Iwad:      DOOM2.WAD
Pwad:      Sunder_2512
Map:       21
Skill:     4
Category:  UV Max
Exe:       dsda-doom 0.29.4 -complevel 9

Time:      1:24:11

Author:    Dheta

Comments: Warning giant wall of text below

Huge thanks to crusador for finding alot of good strats for his own run of this map, watch that demo if you for some reason haven't.
 
Attempts - 438 + about 35-40 ish hours of practice
 
Had this bookmarked as a potential run since the start of the year for two main reasons, of all the current legendary maps on the index this is the only one I like enough to justify the insane grind it would require to get an exit and secondly since crusador had done his run with an avj route I felt like somebody had to make the sacrifice and do the "intended" route(aka the more painful one)
 
The plasma fight is the main issue, the fight is completely insane, most of my early practice was spent simply trying this fight over and over again for hours to find any form of strategy and consistency. a 1/3 survival rate is the best I could do in practice.
 
Almost all the fights after the plasma I found to be very consistent with proper strategies, the two fights that's not is of course the bfg fight and the final fight which usually comes in around 50 and 75 minutes during a run if I'm not really slowed down. Having to run through the first 20 min of the map every time you die in the plasma + the combination of the bfg and final fight in the last third makes this horribly nerve racking and frustrating to run.
 
Never found any proper consistent strat for the first two fights a lot runs just die in either of them, it's just 15-60 seconds wasted so not the biggest deal. All fights before the plasma gave me much more trouble during attempts than in practice and it took about 150 attempts before I even got to the plasma fight the first time, after around 200-250 attempts I just to finally stop having too many silly deaths and mostly died either during the first 4 minutes or I made it too the fight with 4 viles and a hive mother.
 
I don't play with view bobbing on so timing the berserk run to get 60 hp was not an option, I just practiced doing all the fights after with 40 hp doing them with 20 hp isn't a deal breaker since what kills you most of the time is a face rocket or 64 damage hk ball, case in point this run were I got stuck right at the start and managed just fine with 20 hp.
 
The next few fights are a bit scuffed strategy wise, sometimes monster pathing will just screw you over in a big way, the chaingun fight is pretty ass since the wall doesn't cover the whole platform and the zombiemen just ping you randomly around the corners, right as the wall comes down or when the last stragglers teleport in, and there's pretty much always at least 1 or 2 late zombiemen.
 
The first troublesome fight is the fight with 4 viles and the bee, I could not for the life of me find something consistent for this fight, trying to rely on the bee shooting a rocket salvo right at the start is just rng if you get a painstate, and trying to deal with the viles upfront, while better still can get screwed in a lot of annoying ways, sometimes the viles play nice and you just safely rocket them all down right away from behind the pillar.
 
I really wanted to do the fight with the 3 viles waves full pacifist with just releasing all 3 waves at once, unfortunately i simply couldn't find a way to prevent viles getting stuck in their closest, half the time there's 1 or 2 who don't make it out which just makes the fight needlessly dangerous so I just rocket everything down in the corner instead which is super safe.
 
For the plasma fight the core danger point is the first 30 seconds, to have any hope of survival you need at least 3 cybers to get in the middle as quickly as possible while dodging rockets and getting rid of the revs, most of the time the cybers will simply do a delta split however and trap you in a corner were you can't escape even with sr40 across the platforms, if I survive and the cybers play nice the main movement becomes rather simple actually, alternate between the area in front of the switch for the viles and the opposite area while making sure too always keep a mental image of all the cybers so you don't get flanked.
 
The viles afterwards are a little scary since I get so nervous after making it through the cybers so I take some bad zaps, but generally you have to stand on a teleporter spot for both the first and second wave, otherwise there will just be viles everywhere. I just cheese the pinkie fight afterwards with crusadors strat, dunno what you are supposed to in it other than just ran in a circle and spam plasma otherwise, dident want to deal with the risk.
 
The BSK fight looks a lot harder than it is, but it's mostly just afking in a corner while everything infights, cybers got absolutely wrecked this attempt and the viles went crazy, somehow one managed to just sit in the middle for almost the entire fight, usually they will do a mix of: either die to the cybers, run down to where I camp below the cybers or be stuck in the starting area or in that little blood pool below, almost died here just to the shock of seeing a vile in the middle of the room while cleaning up.
 
The strategy for the bfg fight is dead simple on paper, just cirlestrafe for 5+ min, in reality it's way worse, the big danger point usually is the first two laps, lots of way to just get blocked in a chokepoint by a cyber/bee which is usually a death sentence, in this run of course it all went to shit in a bad way, I got blocked in a place I never usually get and couldn't get back on the timings for the damaging floors, then a cyber just blocked me again later and I somehow don't take any face rockets and can just run the other direction, guess I used up all my bad luck on the plasma fight so i didn't have to die here.
 
City fight is a big grindfest, I like it honestly, just hearing all the bees die to their own rockets is amusing, a nice winddown after the bfg fight, thankfully you can just play the fight super safe and not have to really worry about dying in any way, unless of course you let a hive mother sneak up on you like i did.
 
Not sure what to say about the final fight, I gets so much harder with nerves due to the timed nature of it, I died here once in a earlier attempt and almost chocked it again due to bad bfg usage and needing to rocket the hive mother, hands were shaking so badly I didn't trust myself to use the rocket launcher at the end and almost got overwhelmed, somehow didn't get scratched to death by the imps right when I picked up the rad suit.
 
Overall this run is just the kind were almost everything goes wrong but you somehow still scrape by, part of me wishes I got a more clean run so I really I'm beyond relived to have this done, barring any newer maps I'm not touching any other legendary maps or anything harder until I feel ready for sunder map 19 cheeseless.