Update 2.1 Hotfix 1 brings some quality-of-life improvements, balance changes and tons more bug fixes to DOOM: The Dark Ages

💢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 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

Rail Spike Impaler

Developer 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

Super Shotgun

• 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

Holy City of Aratum

🗡Final Encounter

• Adjusted the Hell Knight respawn

Siege - Part 1 & Siege - Part 2

• Increased time between maintain spawns in several encounters

Siege - Part 2

🗡Courtyard Section

(*AT) Fixed an issue where Titan gore collision would disrupt projectiles

Abyssal Forest

🗡Agaddon Boss Fight

• Removed the Imp and Mancubus maintain support in the Agaddon Hunter intro

Ancestral Forge

• Resolved issues where additional combat encounters could be triggered erroneously

🗡Final Heart Fight

• Expanded the Arachnotron maintain window

Spire of Nerathul

🗡Komodo Boss Fight

• Removed the maintain support from the Komodo intro

🗡Hanging Ship Path

• Fixed the Arachnotron maintain respawning with inconsistent timing at the end of the encounter

🗡Overlook Secret

• Fixes the Battle Knight maintain occasionally spawning as another enemy AI

The Kar’Thul Marshes

🗡Morale fight

• Set Nightmare Imp Stalker maintain to begin after both Imp Stalkers are dead, rather than just one

Resurrection

• 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

Final Battle

• 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

Checkout the details of what went live in Update 2.1 and Update 2