Arch-vile

Arch-Viles are frail-looking, yellowish-skinned humanoid figures with a grotesque appearance, including stigmata. They also have no flesh around their abdomens, revealing some of their ribcage. Arch-Viles first appeared in Doom II. Their manual description is:

''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.''

Combat characteristics
Arch-Viles (sometimes known as the "fire-dancer") take a deceptively high amount of damage (700 HP, 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 hiding behind walls, which is 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.

Arch-Viles are the fastest monsters in the game, almost 50% quicker than even the Cyberdemon and a charging Lost Soul, and meeting two of them at once spells doom for most players. They are also the most resistant monster to pain, which makes cancelling their attacks difficult. The only way to do this effectively in fact is a close-up blast with the Super Shotgun, and even this only disrupts their spell about two-thirds of the time.

The Arch-Vile has the power to resurrect other, lower-level monsters. They can revive all monsters that leave corpses except Cyberdemons, Spider Masterminds and other Arch-Viles. They also cannot revive 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 monsters and forcing the player to waste precious ammo. 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%.

In vanilla Doom and many source ports, being hit by an Arch-Vile attack will not provoke other monsters to start infighting. So he will continue to attack enemies until they die. Unlike most other monsters, attacking an Arch-Vile which is attacking another demon will cause it to change its target to whatever attacked it last. This happens in the same attack cycle, i.e. shooting an Arch-Vile that is preoccupied with burning another monster may mean a quick death. Arch-Viles are hurt by the splash damage of their own flame attack at close range, so it is possible for an Arch-Vile to hurt another Arch-Vile, but there will still be no retaliation even when this occurs.

There are some interesting and probably unintentional "bugs" associated with the Arch-Vile's attack and abilities, such as monsters resurrected in other monsters/walls, assisting players with jumps and no-clipping ghost monsters.

Inspiration and development
The idea and name for the Arch-Vile is due to Sandy Petersen

Bobby Prince says: "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." 

Appearance statistics
The IWADs contain the following numbers of Arch-Viles:

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.