Tackling Scythe 2's custom monsters

[baja blast rd.]

Scythe 2 has some notoriously deadly custom monsters, and I got curious about how to fight against them well. 

 

Something I knew already is that afrits are a lot less dangerous in the air, because you can duck under or move backwards to dodge the giant dump they take. That comes in handy when trying to land clean BFG shots, and works even against big swarms of them. ("Afrit swarm" is a horrifying phase.) 

 

That looks like this:

 

 

But what about BFG'ing ground-level afrits? Trying to mess around with an approach, what first suggests itself is timing their attack and then dodging slightly to the left to exploit the little gap they have in their attack pattern.

 

 

This doesn't work reliably though because they can insta-attack again right as you're hugging it. Having to wait for the pattern also isn't good if other monsters are around, because unlike two-shotting a cyb, the afrit doesn't have a predictable volley-like attack.

 

The idea is headed in the right direction though. Let's play around with the order.

 

What if we just shot and reactively dipped into the gap when it fired? Sounds wild, but if you start off far back enough it can be reasonably safe because you have enough time to react and can bail if it shoots at the 'wrong' time. Also, you can more safely finish off a weakened afrit with the wait-and-react approach because it should be softened up enough to usually die to the next set of tracers.

 

 

(YT algorithm is liking that afrit...butt?)

 

Afrits have 2500 HP, which is less than the big bosses and means they are in two-shot BFG range (sometimes even one). But I would probably budget three or four BFG shots for them unless there is some metagamey tactic (like when you know an instapop is coming and can send a couple of BFG shots into a far wall, planning to stack the tracers), because they are so unsafe to BFG efficiently. 

 

The other notorious Scythe 2 enemy is the marine, which is a lot more dangerous. Some key ideas about these are: 

 

- When fighting them with the SSG (or shotgun if you have to), it is really useful to try to get in shots angled on the diagonal relative to the blockmap grid. This increases the effective width of their hitboxes, making them much easier to hit, which is important because they are fidgety and squirmy. (This also does make them harder to fight in caves or spaces orientation isn't obvious.)

- The chaingun is probably a better weapon than it seems. It might in theory go down in two SSG shots, but chaingun's painstun slows them down a bunch. Would probably prefer the SSG but the chaingun isn't bad. 

- If you're fighting them with the BFG, wallbang rather than trying to get the ball to do anything.

- As fast and ridiculous as they are, their pathing is reasonably predictable when you get a good feel for them. They also stop to shoot, but I found that exploiting diagonals and pathing is better than trying to react when they stop to fire.

 

Here's some of those ideas (spawning them right next to me makes this harder, but that accurately reflects a lot of Scythe 2's horseshit traps involving them) in video format: 

 

 

After trying out this stuff they don't feel that ridiculous anymore.

 

As much as group interactions are important too, fights with afrits and marines tend to be largely about the afrits and marines in them. But I'd also constantly be on the lookout for ways to exploit infighting and distraction...

 

 

which I won't get into here. 

[Nefelibeta]

Nice writting. The more Death-Destiny-esque (or whatever the hell you call it) maps I make/play, the more stereotypical they feel. Not that I'm getting super tired of them and decide to quit or anything. To me, it seems the solution is either introduce new "meta" or gameplay mechanics such as the evil eyes from Magnolia and the meteor launcher from wormwood3 (*cough* ]I[ *cough*) or bring in more custom monsters that are game-changing enough to affect the dynamics of the gameplay. The latter is very rare however, the closest thing is ambrosia.wad m02 with (notably) arachnorbs and nerfed plasma dudes, or that purple collab map you made with scotty, couldn't remember the wad numeral sorry. This topic is definitely interesting and inspiring, I'm intrigued to see what can be done to push the ceiling even furthur in terms of combat design.