Iwad:      doom2.wad
Pwad:      doghouse.wad
Map:       MAP20
Skill:     4
Category:  UV Max
Exe:       dsda-doom 0.29.4 -complevel 9
Date:	   September 22, 2026
Video:     https://youtu.be/7oUUNmMiRgs

Time:      92:30.49

Author:    hobop7614

Comments:


AAAAAAAAAAAA  (and yes this text file might be a bit excessive. It used to be 5k words but I trimmed it to 4k. Still a lot though x)

Some time ago, since this is one of my favorite maps of all time, I wanted to route a speedrun max for this map. At first I thought "oh well Crusador's run features a lot of cheeses that seem pretty slow so maybe the faster route will be playing the map more straight up", but as I continued I realized that that wouldn't be true and that the speedrun would, in fact, deviate a lot more from the intended way of playing the map than Crusador's max. In a certain way I felt bad for the map, so I decided that at some point I would do a "cheeseless" run.

Since I'm doing a cheeseless run I need to have some kind of a definition of cheese. Is getting the baron and revenants to infight without making a sound cheese? Is escaping a fight early cheese? is herding cheese? is routing cheese? should I just faceplant every fight??? I wasn't really able to come up with anything better than "I'll know it when I see it" so I guess you could consider some of the things I do "cheesy" but idk I'm happy with the run.

This took longer than I'd hoped, and I choked a lot of 40+ minutes runs, but ultimately I'd say that none of the fights are too insane with proper routing + practice. 


The order in which I did the fights was somewhat variable. I followed the same route for most attempts, but in this case I hadn't actually played the map in some time and was kind of worried about dying in some of the fights that I hadn't done in a while, so I decided to skip some of the fights that I would normally do earlier in the run.

--- Nobles + Viles:
This fight would be easier if I didn't want to save rockets and health for the next fight. I might be going a bit overboard and making it harder for myself than necessary though idk. Depending on how early the viles show their faces this fight can go somewhat differently. Also It'd be easier to funnel the nobles to the left but I don't really want to have any/too many corpses where the vile will be in the next fight, since having revived nobles there can mess you up.

--- Way too grindy fight  (flyers + revs + imps):
Aaaah this fight is probably my least favorite in the wad aaah there are so many flyers aaah it takes forever. And unlike the upcoming "grind tunnels" I don't really feel like there's a "point" to the grind here. It's not a satisfying grind, but it's also not a consistency-check type grind, or a spectacle, so it's just tedious. (still love the map though ;) Anyway I think it might be better to not stick around the revenants at the beginning for too long at the beginning (unlike what I did in this demo) but I'm not sure. You kind of want to go to revenants' location as fast as possible since, because of the spawn location of the flyers, it will funnel them all to the left side instead of being more spread around.

--- Viles on a rock (+ revs + cybers + etc): 
I start this fight killing some imps because I want to lure the cybers farther to the right and give the revenants  an opportunity to teleport in before I go over there and get some infighting going (hopefully). After that I go back to the imps for a sec with the idea that it will both keep the cybers to the right side and to hopefully guide some revenants closer to the cybers to infight. Though I only began doing this during the last two attempts because I died once to a cyber that got boomed down the left pit, which I would normally use to escape the area near the viles once it got too busy. I'm not 100% sure how much it helps though.
I found it too inconsistent to try to kill all of the viles at the start though idk maybe you could get it consistent. Not sure how much it would get you anyway. I barely got targeted in this demo (which is somewhat unusual) so it isn't really shown well, but normally, assuming the viles target you when you get near them, you have to do this stutter-step type thing to avoid getting hit by the homing rev missiles and at the same time give the viles time to complete their blast animation. Once enough revs have left their original location, I try to leave through the left pit (in this demo I approach it in a somewhat weird way though). Normally I would kind of look at the barons up top to see if I could spot a cyber and if I couldn't I would try to run past them and camp up top. But, and I've never seen this happen before, one of the cybers got boomed by the barons /and/ all 3 cybers survived the revenants so there were 4 cybers roaming around! I wasn't comfortable with the idea of slipping past the barons, so instead I ended up camping in the pit to the side, which luckily worked out.

--- One-sided sandwich (5 cybers on the side): 
I'd say my use of the teleporter in this fight is slightly cheese-adjacent but I intentionally try to not abuse it too much so it's fine imo. I start with firing rockets to clear out the imps and let barons and revs teleport in so that they can infight with the cybers, but I think 4 rockets might be too much since some of them end up hitting the barons. 
I didn't execute this fight too well. I probably still needed to derust.
For the transition into the next fight I always try to do it with a decent amount of barons alive to distract the cybers. Since if you try to trigger the revenants with all the barons dead, there's a decent chance the cybers block you from going back down the stairs.

--- Pre-cheesed fight (stuck cacos + revs + pinkies):
This map has some finnicky things, like the teleporting cacos (24 of them) being stuck in this fight. So in a way it's impossible to do this fight cheeseless.

--- Hard(er) health bonus fight (revs + imps + cacos + cybers + barons):
I got pretty lucky with the turrets cyber immediately shooting rockets at the start but this route doesn't require good infighting. I stay in the corner after killing the vile for only 30 seconds after starting the fight, even if the revenants aren't even close to me. Also I think that might've been the first time I've ever gotten hit by one of the turret cybers. Obviously my attention was elsewhere since it wasn't a hard rocket to see, but what was I even looking at??? no revenants were firing at me so I didn't really need to look anywhere but at the cybers!!! Anyway, after the 30 seconds are up I go to the imps for about 7 seconds or so. This is to pull more revenants from their teleport location, so that it'll be easier to go there later. For this same reason I wait around the cyber and cacos for a bit until I return to the start and wait around to, again, pull away the revs from their hole. After I go past the turret cyber, the side that I stay on is important, since I found it to be much easier to get boxed in by the cacos when I tried staying on the other side. After this it's mainly just avoiding cybers and infighting rockets. 
-- I took a lot of unnecessary damage during the first phase but ah there's plenty of health.

--- Revenant cage (+ barons + cyber):	
I used to have more consistency with this strategy but the last couple of attempts didn't work out that well. Oh well, even if you get bad cyber infighting it really shouldn't matter too much. I try to herd the barons so that their pathing gets them hit by splash damage but more often than not, it seems, it doesn't really work out. This strat can definitely be improved but I almost never died here so ah. You could consider teleporting out of the room slightly "cheese-adjacent" but ah I don't consider it cheesy enough to avoid it (and it happened on accident, though I guess I could have not activated the teleporter). Also, since RNG is involved a little bit with the infighting, I don't feel bad.

--- Grind tunnel:
I used to not like this fight but I've grown to appreciate it. It's kind of funny, really, and it works better late into a run than in a casual playthrough.
I found that trying to strike a balance between optimizing rocket splash damage and killing the baron farthest in front gave me the most success. Don't optimize your damage enough and it might take too long to kill everything before the viles are released. But it seems that when I try to optimize it too much, I tend to get forced out of a good position. You want to stay in certain positions since you want to stand where the revenants are able to see you and infight with the barons in the back, thus creating a "blockage", preventing other monsters from moving forward.
Another thing you have to look out for is when you're rocketing close to the lift, it's possible that, when you get hit by a projectile slightly to your left side, you get pushed behind the wall and facerocket yourself (yes this did kill a run lol)

In the second phase you want to stand to the right so that as many enemies as possible can see you, which hopefully causes infighting and slowly damages the viles. Whenever you get targeted by a vile hiding to the left is better since it allows you to continue firing good rockets.

--- PEs + pinkies health bonus fight:
The main thing to keep note of is that 35 enemies in total teleport in and the last pain elemental(s) can be a bit slow, as is shown in this demo. 

--- +++ Giga mega enlarged inflated super secret fight +++ ---

Easily the most memorable encounter of the map (and entire wad?). It feels insurmountable and chaotic when playing blind, but it starts making sense if you spend the time to "study" it. I've probably spent more time in this fight than almost any map (though most of that time was spent on trying to make a different route work).

I'm quite happy with the route that I ended up finding but, damn, this demo is like the worst possible showcase of the route. This might genuinely be the most cybers that I've ever had still be alive after my trek through the pinkies (during an earlier attempt I had only 1 cyber alive, though that's also pretty rare) + 1(?) cyber also joined in from the center. Though I guess it's a good look that, despite having close to the worst possible luck, I still managed to survive. The most dangerous part of this fight is the first 90 seconds and with this route I was able to survive it 12 times in a row in practice. During the 13th attempt, though, I got hit by a should've-been-easy-to-avoid rocket so, yeah, I think with some practice you can definitely make it pretty consistent.

I'd say you can divide the fight into three parts: pre-invuln room, invuln room and post-invuln room. The pre-invuln part should, ideally, be the only scary part. Your main goal is to free the way to the invuln room, but in order to do that you're gonna have to get all of the barons + cybers in front of it out of the way, which means you're gonna have to wait around for a bit. But typically, because there are so many cybers around you, you're gonna be forced to move around, which leaves you susceptible to infighting rockets. Ideally we would minimize this as much as possible. 

The main idea behind this route is using the arachnotrons to weaken/kill the cybers. To maximize this I first kill some imps with the BFG. The monsters can't hear you before you enter the arena so if you pre-fire a shot you can slip past the imps. Here I wait about 7 seconds in front of the imps to get as many spiders as possible to target me, but before their projectiles hit me. After I go through the imps and when I grab ammo I make sure to grab the farthest away cell packs and to not go deep into the cave, since we want to keep the line of sight with the spiders. I then make my way through the mancs. This looks somewhat scary but I found it to be very rare that you get killed here. Though it's definitely possible that the imps + mancs do enough damage to you that you're forced to grab the mega earlier. We go through the pinkies here to both allow the barons and cybers to move quicker and to extend the time the spiders are shooting at me and (hopefully) hitting the cybers. Even if a lot of the cybers stay alive, like in this demo, they will be weakened enough that you can still pretty reliably kill them. After this I go to the back of the arena to wait around. Normally I would kill some cacos  immediately upon arriving here, to clear the way to grab cells later, but because I took some  damage beforehand I was focused on grabbing the mega.

About 2m45s after entering the arena, more monsters start teleporting in. Most importantly, a massive amount of revenants in the back and mancubi + some cybers in front of the invuln room. I try to stay in the back near the revenants up until 2m20s or so after entering the arena. I chose this timing because 1. it pulls the barons + cybers far enough away from the invuln room so that you can slip past them without a hassle, but 2. at the same time the cybers are close enough to the invuln room that they can help a little bit with the revenants that teleport in once you enter it. And 3. this give you enough time to kill the viles without taking damage using some BFG pre-fires. If you waited longer the mancs teleporting in would block the pre-fires and make it harder, if not impossible, to safely kill the viles without being forced to grab an invuln (or at the very least a mega). Be careful after rushing the viles, since it's very easy to accidentally push one or two of them off their platform and you might get blindsided by them. 

After you cross a linedef in the invuln room even more revenants (and nobles) teleport in front of the invuln room (also the platforms that the viles were on lower, but that shouldn't matter if they're dead). Also! we now have 53 cybers to our side. The goal in this room is basically just to survive as long as possible with the resources we get. I try to survive as long as possible without grabbing an invuln as, the longer you survive, the less time you'll have to spend with the revenant wave afterwards. It's not impossible to survive the revenant wave for a while (in fact it's technically possible to do the entire invuln room without grabbing an invuln) but the chance of taking a large amount of damage, or even dying, is much larger than during the noble wave, and ideally we don't want to grab the second invuln until later. You might not want to wait too long before grabbing the invuln since you might not be able to grab the megasphere inside of the crowd as too many nobles will block the way.

Afterwards, most of the invuln room is relatively self explanatory. Try to time your shots so that the tracers hit when you're in front of the nobles. You'll also see me constantly take glances at the cybers to look out for any infighting rockets. I only grab the second invuln whenever I start feeling uncomfortable about rockets hitting me (around 9k kills is good for this route).
Following this route, the kill count I'm looking for until escaping is about 10.3k to 11k, depending on how comfortable I feel surviving. It's possible to escape even earlier but the cleanup will be more dangerous, and it might not even be possible to escape at all without running out of ammo. If you're considering using this route I recommend practicing escapes/cleanups at different kill counts. Depending on whether you'd consider it a cheese, you might do what Crusador did and escape the entire fight early and have things infight while you're chilling. It might or might not be cheese, but I considered that strat, at the very least, too "cheese-adjacent" for this specific run.

The cleanup shouldn't be too challenging assuming you have the right amount of kills. You can make use of the elevation differences here to more easily dodge the cyber rockets. Hopefully you've saved up some megas here to make yourself more comfortable. After a while you can start circle strafing, though you'll still have to look out for infighting rockets. There's a chance one of the cybers doesn't get crushed after pressing the button so keep that in mind if there are any missing monsters before the finale.

I died 4 times during this fight, all in different ways, almost all stupid.

1. This was before I rerouted this fight. The first time I got here I was still somewhat scared of immediately going into the mancs at the start so I didn't do that and instead followed a route closer to what Crusador does in the beginning. I don't remember the details, I just know that I got hit by a rocket (I think infighting?) in the first minute. Maybe  avoidable, maybe not, idk.
2. Got hit by a rocket during the cleanup (just before I was able to circle strafe). The rocket, though avoidable, was a bit hard to see. But really this was a mistake caused by me not being comfortable with the cleanup because I hadn't practiced it enough, so I put myself in a bad spot. - Stupid 
3. During the first part, while in the back with the revenants, I took a lot of avoidable chip damage and at some point got stuck in some revenants because I didn't "use cells". - Stupid
4. For whatever reason I forgot that the viles had a chance to fall off their platform and got blindsided twice(!!!). Since I had like 90/90 health, I felt uncomfortable and grabbed an invuln earlier than I normally would have. It would have probably been a better decision to grab a mega instead, and delay grabbing the invuln. Since more revs were alive than normal, I had a bad time (also probably avoidable by just playing better) and got killed by either a lot of homing missiles or a cyber rocket - idk. - Stupid


--- Yellow skull "fight":
I sure take my time with this in this demo. 12697 kills before the finale. Look out for any enemies that might have fallen in the damaging floor near the eye, and don't forget the stuck cacos.

--- Finale:

Holy hell this went terribly. In general I feel like I'm bad at this fight (even though I've said before that it's easy x)

Anyway, knowing where and when the megas teleport in is an important thing to know, since new megas will "replace" the older ones.
Here's a little drawing showing where and when the megas teleport:

---------------------------------
---------------------------------    <--- stairs
---------------------------------

       x                 x           <--- phase 1, 3, 4, 5

			     x       <--- 2




                             x       <--- 2
			     
      x                  x	     <--- 4


We've got 5 phases:

------ First phase:
The first time I got to the finale I died because the tip of my head got grazed by a rocket. After that I started using the walls to my advantage like you see in this demo. 
I almost died here because I'm stupid and got stuck in that one imp. This was easily avoidable.

------ Second and third phase
Self explanatory I think.

------ Fourth phase:
God I'm terrible at this phase. I try to kill as many viles as I comfortably can. It's possible to kill all of the viles before they are able to revive a substantial amount of enemies, but it's a lot easier said than done to go for this 90 minutes into a run. I feel like I definitely could have killed some more of the viles after grabbing the mega. I feel like it might have  been safer than slowly hemorrhaging health like I did here.
The second time I died during the finale was here. I didn't really practice a "harder version" of the vile phase in case my pre-killing strategy didn't work out that well, so I was already mentally unprepared for such a thing (same with this demo, really). I think I managed to only kill 3-4 viles or something. Maybe I could have survived but I tried to grab one of the megas that spawn in during phase 2, got blocked from grabbing it, and then got surrounded by revenants when I tried to turn back. I didn't fire my BFG fast enough and... etc. This was pretty avoidable since I'm pretty sure I still had one of the bottom megas left that I could've grabbed more easily.

----- Fifth phase:
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
this was terrifying. In practice I often ran into cell problems, but I always had at least a couple of cell packs left. I'm so glad I stumbled upon those packs while approaching the pain elementals. This demo isn't the best showcase of how I would normally do this phase but it still somewhat resembles it: you just shoot the BFG and use the elevation of the stairs to more easily dodge the rockets. Ideally you would kill all or almost all of the cybers before going around the PEs, but that didn't always happen, and you can at least wait delay until the PEs have gotten close enough for you to circle strafe comfortably. Anyway you should probably try to use less of the cells near the stairs during the previous phases. Also I'm pretty sure I kept firing even after I realized that there weren't any cells nearby. Idk why lol I kind of deserved to die.


Sidenote: before I started attempting the run, I had planned to attempt map 21 immediately after exiting map 20. Map 20 and 21 were originally going to be a single map until Arbys realized that 20 had grown too big and it wouldn't be possible, so I thought it would be neat to have a demo that did them both together. I put a good amount of time into routing/practicing 21, but after one or two devastating deaths in map 20 I decided that if I did get an exit, I would rather just end the session on a high note instead of getting disappointed after possibly dying in 21 (even if I still got a map 20 exit!). I'm not sure whether I'll try the 20-21 run in the future, but if I do, I would definitely apply a little bit of cheese on top to make the grindy bits of the map less tedious.

The easter egg / area at the end is an unfinished version of map 21 (+ a little bit extra :)

