About the Game
BECOME THE SLAYER IN A MEDIEVAL WAR AGAINST HELL
DOOM: The Dark Ages is the prequel to the critically acclaimed DOOM (2016) and DOOM Eternal that tells an epic cinematic story worthy of the DOOM Slayer’s legend. In this third installment of the modern DOOM series, players will step into the blood-stained boots of the DOOM Slayer, in this never-before-seen dark and sinister medieval war against Hell.
DOOM: The Dark Ages is a dark fantasy/sci-fi single-player experience that delivers the searing combat and over-the-top visuals of the incomparable DOOM franchise, powered by the latest idTech engine.
REIGN IN HELL
As the super weapon of gods and kings, shred enemies with devastating favorites like the Super Shotgun while also wielding a variety of new bone-chewing weapons, including the versatile Shield Saw. Players will stand and fight on the demon-infested battlefields in the vicious, grounded combat the original DOOM is famous for.
STAND AND FIGHT
Experience an epic story of the DOOM Slayer’s rage in this cinematic and action-packed story. Bound to serve as the super weapon of gods and kings, the DOOM Slayer fends off demon hordes as their leader seeks to destroy the Slayer and become the only one that is feared. Witness the creation of a legend as the Slayer takes on all of Hell and turns the tide of the war.
DISCOVER UNKNOWN REALMS
In his quest to crush the legions of Hell, the Slayer must take the fight to never-before-seen realms. Mystery, challenges, and rewards lurk in every shadow of ruined castles, epic battlefields, dark forests, ancient hellscapes, and worlds beyond. Armed with the viciously powerful Shield Saw, cut through a dark world of menace and secrets in id's largest and most expansive levels to date.
Screenshots
12 images
Version Information
Steam Patch Notes
Official update history
A hotfix has been deployed to DOOM: The Dark Ages on all platforms that addresses the following issues:
Fixed the Chain Spear's inputs being unbound as "??", however in doing so we've reset all player bindings back to default, so please make sure you go in and rebind anything you previously customized (We're sorry for the inconvenience!🙇)
Fixed the issue in Hell's Core where dying in combat could place some users behind a red wall blocking progression
Fixed the issue in Osseus where dying in combat could place some users behind a red wall blocking progression
Fixed a number of the most prevalent crashes
Update 2.2 includes general bug fixes and combat encounter adjustments for all platforms. It also introduces new handheld optimizations and quality of life updates including DOOM: The Dark Ages now being Steam Deck Verified.
👋New Handheld Optimizations
[img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/45053548/87a071e8f998d523059f4c2b1d29ac89ba35da97.jpg"]
✨Handheld Setting Autodetection
On first launch, the game will autodetect the optimal settings for handheld devices. Handheld First Launch Auto Detection is specific to handhelds. Players may further customize the settings based on personal preferences
Settings are now stored per device so players may customize their play experience on a per device basis
👌Handheld Performance
General performance improvements specific to handhelds
Added advanced optimization settings specifically for handhelds
Optimized SFX and VFX specifically for handhelds (Changes do not affect Consoles or PC)
Handheld benchmark mode
👉Handheld Device Specifications
[p align="start"]Performance depends on selected power mode and whether the device is attached to a dedicated power source. Values detailed here assume the device is using the highest power setting in the OS and is not running from batterySteam Deck : 720p @ ~30FPS
Z1 Devices : 720p @ ~30FPS (such as ASUS ROG Ally)
Z1E Devices : 1080p @ ~30FPS (such as ASUS ROG Ally X, Lenovo Legion Go)
Z2A Devices : 720p @ ~30FPS (such as XBOX ROG Ally)
Z2E Devices : 1080p @ ~60FPS (such as XBOX ROG Ally X)
*Results are based on testing with pre-release drivers. Personal results may vary with newer drivers and user selected power settings on a per device basis
✌️Handheld General
Added QOL input improvements when handhelds are docked to a stand
Added controller detection on handhelds for wireless and wired external controllers
😌General Bug Fixes and Improvements (All Platforms)
👿Enemy AI
Fixed an issue with Sentinel civilians‘ heads being out of place in Hebeth, Siege – Part 1, and Sentinel Command Station
Resolved a rare crash if the player used the shield throw on the Plasma Shield Soldiers with the “Power Surge” shield upgrade
Visuals for area denial when Prince Ahzrak blood pillars expire now render correctly
Fixed a rare crash when using the BFC during the beginning of each phase of the enhanced Prince Ahzrak boss fight
🎯Gameplay
🛡Weapon Balance
Fixed an issue where death and damage stats were not being registered properly in the case of multiple damage instances on the same frame as an entity death
This change also addressed a bug where the Accelerator mastery challenge wasn’t being incremented properly
Cycler Plasma Gun will no longer glow white on firing with Berserker Power in Harbor of Souls and Resurrection
Shield now accounts for melee stagger and correctly recovers from being staggered out of a melee strike while attempting to block/parry. Prevents a shield lockout and prevents a case where the shield would pop up into the block state briefly well after the input was released
🗺 Levels
⚔Combat Encounter Updates
[p align="start"]HebethFixed an issue where reloading checkpoints after the gold and sentinel shrine tutorial could cause objectives to vanish until level restart or transition
Mancubus no longer respawns during the Vagary Champion boss fight
Removed Hell Knight and Stalker Imp reinforcements from Mancubus Leader spawn wave in the burning tree fight
Hell Knights, Stalker Imps, and Imps no longer respawn during the Vagary fights throughout the battlefield
The wolf statue ruby will no longer get stuck behind a red energy gate if it is not collected after breaking the wolf statues and reloading the south gore portal checkpoint
Fixed an issue where an errant Titan could appear in the courtyard when reloading the checkpoint
Arachnotron no longer respawns during Agaddon Hunter fight at the end of heart sandbox section
Fixed a potential crash when loading a checkpoint after dying in the Agaddon Hunter fight in the Ancestral Courtyard
Chaingun Arachnotron no longer respawns during final encounter of the cathedral stasis emitter section
Arachnotron and Cacodemon no longer respawn during the shipwreck morale fight
The melee pickups now appear correctly on the secret boat “Hell Knight rush” encounter
The armored Arachnotron that spawns after the Acolyte dies no longer respawns during first morale fight
Arachnotron no longer respawns during buffed Agaddon Hunter encounter
💢The Ripatorium
Vagaries should now only spawn in open areas where they can move around
🔊Audio
Fixed an issue where the Shield Saw grinding SFX could stop playing if the player opened the Dossier while the shield is in a power node and then returns to gameplay
🎰UI
Fixed an issue where second codex does not register progress if mission select was entered before completion or collected via mission select
Resolved an issue with the tutorial in the Ripatorium menu always appearing when entering the menu regardless of whether or not the Player had already played the mode
Fixed a bug where opening the Dossier the frame after breaking a metal lock or using any switch could cause the trigger to fail and block progression
Addressed a potential crash when Alt-Tabbing away and returning to the game when the game is at a load screen
🪄VFX
Corrected an issue where picking up a toy could cause the shield or equipped weapon visual effects to appear during the animation
Stray purple lines will no longer appear when overloading a Cacodemon using the Cycler
Addresses a bug where the first-person gore overlay flickered around screen edges during AI execute actions when resolution scaling was active
🔧Newly Added Active Tunables
Active Tunable gameplay refinements are denoted below as: (*AT) for "Active Tunable"
(*AT) Reduced damage of certain attacks from the Agaddon Hunter, Cosmic Baron, Hell Knight, and Komodo to reduce the number of attacks that break the shield in one hit on Nightmare Difficulty
(*AT) Adjusted the Brink of Death system on all difficulties to be more in line with launch day values
Developer Note: The Dark Ages (and Eternal) was designed from the start to allow players the chance to fight their way back from a near death experience - this system is known as the Brink of Death. When your health is low, by design, you are at your most alert and engaged. We’ve re-tuned this system’s values to settings closer to launch, enhancing this aspect of the combat.
If you're still experiencing issues, please holler at our amazing Customer Service team here
Check out the details of what went live in Update 2.1 and Update 2.1 Hotfix
💢The Ripatorium
😌Quality of Life Improvements
Player’s selection of equipped guns, upgrades, melee weapon, and shield rune will now persist once adjusted
Added ammo and health pickups to Ripatorium arenas
🐞Bug Fixes
Fixed the crash issue during combat with too many enemy AI present in the Ripatorium as well as in the campaign
Fixed the issue with the base Vagary not dying when executed while dazed
Fixed the issue where Champion Vagary had a chance to spawn when the base Vagary was selected
Fixed an issue where swapping any Shield Rune after starting the arena would cause some of the upgrades to no longer work, including Steadfast, Harvester, Blade Master, and Retaliation
The Steadfast Shield upgrade now functions when an unbroken shield is restoring health
Fixed an issue where multiple upgrades where being applied at the same time for Accelerator and Shredder
👿Enemy AI
General gameplay balance refinements (some of these were previously Active Tunables that have been removed from that article and committed to the game in Update 2.1 Hotfix 1). These are denoted below as: (*PT) for "Previous Tunable"
Fixed the issue where Imp, Soldier, Zombie, and Arachnotron’s swipe melee attacks dealt no damage if passing through other demons first
Armored enemies will now falter when their armor is destroyed with Shotguns
Fixed an issue where the Vagary did not falter after taking damage from the Dreadmace direct damage or AOE damage once certain upgrades had been purchased
Fixed the issue where Pinky Rider Armor prevented falters from the Slayer’s landing impact
Fixed the issue where Whiplash did not perform a falter from the Slayer’s landing impact
Reverted the Cacodemon health buff applied in Update 2
Reverted the Mancubus health and armor buffs applied in Update 2
Reverted changes to Mancubus Flamethrower damage applied in Update 2
Reverted changes to Mancubus Fireball speed and size applied in Update 2
(*PT) Chaingunner increased cooldown between burst fire attacks & shortened duration of burst fire attacks
🎯Gameplay
Equipped Guns, upgrades, Melee weapon, and Shield Rune are now retained when reloading checkpoints during the campaign and when transitioning between missions
Shield Charge AOE (Area of Effect) will now cause health to drop from killed enemies
Fixed an issue where the Shield Saw could not be raised to perform a Block/Parry during the reload animation of the Super Shotgun
Added the ability to interrupt the Super Shotgun reload animation to melee at the same frame we allow a Block/Parry
Shortened the delay for the player to interrupt Rocket Launcher and Grenade Launcher firing animations to Shield Block/Parry or Melee
Fixed an issue introduced in Update 2 that allowed players to potentially switch weapons earlier than intended after firing certain guns including Super Shotgun, Rocket Launcher, Grenade Launcher
Fixed the brief slowdown experienced after Parrying or using a Melee combo when 'Parry & Melee Slow Down' is set to 0
Players will now be restored to a minimum of 75 health upon checkpoint reload if they hit the checkpoint with less health than that amount (this excludes Pandemonium and Ultra Nightmare which don't have checkpoint reloading)
Corrected an issue where the low ammo notice appears well before the Cycler Plasma Rifle should be notifying for a low ammo state
Fixed the issue where the player could briefly become locked out of swapping to the BFC while using the Chainshot
Fixed an issue where upgrading all melee weapons could prevent the Melee Expert and Berserker achievements from completing
🛡Weapon Balance
[p align="start"]Rail Spike ImpalerDeveloper Clarification: Impaler headshot damage was not universally increased in Update 2. The approach we took generally favored decreasing Impaler body shot damage in instances where scoring all headshots did not result in a meaningful difference in the total number of shots required to daze or kill a demon. We did increase headshot scaling in a few instances (E.G. Cyberdemon and Whiplash) where reducing body shot damage would have resulted in a longer-than-desired time-to-kill
Balance adjustments including:
Reduced Impaler damage vs. Cyberdemon
Reduced headshot scaling of empowered Impaler projectiles (via Salvage and Chronospike upgrades) vs. Whiplash
Reduced headshot scaling of non-empowered Impaler projectiles vs. Revenant
Balance adjustments including:
Increased Super Shotgun damage vs. Hell Knight and Battle Knight
Increased Super Shotgun damage vs. Cosmic Baron
Reverted the damage adjustments against Mancubus and its armor applied in Update 2
Increased Super Shotgun damage vs. Pinky Rider and Armored Pinky Rider
Increased base Super Shotgun (without upgrades) damage vs. Vagary armor
🗺 Levels
Active Tunable gameplay refinements are denoted below as: (*AT) for "Active Tunable"
⚔Combat Encounter Updates
[p align="start"]Holy City of Aratum[p align="start"]🗡Final EncounterAdjusted the Hell Knight respawn
Increased time between maintain spawns in several encounters
Resolved issues where additional combat encounters could be triggered erroneously
Removed the Imp and Mancubus maintain support in the Agaddon Hunter intro
Expanded the Arachnotron maintain window
Removed the maintain support from the Komodo intro
Fixed the Arachnotron maintain respawning with inconsistent timing at the end of the encounter
Fixes the Battle Knight maintain occasionally spawning as another enemy AI
Set Nightmare Imp Stalker maintain to begin after both Imp Stalkers are dead, rather than just one
Resolved issues where additional combat encounters could be triggered erroneously
Added plasma ammo in front of both plasma gates on the Maykr ship
The “Energy Shield” tutorial pop up does bypass the “Tutorials Off” setting
Changed the enemy AI composition in the final Atlan encounter so there are fewer armored enemies
🎰UI
Resolved the issue where viewing Newsfeed body content for live tiles displayed a blank pop-up and caused multiple log errors
Added the 'Energy Shield' popup tutorial to the Pause Menu's tutorial list
The Energy Shield tutorial in Resurrection will now bypass the "Tutorials Off" setting
🏭Engine
Fixed a crash that occurred during Ripatorium Endless mode on Xbox Series X|S & PlayStation 5 when playing for longer than 8 hours continuously
If you're still experiencing issues, please holler at our amazing Customer Service team here
Read all the above in additional languages on Slayers Club here.
Today's minor update for DOOM: The Dark Ages addresses the following:
Fix for 1-frame jitter that can be caused by resolution scaling
Fix for VRS (Variable Rate Shading) setting not changing when applying defaults
If you're still experiencing issues, please holler at our amazing Customer Service team here
June 2025 PC Update Hotfix is now available. We've updated the required driver messaging in the launcher to match Nvidia + AMD's latest recommended driver.
Nvidia example below:
[img src="{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/45053548/15ceb7bfc0bf476907276ef2ff1685b440714d14.png"]
ICYMI check out the full June 2025 PC Update Release Notes here
Update 1 Hotfix is now available on all platforms and resolves degraded visuals appearing as increased graininess and/or blurriness in some video settings configurations. Shoutout to our community for helping identify the issue so we could quickly address it!
Note: Thanks for your patience while we continue to investigate why some PlayStation 5 users have been unable to unlock the Berserker Achievement/Trophy upon obtaining the necessary upgrades
ICYMI check out the full Update 1 Release Notes here
Today's update addresses the following:
Updated startup messaging
Fixed most instances of crashing at launch for some users
Today's update includes the following change:
Added new startup messaging for NVIDIA graphics card users
Current Release
Build 24132495
Uploaded Jul 13, 2026
System Requirements
How to Install
idTechLauncher.exe to play
Troubleshooting tips
• Run Redist/_CommonRedist installers if game won't start
• Add folder to Windows Defender exclusions
• Run as administrator
Download
Direct link available
96.8 GB
24132495
EE422EB3
8c264e98abf4640fac518309eb934ad62f6aca9f0a03240a355a8805a6afb583
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Download DOOM: The Dark Ages for PC with a direct link or via torrent. Get the full version of DOOM: The Dark Ages for free. DOOM: The Dark Ages is a Action released by id Software.