Whether you're new to the series or a seasoned Slayer just itching to dive back into butchery, Doom: The Dark Ages gives you everything you need to fine-tune your experience. The Doom games have always been considered difficult, but that doesn't mean a newcomer to fast-paced FPS shooters can't enjoy this much-anticipated title.
The game gives you six different difficulty settings to work with, and if that's not enough, you can tweak specific elements like the length of the parry window or the intensity of the aim assist to shape your experience exactly how you want it. Here's everything you need to know about Doom: TDA’s difficulty settings.
All Difficulty Modes in Doom: The Dark Ages
As mentioned earlier, Doom: The Dark Ages features six difficulty presets that you can access from the very beginning. These presets are designed to target specific player groups, from total beginners, to seasoned FPS enthusiasts, to hardcore Doom fanatics.
Here's a quick look at each setting:
- Aspiring Slayer: Designed for players who just want a laid-back ride through the campaign. You deal more damage, and enemies are far less aggressive. They also take longer to recover after being dazed. Health, armor, and ammo pickups restore more, and you benefit from Enhanced Targeting and Empowered Attacks.
- Hurt Me Plenty: This is the way the devs intended the game to be played by the majority of players. It's a balanced preset where enemy aggression and damage are set to default. You won't get auto-aim or empowerment, but the parry window is still fairly generous.
- Ultra-Violence: For players who want a more punishing experience without it being overwhelming. Enemy damage is doubled, and the daze duration is shorter, limiting your window for Glory Strikes.
- Nightmare: For a truly challenging experience, Nightmare ramps things up significantly. Enemies deal 250% damage, aggression is maxed out, and pickups restore less health, armor, and ammo. A serious test of skill.
- Pandemonium: This difficulty is identical to Nightmare in terms of gameplay—but there's a twist. You can only restart a chapter if you have Life Sigils. Run out, and your character dies permanently. It's a “soft” permadeath mode aimed at players looking for a high-stakes challenge.
- Ultra-Nightmare: This is the true permadeath mode. One life. One shot. If you die, your run is over. The difficulty is the same as Pandemonium, but without any second chances.
All Difficulty Modifiers in Doom: The Dark Ages
Apart from the presets, players can also pick and choose specific elements to shape their experience while playing the game. Here are all the modifiers that you can adjust in the game:
- Parry Window: Adjusts the window of opportunity to parry enemy attacks with your shield. Given how integral a part of the game parrying is, changing this could make or break you.
- Enhanced Targeting: Gives you aim assists so that your shots target enemies automatically.
- Empowered Attacks: Causes your shots to interrupt or stagger enemies more easily.
- Tutorials: Enables or disables the on-screen tutorial prompts. This isn’t just for getting the ropes at the start of the game, but actually gives you instructions for just about anything and everything throughout the course of the game.
- Objective Marker Style: Enables or disables the objective marker while playing.
- Damage to Player: Adjusts how much damage you take from enemies.
- Damage to Demons: Adjusts how much damage you deal to enemies.
- Enemy Aggression: Controls how often or aggressively the demons attack.
- Game Speed: Adjusts the pace of the game.
- Daze Duration: Adjusts how quickly enemies recover from being dazed
- Enemy Projectile Speed: Adjusts the speed of projectiles fired by enemies
- Resource Values: Affects how much resource(health, ammo, and shield) you get from pickups and drops.
Which Difficulty Should You Choose in Doom: The Dark Ages?
If you're new to Doom or FPS games in general, we recommend sticking with Hurt Me Plenty. Although Aspiring Slayer is the easiest difficulty, we feel it takes away from the experience. Hurt Me Plenty offers a balanced experience and will help you get better at the game as you keep playing.
For veterans, Ultra-Violence and Nightmare offer enough punishment to last a lifetime. And if you've already completed the game and are looking for more, Pandemonium and Ultra-Nightmare serve as the perfect challenge runs.
Can You Change Difficulty Mid-Game?
It depends on the difficulty preset you initially started with. If you're playing on Aspiring Slayer, Hurt Me Plenty, Ultra-Violence, or Nightmare, you can change the difficulty at any time from the Options menu. However, if you started a run on Pandemonium or Ultra-Nightmare, you're locked into that mode until the run ends or is completed.
Doom: The Dark Ages isn't intended to be a walk in the park, but you can certainly tone down the difficulty if you're looking for an easier time, or make things harder if you think you’re getting away with too much. Make sure you pick up all the collectibles as you progress through the chapters, such as those in the Village of Khalim.
