Doom: The Dark Ages Beginner’s Guide | Gameplay Tips & Tricks

You can beat the demons and make the most of your progress by following this guide. It will show you how to fine-tune your settings, find hidden secrets, use enemy weak spots to your advantage, and make your tools better.

Settings to Change

First, dive into the options menu and tailor your gameplay experience. If you find combat too punishing—or too trivial—adjust the difficulty and, more importantly, tweak your parry windows. Parrying is absolutely critical when using your shield, so experiment until you find the sweet spot between narrow and generous windows.

Enable auto-sprint so that you’re always sprinting without holding down a button. This not only helps you dodge projectiles more fluidly but also spares your fingers during extensive exploration. Next, adjust the threat detector to “parryable only.” This ensures you receive indicators for any incoming, parryable attacks outside your field of vision, letting you turn and counter ranged foes or surprise melee divers much more effectively.

The Importance of Secrets

Secrets in Doom: The Dark Ages aren’t just for completionists—they’re vital for progression. Secret areas often contain gold for gear upgrades, as well as rubies and the precious wraith stones needed for final weapon tiers. Make it a habit to check your map regularly for question mark icons or unvisited nodes.

Whenever you approach a door icon that signifies a transition to the next area, pause and sweep the surroundings for any overlooked secrets. Once you cross that threshold, you can’t return until much later—or potentially never—so thorough exploration before moving on will pay dividends in resources and upgrades.

Exploiting Enemy Weaknesses

Every demon and knight in this game has vulnerabilities you can leverage. For example, shields carried by plasma soldiers will explode if struck with the plasma accelerator, and armored foes take extra damage from the chain shot. Read your weapon descriptions carefully to learn which upgrades excel against specific enemy types.

Your shield itself is a powerhouse: you can parry incoming attacks or hurl it to slice through lesser enemies and lodge it into larger demons, stunning them. If you throw your shield and need to parry immediately afterward, simply press the block button to call it back to your hand and deflect the next assault.

Best Weapons and Upgrades

While your playstyle will influence your choices, a solid early investment is into your shield and melee weapons since they accompany you from the start. There are twelve weapons in total, and if you 100% every chapter, you’ll earn enough gold, rubies, and wraith stones to upgrade everything fully—but until then, prioritize your shield and close-quarters tools.

Each weapon upgrade often offers two variants (A or B), and you can swap between them anywhere in the menu without revisiting shrines. For example, the shotgun’s “smelt” upgrade generates armor packs from burning enemies, which is invaluable in greater difficulties. The shredder’s “pin cushion” enhancement delivers bonus damage to the primary target—ideal when facing single, high-threat foes—though you can switch to ricochet if you prefer crowd control.

Chapter and Mastery Missions

Each time you start a mission, open the menu and check the chapter missions tab (marked with a tick). Completing these objectives—such as using a specific weapon in an encounter or parrying certain demons—awards extra gold, rubies, and skins.

Once you fully upgrade a weapon, you unlock its mastery mission on the challenge screen. Finish the mastery requirements to earn a golden skin for that armament. If you miss any secrets or missions in a chapter, you can replay it with your complete kit intact, enabling you to revisit early levels with all weapons and upgrades available.

Also, check our Doom: The Dark Ages Review and other guides below:

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