Lost soul

The lost soul is a flaming, flying skull first introduced in Doom's second episode, The Shores of Hell.

Doom II made additional use of the lost soul by utilizing it as the projectile attack of the new pain elemental monster. The Doom manual gives this description of Lost Souls: "Dumb. Tough. Flies. On fire. 'Nuff said."

Combat characteristics
Arguably one of the most frustrating enemies in the Doom games, lost souls float at a leisurely pace until they decide to attack, at which point they launch themselves towards the player at high speed. If they miss, they will continue careening through the air until they hit a wall or other object.

It is uncommon to find a lost soul on its own — they are more often found in groups. The lost soul is also the only monster in Doom that does not make any sound when it is alerted, sometimes surprising careless players, because of this.

Lost souls do not leave a corpse; they simply explode. However, there exists a thing type named which produces the last few death frames of the lost soul. This dead lost soul was evidently left over from earlier versions of the game where the monster did leave a corpse, such as in the press release beta. This thing would have served the same function as the other decorative corpses (the imp and the zombieman corpses, for example). Regardless, it is not possible for an arch-vile to resurrect a lost soul even if it is crushed while it dies (which leaves a puddle of blood as its corpse), as it does not have the necessary resurrection frames.

Because it does not leave a corpse, the lost soul is the only monster in Doom that does not normally respawn when the Nightmare! skill level is chosen or the -respawn parameter is used.

Note that the lost soul sprite always remains fully bright in the same way projectiles and lamps are lit up, to represent the light emitted by their flames.

In Doom II and Doom v1.5, lost souls were modified to no longer affect the player's kill score, so it is possible to achieve 100% kills without destroying any lost souls found in a level. This was undoubtedly due to the addition of the pain elemental.

Tactical analysis
The player can stop a lost soul's charge by shooting it while it is attacking. Because of their 100% pain chance, it is often safer to use the pistol against them, rather than the slower-fire shotgun, so the Lost Soul will not have enough time to retaliate. Also, Lost Souls will stop when they cross an object in their charge path, such as a shotgun or a medikit, which stops them as if the objects were a wall. Using rockets against groups of lost souls is hazardous, as there is a considerable chance that a Lost Soul will suddenly fly towards the player, causing one of the rockets to explode close to the foolish marine, causing serious blast damage to the player.

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

The IWADs contain the following numbers of lost souls:

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


 * Phantom (green)
 * Lost soul (normal colors)
 * Nightmare (blue)

Lost souls can move three panels in a single turn instead of one, and will attack automatically once they are in an adjacent panel to the player, even if it has already moved. It attacks three times consecutively and can be damaged by the fire extinguisher.

Doom 64
These variations of the lost souls look somewhat different and there is fire only on the top of their skulls.