PWAD: dotw.wad
PWAD Name: Dance On The Water
Map: 32
Skill: 4
Category: UV-Max
Exe: DSDA-Doom 0.29.4 complevel 9
Recorded on: 10/9/26 (mm/dd/yy)
Time: 35:26
Author: Twilight
Attempts: 613 (About a week of routing/practice)
Description:  The first time I tried this map was close to a year ago, but it was completely unapproachable for my skill level (it's still a stretch, even with some cheese).  Recently, it began to stick out as the only remaining non-DOOMED bounty, and I thought it would be cool to have only DOOMED bounties left, so I gave it another look. 
	Just like with Disarray map 4, I did this run early in the morning before eating breakfast.  The window was open all night so the room was cold.  I shut the window and figured it would warm up eventually.  My hands were still cold.
	My initial route was to get the bfg, do the secret for a mega, and then do the circle fight with that.  Then when I come up from the second fall I can just bfg the remaining barons.  (I did experiment with trying to bfg through them earlier, but it's a low chance of survival.)  The benefit of this is that you don't have to rocket as frequently, but the time investment to get to the fight is too much.  Since you can easily die in the circle fight from any momentary lapse in concentration, or even sometimes a lost soul way above you can push you off.  My first 3 successful attempts at the circle fight were with the bfg.  Then I ended up dying shortly after returning. (First to the red key platforming, and another time to the viles.) 
	I was getting more comfortable with the fight, so I decided to try it with just the RL, and it wasn't much different from doing it with the bfg.  The extra health from the mega means that I usually didn't have to go for one during the fight, which is good because it can hard to find a good time to pick one up with rev missiles right behind you. The extra rockets let me use the time at the start while the missiles are approaching to get a lot of early damage. 
	I'm a little disappointed that this is the circle fight that ended up being the successful run.  The first 2 falls are planned to crash the revenant missiles and allow for some focused rocketing time, but the third fall was an accident. If all goes to plan in the circle fight, the barons should be dead as I go for the mega, but I was landing less rockets than I should have earlier in the fight. 
	The 2 key fight is the hardest part of the map for me.  The plan was to take out the viles and then that far cyber while circling one teleporter.  If you can stay on top of the spawns at that far end, that is the cleanest way I found to do the fight.  The push through the revs after I grabbed the 2nd mega is just one of those dumb things I do in a live attempt that I never practiced.  I felt like I was going to get overwhelmed if I stayed in that area so I just went for it.  I experimented with doing the whole fight from that little hole where I got pinned in, but I would usually lose the war of attrition with that strat.  So that's why I keep trying to find a time to leave that spot in this run, and each time I take a lot of damage.  I knew I was dead if I was still there when the cybers started joining the fight.  If you don't get pinned in, there is usually time to kill those 4 stationary cybers while the hell knights are spawning.  Having them alive with the cybers really complicated the ending. 
	I made it to the 2 key fight at least 10 times, and was getting more and more consistent with everything leading up to that.  But the 2 key fight is just so overwhelming!  Infinite bfg feels inadequate for the flood of revenants.  I don't see any alternative to killing the viles at the start, since there is nowhere to LOS their flames.  But it is hard to kill them quickly, especially with the resurrected mancs on their platforms.  Usually I would need a mega already after killing the viles.  
	I could do the 2 key fight in practice, but I doubt I will ever be anywhere near consistent at it.  So it was just a matter of throwing enough attempts at it.  I figured that eventually I would somehow be able to survive that fight, and that is the de facto finale assuming the cheese works. 
	The cheese for the finale was found on accident while practicing the fight.  I was trying to find some prefire angle to help kill one side of the cybers faster.  I couldn't find one, but after I sl40'ed through the teleporter, the back wall didn't raise!  It took me a few minutes to figure out why that happened and to be able to replicate it.  I thought I might need to come up with a precise sr50 setup to make this consistent, but it works every time as long as you have some momentum built up.  (But do your own testing!)
	The circle fight is up there with sl29's merry-go-round in terms of design, but it is much more deadly. This map deserves a better run than this one, and is probably a good candidate for a cheeseless route.  

Which direction you want to be going when you hit the skull switch in the circle fight:
5 = outermost ring
5th - counter
4th - counter
3rd - Clockwise
2nd - Clockwise
1st rev - counter (take first opportunity out to 5th ring, should rerise on 5th)
1st manc - counter

So I came up with a route that allows you to spend the majority of the fight going counterclockwise. Toward the end I go into the 2nd circle and back out to the third to start going clockwise for the last 2 switches. 

Secret guarded by viles has: 
- 40 shells
- 10 rockets
- 300 cells