Good WADs for getting into saveless?

[JackDBS]

I’ve attempted to saveless Ancient Aliens and Struggle before but I get filtered by MAP04 and MAP09 respectively.

[TheLippyServer]

Try Swift Death. It's pretty hard, and even a lot of early maps will hose you fast, hence the name, but each map is REALLY short so it doesn't feel that demoralizing when you die. Great for practicing saveless runs and will probably improve your general play.

[Mr. Alexander]

I've had fun playing the Nostalgias, Machete, and Plutonia saveless. Plutonia is the most "modern" of the IWADs, but the IWADs would be the obvious suggestion, with challenge wads like Swift Death being on the opposite end of the spectrum. Anything with relatively short maps that present their most RNG challenges as optional fights or right at the beginning of each level is usually a good fit. Anything with long adventure levels or with introductory sections that get repetitive upon death, like the cool arch-vile chase up to the temple in Valiant Map09, might be less fitting. If you don't like IWAD-style combat, the Micro Slaughter Community Project was designed for levels to take a short time to UV-Max.

[Li'l devil]

Eternal Doom. Maps that take over an hour to finish and have trial and error moments that will make you replay the map all over again. All this coupled with very obscure progression. It really builds character!!

[Cutman 999]

- Doom 1 and 2 

- Plutonia

- Nostalgia

- scythe (Altough not map30, that is its own beast)

- Machete

- Crumpets (On HMP)

- Plutonia 2 (Altough this is the first mapset mentioned with levels longer than 10 minutes, be careful)

- Rush (The only actual slaughterwad, is good to get a grip with slaughtermaps in general)

 

[No-Man Baugh]

I'd def recommend shorter maps like Demon Fear, Bloodrust, or anything by Clippy.  The only caveat with them is that they're either so short or so easy that they might not be the best if you're on the way to beat a Skillsaw map saveless

But in that same vein I could recommend any maps and megawads done by Andrea Rovenski. The Delirium Dimension and A War on Christmas in particular have a good challenge to them, and they're just long enough that starting from scratch on them is still a kick in the head

[Cilian]

Play anything you want for saveless, it doesn't make that much of a difference. It's important to do practice runs before you actually attempt to beat a hard map saveless. If you don't know what that means, you just play through a map with saves, learn the map. Practice problematic fights by doing them over and over until you become as consistent as you can reasonably get at them.

 

Long maps are ok, they just are very punishing if you don't do practice runs. The choice of the wad doesn't matter imo, but keep in mind that saveless is obviously harder so your choice should be easier than what you can potentially beat with savescumming. If a wad tests you without being overwhelming it's a good wad.

[JackDBS]

2 hours ago, Li'l devil said:

Eternal Doom. Maps that take over an hour to finish and have trial and error moments that will make you replay the map all over again. All this coupled with very obscure progression. It really builds character!!

Deal.

[Laocoön]

I don't love self-promotion, but my wad is designed explicitly around being played saveless: 

 

[JackDBS]

5 minutes ago, Laocoön said:

I don't love self-promotion, but my wad is designed explicitly around being played saveless: 

 

Meh. Why not. I’ll give it a shot soon.

[Shepardus]

I recommend Long Road, No Turns. It's the sort of WAD that only truly works saveless (or saving at the end of each section if you're playing the combined version - more on that below). Where the WAD shines is in the protracted resource management of rationing a couple dozen megaspheres over the course of half an hour to forty minutes, and the ebb and flow of carving out slices of monsters while trying not to bite off more arch-vile than you can chew, and you don't get that if you reset all the time. If you save too often, it becomes a repetitive slog, because if you're just there to tour the spaces and be done with it, you only need to play each section for a few seconds to see everything there is to see. On the flip side, that means if you play saveless, you can focus entirely on the things that make saveless gameplay different from playing with saves, rather than wondering whether you're missing out by not save-scumming to the end.

 

MAP01 is one giant map while Maps 3-15 are the same map divided into segments. Don't try to beat MAP01 saveless unless you have a lot of free time and are insane (if that describes you, please record a demo and submit it to DSDA). The combined map is divided into sections anyway so you aren't missing anything by playing the split version. The main difference between skill levels is the amount of megaspheres/soul spheres you're given, so use your resource consumption rate to judge whether you should adjust the difficulty up or down.

 

I also recommend playing Emergent and worm\V/wood saveless, as the randomized/dynamic elements of them don't come through with just one play.

[Geniraul]

I'd say some WADs that have shorter maps are good for playing saveless, as you don't necessarily have much time to die in them. BeachThunder's You Have 1 HP is what comes to mind:

 

 

[LVENdead]

Complimentary question; do you also try to beat fights w/o midfight saving when you are not attempting the whole map saveless? I've felt doing that has really helped hone my decision making and sense of survival which translates over to saveless runs of entire maps.

[JustHeziel]

[April 1st=0]

 

If you don't mind occasional/mild slaughter fights, then maybe I have a single map wad I enjoyed a lot for you.

 

I fell in love with Lullaby a couple of years ago, my favorite in music and visual/map design :) .

 

 

[JackDBS]

10 hours ago, LVENdead said:

Complimentary question; do you also try to beat fights w/o midfight saving when you are not attempting the whole map saveless? I've felt doing that has really helped hone my decision making and sense of survival which translates over to saveless runs of entire maps.

Well not really. If it’s hard stuff like Sunder MAP32’s shitty hedge maze portion then  I do make mid fight saves

Edited April 1 by JackDBS

[Akagi666]

I started with Plutonia.