Arch-vile



"One of the worst of a bad lot. You can't think of enough rotten things to say about him. He's fast, hard to kill, casts spells, and resurrects dead monsters! At least these suckers are rare."

- Doom 2 Manual description

Arch-viles are emaciated-looking, yellowish-skinned humanoid figures with a grotesque appearance, including stigmata. They also have no flesh around their abdomens, revealing some of their ribcage and spinal column. The Arch-viles first make their appearance in Doom II's Map 11.

Combat characteristics
Upon spotting the player, the Arch-vile emits a high-pitched sound similar to that of an Arachnotron. When killed, it utters an anguished, gurgling cry as its body seems to fall apart - his midsection and left leg broken in half, right hand disintegrated into a bloody stump -, collapsing in on itself into a bloody heap.

These monsters can take a considerably high amount of damage (700 hit points, the fourth highest in the game), and their attack consists of a unique ability to immolate their enemies in flames by raising their arms up, summoning fire upon the targeted foe, regardless of range (though they will not use their attack from more than 1024 map units away unless hurt). They then hunch over and clasp their hands together, causing the fire to erupt, usually send the enemy flying into the air, while causing up to 90 points in damage. This attack will always hit the enemy as long as there is a line of sight between the arch-vile and the target, and can be avoided by getting out of the arch-vile's line of sight, which is usually relatively easy since it takes the arch-vile about three full seconds to do one attack, from when it first calls the fire to when it actually sends out the blast. The blast occurs near the end of the spell. The demon will continue to finish its spell even after the blast however it is safe to come out of cover at this time. If the doom guy moves out of the sight of arch-vile and comes back at the moment of the blast, he will get hurt. In fact the only time the doom guy needs cover is at the moment of blast. This can be useful in speed-running.

The arch-vile has the power to resurrect other, lower-level monsters that they come across. They can resurrect all monsters that leave corpses except cyberdemons, spiderdemons, Commander Keens, and other arch-viles. They also cannot resurrect corpses that were placed on map by the level designer. This resurrecting power makes them top priority to kill in battle, to stop them from reviving defeated monsters and forcing the player to spend extra ammunition. However, the player does get credit for killing resurrected monsters, so in levels containing an arch-vile the KILLS percentage displayed at the end may exceed 100%.

Arch-viles are the fastest monsters in the game, almost 50% quicker than a cyberdemon or a charging lost soul, and meeting two or more of them at once without any cover will likely result in death for most players. They are also the most resistant monster to pain, which makes canceling their attacks difficult; a point-blank shot with the super shotgun only disrupts their spell 55% of the time.

Arch-viles can be hurt by the blast damage of their own flame attack, so it is possible for an attacking arch-vile to hurt itself or any arch-vile close to its target. However, monsters (including other arch-viles) damaged by an arch-vile's attack will never retaliate because there is an exception in the source code that prevents other monsters from targeting them. This does not stop arch-viles themselves from targeting and damaging other monsters, though. Arch-viles are easy to distract because of their lack of targeting threshold; which means they will always switch target when hit.

When facing Arch-viles, it is strongly recommended that players should use the most powerful weapons at their disposal against them -- the BFG 9000 will kill them in one hit most of the time, while the Plasma rifle will usually suppress them from using their attack due to its high rate of fire. The Rocket launcher is also useful at dispatching them, although the player runs a risk of being counterattacked if there are more than one of them at a time. The super shotgun also works fairly well if there is proper cover for the player to hide behind.

There are some interesting engine quirks associated with the arch-vile's attack and abilities, such as their assisting players with jumps and creating non-clipping ghost monsters.

Inspiration and development
The idea and name for the arch-vile came from Sandy Petersen.

Bobby Prince said: "The Archvile is an evil healer. Anyone getting in his way is blasted with fire and disintegrated. This includes other demons. But, after he has wrought his destruction, he then goes around and reanimates all of the demons. Because of this interesting dual personality, I decided to give him a very evil laugh as an active sound. For his death sound, I recorded a young girl saying 'why,' pitch shifted it down and mixed it with other sounds. The Archvile just doesn't understand why anyone would want to kill him as he sees himself as only doing good for his fellow demon." 

Data

 * 1) Assumes that the victim never takes blast damage from an attack on a different target.
 * 2) Cannot be targeted because arch-viles attack other monsters only in retaliation, but may be accidentally hurt by blast damage.
 * 3) Arch-viles can never be arch-vile targets, but may suffer accidental blast damage.

Appearance statistics
In the Doom games, the arch-vile is first encountered on these levels:

The IWADs contain the following numbers of arch-viles per skill level:

Doom RPG
In Doom RPG, the arch-vile appears as a class of monster. There are three variations, identified by color:


 * Infernis (blue)
 * Archvile [sic] (gold)
 * Apollyon (red)

The arch-vile class of monsters are particularly susceptible to axe attacks and also appear to share a similar weakness to the fire extinguisher that lost soul-class monsters do, much the same as in the novelisation of Hell on Earth. They also possess the ability to revive dead monsters, though this will fail if the player is standing on its target's corpse at the time. Something that should be noted is that when attacking, no matter if the arch-vile is an Infernis or Apollyon or just plain arch-vile, it always uses the unmodified costume of the regular arch-vile raising its arms and catching fire.