How to beat Doom Eternal on Nightmare, without really trying.

This is going to be a video/discussion thread on how to beat Doom Eternal on Nightmare without a lot of acrobatics and multiple quick switching of weapons. I'm sure a lot of you may have seen such feats by expert players, but I am here to show and tell you that it can be done without them. I happen to be 62, and lack the reflexes and dexterity to do such things. At most you'll see me use a tap of the weapon wheel button to swap back and forth between the last 2 equipped weapons for enemies like the Marauder, but I can't do it nearly as fast as some.

This game is as much about what weapons to use, timing use of the equipment launcher, and knowing when to duck and run to find or make health, armor, and ammo via caches, glory kills, belch, and chainsaw. Knowing how to use the terrain, monkey bars, jump pads, and portals is key as well. I'll be posting the vids in sets of 4 videos, each covering a whole mission. The last post will be just the final 13th mission, which may even be posted as 2 or 3 videos since the final boss fight can take a while for us average players whom lack the aforementioned elite skills.

The first mission Hell on Earth was a bit frustrating, as I couldn't come anywhere near my hopeful (but a bit unrealistic I found) goal of making the milestone for doing it in under 11 min. Exultia is a level I love just for the awesome look of it and great ambient music that accompanies it, though it's Slayer Gate is to be taken seriously. Cultist Base is one of the longest and hardest missions on Nightmare because it covers a lot of ground and comes before you have very many suit or weapon upgrades, or heavy weapons. It also has an extremely tough Slayer Gate.

Finally, the 4th mission Doom Hunter Base I used to feel was fairly hard just due to the boss fight at the end where you have to tackle not just 1, but 3 Doom Hunters, the last two being active simultaneously in the same battle. That said, it's become one of my favorite missions. It has some nice steampunk elements to it, offers many places to do some great aerial platforming shortcuts that I found are not in fact too hard, has no Secret Encounter or Slayer Gate battles to worry about, and if you have the plasma rifle fully upgraded, or better yet mastered, it can take Doom Hunters off their sleds pretty fast.

If anyone has any comments, wants to share notes on tactics, or questions, especially on things like platforming shortcuts, as I feel many mistakenly think the aerial platforming is too hard, feel free to participate. You may be surprised how just a little bit of timing makes a world of difference.

Play these on the 1440p setting (not Auto), for best results.

Just stepped in to give anyone that might be waiting for the next set of vids a heads up. I had a week delay due to having to order a new keyboard when the one I was using broke down, my apologies, but it was a necessary step. Things are going well now though, and I'm at the start of the final battle in Mars Core. So it shouldn't be long before I start uploading the set, since Sentinel Prime is pretty short.

Stay tuned!

OK guys, again, sorry for the delay, but much of it was due to waiting for update 1.1, and having to order a new keyboard, which accounted for over a week of it. I'm loving the new KB, and it does macros like you wouldn't believe, but I decided not to use it for that, as it just felt like a cheat to simply press a key, have it auto cycle rapidly back and forth between Ballista and SSG shots, without so much as touching LMB, then toggle it off using that same key when the enemy went down. It also made me lazy and because of it, I actually played worse believe it or not. It IS however handy for disabling any key you want, like Tilde, which I was often accidentally hitting before when trying to tap 1 to use combat shotgun. Imagine having a good fight going only to see the console pop up, freezing you in place. I also love that it's box style switches don't wobble. Despite measuring 5mm narrower from L edge of L Shift to R edge of R Shift than my Dell backup (280mm vs 285MM), it actually feels less fiddly due to the aforementioned lack of key wobble, good key spacing, the bottom corners of keys being beveled, and each row being tiered, meaning the next lowest row is set lower, especially the bottom row. This means I never accidentally hit Ctrl anymore when using Shift to sprint, which caused a lot of accidental nade tosses. I also like that the IR switches actuate in only 1.5mm of travel, and travel a total of only 3mm. So despite having slightly higher depression force keys than the other mech boards I've had, it feels less strenuous to use. Anyway, enough about the KB, if interested read TPU's review on it.

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/bloody-b840/

OK, the new set of vids.

1. Super Gore Nest as usual felt disorienting getting my bearings. You can also add probably 30 sec to the time because I forgot to grab the 1st Praetor suit point after getting the 2nd style of GK on the Pinky, which caused me to go grab it from the next checkpoint/capture seam I stopped at, but I forgot to capture it. Us old farts invented Alzheimer's I think. I DID however get in some quick kills on the Arachnos and Mancs in the first battle in the big center area, and a nice little yeethook on the Rev where the rotating fire traps are.

2. ARC Complex seemed to take forever in the first half, but I managed the 2nd half pretty quickly, and dropped the smarty pants Bruto Mars boss in under 30 sec again. Annoyingly I had to fast travel back to get the very first collectible though, but thankfully with a bottom of the elevator spawn point, it was pretty quick. Apologies for the brief 1 sec or so graphical glitch at the 8:13 point. It was in the original raw capture clip though, so I couldn't do anything about it, and I seriously don't know what caused it.

3. Mars Core I fell in love with for the first time. I have to give partial credit for that to the amazing DraQu in his latest speedrun video for his method to kill Mr Mars in the Slayer Gate, his incredible Ballista boost jump after exiting the gate area, and his yeethook to get immediately to the platform the Praetor suit point is on in the room with the big cylinders moving up and down. Because of that I got my quickest Mars kill ever in about 11 sec, and even though I didn't manage a Ballista boost, I got there pretty quickly by other means, which is nearly as fast, and anyone can do easily. I also didn't manage that direct yeethook, but found a good alternative that is very easy. Lastly, I have to also give credit to Under The Mayo for his meathook shortcuts video, particularly how to bypass the first room full of tentacles. The Gargoyle that spawns there has very unpredictable spawn placement, but as long as he's anywhere in the half of the room nearest the jump pad, it's doable. I managed the Mars Core Slayer Gate and final battles both in under 1:30 each, and finished with my fastest overall time by far.

4. Sentinel Prime went kinda sloppy the first capture, losing a whopping 4 extra lifes, but I was going to upload it anyway. Then I decided screw it, I had the checkpoint save still from the start of the battle, so I went at it again, this time using only 1 of the 2 extra lifes I picked up in the level, and cutting over 30 sec off my kill time. I'm also pretty sure the one life I lost was due to a silly short range rocket shot I did on a fodder, so I chock it up to dumb old farts can't think on their feet sometimes syndrome. LOL

So I'm very happy overall with the result of this vid set, and have 4 extra lifes going into Taras Nabad. I also saved 1 BFG shot that I didn't use on Mars Core's final battle.

Enjoy, any and all comments or questions welcome. I mean, what else ya gonna do in a damn pandemic quarantine, except talk about excellent games like Doom Eternal?

Just a brief update. I'm still in the progress of making the guide and have finished Taras Nabad, and Nekravol parts 1 & 2. The Marauders have been giving me hell, but I'm managing to hold on to quite a few extra lifes I picked up along the way, having accumulated 8 so far. Took a break this Sun 6/21 to get some other stuff done, and I'll be busy 6/22 getting my truck repaired, but I should have the new set posted soon.

Really cool that you're doing this. I was actually kind of afraid of trying this game out despite quite liking Doom 2016 because everyone keeps going on about how difficult it is, and I am really bad at using mouse & keyboard to a high level of dexterity. Your posts made me want to go back and give this game a try anyway.

Thanks, and glad you found inspiration from it!

A LOT of players have the first impression that it is noticeably harder than 2016, but once you get the hang of it, there are certain things that seem like issues at first that aren't. If you can get used to using various weapons, since some are more effective than others on destroying the weak spots of heavies, then ammo takes longer to run down, and you chainsaw low level demons when it does to bring it back up. Plus belching demons for armor and glory killing for health and to regen Blood Punch makes a big difference, as does using your frag grenades and freeze bombs.

A common scenario that's very effective and safe is making sure you GK a couple demons before going into a big battle, them freeze bombing heavies like Mancubuses or Doom Hunters, followed by a blood punch, which destroys a Manc's armor, and takes a DH down low enough to take it off it's sled quickly with a well upgraded (preferably mastered) plasma rifle. Both can be easily killed after that with one or 2 lockon rocket barrages.

You also need to learn what each symbol means on the HUD, which will tell you at a glance if things like Blood Punch, Belch, or Chainsaw are regened and ready for use. That way you can concentrate on where enemies are instead of what needs refilling. It's a game that takes a bit of learning and experience to play, but there is tons of room for improvement due to the way it's designed and all the tools they give you.

If you struggle with Mouse and Keyboard a lot that will hold you back though, so I advise several play throughs, maybe even starting out on the easiest difficulty. The game from what most say is a lot harder to play on gamepad though, and a good gaming mouse is invaluable just for the many ways you can bind it for combat.

I have scroll up bound to the Super Shotgun, and scroll down to Ballista, which makes quick switching from one to the other easier. In this game quick switching weapons deals high DPS because it bypasses the weapon's reload animation. I also have the thumb buttons bound to switching grenade type and Rocket Launcher. Each grenade type has it's own cooldown, so it helps to switch them often.

OK, here's the next set of 4 vids.

1. Taras Nabad. I struggled against the Marauder right after pulling the Crucible out of the Titan, and lost 2 Extra Lifes because of it. Somehow I often fumble on the terrain in that battle when trying to evade him to setup another choke point attack. The rest of it went pretty well though, and I found an easy way to isolate a couple of Pain Elementals for their 3 Glory Kill types challenge.

2. Nekravol is probably the easiest of these 4 missions, and it offers some good meathook shortcuts and ways to recoup lost health/armor via traps. This time I aced the dual Doom Hunter battle at the end. The only clumsy moment was losing a ton of armor and health (after building it to near full preparing for the Marauder), on of all things the damn crusher door.

3. Nekravol 2 can be a pain, but I got through the battles OK, and even aced the rotating fire pillars platforming section first try unscathed. The battle at the end went well too. I lost one more Extra Life, again to a Marauder, but had accumulated 8 by the end of the level.

4. Urdak is beautiful, but some of it's battles can get out of control fast. I think I found my pace and strats though, and managed to work out ways to beat each one losing no Extra Lifes. I experimented a bit on the big aerial coffin platforming section (that comes just before setting the 3rd Celestial Ring), which I managed to ace with one long jump from the launchpad/hoop last time. I found out it's a lot easier to replicate a jump to the final coffin instead, and it's still a pretty fast and easy shortcut. So for the purpose of this being a guide, I thought it more appropriate to show that than my two successful straight-to-door jumps. Finally, I finished with 10 Extra Lifes, and thanks to Decino, found that Mastered Micro Missiles is the fastest way I've used yet to beat Khan Maykr (under 2 min).

Enjoy, btw, I am on track for my goal of averaging less than 30 min a mission if I can beat Final Sin in under 44 min. I did it in just over 47 min last time on Ultra Violence though, so it's not going to be easy. It took me 11 min or so on phase 2 of the boss fight though, and I felt I could have done better.

OK, thought I'd update you on my progress. I finally had time to go full on into Final Sin the last couple days after dealing with some stuff I needed to take care of. It's going pretty well so far. I'm at the start of the Icon of Sin boss fight at about 22:40, so I should theoretically manage my less than 30 min per mission average goal, as anything under 44 min will accomplish that. I also have a whopping 13 extra lifes, not having lost any so far in this mission. I just gotta say it is a huge help to not waste BFG ammo on the Khan Maykr. Having an abundance of BFG ammo really makes a big difference in the bigger battles in Final Sin. I should have Final Sin posted soon, maybe within a few days.

I'm scrubbing through some of your videos right now, and I have to say that your acceptance of the core gameplay loop (chainsaw/equipment/weapon swapping) makes it pretty clear how well-balanced Eternal is. A lot of the pushback comes from people not wanting to have to use everything at their disposal, and then getting angry when enemies are designed to push you to use those tools. Eternal is a hard game, and it can be extremely punishing, but just knowing and acknowledging all of the options at one's disposal goes a long way in smoothing that curve out.

I agree completely, and furthermore, once you DO embrace that, you'll find you really don't need elite skills to beat it on Nightmare. Strats matter a lot in this game, even some of the best speedrunners can only improve with better strats, and they often acknowledge that in their chat with fans.

This concludes the guide with the final mission being completed in 32:24. This also meets my goal of less than 30 min per mission at just over 29 min per mission.

Final Sin

I lost track of the 2nd Marauder temporarily, but was able to defeat him before losing an extra life. I also managed to keep all my extra lifes and finish with 13. I have to say a big part of what made this mission very doable was not wasting any BFG ammo on the Khan Maykr, and carrying a fully loaded BFG over to this mission. It also helped immensely to use only 4 BFG shots on the 1st phase of the boss, to be able to use 4 in the 2nd phase as well. I jumped a bit too far off a jump pad when finishing off the boss, and fell over the edge, but lost 5 armor and 25 health because of it, so it certainly wasn't a freebie. I have to say I felt a bit clumsy toward the end of the 2nd phase of the boss fight. I managed to finish with 200 health and 30 armor after using the Supercharge to go up close to finish him though, and I'm pleased that I vastly improved my previous times on the boss, at just over 7 min of combat.

Thank you all for taking the time for viewing and commenting. This was at times very daunting, but time spent on tactics helped me find ways to manage, albeit a bit geriatrically at times. I hope any of you whom may go through the same worries find it to be useful encouragement. It's not just about reflexes and dexterity, but strats and tactics too.