Cacodemon



"They float in the air, belch ball-lightning, and boast one Hell of a big mouth. You're toast if you get too close to these monstrosities."

- Doom II Manual description

Cacodemons are red monsters with large spherical bodies crowned with horns, that float slowly through the air. They have a single green eye over a large mouth which is persistently twisted into an evil grin showing a series of nasty teeth and a bluish interior.

Combat characteristics
They attack by spitting a ball of lightning or by biting with their gaping maw. The cacodemon often seems to distance itself from the player when under attack, though the cause of this is that it is being pushed back by successful hits from its enemies.

Cacodemons emit a loud hissing sound when they first see the player or otherwise become active, and use the pain sound shared by most of the demonic monsters from Doom. When killed, they let out a gurgling moan and fall to the ground, splitting open like a burst pustule, spewing copious amounts of blue goo and intestines that flow forth, to reveal their bared brains while their sole eye pops out of its socket.

Tactical analysis
Cacodemon attacks are relatively easy to dodge, and with sufficient space large numbers of cacodemons can be fought while sustaining little or no injury. Because they are slow, and because their pain chance is high, they are fairly easy targets. The chainsaw can incapacitate them, and repeating weapons such as the chaingun or the plasma gun are very effective against them, as they are pushed away and are nearly unable to fight back. They are relatively easy to goad into attacking other monsters, but can occasionally be tricky in this respect if they are floating in a high position allowing most of their shots to go over other monsters in the player's area. Their slow floating speed can, however, increase a player's chances of luring them into another monster's firing line. When possible, the best monsters to lure a cacodemon or multiple cacodemons into the path of would be a Spiderdemon (DOOM or DOOM II), a Heavy weapon dude or an Arachnotron (DOOM II). Each of those 3 monsters all have repeating weapons which can come in even more handy when multiple cacodemons are present in a given area. A skilled player could use a shotgun, run in for close shots, and dodge any incoming attacks while reloading and retreating. Multiple cacodemons can also be mowed down in fairly short order with the BFG 9000, in 1 to 4 shots depending upon how many a player is combating & how closely together they are bunched.

Because of their flight ability and versatility, it is not uncommon to see these flying out of unexpected angles once alerted.

Although the cacodemon has a melee attack, it does not actively try to use this attack; it simply "happens" if the player is at point-blank range at the time the cacodemon attempts to launch a projectile. (The cacodemon's melee attack also does not have a sound effect associated with it.) This is presumably to prevent the enemy from abusing this attack while located at a greatly different elevation from the player (where the player would not be able to retaliate).

Data





 * 1) These tables assume that all calls to P_Random for damage, pain chance, blood splats, impact animations, and backfire checks are consecutive. In real play, this is never the case: counterattacks and AI pathfinding must be handled, and of course the map may contain additional moving monsters and other randomized phenomena (such as flickering lights). Any resulting errors are probably toward the single-shot average, as they introduce noise into the correlation between the indices of "consecutive" calls.
 * 2) Assumes that direct hits are possible, which does not occur in any stock map.
 * 3) Hardcoded exception to infighting negates damage (excepting indirect damage caused by exploding barrels).

Appearance statistics
In classic Doom, the cacodemon is first encountered on these maps:

The IWADs contain the following numbers of cacodemons:

Doom 64
In Doom 64 the cacodemon underwent a major design change, becoming brown, with a single yellow-green eye, and gaining two arms with broken chains attached, and a rather terrifying face. Instead of a screech it lets out a loud, frightening hiss when spotting the player, and the body of the monster has animation frames (mostly in the way it swings its arms when in flight), whereas the original Cacodemon floated in a motionless manner. It resembles Doom II's original pain elemental. The nightmare cacodemon variation, introduced in the Doom 64 TC, remained red.

Doom RPG
The cacodemon appears in Doom RPG as a class of monster. There are three variations, identified by color:


 * Malwrath (gold body, red eye, red throat)
 * Cacodemon (normal colors)
 * Wretched (blue body, olive green eye, bright red throat)

Cacodemons attack three times consecutively and are most weak against axe attacks and plasma blasts.

Hissy
Circa 1997-98, amateur Doom level designer Jonas "Chrozoron" Feragen created Hissy, a plush cacodemon which quickly became famous in the Doom community. Hissy can be found as a character in Skulltag, Cacodemon Squad, the secret level (WTF!) on MassMouth 2 and EarthBound Doom; the plush cacodemon itself is on a "world tour." She has been in the hands of over a dozen community members in the past eight years.

Pixel
Pixel is a plush-toy cacodemon created in November 2004 by Doom enthusiast Hughe, in response to a challenge from a friend. Pixel was created to be as accurate in form as possible using five different materials, including all his horns, separate teeth, upper mouth and single eye. Pixel was created before Hughe had any knowledge of the plush Hissy, and was in no way made to compete with her. In fact, it is said that Pixel finds Hissy rather cute.

Hughe later made a second, named Sprite. Sprite was made of a couple different materials; and is believed to guard Hughe's desk at the Sony offices in London.