Ultimate Doom Ultra-Violence 100% No Enemy Damage Walkthrough - Thy Flesh Consumed

Excuse me if I make grammatical or spelling mistakes in this entry, because I'm about to collapse from complete exhaustion.  I'm writing this after having finally completed the last video in this series, E4M8, and getting through episode four has just about wiped me out completely.

I mentioned in the last post that I'd never played episode four before.  I completed the original Doom when it came out with episodes one through three, then Doom 2, but by the time Ultimate Doom released I had moved on to other games.  In fact I'm not really sure I was even aware of its existence at the time.

When I knew I wanted to do a walkthrough series for Doom, I knew I wanted to do something a little extra.  100% kills, items, and secrets was a given, of course, for my completionist style, but it didn't quite feel like enough.  That's when I got the idea to do no enemy damage.  I know I'm not the first person to do it, but it felt like something that could elevate my walkthrough above others.  My only hesitation was the fact that I had never played episode four, so I had no idea how amenable it was to that kind of challenge.  I didn't want to spoil the experience for myself, so I didn't look at any videos beforehand to gauge it.  Instead I just started this series, trusted my ability to get it done, and hoped for the best.

Well, I got it done alright, but it was a beating beyond absolute belief.  With the first three episodes, doing no enemy damage is mostly a matter of skill - knowing the map, optimizing your approach to taking down enemies, and just being extra careful.  It does require a mild dose of good RNG, because hitscan enemies are always going to require good RNG to get through, but the good news is that hitscan enemies drop off as the episodes progress and are replaced by bigger enemies like Barons and Cacodemons, making episode one actually the hardest of the three to do.  So once I finished E1M7 Computer Station - the hardest map in episode one - it felt like everything was downhill from there.

Then I got to episode four.

I assumed episode four would have a bit of a difficulty spike - after all, it needed something to make it attractive to players who had already mastered episodes 1-3 and Doom 2, but I was totally unprepared for just how big that spike would be.  Now not to brag, but I'm a veteran Doom player, so it's not like the maps were hard for me to complete period, or even hard to 100%, but it's just the way in which the designers upped the difficulty that made doing no enemy damage an absolute nightmare.

For one, the designers clearly understood the player base.  When you first play Doom, of course the bigger enemies like Barons and Cacodemons seem incredibly intimidating.  But as you become skilled at the game, you realize that they're actually not that difficult unless the designers go to great lengths to maximize their terrain advantage in a fight (e.g. tight corridors, or using height differences to allow Cacos to take advantage of their flying ability).  Their projectiles are easy to dodge, and veteran players can easily shotgun a Baron to death or take down a Caco with nothing but a pistol.  Heck, the best players can kill a Cyberdemon by punching them to death.

But you know what's difficult regardless of how skilled you are?  Hitscan.  Hitscan enemies mean you're always in danger of taking damage if they have line of sight to you.  Once a Shotgunner's AI decides to attack you, it only takes him about three tenths of a second to execute the attack.  Even if you're being careful, there's always a chance that when you come into line of sight of one it will be at just the right moment where his AI dictates to do an attack immediately.  I can't tell you how many attempts I had in this episode that were ended by a quickdraw Zombie or Shotgunner.

So after trailing off in the first three episodes, Zombies and Shotgunners come roaring back in this one.  Not only that, but the designers knew how to maximize their effectiveness, often putting them at distance.  This makes them so much harder to take down quickly as the distance decreases the accuracy of your own hitscan weapons, and projectile weapons can obviously miss if the enemy moves and the travel time gives them even more time to attack.

I didn't do this for the first three episodes because it just didn't feel necessary, but here I'm going to do a rundown of all of the maps and which ones nearly stole my sanity in the quest for no enemy damage:

E4M1 Hell Beneath

There are a couple of challenging moments, but overall it's not too bad.  The first real challenge is when you pick up the chaingun and aggro the enemies in the hallway beyond, triggering them to start teleporting.  There's precious little room to maneuver, and the Shotgunners can easily get the drop on you.  There's also the chance that the Baron skips the teleport trigger and corners you in the room.  Even if he doesn't, getting him to infight with the imps in the corner to conserve ammo requires a dangerous dance without much room.

Once you survive that, the only other major challenge is at the end when you release the other four barons.  The hitscanners are gone at this point, but releasing them and then running to the other end of the map is still very stressful.  Grouping them in the corner to maximize rocket splash again requires being uncomfortably close when they start throwing projectiles.  Overall, we'll rate this one as B tier for difficulty.

E4M2 Perfect Hatred

Ugh is all I can say about this one.  You start out immediately in a race to take down enemies before everything goes sideways.  First it's the two Shotgunners, then the Imps, then the Cacos before they can surround you.  Then you enter a long stretch where it's all about carefully maneuvering on platforms while doing a lot of tedious shotgun work.

The next biggest challenge is when you enter the cavern beyond the yellow key unlock.  Taking down the Baron who's down below the edge of the cliff you're on without taking damage is quite stressful, since most of the time he hugs the bottom and you can't seem him well.  The two Barons further beyond him are difficult because of the tight space.

I like the gimmick of telefragging the Cyberdemon, but the last hurdle is being careful with the swarm of Cacos that come out near him.  All in all we'll rate this one as B tier as well.

E4M9 Fear

This one starts out pretty insane but gets easier as it goes.  It's actually a little disappointing for a secret level honestly.

I found the BFG the best way to deal with the large number of Zombies at the beginning, and then you just have to hole up in the room beyond the door and withstand the onslaught of all the enemies that come after you.

Once that's done, the next major challenge is the large interior room with the Baron at the center.  It's just a matter of piecemealing it - going slowly and clearing out each side room or hallway carefully, making sure nothing is going to creep up behind you.  After that it's pretty much all downhill to the end, although I did end up taking an embarrassing face rocket with a Caco near the end due to jitters.  This one is really only C tier.

E4M3 Sever the Wicked

@%@$*$&!^%&#&!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That's all I have to say about this one.  I didn't keep count of how many attempts I had to make on each map before I got a no damage run, but I can assure you this one was easily in the hundreds.  If you told me it was 500 I wouldn't bat an eye.

Welcome to hitscan hell.  You start on top of a platform completely surrounded by hitscanners, and the majority of my runs ended here in the first 15 seconds.  You can reduce the chance of getting pinged if you immediately backtrack off the platform and into the corner with the Pinkies, but ultimately I found this to be a much more difficult strategy down the line when you try to deal with both the enemies behind the false wall opposite the elevator that you can't see, as well as all the hitscanners on the other side where the Baron is.

So my decided strategy was to immediately go for the invulnerability sphere, because you can largely kill everything in the open area before it runs out.  The problem is of course getting to the sphere before getting sniped by one of any number of enemies.  There are the enemies behind the false wall that have a perfect line of sight to you right off the bat, as well as all the ones on the large platform opposite.  There are shotgunners down on the ground level, and of course there are plenty of Imps and Lost Souls who can hit you as well.  The strategy then becomes this:

1. Run and hit the switch to start raising the platform to the sphere as fast as possible.
2. Run back to the rising platform, shooting a BFG shot as you do to start killing enemies in that direction.
3. Drop down onto the rising platform, backing up against the wall.  This gives you some cover against the legion of hitscanners behind you.
4. Shoot a second BFG shot as the platform is rising, doing it quickly enough to hit the wall in front of you.  This will hopefully take out the Shotgunners on the platform opposite where the exit is.
5. Once the platform rises far enough, run and pick up the sphere.  If you're good and lucky, then about 5% of the time you'll be able to do all of the above without taking damage and can then make an attempt on the rest of the level.

A 5% success rate may sound abysmal, but if it happens in the first 15-20 seconds of the level the failure cost is low.  I decided I'd rather go this route than a different strategy that might have a somewhat higher but still low chance of success, but which took 2-3 minutes before getting to the likely failure point.

The thing is, it's not like you're in the clear once you get the sphere.  Yes, you can kill most everything in the open area, but there are still many, many more Shotgunners - as well as enemies in general - left in the level that can ruin your run.

The first major challenge point is when you have to take the teleporter to get the red key.  You arrive in a not very large room where you may be immediately staring at two Shotgunners and a Baron.  If the Shotgunners quickdraw on you it's game over.

The last major challenge is the stairs at the end going up to the exit.  You're surrounded by three Shotgunners whom it's hard to get a good line of sight on until you ascend the stairs completely, giving them time to hit you.  Your best bet is to try to get here while the invisibility sphere is still active.

All in all this by far the most brutal level to complete.  This one is S tier all the way.

E4M4 Unruly Evil

Oh thank goodness you get a break on this level at last.  This level is honestly pretty trivial, and you can get the drop on the few hitscanners it has pretty easily.  Took me hardly any time to do this one.  F tier.

E4M5 They Will Repent

The challenge is back in this one.  The hardest part is the final room with the exit, where taking care of all the hitscanners standing around the actual exit before you enter the room is pretty challenging.  But besides that there aren't a lot of specifically hard parts of the map.  It's more that the whole thing is challenging, and every part requires you to work methodically and carefully.  There are multiple places where you have to deal with hitscanners placed at different elevations and awkward angles from where you are, making them more difficult to take down.  Another B tier challenge.

E4M6 Against Thee Wickedly

The brutality gets ratcheted up again in this one, and again, it's a matter of being a consistent challenge from start to finish.  This is the one where you need to have thoroughly mastered the skills needed from previous maps - knowing exactly when and where enemies appear, then keeping track of which ones you've killed so that you don't get ambushed by a forgotten enemy later on.

Getting to the first open area with the lava pit isn't very hard, but successfully managing the transition down the pit into the next area sure is.  It's always best if the second Cacodemon comes out from the the lava pit so you can kill him in the open, but it doesn't always happen as sometimes he gets stuck inside.  I realized ultimately that it was just better to go slightly slower and take lava damage while navigating to safety than rushing in trying to take less lava damage, but ultimately increasing the chance of getting pinged while dealing with enemies in tight corridors.

Beyond there, you have to do some very careful shotgun work to take down several Imps and Shotgunners on ledges some distance away.  This is where keeping track of enemies is critical.  There are three Shotgunners that will ultimately appear on the far ledge, and if you don't keep track to make sure you've killed them all (sometimes the third takes his sweet time arriving), you're likely to get pinged in the back later on.

The room with the teleporter out into the lava where the yellow and red doors are is another major stress point.  You want to carefully aggro just one Cacodemon at a time, but the fact that they can end up taking the teleporter out there complicates things.  Then when you actually teleport out into the lava you're in a very risky situation since there are two Shotgunners in it waiting for you.

If you make it past all that, the last hurdle is running past the enemies to grab the invulnerability sphere before taking on the Cyberdemon.  There are Shotgunners, so it's a frustrating moment where your fate at the very end is basically up to RNG whether they quickdraw you or not.  This one is A tier for sure.

E4M7 And Hell Followed

This one was shockingly trivial.  I'm pretty sure I had two restarts at the very beginning where the hitscanners quickdrawed me, and then my third attempt succeeded.  Since you can kill the Cyberdemon without using the invulnerability spheres, that means you can save both for the large room at the end, making it significantly easier.  This one is only D tier.

E4M8 Unto the Cruel

And we finish up with a solid S tier map for sure.  The first room you enter is hitscan hell 2.0.  If i made it look easy, it's because I worked over dozens and dozens of attempts to work out the perfect timing and angles for BFG shots.  With so many hitscanners standing in front of the door, the possibility of getting a quickdraw is extremely high, so you need to time the firing of the BFG so it hits the door just as it's opening so the tracers can kill everyone ASAP.

The next room beyond the teleporter is just plain unfair from a no damage run perspective.  There are only about five Shotgunners, but they're well spaced out.  It's hard to get a BFG shot that can kill everything in one go, so I found the best strategy was to just go crazy with the plasma rifle, spraying it every which way while running around like crazy trying not to get shot.  Even if you can get the Shotgunners down, this room is far from safe.  The Cacos in the room above and the Baron can start taking pot shots at you.  There's a Shotgunner beyond the ledge where the Baron is that can hit you if you stand too far back near the wall where the teleporter is, and if you move too far to the right from the teleporter you can aggro the two Shotgunners far back in the upper room with the Cacos.  It takes a tremendous amount of RNG to get through this part unscathed.

If you can get past this part, you have a decent shot on goal chance.  The last major hurdle is the room with the Spiderdemon.  Here it's about carefully taking out as much as possible before aggroing him.  I used rockets to hit the enemies in the side passages and lure them out so I didn't have to run in and face them.

From there as long as you're super careful with the Spiderdemon it should be a win, but man do they make you work for it.  My run count was definitely in the hundreds here again, and by the time I got my successful run I didn't care that it contained two embarrassing face rockets.

Conclusion

So yeah, this was an absolute beating, but I'm proud to have accomplished it.  I'll be moving on to Doom 2 soon - maybe not immediately, but soon.  In the meantime, here's the playlist:

Ultimate Doom Ultra-Violence 100% No Enemy Damage Walkthrough