Beginner slaughters recommendations? 2024

[GreenAnime]

Despite having distaste from this genre maybe should give them another chance. I've pushed through itydd sunlust it was pretty chil till map 18. Tried UV newgothic 1 blind and I was not having fun at all. Those archvile spams are way too rage inducing and the platforming segment with hitscanners made me quit entirely. Maybe something chill not too long, not too large, with 300-400+ monster count range. I'm still hesitant to play micro-slaughter, I've peeked some videos on it but it gets manic pretty quick.

[Hebonky]

Rush's early sections are great for new slaughter enjoyers. It's more laid back and it's a good ground for learning the basics of slaughter.

 

Water Spirit is like diet Ribbiks, same visual styles but not as painful.

 

And Oceanside is about as laid back a slaughter WAD gets.

 

You can find more in this thread.

 

But most importantly don't FORCE yourself to play slaughter, if you come out of these wads not liking the gameplay style, then it's not for you. A large majority of the community isn't into slaughter wads.

[Lucius Wooding]

If you want something chill, that kind of goes against the idea of slaughter in a lot of ways. The entire genre is about killing lots of things fast and also usually moving fast. Personally I'm not a fan of like 75% of the ones I play and I wouldn't go out of my way to play most slaughter stuff. But I usually want a bit of a challenge when I do. I like to meet it where it's at, or just skip it.

 

That said, I'd go Sunder (For People Who Don't Have Time to Play Sunder). Definitely a lot more accessible and more tolerable to play casually than the original, even though it will generally still force you to come up with good strategies. I decided to give this a chance because I consider the original to be massively bloated, and I ended up enjoying most of it pretty well. 

 

I'd probably also recommend Vanguard, it's a good slightly older WAD that has a few good slaughter maps and a mix of others. It's pretty great all around, but maps 5 and 10 come to mind as slaughtery fun. 

 

In general though, maybe just play all the heavily acclaimed megawads out there. Most of the time they have at least a handful of slaughter maps thrown in at the end, and are worth playing to begin with. Or consider playing slaughter stuff with weapon mods as a way of making it a lot more forgiving.

[Christopher Brown]

I'm in the boat of not feeling like my skills are at the level of playing slaughter wads yet. I tried Sunder Map 01 and beat it so I could say I beat at least one, then on a whim started playing Map 11: The Furnace to see how far I'd get. To my surprise, I managed to pull through the whole thing in a few hours. It wasn't that it was an "easy" level exactly, but I found that I'd already developed the skills to handle every scenario I came across in some other, smaller way elsewhere. The Furnace's intimidating qualities are more about the experience, that amazing feeling of being in a space larger than any the player was meant to inhabit, yet choking on a suffocating atmosphere. I'd highly recommend the slaughter-cautious give at least that map a go, it's an excellent work of art that's a lot more accessible than the wad's reputation would suggest. (Plus, it's nice to have bragging rights, heh heh.)

I'll second Oceanside as well, my favorite Valkiriforce project alongside Sargasso and Anomaly Report - it's short and very breezy in both atmosphere and difficulty. I also enjoyed Vispire by him, a Hell Revealed-inspired mapset that I found quite easy-going on a continuous play-through.

I don't know that Vanguard really registered as slaughter to me, but that's definitely a good set as well.

 

[Shepardus]

Similar thread from a couple days ago:

My answer at least would be the same as what I shared in that thread.

[fruity lerlups]

I'd recommend Rush.wad, i was completely new to slaughter and managed to practice and single-segment UV-Max every level, and Map12 is a masterpiece, it doesn't have any Ribbiks style CBD, just like some tricky fights that require you to come up with a strategy. I'd say Map11 can be a little stressful but its short, Map09 is very slaughterish but you can figure it out!

[Bauul]

3 hours ago, GreenAnime said:

I'm still hesitant to play micro-slaughter, I've peeked some videos on it but it gets manic pretty quick.

 

For what it's worth, the Micro-Slaughter CP has difficulty settings fully implemented while still maintaining being a slaughter mapset. I'd recommend trying it on Easy or Medium.

[CblBOPOTKA]

Mentioned above MSCP is the smooth dive into slaughters, also Slaughterfest 2012 and SF3 (yes, skip 2011 and Smax, they are too much). Then you can try to play NoReason's Speedmaps 2/3 (or simply NoSp2/3), it is more like power fantasy, so it's about fun. Try to beat Holy Hell, old good classic, if you like monotonic grindy stuff, it's not hard, but requires some concentration. 

[rita remton]

[forevermore] and [tetraptykon], both from the [old-school] sub-genre of slaughter maps, and [advent]. good luck :)

[LadyMistDragon]

If we're going to recommend valkirforce wads, may I suggest Mountain Gorge? Like the other maps mentioned, it's not terribly difficult.