WAD: Sunlust
Map: 20
Skill: 4
Category: NM-100s
Exe: Dsda-Doom 0.29.4
Time: 2:52

Author: 	Kinetic
Demo Date:	January 3rd, 2026
Attempts:       449
Practice:	25 min
Grind:		7 hr 4 min
Goal:           First Exit
Satisfaction:   :D :D :D

- complevel 9

Comments: 

Yes, today was my demo day for the winter break. All I did was eat and play Sunlust NS today. And it was a lot of fun.

=== GUIDE? ===

This map feels 2x as hard as the next hardest NS ive done so far, that being Map13. The beginning temple is pretty consistent, plenty of attempts die there of course but most of the time you're fine. You can take varying amounts of damage through the entire run until the invuln charge, since health is pretty plentiful. If I have good health, I try and leave the supercharge available by the little cave opened up by the red switch behind the start, I sometimes go for it if I decide I don't like my health for the final tower before the exit. The invuln charge is where the crux of the run happens. You need to rush hitting the switch behind all the cacos as fast as possible, to give yourself maximium amount of time with invulnerability, because it really can make the difference in a run like this. Even just 1+ second of invuln can allow you tank so much lethal damage at the right moment before it wears out. You really want to have it last until you hit the lift that reveals all the barons, revs, and PEs that guard the actual switch that lowers the lift, because you'll have a full mega to deal with that and the barons, cacos, and cyber (if cyber is alive) once you get up. I was struggling in this part initially in attempts, but found the method of BFGing the rev side really important and way better. Killing all PEs is also nice too, the lost souls can be such a pain in the ass. You have to dodge archvile fire here too, there's just so much going on between grabbing the invuln, and getting the megasphere by that top perched cyber. Sometimes your invuln runs out early and you just end up eating tons of damage and dying, sometimes a lost soul blocks you from getting on the lift in time, sometimes the viles get a bead on you and destroy your movement and you die from other stuff, sometimes an imp respawns and you get stuck inside of it and eat tons of damage, and sometimes you get all the way up the lift and the barons just chew your ass out, or there's 500 cacos in front of the cyber while the cyber is still alive and your tracers hit him and then now all these cacos, the barons, and the cyber are firing at you and you're just cooked. And of course, you can also fail grabbing the 2x cell pack secret behind the translucent sludgefall, if you dont get the AVJ up there. I found if you burrow yourself on the south side of the vile platform right in front of it, you have better odds at getting in there.

The top perched cyber is particularly annoying, it's great if he's already dead when he gets up there, or if he has very low HP and dies quickly. But if he has most of his HP, you don't have much HP, or you run out of cells, he's just the worst. It's entirely RNG what his status is.

And then there's a bit more RNG. This isn't likely, happens maybe 1/5 times, but you can get blocked trying to jump back down into the main area. I try luring the enemies a bit to the southwest away from where I jump from, but IDK how much that helps. Hopefully you don't get blocked though and can run to the tower with most of your mega still intact, because you need it for the tower.

I choked quite a few runs here. Sometimes I rushed too early. Sometimes I accidentally killed all the viles. Sometimes I just failed the jump. Sometimes I had too little health to perform the jump, and I even tried going to the exit, refilling on health and starting end fight, then returning to try the vile jump again. That attempt was interesting, I actually was successful in returning and getting the jump, but when I teleported to exit, I telefragged a cyber, making me stuck for 1.5 seconds, eating damage. I had low HP so I tried grabbing a supercharge, but a vile targeted me, blasted me, fucked up my movement, then I tried going for the other supercharge but lost souls blocked me an tore me to shreds. Probably should have just used AVJ to run to end in that attempt but wasn't able to come up with that adlib on the fly.

Tangent aside, you need to be pretty patient with the tower entrance. You can do basically one bfg blast each time you peek out, and you should not go in until you damaged 2 back viles a bit, and front 2 viles are dead. Be patient, because you can't have too many revs in there, rushing it is a bad idea, you just get melted. There is caco-fire coming from the side too in your hiding spot but it's fine, try running loops around the weird cube cover. It's basically a YOLO inside to attack the northeast vile, hopefully he dies and you can slip into the stairwell with enough HP for an AVJ. And then the actual teleport to exit is completely free.

=== TINKERING WITH THE ROUTE ===

This was really tough to puzzle out. 2 of the maps secrets are pretty free to get, that being the invuln and the one in the main area. But going for the secret 2x cell packs, and the tower secret, is just the entire pain points of the run. If you didn't have to get those, this run would be insanely free. But you have to out of your way, activating the huge caco cloud and plunging in, to go and get the 2x cell pack secret, and then the tower secret is just so tough because you're already going to be low on HP and it's hard not to kill 3/4 viles without killing the last one. I initially thought about the odds of getting each secret normally; running on the vile pedestals to get the 2x cell pack secret, and grabbing the blue card for the tower secret. Well those are just both entirely cooked options. Respawning imps and viles, and having to ride the lift again, makes the former basically suicide. Even if you get the secret this way, you're probably going to lose so much health you die, or you have to grab the mega up top to have a chance to survive, which will completely destroy you from being able to complete the tower since you need a full mega for that most of the time. And grabbing the blue card for the tower secret is just a complete no-go as well. You need to spend the last few dregs of the invuln to get the 2x cell pack secret, so you don't have invuln to charge into the 2 cybs and 2 viles to hit the lift to the BC. Even if you used it for that, you just get knocked all over the place by the pedestal viles on the other side, completely screwing your movement and making it impossible to dodge reliably. If youre able to get up the lift to the BC, usually 5+ cacos await spamming you, and then you have to grab the card and return the way you came, where there's just a shit ton of cacos and cybers infighting and randomly turning on you, and the viles on the other side continue to target you. You can't jump off the blue card area either, I tried running from the little raised square thing onto the window's rim, and it's just not doable, at least in a run like this. I also tried using a vile from below to AVJ over the rim, but I quickly decided that that's just stacking more ridiculous 1 in a million RNG onto the run.

So trying to grab both of these secrets normally is just basically impossible. So I ended up cooking this route, which is obviously still very hard and has degrees of RNG, but it's doable. You can somehow get the jump to the 2x cell pack secret way more reliably than makes sense, you just nudge into the south side of the vile platform and just hope you get jumped up, and probably 60-75% of the time if you get there it works. And then the tower secret, because getting the blue card is suicide, requires the AVJ for it. The route is just a bit crazy, because you have to start by skipping to the BFG temple, which is standard in most runs of this map on other categories, but then the progression of the map gets totally broken and the progression of the secrets is totally broken. It's really a marvel to be able to make a map like this, just so many great routing options, such a cooked category to run on this map but it's still doable. I have gravitated towards making more maps in this open-style, it just makes routing and runs look so cool.

=== THIS RUN ===

So this run in particular had really great RNG. Everything is fairly standard at the start. The cyber started targeting me in the temple and I had to dance with him a bit, which is a bit unusual but I survived. But it was a clean run to the RL area, clean to the invuln, and then the great RNG started rolling in. I got a little stuck at the start of the invuln charge, but not too much, but once I broke free to the caco cloud, I had a great respawn cycle. Most cacos were dead, so I was able to hit the switch seconds earlier than normal, which was super fortunate. I got the AVJ on the 2x cell pack secret first try, which was nice considering I was actually on the corner instead of south side of the pillar, so nice RNG there helped. I then took out the viles quick and used the last few bits of the invuln to get 2 super deep shots into the horde guarding the switch for the lift, setting me up with 200/200 to then attack again and hit the switch on my 2nd plunge into that little alcove (normally I do it on the 3rd plunge, but I saw an opportunity here).

Then when I got up the lift, the cyber was alive but had super low health so he died basically instantly. After I lure enemies to the side and drop down, I go for the other cell pack in the main area secret, just to have as many cells as possible for the final tower. You don't really need 600, you can do it with 400 or 360, maybe even 320, but better safe than not. Because I had the extra cells, I used BFG on the chaingunners guarding the tower, instead of rockets like if I was lower on cells. And then the final tower rush went basically to plan. Prefires worked great, didn't take too much damage so I had great HP to tank some hits when I finally plunged in to rush the switch and stairwell. I knew there were a fair bit of revs still after I got in the stairwell, so I prefired a BFG on them, but I did take a rev rocket, that did not much damage, but it reminded me how easily I could lose the run here if I took another, since my health was getting a bit close to the threshold that affords an AVJ. So I decided that playing coy was not an option here after peeking back down after the first BFG prefire, so I then went for another to clear some revs, then just prayed the vile instantly targeted me, and I was able to get the jump. I then nearly became incredulous as I got pinned by revs trying to get back down, worried I was about to choke the run in the stupidest way imaginable. I had SSG out because having BFG to take out any revs disrupting the AVJ could potentially end up killing the vile, so SSG felt better, but it almost screwed me over here. Luckily, I was able to kill the rev and get out. I then felt a small jolt in my body after I teleported, because I was instantly hit by some caco projectiles and saw my HP switch to red color. I just held W key and performed the EZ skip and as soon as I got the mega and got up, I finally could start to relax. Definitely felt my heart rate was up after getting the run, was stuck on this for a while today.
