Runner: Zero-Master
Date: 2026-09-03
WAD: Hexen
Category: Cleric sk4 Max / Cardinal 100%
Map: All
Source Port: Nyan-Doom 1.5.4
Time: 1:37:02

Description:
I don't know what compelled me to do this run, hexen is over 30 years old and I just really felt someone had to do a single segment 100% full runthrough, so here we are. This is done on Cardinal difficulty (-skill 4), the ultra-violence equivalent. Hub 05: Necropolis from doomwiki: "...there are three dormant reivers on the map that are never activated." so there are 3 missing kills there. There's also an infinite spawner in hub04 - dungeons which I simply never activate, though the rules of what needs to be killed aren't well defined so I just go with what made the most sense.

We have a choice between 3 classes, there are some advantages and disadvantages to each class, most importantly:
fighter: does not have wraithverge
mage: does not have wraithverge
cleric: does have wraithverge
so we pick cleric.

Each class also have different effects from the green/poison flasks (flechette), fortunately cleric is also by far the best choice here. It leaves behind a poison cloud that deals quite a bit of damage and lasts quite a while, it will also kill any centaur that steps into it early enough. Cleric movement speed is a bit slower than fighter, fortunately all the useful tricks that fighter can do are also doable with cleric, especially getting to the wings of wrath early.

Every 4 minute some monsters (usually ettins) will spawn in at certain locations, how many and which locations is however random.

This run isn't too difficult, you just need to know about the roughly 5000 things that can immediately end your run, and hope that the game doesn't crash because monster movement didn't go in your favor, the rest is just making sure you use the quartz flasks for healing. I swear every single practice run I did I found either 1 or 2 things that would make it impossible to progress, "I've never seen that before" is pretty much a statement that will happen, at some point I thought maybe I've seen it all, but I don't think I'm even close, so I'm thankful for whatever undiscovered nonsense that didn't happen here remains unknown to me.

This run/route:
Map 01: No flechette used in the hall, might save time being a bit slower here to have ettins walk into the crusher in the room I just left.

Hub 01: Didn't seem possible to get the wings of wrath and return to the start so most of this is done normally until I can open the door by jumping from the stairs. Very happy I got both jumps first try.

Hub 02: Immediately go for the wings of wrath, do it the easy way by getting the porkelator first. I missed the horn key and didn't notice so I lost a lot time to that, also forgot to clear out the basement gargoyles until the end, so not everything went as planned here. I also somehow missed the icon of the defender in the swamp and didn't notice, I have one in backup in case I need it, but that never happened so it wasn't an issue. Missing the horn key also probably led to the ettin spawns 4 minutes in to move out of their usual positions which cost me more time.

Hub 03: You can get the wings of wrath immediately here, boots of speed aren't required, but they make it a lot easier to get through the fence. Also pick up the final weapon piece so it's time to use wraithverge finally. Forgot to grab the blue gem, was saved by the kill counter reminding me. Got lucky and got a spare krater of might. Can't believe the boss managed to escape the poison cloud trap, took way too long to kill, unlucky.

Hub 04: I managed to beat the respawn timer in castle of grief which was unexpected, unfortunately not in gibbet as I missed the gargoyle in the center, cost me nearly a minute. Again go straight for wings of wrath, a bit more complicated this time :) The boss struggles to leave his little platform so he often dies to a few flechettes.

Hub 05: Can just spam wraithverge on everything, I had 2 kraters of might (200 green/blue mana) left over so route isn't perfect. Faster to go out of bounds on the final boss to clear out the bishops, it could take several minutes for them to be released if you are unlucky.