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Everything you need to know about the Ultra-Nightmare difficulty in Doom The Dark Ages, and whether it’s worth it for your first playthrough.
Doom The Dark Ages is arguably one of the best first-person shooter titles to have been released in the last few years. While the game is structurally quite similar to the past Doom titles, it differentiates itself with a more “grounded” combat system as well as a heavier emphasis on cinematic storytelling. The Dark Ages takes a more methodical approach to the combat system, which isn’t as frantic as Doom Eternal’s.
However, that doesn’t mean that the game is devoid of any challenge. The Dark Ages might not be as challenging as its immediate predecessor, but it’s still a difficult arcade shooter. With the lowered overall difficulty of the game, some players might be wondering whether it’s worth going for the Ultra-Nightmare mode on their first playthrough.
While Ultra-Nightmare isn’t incredibly difficult, it still has its fair share of challenging aspects that you should be aware of. Here’s everything you need to know about the Ultra-Nightmare difficulty in Doom The Dark Ages, and whether it’s worth going for it on your first playthrough.
What Is Ultra-Nightmare in Doom The Dark Ages?
Similar to developer id Software’s previous Doom games, Doom The Dark Ages comes with a host of difficulty presets. The default preset is Hurt Me Plenty, which is a great starting point for players who aren’t familiar with Doom games or fast-paced arcade shooters in general. There’s an even easier difficulty, Aspiring Slayer, which is also a great option for new players.
However, if you’re looking for a challenge, you need to go for Ultra Violence or higher. In fact, many veteran Doom players consider Ultra Violence to be the default starting difficulty for these games, with Nightmare and higher being the best options for repeat playthroughs or challenge runs.
Ultra-Nightmare, on the other hand, is meant for players who want the most challenging and crushing experience in their games. Ultra-Nightmare is essentially a more difficult version of Pandemonium. The mode restricts auto-saves to chapter completion only and disables revival using the Life Sigils. It’s essentially a permadeath/rogue-lite mode within the campaign itself. Here are all the conditions for Ultra-Nightmare:
- Campaign ends on a single death, unless you have Life Sigils.
- The Life Sigils heal you instead of reviving.
- Progress is only saved upon chapter completion.
- Enemies are extremely aggressive and hit incredibly hard.
Should You Choose Ultra-Nightmare for Your First Playthrough?
In previous Doom games, Nightmare or even Ultra Violence used to be a significant jump in terms of difficulty compared to Hurt Me Plenty. That’s not the case in The Dark Ages. Ultra Violence is still challenging enough, but it’s on par with Hurt Me Plenty of the previous two Doom games. Meanwhile, Nightmare is the one that equates to Ultra Violence of Doom Eternal. The lowered difficulty of the game is intentional, as it encourages the use of the new difficulty modifiers.
You can essentially tune the difficulty of the game based on your preferences, even outside of the presets. Even if you decide to go for Ultra-Nightmare, you can still tweak various elements of the game’s difficulty to either make it easier or even more challenging.
As such, you can go for the Ultra-Nightmare mode on your first playthrough, albeit with some modifications. However, if you’re experienced with Doom’s general gameplay loop, you can go through the entire campaign on stock Ultra-Nightmare without much issue. Just make sure to stay topped up on Life Sigils in case you get overwhelmed by hordes of demons. While we still recommend going for Ultra-Violence or Nightmare for your first playthrough, Ultra-Nightmare is totally doable.
Additional Notes
Our recommended difficulty setup is to keep Damage to Slayer at 200% and Damage to Enemies at 100%. Apart from this, you can keep the rest of the settings on the default Ultra-Nightmare preset. You can also slightly increase Parry Window, but it’s not necessary. The default parry timing is already quite generous.
Thank you for reading the article. We provide the latest news and create guides for Doom The Dark Ages. Also, watch Deltia play on Twitch or visit his YouTube channel!
