Strategy:Cyberdemon

Basic Strategy

The Cyberdemon is a particularly bulky boss who will greet you at the end of Deimos (Deimos 8: The Tower of Babel) and occasionally in the final levels of Ao100. He packs a melee attack that does 1d3 + 15 damage and a ranged rocket attack that does 6d6 damage. He is unique from most other DoomRL enemies in two ways—first, he knows where you are and he will get into range and attack unwaveringly. Second, he has a longer sight range than you do (unless you have MCe). Indeed, his large sight range makes it difficult to outspeed him, even though he only has 110% speed.

There are three basic strategies often employed to take down the Cyberdemon.

• Gather a large amount of dodge. Two levels in Hellrunner and donning Tactical armor is an example of having high dodge. This will ensure that most of the Cyberdemon's attacks will miss if the player dodges correctly. An even more surefire way to handle him using this method is to take the Dodgemaster trait. This will guarantee that his rockets will never score a direct hit. Be careful, though; the level is a bit cramped, considering the pillars. It is easy to get hit by the splash from the explosion. Also note that he will slowly close to melee range over the course of his attacks. You may need to retreat if you're in danger of being melee'd. This method is advised for low-DPS builds that rely on speed (i.e., MSh).

• Build a high-DPS character. Some characters do so much damage that they can kill the Cyberdemon before he is able to fire more than 4 or 5 rockets. Even if you get hit by 2 or 3 of them, that damage is easily mitigated by armor and medkits. An example of a typical high-DPS build might be a focus on rapid-fire, with traits such as SoB and TH. Dual pistols often fall into this category as well. Outside of weapon-restricted builds, rocket launchers and BFGs perform well against him. Remember to time your shots so that you can still get a dodge off before he fires! Fire speed helps a lot here.

• Melee him. The Cyberdemon doesn't do as much damage in melee as getting hit directly by a rocket. Even a non-melee build is able to make good use of the guaranteed chainsaw (from The Chained Court) to attack him, provided an armor with high melee resistance and/or armor value has been found. A red armor is doable with a melee build; for a non-melee build, it is advised to have something a little beefier.

Tips

• Use the pillars to buffer yourself when you first enter the level. You won't know exactly where the Cyberdemon is, so stay on the stairs-side of a pillar and wait for him to fire a rocket at you. The resulting chunk blown out of the pillar will allow you to pinpoint his location, so you can get into the fire->dodge->fire groove without giving him a free hit.

• The Cyberdemon is immune to acid and lava pools, so don't bother using the Acid Spitter or Napalm Launcher against him.

• Although the Cyberdemon is immune to knockback in The Tower of Babel, he can be knocked back in Ao100.

• The Cyberdemon will fire a rocket and some time (1.0s?) will pass before he reloads his rocket launcher. A message will be displayed to let the player know when the Cyberdemon has reloaded. This marks roughly the halfway point to when he will fire again. Take it as your cue to dodge. Check your firing speed (with the @ key) to get a rough idea of how many times you can attack before you need to dodge.

• When you reach Deimos 7, try to clear the level without using the powerups. If you're lucky, you will get an invincibility or berserk near the stairs, which will make the fight trivial. (You remembered to take the chainsaw with you, right?)

• The Cyberdemon will fire at you as long as you're in what would be his sight range; even if you're behind a pillar. This means that a character with sufficiently high movement speed can fire off some shots, duck behind a pillar to block the attack, then pop back out and fire off some more shots. Don't count on the pillar to take more than 3 or 4 hits for you, though.

Ashannar 11:34, 23 March 2013 (CET)