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DOOM: The Dark Ages has received 'difficulty' balance changes that have made the demons of Hell even more dangerous than ever.
DOOM: The Dark Ages, the latest entry in the DOOM franchise, has recently received a new patch that has made big balance adjustments to the game's difficulty to make it harder.
According to DOOM's official website Slayer's Club, these balance adjustments are focused on making the game harder, as players have been leaving feedback saying it felt too easy even on Nightmare Mode.
As a result, enemies now hit harder, health and armor item pick-ups drop less often, and certain enemies punish you more severely for mistiming the parry mechanic.
The full notes for these balance adjustments (as taken from the Slayer's Club) are as follows:
Update from 5/23/25
- Adjustments to make the Hell Knight's arms tougher to sever when using the Pulverizer.
- Lowered Skullcrusher Ravager damage against Bosses and Komodo.
- Reduced how long certain health and armor drops linger in the world in the [spoiler] boss fight.
- Reduced how long health drops linger in the world when in the Atlan
- Rebalanced the Atlan final [spoiler] boss fight.
Update from 5/22/25
"After a week of observing you play and hearing your feedback, we felt the game needed to be a bit harder overall, especially on Nightmare difficulty, so a Tunable pass was made live yesterday More specifically, we:"
- Buffed damage to certain attacks for the following enemy AI: Agaddon Hunter, Cosmic Baron, Hellknight, Komodo, and Pinky Rider.
- "We wanted the threat of these enemies to be increased and have higher impact when on the field, especially on certain damage scalers/difficulty settings."
- "As an example, on 250% damage (Nightmare default), missing a parry on the Agaddon Hunter’s overhead slash will now break your shield instead of simply doing a lot of damage to it."
- Adjusted certain player forgiveness systems to be less generous across most of the ‘Damage to Player’ sliders (100% - 500%)
- "There are systems under the hood that are designed to give players a better chance to survive when near death, and those systems were being too generous."
- "Players were able to brute force their way through situations that should’ve resulted in costing a Life Sigil or death, and we want to make sure we are keeping the player in check and asking for better tactical decisions."
- "These changes will have an impact on player survivability and will be more noticeable the higher up the Damage Scale slider you go."
Ripping and tearing just got a whole lot more challenging
Despite a mixed PC launch, DOOM: The Dark Ages has been one of the fastest-growing games in the franchise, garnering over three million players in just five days after its launch on May 15, 2025.
The game has also been accumulating overtly positive critical acclaim and high Metacritic scores, including a perfect 5/5 review score from my colleague Samuel Tolbert, stating that, and I quote, "id Software proves it can still reinvent the wheel, shaking up numerous aspects of gameplay, exchanging elaborate platforming for brutal on-the-ground action, as well as the ability to soar on a dragon's back or stomp around in a giant mech."
With this latest update, players who felt DOOM: The Dark Ages needed more bite to its difficulty will finally get the challenge they've been looking for in one of the best Xbox Games of 2025.
DOOM: The Dark Ages is available on Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC (via Battle.net, Steam, and the Xbox PC app), Xbox Game Pass, and PlayStation 5.
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