Ok, I'm going to go on record and say that I don't think it's humanly possible to beat the final boss of the Nightmare Levels on the normal difficulty level.

I turned on god mode and it still took almost every last bit of ammo I had, and that's only because I was able to get right up close and use the shotguns. If I had to keep away from it, I would have run out of ammo long before I killed it. Then the only thing left would be the Orb and knife, neither of which is a practical weapon to use on a boss.

It might actually be possible, if it didn't shoot homing fireballs, which are impossible to dodge. Even hiding behind one of the stone pillars won't help because you still get hurt. Once it starts shooting, there is nothing you can do to avoid taking damage. So no matter how good you do, it's still going to wear you down long before you can kill it.

As if that wasn't bad enough, if you save the game and re-load it, like if you're doing well, and want to make a safety save so that you don't have to start from scratch, it resets the boss's health back to full! So you have to play the entire fight in one sitting, but screw up just once and you have to do the entire thing over and over and over and over and over and over...

I gave up after about the 20th failed attempt and I never managed to get its life down lower than halfway without cheating. Whoever designed that last level was a sadist who gets off on seeing players placed in impossible situations.

There's hard and then there's friggin impossible!

It's not like the last level of Quake where you have to interact with the environment (tele-frag) in order to do any significant damage, is it?

The whole Nightmare Level expansion is poorly designed. What I recall most is the level for Ophelia. The back story for Blood says Caleb was born in 1847 and Ophelia was his way into the cult. Does her level look like it's set in the correct time period? I think the part about her husband and son being killed by the cult before meeting Caleb was lost too.

Also I still didn't know what happened to Gabriel.

megatron-uk wrote:

It's not like the last level of Quake where you have to interact with the environment (tele-frag) in order to do any significant damage, is it?

Not as far as I can tell. It's just a large, open area, surrounded by rock walls with about five large, stone pillars around the edges. When you approach the center, a cutscene plays, the beast appears and the fight begins. Whenever you hit it with any weapon, a health bar appears.

Assuming you've conserved ammo, you'll start the fight with 500 bullets for the conventional guns, about 80-100 units for the Tesla Cannon, maybe 40 or so flares, maybe 50 shotgun shells, 5 shots for the Napalm Launcher, maybe 5 shots for the Howitzer, and if you were lucky enough to get Ishmael to drop it when you killed him, you'll also have the Orb, which regenerates slowly, but only does a small amount of damage. There are two cases each of bullets, shells and Tesla batteries in the arena.

It only takes a few seconds to empty the minigun and Tesla Cannon, which get him down to around 60% health. The Howitzer and Napalm launcher are both seriously under-powered and do about as much damage as the shotgun at 50 feet. The flares stick into the enemies and continue to do damage as they burn, but each one only seemed to take off maybe one pixel on the health meter. The shotgun works well at close range, but then it's likely to stamp the ground and send out a shockwave. At least that's what it seemed to be doing, since I'd see a flash and lose health, without there being any explosion. As for the Orb, I managed to fire about ten shots at it while it was stuck on one of the pillars and the health meter decreased maybe one pixel. At that rate, I probably would have needed about 30-45 minutes to kill it. I usually don't last more than 2-3, if that.

If you can find it (I did), there's a death ray in the normal game that works reasonably well. It doesn't seem to be present in the Nightmare Levels though.

SKARDAVNELNATE wrote:

The whole Nightmare Level expansion is poorly designed. What I recall most is the level for Ophelia. The back story for Blood says Caleb was born in 1847 and Ophelia was his way into the cult. Does her level look like it's set in the correct time period? I think the part about her husband and son being killed by the cult before meeting Caleb was lost too.

To be honest, I didn't pay that much attention to the back story, I was just enjoying the levels. Up until the end, the only part that gave me trouble was the tunnel of love in Ishmael's level, just because you have so little ammo (you can only carry 100 bullets), and the stupid drudge lords were killing me. I finally managed to kill them (one with bullets, the other with the knife) and then snuck past the cultists. After getting the Orb, I used the guided mode to go back and kill them, just to be complete. 😀

The last level is the only one I couldn't do.

At least they toned down the behemoths for the three levels that they appear in. I was surprised by how easily they died compared to the normal game.

I guess I have to eat my words, as I just managed to beat the last level. However...

It was only possible due to glitches. The first time, the creature got stuck on one of the stone pillars and just kept running in place while I blasted away at it. The second time, I discovered that if you let it get right on top of you, it does very little damage. If you try to beat it by running from it and hitting it from a distance, you'll never kill it.

I had played the previous level over again, conserving as much ammo as possible and making sure not to get hit. I also replayed the fight in the cave multiple times until I was able to survive it with full health, armor and almost full ammo.

Even with 500 rounds from the minigun, 500 units in the Tesla Cannon, about 50 flares, 15 shots with the Howitzer and 15 shots with the Napalm Launcher, it wasn't enough to get its life below about 40% or so. You absolutely have to use the shotguns. Either by getting it stuck on one of the pillars (rare), or by letting it get on top of you and then blasting away.

Of course I wouldn't have survived if I hadn't had 300 health and 100 armor. I think I only had about 30 health left at the end.

I still say that it's a completely unfair fight. You have to exploit bugs/shortcomings in the game to win.