Ok, let's see... Worst game script ever (no, it's not you xardion)? Check. Game based on the unfairest engine ever seen in a fps? Check. Most disappointing boss fights ever? Check. Getting to control a guy with the IQ of a panda bear? Check. FUCKING WORST POSSIBLE ENDING IN A VIDEO GAME EVER!? CHECK!? ALRIGHT LET'S GET THIS FUCKER MOVING!

• Main Excavation

  The hardest part of this level happens to be the first corridor. See those little stones? Touch any of them and you can restart. The bh sequence has to be done in a particular way to a. avoid the stones, b. bh right under the lower part of the ceiling, and c. fit right in between the wall and the skull at the end. I stop bhing a little early when displacing the power cell to make sure I don't miss the damn button. At the room where you're supposed to fight some imps and skulls before proceeding, I use a trick called spawn boosting (or whatever). It works like this: whenever a monster spawns everything nearby gets a vertical boost and with the right timing you can jump pretty high. High enough to land in a certain spot where you get stuck between the rocks blocking your way until you don't kill everything and a pillar. From there you can crouch jump and get up on the blocking rocks, successfully skipping the whole fight. After acquiring the gravity gun I got pretty lucky with how the boxes reacted. After some risky bhs the level is over.

• Erebus - Level 2

  The second level also gets tricky right from the start. During the scene where the imps spawn and you're still stuck in the elevator, all the shit around the room gets tossed around. Where will every object end up is random, so this was the first part which had to be manipulated in this segment. After that every normal person would take the stairs and go all the way around to get the access card. Well, here at sda we say fuck all that and use invisible solid objects to get there, just cause. This has one down side: you skip a pack of hand grenades that you really want. This can be fixed with the gravity gun on your way back to the lower floor. The next part and the boss are pretty much self-explanatory. When the big guy lays dead it's good to cast slowmo immediately after leaving this area mostly because doing so will prevent the moving walls in the next area from triggering at all. A couple of seconds later you'll be introduced to a glitch discovered by tossedsalad. I'll later refer to it as the glide glitch. With the right timing you can get pushed by an object held by the gravity gun and the "push" can be quite large I'd say. When I'm already on the other side of the cave, near the exit elevator area, I get up on the ladder with two well placed jumps which skips getting the access card. Kill some monsters, push some buttons, avoid getting killed, and that's it.

• Erebus - Level 3

  This is easily the hardest, random, most annoying level of them all. About 60% of the time spent on making this run went into this level alone, so you get the idea. The glide through the trap room was the part that took me the longest. You can get the glitch to work at exactly the right speed maybe once out of a million tries. Now combine this with having to glide at exactly the right angle and you'll get a good reason to be pretty pissed all day month long. After that it doesn't get any better. Because of how many enemies I skip, there's a good 90% chance that I'll get blocked by them entirely on my way back and that goes for each and every fucking room that I passed by. Obviously I just stopped caring about unprecise bhs and shit like that after a while and focused only on getting through the segment without getting blocked by anything. At about 10:00 you can see the biggest fuck up in the entire run: I shot a zombie and it just didn't die. The point of shooting it was that you have to go back that way later and there's no way it won't block you in the doorway together with another zombie. Well, that's what I thought at least. I got him to position himself the best way he possibly could, without blocking the way. That's good and all but the mistake is still there, I wish I knew this before moving to the next segment. After getting the double barrel you can notice that I cast slowmo. Now why would I do that? I mean I still don't have berserk. I do it because of how poorly some of the triggers work in this game. If you manage to run pass a flawed trigger with slowmo, the trigger won't go off. At this part I skip a sequence where the screen goes all red and you have to kill a couple of zombies before continuing. This was brought to my attention by Sunpal. At the oxygen level control room I block the door with a barrel so that after clearing the artifact storage from poisonous gas it won't shut tight and instead of waiting I can get to the artifact area a little sooner. Well I still would have to wait for the door leading to the artifact area to open, but I get there right when it happens, so yeah no downtime for you.

• Erebus - Level 4

  I'll start by saying that you can get up to the venting shaft at the very beginning, but it's a dead end because of the ladder: its collision box is placed above it, blocking your way to the end of the level. It's a shame as it would be quite a time saver. Anyway I kill everything in the next room as I'll be heading back through here later on. A while after that I use the glide glitch to get a small vertical boost. Not only does it help me to get to my destination a little sooner, but it also skips some enemy spawning triggers. The next goal is to get to the upper floor asap. A well timed grenade jump helps us with that. A couple of rooms later I skip triggering the bridge and just use the level's design to my advantage. The last part proved to be a bitch with the random enemy behaviour but it went quite well this time, I even got a boost from the imp. At the lift I jump up half way through to lower the ladder a bit sooner. Once I'm in the shaft it's pretty much straight forward. Note to self: record more awkward, unexplainable exit button presses.

• Erebus - Level 5

  This is one of those shortcutless levels that you hate for being shortcutless. There's pretty much nothing I could tell you about this level, maybe except the fact that manipulating the boost from a cherub somewhere near the end was a major pain in the ass.

• Erebus - Level 6

  I begin this level with the glide glitch. It's a pitty that you can't get to glide all the way to the wall because of the sloped ground. After that I use two... Wait, three slope jumps to get to the airlock sooner. The third slope jump, the one from the pipe, was easily the hardest as you have to land in a perfect position after the second jump so you don't have to waste time fixing it (and no, you can't get up to the airlock from the pipe without the extra vertical boost). From here up to the tunnels I got very lucky in several places, those are minor things so I won't list them here and I seriously doubt that you'll even notice. In the tunnels I cast slowmo so I can finish off every enemy in my way without running into it. At the end I get a nice boost from the imp which is great since I can't build up speed on my own with the crappy stamina that I have at this point. As for the boss... The research I did on this guy took me quite some time. My final idea was to get him to pounce between the pillars, never get him running, and shoot him as much as fast as possible. This idea was great and all until this attempt which pretty much crushed all my theories. He runned a couple of times, I missed a couple of shots, and I even got hit. When I timed this fight out of curiosity I was like WTFWHY and I just left it there. In graditude for such a strange fight he lends me the berserk spell. Now we're talking!

• Phobos Labs - Sector 1

  Every time you end a level with less than 25hp, you'll start the following one with 25 anyway, so don't think you're seeing an inconsistency. There's nothing out of the ordinary in this level up until the tram. I start the tram then run out of it and position my self in order to catch a ride on its front window. You have to be very careful while doing this because it's very easy to fall when the tram is turning. Doing this will let you run up to the exit before the idiots riding the tram, or the idiots getting thrown at the tram. A funny thing about the last few seconds is that you can't get over the rail when getting off the tram while you can do it in the exact same situation in the level after the next one.

• Phobos Labs - Sector 2

  Nothing new here. Some bhing, good artifact control, a small glide, and collecting some rockets necessary for the last fight with the gravity gun. I skip quite a portion of the level by dropping to the boss early. With the already mentioned good artifact control I don't have to get under the floor for a recharge during the fight, not even once. The fight alone had to be done in two segments. One reason for this is that in order to waste less rockets (I tested every possible possibility to damage the big guy faster and the rocket launcher is the best by far) he has to be damaged in a glitch kind of fashion where he takes more damage than he's supposed to. The other reason is that after you deal enough damage during each cycle he'll either start charging without moving a muscle or turn around, walk for a bit and start charging after that. You have a good chance of like 10% that he'll do the first. The cores don't have to be destroyed in a single shot since you have to wait for the guy to finish his attack anyway. At first I thought that in the last cycle you have to fire five rockets, but I discovered on accident that you have to fire only three, then I was lucky enough to replicate it. After I get the most useless artifact ability I jump on the lift's railing and start it from there. I do it like that because you somehow can't start the lift first and then get up on the rail. Anyway doing it like that lets me get off of it a lot sooner. Normally casting berserk when I'm already at the lower floor would be slower than going through all the doors without it, but if I wouldn't cast it some huge ass monsters would spawn and getting pass them without some serious fire power would be impossible (slowmo fucks up some triggers, remember?).

• Phobos Labs - Sector 3

  This is the longest level among all of them. The amount of downtime is just plainly painful. I start it off with a trick you were already introduced to two levels earlier, but this time I'm easily able to get over the rail at the end of the ride. Because you get your weapons back once the tram's door is open, I have to get around one zombie blocking the way. I take damage before jumping on the rail and then above him so that he doesn't land a hit on me while in mid air, pushing me all the way down the stairs. In the huge core chamber (or whatever) it's faster to bring down the elevators before proceeding instead of dropping all the way down first and then waiting for them to come down. I exit the whole area a little sooner than I'm supposed to with a rocket jump. In the area where it's all dark and shit there are tons of shortcuts but some end up being quicker and some end up being faster. I obviously used only those that save any time at all. What happened between the airlocks is still a mystery to me. I got boosted from the pipe, saving some time. Usually you'll get dragged down the pipe, hell, this is the one and only time this happened to me. What happens between the airlocks stays between the airlocks, right? From here there's only some bhing left before the level's end.

• Phobos Labs - Sector 1 (revisited)

  This level is fun because it's short. Short is fun.

• Delta Labs - Unknown

  My personal favourite. Requires super precise movement, perfect timing, and tons of luck manipulation. Just what groobo likes the most. It's short and allows me to do at least one sequence break, so it gets another plus from me. As for the sequence break: for you those are just two rocket jumps, but for me those are a rocket jump combined with tons and tons of frustration followed by tons and tons of frustration. The first rocket has to be placed at the right angle so you'll get enough height while moving. The second one has to be placed, well, I don't know really. I dunno the right angle nor the right timing for it. You just get enough height to get to the upper floor like once in like a thousand tries and it comes seemingly out of nowhere. While on the upper floor the crouch jump has to perfectly timed and done at the right angle so that you don't end up on the railing nor jump too far. It has to be just right in order to be fast.

• Hell

  Nothing has to be explained in the pre-boss part really. As for him, he proved to be a real bitch. It's not the fact that you can't kill him any faster because the only way to really do it is to deal enough damage before a certain point in time (even wasting all your ammo during his first attack would trigger the ending at the same time as you'd throw everything you've got at him at his last one). It's not even the fact that you have to manipulate his each other attack (three quick fireballs being the fastest, as you can see in the video). It's the fucking meteors during his last seconds. I thought that surviving them without the artifact is impossible. But as of now you probably think that I like to prove myself wrong. And yes, I do. TODO: insert a bad joke about the ending.

And that would be it. I'd like to thank the whole SDA crew and ex-members: DJGrenola and Radix.

After having done single-segment speedruns of various games for around 3-4 years now, 2021 has somehow persuaded me into heading down the paths of my predecessors. I am known to run old games, the games I kind of grew up with and Doom 3 RoE is no exception. Alongside that, one of my fellow speedrunners, Kibumbi, decided to continue and finish one of his ancient projects started back in 2008. I am talking about the Doom 3 Main Campaign segmented speedrun on Nightmare. At the beginning of 2020, there have been strategy developments made by me and that yielded me the first Nightmare run under 59 minutes in the BFG Edition. All of those strats are usable in vanilla and I started helping Kibbo do his thing, while at the same time thinking that I should do the same, given the fact that I had just finished running Resurrection of Evil BFG Edition and got WRs in both Recruit and Nightmare. I was surprised at how Nightmare is actually faster than Recruit since you have all 3 power-ups from the get go, which are Slow-motion, Berserk and Invulnerability. I have also found new strategies for this run and I wanted to see how low this could go compared to the 31:46 groobo has from a while back. I was really surprised by the final time being a low 27.

Every paragraph is representing a segment.



Level 1 / Main Excavation

Slightly annoying sometimes, but I had a good route to not jump into every rock and lose all my momentum. The Forgotten One boosted me around the corner as well and then I just strafe jumped as cleanly as I could while also getting some momentum from going a bit high off that debris, not having to manage stamina just yet. I would have slowed down anyways, but colliding with that light stopped most of my momentum, enabling me to precisely click the panel. Dumbass me forgot to pick up the shotgun.

After the elevator ride, I tried to get the best movement I could and you can get all sorts of crazy boosts while dropping down into the room after the door, but I didn't want to play the lottery so I took the first decent segment I got. Teleport boosted to skip most of the platforming I would have to do.

A bit of grabber randomness. Most of the time it just doesn't move the boxes out of the way. Then I just did some decent movement with releasing shift a lot mid-air so that I have enough stamina to ride it out till the end. That will be the theme of the whole run when I am not using the artifact.

Final time 1:09.217



Level 2 / Erebus Dig Site

I cut off the segment to not lose my mind watching the elevator intro while also having the spawning Vulgars not boost a barrel in front of the door.

Some tricky jumping and grabbing the grenades from the darkest corner in the universe while also wasting as little time as possible healing. Saving a fraction of a second by not killing the vulgar with a barrel but rather passing through him since I can and then a funny, unplanned projectile boost into the cutscene

The boss fight can't really be sped up since you have to rely on the cannons.

Then instead of doing the annoying barrel skip I just strafe jump with the berserk over the huge gap with very smooth platforming to get onto the ladder. There are enough artifact charges to do this.

The last segment got even more tricky since I realized I forgot to take the shotgun in the first segment of the run, so on top of doing the movement almost perfectly and lining up the nade that kills 2 vulgars, I also had to pick up an enemy's shotgun up and then drop down in a specific way to not die and only on the attempts where the machine gunner shows mercy which is quite rare. That segment was the first real grind.

Final time: 2:18.049



Level 3 / Erebus Labs

I grabbed everything I could get my hands on and split the segment once again.

The movement in this segment was tricky up until the pillar room and I must say, I could have done it better. Then the easy pillar strafe jumps with the artifact, used its speed to slope jump over a vulgar spawning cutscene trigger which saved me some time and a charge.

Killed a machinegunner and vulgar to not have them gang up on me later.

Timed the charge so it lasts up until the elevator. Getting stuck after the health station, which I go to since I want to wait for the shotgunner, is actually good because the dead shotgunner's body helped leave the door open.

No idea how I skipped the vulgar waiting for me at the elevator exit. I must have either saved at a particular point to somehow skip the trigger. You can still hear the chanting though. Either way, I was pretty happy about it. After that, managed to get pretty clean movement.

It was tricky to jump over the railing cleanly without bumping into something and then I figured I would use the barrels to kill the vulgars and save grenades if I needed them later. On top of that, you can make the barrel explode and kill enemies before they visually appear, so that was also a plus.

Final time: 3:04.434



Level 4 / Erebus Control

I needed clean movement through the elevator platform and then to kill the 2 mars sec as fast as possible with the grenade to trigger the door to unlock. Then a strafe jump chain to the 2nd door while killing the vulgar.

Artifact charge here and then tricky navigation through the growth tunnel, cool barrel boost, took the charge and the PDA, some more tricky navigation including strafe jumping down the stairs while not hitting anything and clicking on the panel while flying.

Used a vulgar spawn to boost up the platform. In this segment I had to really take care of my stamina because I needed it for the last segment in the level where I can't bunny hop. Dropping down onto that rail by the end was tricky since an imp crawls up from there and blocks most of space you can actually traverse.

I think this way of jumping over the grinder is slightly faster and definitely saves more stamina. After the door unlocks, most of the time the vulgar would just jump at me and instantly kill me so I had to play until I got lucky with his positioning and the double barrel shotgun spread. Not to mention clicking those damn panels ASAP after the camera bobbing from the fall I just took. This one was slightly annoying.

Somehow I squeezed more time than I thought I would here with that jump before the health station and by running against walls and pipes. Conveniently enough, I could still keep clicking to recharge health while starting to jump towards the exit.

Final time: 1:29.8



Level 5 / Erebus Research

Using the artifact throughout the first segment because it is faster since there are no slow opening doors and to preserve a lot of stamina. There are artifact charges everywhere to instantly replenish the artifact after usage so it was a no-brainer.

The first jump off the railing goes over a trigger for spawning a maggot. It’s faster and I don’t take any fall damage. This segment was faster without using the artifact because of too many slow opening doors. Some precise strafe jump chains taking care not to hit spawning enemy hitboxes which are abundant. Then a nice boost at the end saving about 2-3 seconds from the cherub spawn boost that I would have done otherwise.

Final time: 1:23.48



Level 6 / Erebus Station

This boost was really annoying. I took my first pause from running the game because of this. You can get an insane boost which will get you directly to the airlock but I was not prepared to waste my whole life on it so I took the 2 barrel boost segment. You can also get boosted with the artifact but then the airlock opens very slowly.

From the airlock I had tricky movement. I was taking care not to get stuck anywhere which almost always happens because of the tight spaces and spawning enemies. Then sound in the game just died for some reason and I tried to redo that segment and I could not match it anymore so I left the audio glitch in.

This was one fun. I managed to do very fast paced shooting and clean movement. Flashy stuff. The boss fight is very easy – just 5 punches and you’re good. The tricky part about the boss fight was actually skipping the cutscene after you beat him with losing the least amount of time.

I split the segment here because the bridge to the sky tram has weird and unpredictable physics properties. That’s why I don’t jump going in.



Level 7 / Phobos Labs 1

I split the segment to not watch the beginning every time.

I used the artifact, got the charge back immediately and did good movement. I also tried to kill the Vulgar to not have him jump me when I come back into the room later in the level. I ended up only wounding him, which was good enough. Then, used the 2nd charge and jumped onto the barrels which slid me to the other side of the railing, saving 1 jump from happening.

There is the rocket launcher! As soon as I got it, I started using it. Luckily, there is no shortage of ammo for it. There is more of it in the later levels though so I tried to get all the ammo in my way.

This worked out extremely well. I got through those Vulgars perfectly clean. There was another audio glitch while opening the door to have a Revenant greet me. Then I just get out before the door closes and ride until the end.



Level 8 / Phobos Labs 2

I took the artifact charge since I needed it. Then I used one since it was faster and to not have a bruiser guard the door. I went through the window frame only once since it was a huge pain to get in from outside of the office.

Oh man, this rocket jump. This was the only one I got. I found this skip in the BFG Edition where it is easy. You need to do it absolutely perfectly here or else it just won’t work. I even forgot to reload the rocket launcher when I got it since I was so surprised. It looks a bit messy but it actually lost only a few frames to it.

This segment was also difficult. The machine gunners were a pain in the ass to kill without losing my momentum and then elevator skip wasn’t a picnic either since you’re jumping from the smallest platform in the universe.

The boss fight could have been done faster but I valued artifact charges and 2-3 seconds lost since I was thinking ahead. Basically you need him to do certain attacks which can be interrupted to save time. It was still fine though as I am leaving with 3 charges.

This skip saves a little bit of time and it was quite a grind to get this one correctly. It also doesn’t help not having any stamina. There are actually 15 rockets on the catwalk right at the end of the level which you can’t get to by normal means. I wanted to get them by jumping on top of a revenant but when I realized that there are plenty of rockets later I scrapped it.



Level 9 / Phobos Labs 3

This level has some awesome skips. Again, I skipped getting stuck in the sky tram, but this time I initially got stuck in the door, but if you don’t get completely stuck, you can kind of just spam jump and get out. Then I hitched a ride until the next airlock, where you can actually just save loads of time by platforming before the sky tram gets there. You don’t need your guns there anyways. Normally, when I get up the ladder and into the first door, there is a zombie that blocks the small stairs but somehow, that day, he was moving slower so he didn’t get there fast enough to block me which was really nice.

Going up I used the artifact to rocket jump and get to the door faster, activate the panel, get some HP and rocket jump to the other door as the power is fading away. The ledges are quite tricky which is why I kind of prematurely rocket jump.

I actually skip the elevator since it is slightly faster and more convenient. I also got the rockets after I punched the Revenant. This must be among the darkest areas in the universe. On top of that, it is pain to navigate through. This took a while to get right.

I take the plasma since I missed it in Phobos 2 because I was going to use it in Phobos 1 Revisited. You can’t die from fall damage under ladders for some reason. Great! After the airlock, not getting caught on that rail was pretty precise and I feel like that was the best I could do.

This is an awesome segment. The artifact charge actually lasts too long so I activate is as soon as I get out of the elevator. Then some tricky navigation and a rocket jump without getting stuck on the railing. Bird hunted the Vulgar.

This is also an awesome segment. It looks so awesome to just get boosted like that. :)



Level 10 / Phobos Labs 1 Revisited

The first single-segment level. Just above a minute long. I had to take the BFG ammo for the final boss fight. Somehow jumping into the boxes didn’t seem to waste time. Then another rocket jump. I needed not to waste an artifact charge ending the level so I had to figure out how to do that. If you are fast enough, you can make the Bruiser who is further away not do anything, kill the one that is close to you while you’re waiting for the teleport to activate and then just shield yourself with plasma from the revenant. Neat!



Level 11 / Delta Unknown

The second single-segment level. I feel like I played this one better than the previous one. I have rockets to spare so I use them. It would have been nice if I was able to keep an extra artifact charge but it is still ok. I get all the BFG ammo in the level and then rocket grenade rocket jump to avoid crouch jumping between the rail and the ceiling which is insanely precise, making it terribly inconsistent.



Level 12 / Hell

I needed to take both artifact charges at the start. This segment was purely getting the movement right. I also eliminate all the imps, a cherub and I take the BFG ammo.

I figured out I can use only 2 artifact charges here which was really important. I took my sweet time with this segment and I think it shows. It was done really well.

This was the trickiest movement of the whole run. I still could have done it better. It is also the only time I use rocket boosting. Instead of rocket jumping, you can fire a rocket just before you fall to the ground and hold space to translate it into horizontal momentum. It looks pretty cool as well. I took the BFG ammo at the end.

The final boss fight. Yes, you can actually beat him without using the artifact which is pretty crazy. I was reading up online about the fight and how it works in hopes of making this work. There are 2 separate phases. The first one he has 2500hp and the second 5000hp. So it is redundant if you shoot him a lot during the first phase where he is just flying above the skull and spawning lost souls. You only need to hit him twice with a fully charged BFG, get both fast attacks from him which is luck based and deal damage to him in between. Then the second phase is where he flies over you and spawns fire and then flaps his wings and meteors fall. I hit him while he is flying over me with a rocket. Then I set up a fully charged BFG prediction shot to have time for another one. I fire the third one and the tendril deals a good chunk of damage which seems to be more than a few rockets. Then, as he flies over again I hit him with a fully charged BFG this time, set up another full charge and a few rockets, machine gun and that is just about enough to get him. GG



All in all, this was an enjoyable experience. This run took me a month to complete. It is possible to go under 27 minutes for sure.