Levels

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Levels are the heart of DoomRL, and without them there would be no game. It is where the player explores, where enemies roam, where special items lie in wait. They are filled with either fortune or your own personal doom.

Basic Objects

All levels are made of basic objects like floors, walls, and doors.

  • HP: This is one of the parameters that governs how difficulty the object is to destroy. Whenever an object takes damage, it's HP is decreased. Once its HP falls to 0, it changes to a floor tile. Some objects cannot be destroyed; these are indicated as "none". Also, some objects have two versions: one that can be destroyed and one that can't.
  • Armor: This also makes objects harder to destroy. Whenever an object takes damage, the object's armor is subtracted from the damage before the damage is subtracted from HP. Unlike the armor of the player and his enemies, objects' armor may reduce damage to 0.
  • Fragile: Objects can usually only be damaged by plasma, fire, or acid damage. Fragile objects can be damaged by any damage type.
Basic Objects
Name Appearance HP Armor Fragile Special
floor · none N/A N/A N/A
blood · none N/A N/A N/A
pool of blood none N/A N/A N/A
Phobos rock . none N/A N/A N/A
wall, blooded wall #, # 10 10 no N/A
bloodstone, blooded wall #, # 15 10 no N/A
green wall # 15 10 no N/A
crate, blooded crate #, #, # 5 5 no N/A
closed door + 6 4 yes Can be opened.
locked door + 6 6 yes N/A
open door / none N/A N/A Can be closed.
lever & 10 0 no see link in name for details
barrel of fuel 0 2 3 yes Can be pushed. When destroyed, creates a radius 4 explosion dealing 5d5 fire damage.
barrel of acid 0 2 4 yes Can be pushed. When destroyed, creates a radius 4 explosion dealing 6d6 acid damage, sometimes leaving behind acid tiles.
barrel of napalm 0 2 5 yes Can be pushed. When destroyed, creates a radius 4 explosion dealing 7d7 fire damage, sometimes (often) leaving behind lava tiles.


Random levels

The archetypical level in DoomRL is a randomly-generated one. It is produced in such a way that no two games are particularly alike. There are many special considerations within the game engine, although many of these are technical and unimportant from a gameplay perspective.

Special levels

In stark contrast to random levels, special levels are constant and many of them appear every game. As you gain more experience playing DoomRL, these become stepping stones used as a grip against the turbulent flow of random levels.

For obvious reasons, all of these pages are considered spoilers if you wish to learn how to beat them yourself. Some are particularly spoiler-heavy, though, and are indicated as such here.


Special level placement

Technical
This article discusses technical aspects of DoomRL and will be of limited interest to most players.

Special levels (besides Phobos Base Entry, Hellgate, Phobos Arena, and Hell Fortress) each have a dlevel range and a probability of appearing. When a new game starts, the program iterates through the special levels. For each, it rolls to determine if the level spawns, then, if so, chooses a dlevel from the range and places the special level there. If another special level later chooses the same dlevel, then the first special level is overwritten. Thus, the order of iteration is important. The order is: The Wall, The Lava Pits, City of Skulls, The Mortuary, The Vaults, Hell's Arena, Unholy Cathedral, Spider's Lair, Hell's Armory, Halls of Carnage, The Chained Court.

The following table summarizes the probabilities and dlevel ranges, with a separate column for the probability one overwriting is accounted for (which is what players will observe).

Level Range Probability (base) Probability (actual)
Hell's Arena 2-3 100% 100%
The Chained Court 4-6 100% 100%
The Wall 7-13 100% 11/28 = 39.3%
Hell's Armory 9-10 100% 100%
Halls of Carnage 11-14 100% 100%
Unholy Cathedral 16 100% 100%
City of Skulls 17 40% 40%
Spider's Lair 18-19 40% 40%
The Vaults 18-21 100% 90%
The Mortuary 22 100% 100%
The Lava Pits 23 100% 100%

Additionally, some levels don't spawn on I'm Too Young To Die: Hell's Armory, Unholy Cathedral, The Vaults, and The Mortuary. This means that The Wall is more common on that difficulty level: 19/28 = 67.9%.

Also, for those levels that get overridden, the likelihood of appearing on different levels is skewed.

Here is a table showing the distribution of which specials stairs are likely to be on each level assuming there are stairs and that none of the possible levels have been encountered previously.

Level Special Level
1 N/A
2-3 always Hell's Arena
4-6 always Chained Court
7-8 always The Wall
9 5/6 Hell's Armory, 1/6 The Wall (on I'm Too Young To Die, always The Wall)
10 always The Armory (on I'm Too Young To Die, always The Wall)
11 5/8 Halls of Carnage, 3/8 The Wall (on I'm Too Young To Die, 1/2 Halls of Carnage, 1/2 The Wall)
12 2/3 Halls of Carnage, 1/3 The Wall (on I'm Too Young To Die, 1/2 Halls of Carnage, 1/2 The Wall)
13 3/4 Halls of Carnage, 1/4 The Wall (on I'm Too Young To Die, 1/2 Halls of Carnage, 1/2 The Wall)
14 always Halls of Carnage
15 N/A
16 always Unholy Cathedral
17 always City of Skulls
18-19 1/2 The Vaults, 1/2 Spider's Lair (on I'm Too Young To Die, always Spider's Lair)
20-21 always The Vaults
22 always The Mortuary
23 always The Lava Pits
>23 N/A

Special stairs are always placed on a random empty tile.

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