Doom II: Sunder - Map 19 (City at the Mouth of Ire) UV-Max in

Runner: Zero-Master
Date: 2022-02-22
IWAD: Doom2.wad
PWAD: Sunder 2407.wad
Category: UV-Max
Map: 19 (City at the Mouth of Ire)
Source Port: DSDA-Doom v0.24.1
Time: 2:05:18.17

Description:
What a map! One of the most difficult doom levels ever made assuming you don't use tricks to make it just a little bit easier.

This level was made about 2 years ago, well before I started running sunder. Previously I've done some of the levels by going straight to the end where the BFG is located. Here however, the BFG is locked behind high walls with double fences, almost like a fort designed to keep me out. Only after doing many challenging fights and going through about 80% of the level are you supposed to finally get your hands on it. So anyone that's seen this level and watched my other runs might ask, did I actually get to it early this time too? You can find the answer by watching or reading below. Anyways I use nearly every trick there is for this level.. linedef skips, zero press, rocket jumps, glides, infinite height switches and an arch-vile jump.

I really enjoyed running this, the early parts are quite fun. This was my only run to get past like 45 minutes so things really go downhill at that point. Being a bit more familiar with the route and not playing unnecessarily safe could easily bring this under 1h50m at least.

There's a couple games I'll be playing over the next week or two, so I'll get to map 20 after that. Quality wise this is the worst run I've done so far, a lot of it just looks like a casual playthrough to me, so hopefully taking a bit more time for map20 I'll also be able to record something that's at least not terrible... assuming I don't end up getting unlucky at the final fight too many times whenever I get there, in that case I'll also take whatever I get.

Comments about the run:
Absolutely awful time and 25 minutes slower than my last practice time. Even a half-decent run without the early skips could beat this. 5 minutes were probably lost to horrible ammo management, 5 minutes to forgetting where to go or checking for missing monsters, 5-10 minutes to just slow and bad playing for everything after 40 minutes and another 5-10 minutes to playing the final fight too safe. A bit more practice or deep attempts would have fixed those problems quickly, but whatever gets the job done is good enough for now I suppose.

Since the map is so open I made several route changes after some attempts which made a mess out of it all too. 3 out of my last 5 attempts made it to the BFG, so the early route here is really good now. Most my attempts died at the first couple of fights early on as I figured I'd just combine attempts with practice as I don't need ammo/health from there.

Start was ok, somehow I just almost never die in the long stairs fight even though I feel like I play awful on a bad route every time so I haven't seen much reason to adjust anything. At least I had some health left this time, not that it's important.

Got the skips without trouble, only for a few attempts did I have to attempt the rocket jump a second time, so it's very consistent for me.

Rev/cyber fight went mostly as expected. The same with red key fight, but took a lot of damage and things got out of control shortly after the hive mothers teleported in, though that's normal and I still survived.

I wasn't supposed to grab the invulnerability closest to the blue door when I did. My plan was to use it for the part at 39:00. It's not too bad though since it was a recent change to the route so I had already had something decent prepared for it, just not as safe as with the invulnerability.

Actually managed to activate the cyberdemon/vile/revenants fight at 37:25 in 1 SSG shot, that was lucky.

Grabbing the megasphere at 39:30 turned out to be a bad idea, but if I survive getting back out into the main room then it's easy to dodge everything as long as I don't do anything dumb. Wasted quite a bit of time here playing it too safe.

Wasted too many cells at 55:30, just forgot what I was supposed to do here so just left click with BFG until everything is dead. Left me low on cells for the cyberdemon pair afterwards so that cost more time.

Made a real mess out of the baron elevator fight at 1:09:25. This fight was easy enough without the BFG so with it I just assumed it would never be a problem. Could have easily taken a cyberdemon rocket and died here.

Nearly died in the last fight, should have waited a bit longer for the monsters to move closer to the center. Since it nearly cost me the attempt I clearly should have put more effort into that particular part. Mostly horrible BFG use overall, just didn't want to run into 10 projectiles at the same time or get trapped somehow because I want to save a few minutes in an already slow run. A single hell knight decided to flee the battlefield apparently, coward!

Route/Strategy:
https://pastebin.com/C9pq5BC4