Doom Dark Ages: Difficulty levels

Doom The Dark Ages has a wide range of difficulty levels to choose from, and this guide page will explain them. We'll cover the pre-defined difficulty levels, from Aspiring Slayer to Ultra-Nightmare, and explain how to customize gameplay sliders to suit your needs. Here you will learn what settings such as parry timing, player damage, and enemy aggression affect.

• What are the difficulty levels?
• What are the additional difficulty settings?

What are the difficulty levels?

In the new id Software game you will find several predefined difficulty levels. These are:

1. Aspiring Slayer - Enemies are less aggressive and deal less damage. Resources you pick up are worth more. The window for perfect parrying is wide.
2. Hurt Me Plenty - The default setting, where enemies have regular aggressiveness and deal standard damage. The parrying window is quite wide.
3. Ultra Violence - The parry window is reduced and enemies become more aggressive and deal high damage.
4. Nightmare - Enemies deal extremely high damage and are much more aggressive.

Additionally, when starting a new save you can choose from two additional levels that offer a similar challenge to the Nightmare level but add a permadeath mechanic. These are:

1. Pandemonium - If you die on this difficulty without Life Sigils, the campaign ends. Sigils allow you to reset the chapter.
2. Ultra-Nightmare - Death in this mode ends the campaign. Saves are only made after completing chapters, and Sigils can only be used for healing (no chapter reset).

The two highest levels can only be selected when starting a new game. They also cannot be changed mid-game.

What are the additional difficulty settings?

If, during gameplay, you decide that none of the default presets are ideal for you, or you want to adjust the difficulty of one specific aspect of the game, you can make modifications. In the pause menu, select settings and then go to the difficulty tab (fourth tab from the left). Here you can independently tune the difficulty of mechanics such as:

1. Parry timing - the timing window within which a perfect parry of an enemy attack must be made.
2. Improved aiming - makes it easier to target enemies, reducing the requirement for precision shots. Recommended for players inexperienced in first-person shooters.
3. Empowered Attacks - enabling this option will make enemies more susceptible to having their movements interrupted when attacked.
4. Damage to Player - the slider determines how much damage enemies deal to the player.
5. Damage to Demons - the slider determines how much damage the player deals to enemies.
6. Enemy Aggression - the higher it is, the more often enemies will attack. At higher levels you can also expect multiple attacks at once.
7. Game Speed - this setting increases or decreases the overall speed at which the game is played.
8. Daze Duration - determines how long enemies remain staggered (purple glow) and vulnerable to a finisher.
9. Enemy Projectile Speed - determines how fast projectiles fired by enemies travel.
10. Resource Values - the slider affects how many resources (health and ammo) you get from individual items scattered around the map and dropped by defeated enemies.

With individual settings you can decide which elements of the game you want to make more difficult and which ones can be less demanding.

Doom: The Dark Ages

May 15, 2025

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