Strategy:Game Settings

Angel of Max Carnage

AoMC is infamous for being considered easier than the main game by players; while it seems like you will die really easily with enemies not missing you without Dodgemaster and always dealing maximum damage, the player can utterly abuse the max accuracy and damage to destroy enemies before they even get a chance.

The ideal build for this challenge is a rapid fire build; these weapons are mainly held back by their abysmal accuracy and unreliable damage output without significant trait investment, but in AoMC, these weaknesses no longer apply. And among the rapid fire options, the ideal class is the Scout with Cateye. With a Scout, you can immediately get Intuition, so you can get Intuition 2 as soon as dlevel 2, allowing you to see enemy locations outside your sight, where you can then fire at them (with the accuracy of AoMC mitigating the out-of-sight accuracy penalty) and kill them easily before they can see you. Intuition additionally builds to Cateye, so you won't be delaying getting it by going for Intuition right away. And then once you have Cateye, you pretty much won the game; Intuition 2 stacks on top of the +2 to your vision from Cateye, so you'll be able to see enemy locations from 5 or more spaces outside their vision, meaning you should be able to kill everything before they ever get a chance to see you. When it comes to additional traits after Cateye, you should take the second level of Triggerhappy and definitely get Finesse twice to farther improve your ability to kill enemies before they can react. Whizkid after that is also a good idea as assemblies and mods will add additionally improved firepower among other benefits. And then Hellrunner will be a decent pick to help you stay out of enemy sight or escape beginning situations that have you surrounded, though being able to move faster won't help that much most of the time when you're able to kill everything outside their sight, so you might want to go for improving Finesse and Son of a Bitch farther instead.

Counter-intuitively to a challenge designed to have everything hit so hard and accurately, this ability to kill enemies so easily before they can see the player makes AoMC ideal for getting the Untouchable Badge, Medal, and Cross, as well as for any of the other medals and badges that require you beat something without taking damage. There's also a few badges that requires you to beat AoMC on certain difficulty levels with one of the Untouchable medals, which should be among the easier badges to get among their class.

When it comes to the special levels, all of them should be easier than usual and no problem to complete, making a Conqueror run simple. Phobos Anomaly might be tricky with its ambush where the Cacodemons and Imps will be super accurate, so you would want to carry a Phase device with you to get out of there. City of Skulls could be tricky too with its beginning ambush, so you'll probably want to keep a Combat shotgun or Tactical shotgun handy, as well as use a Phase device again. Unholy Cathedral seems like it would be a stumbling block since you almost certainly won't be investing in melee traits in AoMC (Cateye itself blocks Brute and by extension Berserker), but Unholy Cathedral is significantly more doable without melee traits than in the main game. With a Piercing Chainsaw, you'll be dealing at least 28 damage to everything without Brute investment, which will one shot all the Lost souls and Demons on the level, and you won't have to worry about misses either without Brute when you have the accuracy modifier of AoMC. Then with the Angel of Death, his damage output doesn't really change from the main game, his hits will just do 1-2 more damage than usual, while you're now able to do 28+ damage with every hit. Using a Hatred skull on the Demon corpses will make the Angel of Death a freebie, but without going berserk, you should be able to beat the Angel of Death with no more than a few Large medkits, provided you wear an armor with decent melee resistance. You should probably skip the Unholy Cathedral however if you're actively going for one of the Untouchable medals or a badge that requires one due to unavoidable damage, unless you can nuke the level. Omega Tyrant (talk) 09:23, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Angel of 100

In Angel of 100, instead of a normal game, you have to play through 100 randomly generated levels to win, with all the special and named levels removed. A straightforward challenge.

When it comes to what master trait you should go for, first thing to consider is that you're going to want to pick up Whizkid. With 100 levels, you're going to come across a ton of mods and Exotics, and have forever to reach your potential, so you'll be really handicapping yourself for later in the game if you don't take advantage of Whizkid to get all that wonderfully powerful equipment. So that means you can cross off picking Army of the Dead, Entrenchment, and Gunrunner. Second, you will want Hellrunner, as besides movement speed and dodging being really useful in itself, you will come across level events like floods and armed nukes that will require you leave or complete the level ASAP or die, not to mention with 100 levels you're eventually going to get put into really unfavorable situations where movement speed will be your best friend to get out of it. Plus if you decide to start stair diving, movement speed will again be your best friend. So with Hellrunner in mind, you can additionally cross off Vampyre, Bullet Dance, and Survivalist for your master trait to choose. Then Intuition will be extremely helpful for keeping you alive and out of bad situations when you're playing 100 levels, so with Intuition desired, that will cross off Malicious Blades, Fireangel, and Ammochain. This one however isn't quite as clear cut; Ammochain's ammo preservation is extremely helpful when ammo can be a serious concern in Ao100 and when you can use those inventory slots that would have been used on ammo on things like medkits to help keep you alive, especially if you're trying to get 100% kills, and Malicious Blades will be the only melee build that will still be powerful with the lack of any guaranteed melee weapon better than a Combat knife, while you can argue smart and cautious play itself will keep you out of bad situations Intuition will help you avoid. That bit about melee means you can cross off Blademaster unless you're willing to gamble, as you're going to be really weak unless you're lucky enough to find a Chainsaw, a Butcher's Cleaver, or the Dragonslayer while being able to pick it up.

So with all that in mind, your best choices for a master trait will be Malicious Blades, Gun Kata, Sharpshooter, Shottyhead, Ammochain, Cateye, and Scavenger. Another thing is if you don't care about 100% kills, you will probably want to start stair diving once you're sufficiently powerful enough to take on any encounter, in which case you should unquestionably choose a Scout as your class and whichever of the above recommended master traits available to Scouts, as you'll be able to see the stairs immediately upon entering each level and save you a ton of time in having to search for them with other classes. For one more final note, if you want to fight the Apostle, you will have to be wielding the Dragonslayer and Berserker Armor when you make it to the final floor, and you cannot ever unequip the Dragonslayer once you pick it up, so if you intend to pick up the Dragonslayer if you find it to fight the Apostle, you should pick a master trait that doesn't block Brute, which of the above recommended masters will cross off Gun Kata and Cateye. If that is your ultimate goal, a melee master isn't necessary, as while one of them would be obviously helpful while almost all the other master traits would be useless once you have the Dragonslayer equipped, the Dragonslayer is so powerful that with the permanent berserk it grants, having a melee master isn't really necessary and you can suffice with just Brute investment, while you can invest in another master and non-melee when the Dragonslayer isn't remotely guaranteed to ever appear in Ao100. If you really want a melee master with the Dragonslayer however, you should use Malicious Blades as pointed out before so you can still be powerful without relying on lucky drops.

When it comes to the actual gameplay of Ao100, you'll have to know that the game's difficulty curve doesn't level off once you reach dlevel 25; the danger level used in generation continues to rise as you get deeper and deeper, while nightmare enemies, elite formers, and most of the bosses will start showing up as normal enemies. This means as you get deeper and deeper, stronger and more dangerous enemies will appear, larger quantities of enemies will appear, and you'll be facing increasingly deadly level types and events. Despite that however, the most difficult part of Ao100 will be the first 10-20 levels, and these will be the levels that will really test your ability to survive. With no special levels, you will be sorely lacking all that nice guaranteed loot you would have at equivalent dlevels in the main game, such as many mods, a very early Rocket Launcher, the Chainsaw, the Red armor, and the BFG 9000. The lack of special levels additionally means you will be a few levels lower at equivalent dlevels during this portion of the game. So lacking that guaranteed loot and those few extra trait levels, you'll be much weaker when stronger enemies like Barons, Arachnotrons, and VMR start showing up, unless you get really lucky quickly. At this point in the game those nasty enemies will be extremely threatening, and you'll be at the mercy of the RNG's level generation; one bad level generated during the 10-20 dlevel range, especially on harder difficulties, and it's probably game over. Indeed, the vast majority of failed Ao100 runs end in this level range. So you will really want to kill everything and fully explore levels early on, getting as much experience, equipment, and items as you can. The faster you can get stronger, the better your chances will be of surviving this big hump. You should only leave levels prematurely at this point of the game if you get a really bad level generated like an Arachnotron Cave that you will have slim hopes of surviving if you stay, or otherwise have gotten yourself into a really nasty situation and will most certainly die if you don't get to the stairs ASAP to take a gamble with the next level giving you a reprieve.

Assuming you killed everything and fully explored each level along the way, if you can survive to around dlevel 25, the game will start getting a lot easier. At that point your level will be around the normal game's endgame level, you should have good modded equipment and a couple Exotics/Uniques, a sufficient supply of Large medkits among other useful items, and item generation will get really good. Additionally from this point, the next set of new enemies get introduced every 10 dlevels, giving you plenty of time to level more and improve equipment in preparation for them, while the only new thing that starts showing up in the 24-30 dlevel range (dependent on difficulty) is the Nightmare Imp, who is outclassed by the Hell knights you have long surpassed and is no real threat to you, thus giving you a big reprieve in the increasing danger climb when you reach this point. So once you get to this point of the game, the chance of each individual level being able to kill you drastically drops, and the main challenge to the game will be avoiding doing something fatally stupid over so many levels instead of fighting for your survival. Yeah you will eventually start having hordes of Barons, VMR, nightmare enemies, and most of the bosses everywhere, and the RNG is going to hand you some really unfair levels at some point (you thought Arachnotron caves were bad? How about a Nightmare Arachnotron cave). By the point you encounter such though, you'll be so overloaded with traits, overly powerful assembled equipment and modded Exotics, and Uniques, that even Cyberdemons and Nightmare Arch-viles as regular enemies will do little to faze you.

If you don't care about 100% kills and want to finish Ao100 as soon as you can, you may be wondering at what point you can stop focusing on getting stronger and start stair diving without worry of running into something you're too weak and ill-equipped to handle. While around dlevel 25 may be the point the game starts getting a lot easier as explained, you shouldn't start stair diving just then, as while the normal elite enemies are no longer a big threat to you, you probably still won't be strong enough to handle large groups of them in conjunction with nightmare enemies and bosses, and can still easily get killed by getting spawned in something really nasty like a Nightmare Arachnotron cave. At what point you're reasonably strong enough to take on anything the game can hand you will be a judgment call on your part, but once you're at your potential or feel you're near, where any additional traits would be mostly superfluous and there's little more stuff you could find or do to farther improve your equipment, there's probably few situations that can be really threatening to your survival. Being a Scout with Intuition 2 will really help for stair diving and allow you to start comfortably doing it earlier. And of course if you get the Dragonslayer and Berserker Armor, you can probably start stair diving without worry unless you're really lacking in traits and could use some more.

When it comes to stuff you should assemble, there's obviously the advanced and master assemblies of your build's primary weapons that you could have trouble getting in the normal game, when Whizkid, time, and mod investment is no longer a concern. For assemblies of particular note, there's the Tactical rocket launcher, when with no guaranteed Missile launcher, it'll be your way to procure a guaranteed clip rocket launcher, that is better than the Missile launcher anyway but held back in the normal game by the advanced assembly requirement. Then there's Cerberus boots, where with 84 of the 100 levels being in Hell, you will be around lava a lot and having a way to walk through fluids with no damage whenever you want will be a tremendous help, as well as making you a lot more RNG resistant when having them will make the spawning of fluids become a big advantage to you instead of the detriment it usually is. Cerberus armor also merits special consideration, when in the normal game its steep mod requirements and probably lacking a good Exotic armor to make it out of makes it not so practical to make, while in Ao100 mod investment is again no concern and you'll probably eventually come across a good Exotic armor for its base. For one more note, once you get Whizkid 2, any basic assembly you made beforehand, like Tactical boots and Fireproof armor, you should remake another of, as you'll be able to add an extra mod to any assembly you make after Whizkid 2 and thus farther improve your equipment, while any assembly you made before you got Whizkid 2 still cannot be modded at all. Omega Tyrant (talk) 15:50, 19 April 2017 (UTC)