Improved doom Beta testing and initial bugfixing completed...

So I spent a long time yesterday and last night doing bug testing, bugfixing and other testing for Improved Doom, my upcoming Doom Rebalance/RPG/Random Spawning Mod for Zdoom ports... I spent hours on the mod. Making the initial mod was a 3-4 hour job done a few days ago. Since then I spent hours bugtesting, Bugfixing, and constant backing up the latest version. Last night I made what I think is a final version of the mod, version 3.2

Since Improved Doom was made in three phases and the first 2 phases were not release ready, this new version is technically the latest version for the third phase.  The first phase was similar to the new version but had lots of issues such as enemy damage being too high and limited enemies and weapons.  You also started out way to weak in phase 1 and could die very easily because you're starting HP was 50 or so and not 150 like it is now.  Phase 1 was ditched and a new phase, being completely based on some other mod was made but not released due to the other mod being some one elses...

I wrapped up phase 2 and backed it up but never came back to it because I found great mods like HXRTC and DoomRPG/RLA.  Improved Doom was put on the back burner and forgotten for almost 2 years...  (This was around Summer 2016)...  A few days ago I found a backup of phase 2 and edited it heavily... I imported a wad from phase 2 with custom stuff including new enemies, a scripting library with the new coding for the cyborg powers and levelup system, and such... I took that wad, edited it heavily to get rid of code and other stuff from the other mod and made a new version based on this and stuff downloaded from the beastiary. I downloaded 40 new enemies and 18 new guns.. I went for ones I liked a lot, rather than popular ones... It payed off...

The new version was made but as I made it my sloppy coding caused lots of bugs to appear, misspellings, etc. Some serious issues needed to be fixed... A sprite conflict between the sprites of two enemies from the beastiary was there because I downloaded both enemies.. I had to rename the sprites and patch the decorate of one enemy to compensate... I did that... That was 5 revisions in... I had other issues such as missing monsters in the random spawning list... I added new features such as cluster grenades and some new enemies as well.  Around 8 revisions in it was finished...

Backing up the versions turned out to be a chore. I had to back the mod on to a CD and External HDD every time I made a revision and twice I uploaded a massive online backup to the internet. When I had to patch something to make revision 8, I had to delete and re-upload this version... Basically improved doom made me work a lot to get it working right... It should be ready for release by next month... Extensive testing is needed....

Doom RPG+RLA compatible Hardcore Mode Mod made by me...

I am here with an update to my download for Doom RLA and Doom RPG mods for Doom 2. This download allows people to download all the mods in one package and allows people to get an easy to install package of the mods... Normally It's hard as hell to install and run these mods, but this fixes that...

The fun I had with it was astounding...   But something was lacking in the mod so far... Survival mode... As of late a lot of RPG's are starting to implement survival modes into the game where you have to eat and sleep to survive... This started with Games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Fallout : New Vegas and soon spread to Fallout 4 and Skyrim as well.   So I decided to make a mod that is compatible with DoomRPG that makes it so if you play on Hard or Higher you have to eat and sleep to survive....

The way the mod works is simple... There is two timers that count down to 1 minute and 2 minutes respectively.  Once the first one hits 1 minute, it hurts you a tiny bit (10 hitpoints, which for a strong character with a high vitality is nothing really...), and says you are feeling fatigued... Once the second Counter hits 2 minutes, it takes away 25 hitpoints and says you need to eat... If you ignore these it will get worse, the next time they hit they take away twice as much health and then 4 times the next time and it gets exponentially worse...  What do you do to fight this?

See you have the option to sleep and eat in this... Sleeping activates a script which reduces the value the sleep counter takes your health away to the default... It also makes you more hungry at the same time, (just like in STALKER and Skyrim survival mode). It also makes your screen go black to make it look like you are sleeping... The Downside is that you should probably never sleep in a level where enemies are nearby as it is a huge risk that you will be shot, so you should find a completely safe place first...

Eating works by reducing the amount of damage you take from the eating counter by dividing the variable that stores how much damage you take by 2. It also takes away 1 ration... You get 5 rations in total and cannot get more and once you run out you must complete the level to get more, which restocks your rations to the max count of 5 again... This makes the eating part more tricky, because now you have to conserve rations... You may not want to eat a ration each time you get the hunger counter to hit because you only have 5 and later on when you are further into a long level (like 10 minutes in) you may not have enough rations to satiate yourself then and since the hunger would take away more health 10 minutes in than 2 minutes in (200 hitpoints taken away 10 minutes in versus 25 taken away 2 minutes in)...

The hunger feature may also make super long levels like Map24 of eternal Doom (which takes 45 minutes to get through) to become very hard... So this makes strategizing your build much more vital. Do you want to focus on pumping tons of points into vitality and defense to give yourself more max health to fight the hunger with in longer mapsets? It's up to the player, but this makes a good Character build even more vital for a playthrough of a long confusing mapset than it was before without the survival mode enabled.  I have found that vitality and defense builds don't suffer as much from the hunger and sleep penalties as someone without high vitality or Defense. I had a default build setup without stat points allocated and took 25 points, then 50 points, then 100 then 200 points per counter hit for hunger.... Then I restarted map01 and put tons of points into vitality and defense and found the damage taken was far less... So a Good way to fight hunger is to have a high vitality and defense.. (30+ each)...  Keep that in mind when playing Doom RPG with the Survival mode on...

To balance it out, the survival mode mod only works on Hard Difficulties and higher... It is inactive for Medium/easy difficulty players so that people always have a choice whether they want it on or not. If you do want it on, simply play on hard or higher. If you want it off, play on medium...

The mod was quickly thrown together and is kind of a hack... But it works perfectly now after I tested it for 3-4 hours last night and this morning...

The mod works well.. The keys for eating and sleeping are defined in the right places so all you have to do is bind them to keys in the controls.


Donwload the mod package here... Unzip to your Doom 2 folder... Run Loadrpg.bat from the run box in Windows or a dos prompt to run the mods together without issues... Make sure to unzip all the files to your folder including the source port included. Doom RPG and Doom RLA do not work well with Later Gzdoom Builds and require you only run them with 3.0.1 or before...

There are a lot of controls to bind in the options menu. Make sure you bind Open Menu, Open Shop, Skill Wheel, Use Skill 1-5 and Eat and Sleep to keys! I set Open Menu to Tab, Open Shop to Z, Skill Wheel to E, Use Skill 1-5 to F1-F5 and Eat and Sleep to V and B respectively... It works for me...

DoomRPG+DoomRLA Madness....

As I was waiting to get to the point where I can release my wads in the Hell Revealed Pack, I started Doing some playthroughs of randomly generated wads to enjoy the holiday season. As usual I played in DoomRPG and DoomRLA..... At the beginning, I had no issues at levels 1-10 for my Techician... I had good equipment, and had done an extremely tough mission to acquire Nanofiber Armor, which is always my armor of choice because It cannot degrade....

I had assembled the High powered plasma rifle, and was ready to go into the later levels, and I managed to reach map 20... I got through that fine...  But I ran into real trouble in map21-30...

In the earlier maps (map21-25) of the last 10, I had some minor issues, but managed to get past them fine... But when I reached map26-30 Bad things started to happen... SO bad that they are epicly bad!!!!

First of all in map27 I died a lot... I ended up being killed by at least one revenant which killed me over and over again thanks to a bug where I could not fire my weapon at all or move for a few seconds. I somehow got myself out of this by cheating to turn on god mode, and hitting a few keys. By that time, I had died 4 times in a row (because I was trying to fire and failed), and had my rank reduced a shit ton, and even got demoted a few times due to that. that was bad, even really bad, but that was nothing for the bullshit map28 would give me. In map28 I managed to go through 90% of the level without being killed, only to find myself in a stupid BS situation... I ran through a vent only to find myself in the next room, which had a cyberdemon in it. It killed me and it pushed me into a lower bordering sector which had it's ceiling lower than the other sectors in the room. Since I resurrect after death to make it easier on me, I got stuck there...  This sector I could not move in at all, and the cyberdemon ended up killing me 4 more times, demoting me even further... I managed to god mode rescue me again, and  this time I got through it... I ended up having to duck my way out of it to survive...

But none of that prepared me for the horribly epic yet disgustingly fight with a nightmare cyberdemon in map29!

I ended up beating map29 but I died 4 times in one fight....  This fight was against a level 249 nightmare cyberdemon... This thing had regenerating health and a regenerating shield plus 17000 health in  total.  It kicked my ass royally!!!! I ended up dying 4 times in a row. It took for fucking ever to beat and in the end I ended up triggering a random event that caused me to run away in fear, some kind of weird light effect... I can't describe it.... I ended up getting to map30 and quit there, I was so frustrated with the game I decided to quit...

By the time I got to map29 I was a level 36 technician. I had good equipment, a nanofiber armor that doesn't degrade, basic boots, and a high powered plasma rifle plus lots of other overpowered guns... I got pwned by the enemies and thanks to complete BS Situations It got really bad...

Masochistic Death Doom 2 megawad trilogy Remade....

Last December and earlier this year, I constructed the Masochistic Death Doom 2 Megawad trilogy : A set of 3 modified randomly generated Doom 2 megawads that were tributes to 3 megawads I made by hand that I no longer have on my computer due to A) People trashing the first one in youtube videos and twitch streams and B) Me deleting them in a fit of guilt.

Masochistic Death 1 was originally made last december. It was a tribute to my second made megawad (the one that got trashed). It came out ok. I used a tweaked oblige 7.37 to make it, then retextured it. The original wad was a tribute to my 3 favorite doom megawads, and so was this. Masochostic Death 1 came out ok... Some levels were good, some were not.

I made part 2 and 3, tributes to the sequels of that failed megawad (Torture and Insane doom), earlier this year. They were both INSANELY hard, so hard that I had to scrap them... I didn't want them to be THIS Hard... Level 1 of the second one for instance had you fight a partially invisible super fast archvile in the first room with nothing but an automatic shotgun. It was too hard.... And since the first part was too badly done I decided to remake the trilogy recently.

I put together masochistic death 2.0 5 days ago, using a tweaked version of oblige 7.70, that was tweaked to change textures to make them look better mostly.  It came out a lot better than expected. maps 1-12 were easy, like the original failed megawad, but once I did map13-20 I amped up the difficulty greatly, making them hell revealed difficulty. By the time Map21-30 came the difficulty became totally insane for the end of the wad, starting to put in tons of archviles.

I made sure I retextured the levels in Masochistic Death 2.0 with the same textures the failed megawad had... That was important. CageTextures for Episode 1, EternalDoom/Retres for Episode 2 and Epsode 3 had textures from a tweaked oblige I found on the Oblige Forums...

That difficulty would be dwarfed by masochistic death 2 and 3, which I remade last night... I used the same oblige 7.70 version I used to make Masochistic death 2.0.  This time I amped up the difficulty to rediculous extents. The first map of each was easy but anything beyond that.... hardly.. Maps 2-11 of masochistic Death 2 were hard as hell, with tons of arch viles in map 2 especially. masochistic Death 3 had 50+ archviles per level in maps 2-11! By the time map12-20 came, the difficulty would be increased even more, to have shit tons of hard enemies, and masochistic Death 3 had tons of cyberdemons too in these maps. Episode 3 was insane in both wads... I made sure Masochistic Death 3 would have the most insane finale possible, so I made sure all monsters in monster control were set to INSANE!

Masochistic Death 2 had different textures than the original torture.wad. Instead of IKbase, then Fear Textures then CageTextures, It had NMNCorp textures for episode 1, Modded Oblige textures (mentioned above) for Episode2, and CageTextures For Episode3. Masochistic Death 3 Had CageTextures in Episode 1, Just Like Insane Doom, But had different textures for episode 2 and 3, the original had tons of new textures for episode 2 and 3, this remake used Doom64 textures for episode 2 and modded oblige textures for episode 3.

Overall I think these came out great. Whether I release these levels or the hell revealed pack ones is up in the air now. I will let you know about that later, maybe around November 31'st or so...

Screenshots:

Masochistic Death 2.0

Masochistic Death 2

Masochistic Death 3

Over the next few Days I will be testing these wads in DoomRPG and DoomRLA, my favorite mods to test such wads in, due to how easy they make wads like this. I already have half of Masochistic death 2.0 tested, I will get up to map20 tonight.... Then I start Masochistic Death 2 and 3 testing after that...

Masochistic Death Doom2 Mapset Maps 1-12 completed with ZERO DEATHS! That's right people! ZERO DEATHS!

So I decided to do another playthrough today. I chose Masochistic Death, a Modified Randomly Generated mapset to play. It was designed to be a tribute to a wad that everyone in the damn community trashed that I made. It had a similar texture theme in episode 1 and 2, similar gameplay, but this time the randomly generated maps made it much better looking than the original wad It is a tribute to..

So I decided to play maps 1-12 in a playthrough on youtube. I got up and no one was home so I jumped all over the chance to do maps 1-12. Pretty good run I had. As usual I was playing it in the mods DoomRPG and DoomRLA, which are RPG mods for Doom 2. I built a pretty damn strong character in it, a demolitionist with a lot of Vitality, Strength and Defense.  I had leveled him up to level 29 or so by map12 which is quite good. Spent lots of skill points to get skills I needed. Got good armor and a good arsenal of powerful weapons, some assemblies, some not, to help me clear the levels.

Maps 1-4 were easy. I had absolutely no issues with them. By map 4 all I had for weapons were a super shotgun, Tactical rocket launcher, and a Starting Mirv Launcher I decided to save for later. By the time I got to map 5 however, the maps got way harder. I got a thompson, and it saved my rear end in map05, when I had to fight 15 revenants in one room, Twice. I got a BFG soon after and in one hilarious member, I ran into a narrow hallway filled with enemies to BFG a nightmare Archvile that was behid them, that had  to be killed Right then. I ran out and took very little damage, which was great. Then I got to map06-07 and they were harder than map01-04 but much easier than map05.  I survived them only to stumble into map08, 09 and 10. The first of these was no harder than map07.  09 and 10 were much tougher though..

Map09 had lots of hard enemies in it. I survived it because I used the MIRV Launcher I had saved up a lot. By  this point I also had a High Powered plasma gun I assembled and a good Auto Shotgun as well. That all helped a ton on map10, which was the toughest map I played on the run, overall.  I ran into tons of barons of nightmares in map10, because I was doing a mission to kill 6 of them to get a weapon in DoomRPG. But the real challenge when I had to fight a cyberdemon that got replaced by 2 bruiser brothers. These guys were like the bruiser demons on the beastiary but harder, faster and meaner. I managed to autoshotgun them to death because the MIRV launcher did nothing against them, they just ignored the damage from it!

Map11 and 12 were quite easy in comparison. That ended my run, which to my surprise at the end, had no deaths in it at all!  Overall there were a lot of places where I could have died, the Bruiser Brothers Fight, the Nightmare Archvile in Map05, the Revenant horde in the earlier portion of that level, and more.  But I didn't die once, which was insane... I finally equalled my feat I did in Complex Doom last winter where I beat 32 slaughtermap levels without dying once in Complex Doom + LCA.

Challenge Accepted! Doom Oblige wad maps 1-11 survived with only 1 Death! ONLY ONE DEATH!

So I decided to challenge myself in doom last sunday. This is what I did... I decided to try to beat maps 1-11 of a certain randomly generated mapset without dying once. I had done this on purpose for a specific reason. See along time ago on a doom channel which does not exist anymore, I did the same  thing, in an old scrapped version of the ultimate hell revealed pack's 4th episode. (Which was Alien Vendetta Difficulty to Hell Revealed 1 difficulty - depending on the maps). In complex Doom, I beat all 30 maps in that without dying.  I survived that mapset without dying once and I decided to see if I could do it AGAIN!

This time I was not successful... But I atleast only died once. I ran this challenge run in the mods DoomRPG and DoomRLA which are RPG mods for Classic Doom.  I ran through vdd2.wad maps1-11. They are quite hard. Huge hordes of enemies.  By map 4 I had fought 25 revenants in one room. Map 5 had 30 cacodemons in the map and 2-3 cacoabysses, which I had to use invulnerability (the skill) to get past. I died to an explosive barrel in map06. That was unfortunate. I accidentally hit one barrel which was next to a nuke barrel which can instakill you if you are anywhere close to it. I was, so I died. A complete Bullshit death because it was a fluke accident.  I got lucky and did not die at all past that point which was good. Beat maps 1-11 with only 1 death!

Here is the playlist for it if you want to see it. I recorded it for youtube for people to watch.   The maps were insanely hard this time. Huge hordes of minibosses all over the place in the last few maps. Just like Hell revealed or Alien Vendetta. my build was strong and that was part of the reason I survived. I had high vitality and high strength and high luck and most importantly, high defense. It saved me a ton. By high I mean 50+ in each stat. I was doing tons of damage and taking very little. The one death was a complete fluke. I didn't even notice the nuke barrel was even there till I looked back on my footage later.  My fate was sealed.

Ultimate Hell Revealed Pack Testing Completed

Good news people. The Hell Revealed Pack has been tested. Unfortunately, I could not test all of it but I tested all I could, which is good. Since it's a randomly generated tribute to Hell Revealed it should run fine. What I did test was:

-All of Hell Revealed IV
-2/3's of Hell revealed 666
-1/2 of hell revealed V
 -1/3 of hell revealed III
-None of hell revealed 777 was tested due to it being a coop only mapset designed for DoomRPG/DoomRLA players who know what they are doing.



My initial forey into the Hell Revealed Pack Maps was a failed challenge run that I put on my channel and deleted recently due to possible youtube ContentID issues with the music I was playing in the background. In this challenge run, I attempted to get through Hell Revealed V's first 15 maps without dying once and failed miserably. I died around 23 times in 15 maps and it was all because I built my character bad in DoomRPG and DoomRLA.  (The mods I was testing it with).  I did a test of hell revealed III in it and beat maps 1-10 but still didn't develop a good character till 2/3 the way through hell revealed IV's test that I beat successfully.  By then I had managed to tweak DoomRPG to give me more skillpoints per level and give me levelups faster and that helped me balance my character better and I died far less in  the last 1/3 of Hell Revealed IV.

Recently I ran through hell Revealed 666's first 20 maps in DoomRPG and DoomRLA. First attempt failed miserably due to a bug in DoomRPG 0.10.1 beta that gives me random "runaway script" errors. I downgraded to DoomRPG 0.9.14 and that fixed that, allowing me to run through the  first 20 maps on medium, with limited deaths. I had issues in maps 8-9 though  thanks to the non-tweaked enemy leveling which made the enemies have ridiculous health for their level at my characters level (level 36) (which amounted to tons of hell knights with auras and 4000+ health in one level). I toned that down and managed to get through the later maps and really had no issues till late today, playing through maps19 and 20 where I ran into 50+ archviles in both and they slaughtered me bad, tons of status effects, No Energy Points, etc. I survived without dying in these two maps and that was miraculous. I called it quits and decided that

A) Since it was randomly generated there probably would not be major bugs.
B) I had enough of the insanely hard gameplay I had put in when I tweaked the maps to add hundreds of archviles in, so I quit in map20 and decided never  to come back....

So I now know the hell revealed pack levels are hard enough. I was worrying about how insane they would Not be... They are now quite hard and lots of archviles per level is guaranteed in later maps. I did some texture fixes and misc fixes to the wad as well.. I retextured the levels to use textures from a modded oblige that is found on forums there. That version's textures were in this rendition from the get go but were used badly, so I improved the usage by using a scripting program to convert doom textures to the new ones in maps. It improved the look a ton. I also removed a lot of health and ammo from the levels. They were too easy. Now they are not.... See when I built the levels they had 1000's of enemies and I removed 75% of that but still too much health and ammo remained, so I had to remove a lot recently... Now that that is done, we finally have a released version...


I am still waiting on a release but I doubt that will happen this year. I got other things to do for a month and I don't think December will get me time to release it, and due to other issues with idiots I don't want to release till AFTER Xmas. So no release for a long time. I won't be testing the rest of the levels though, but I know they will work...

So I wait on a release timetable. It should be fun to release it but It won't happen for a long time due to the above issues I have...

Doom Mod Review : DoomRPG + DoomRLA + RLME (Rpg mods for Classic Doom)`

Well I found not just one new mod to play doom with recently, not even 2 but 3!

I've been looking For Doom RPG themed mods that can play original and non mod maps well for years. Found HXRTC and that was fine for a while but what really annoyed me about that was the constant use of Gem Pickups in a non-fantasy setting and the lack of skills and stat point leveling... It just had levelups but had no real stats that you could choose from to level up...

Enter DoomRPG, a mod that fixes a lot of those issues.

The Good:

DoomRPG as the title suggests, is a Doom RPG mod. It allows you to level up by killing enemies, and distribute stat points every levelup.  The stats you get are Strength, Vitality, Regen, Capacity,
Defense, Agility and Luck.

Here is what these stats do:

Strength = Determines how much damage you do with weapons
Vitality = Determines your max health
Regen = Determines how much health you regenerate over time
Capacity = Determines how much you can carry
Defense = Determines your damage resistance
Agility = Determines your movement speed and jump height
Luck = Determines how often you get certain "lucky" to find pickups like credits, ammo, health, etc.

You buy items with credits enemies drop regularly, and that is limited to armor and ammo at lower ranks (there is a rank system like in COD games = higher the rank the more you can buy). Rank increases when you kill a certain amount of enemies, and decreases when you die.

There is also a lot of new features not found in normal doom in DoomRPG such as Skills you can purchase with "modules" (that get given to you when you levelup - you need them to upgrade stats too), and a working skill wheel. It's tricky to learn how to play this mod because skills in this are vital.  You will need your skills to survive, it's not just a case of leveling stats and hoping you will win, if you do that you will die a lot. One skill I HIGHLY recommend is heal.  Even at skill level 1 this can save your life provided you have enough energy to use it (Energy is what skills waste when you use them, you replenish it by finding energy powerups). You can upgrade skills levels as well, and it helps. But each level costs more energy to use than the previous level, so you have to manage it well to survive.

There is also a shield you can use, which is similar to the Mass Effect Shields but has some limitations because it replaces armor and strips you of armor. To use it you must find a capaciter, body and a battery.  Once you equip all three your shield is ready and with one press of the shield key.

DoomRPG is pretty good on it's own but does have some drawbacks. Certain levels are programmed randomly to be radiation infested levels or acid rain filled levels and those mess up your health a lot...
It's almost unfair to deal with these traps so I highly recommend anyone playing these mods to SAVE before exiting a level to savescum around these stupid traps.

But to really play doomRPG well you need to play it with two other mods which I am reviewing here at the same time as DoomRPG...

Enter DoomRL..

DoomRL or Doom Roguelike Arsenal, is weapon mod that is quite fun and very RPG like. It introduces literally hundreds of new guns and they spawn randomly in the place of other weapons or on dead enemies. Both mods work well together but getting them to load together is really hard... See below for more info on that.

Guns range from Shotguns to Automatic single barreled shotguns, to auto double barreled ones (!) and some really overpowered energy weapons, explosive weapons and pistols, yes that's right Pistols!  Pistols in this are not crap, there are some ones that rival the Rocket Launcher in Damage! You have to be VERY lucky to get the top tier weapons at an early level, which is good.

There are 5 playerclasses in this mod. Marine is your basic machinegunner soldier who starts with the chaingun. Each playerclass gets perks.. His perk is he wastes less ammo. The scout is your pistol expert and does 3x-8x damage with pistols as his perk, depending on the fire rate, the slower the fire rate the more damage.  He starts with a basic pistol but it is so much better with him than on other playerclasses.  But once he gets a really strong pistol (handcannon, etc) he can slay strong enemies with a few pistol shots, and that is fun!.  The third playerclass is the technician who is a weapon modding expert... I will get into weapon modding and him a bit later. The next playerclass is the renegade and he is a shotgun expert who does more pellet shots per shotgun blast than other classes as his perk.  The final class is the most OP one, the Deadly Demolitionist! He is an explosives expert and his perk is so OP it's stupid, he is completely IMMUNE to splash damage, even enemies splash damage. That means you can kill enemies at point blank range with rockets using him. But is not a huge issue because being overpowered in this mod is one of it's strengths so...

DoomRL revamps the armor system.  Armor has to be equipped now.  And boots are also available and you need to equip them as well. It's important to have both armor and boots or else you won't get good damage resistance.  Basic armor and weapons in this mod are crap though, so It's best to save up credits to get better armor and boots before later levels anyway. Default Combat armor won't help much unless you are VERY lucky.  There are tons of other pieces of armor available and they are much better than combat armor which in this is basic armor not great armor like it was in normal doom.


The new guns in DoomRL are quite nice but most of the starting weapons from doom are quite useless due to the difficulty of the mods. These mods are HARD AS HELL, and with default stats, you will die a ton in the first map of the wad you are playing. Until you get to level 2 and pump all your points into vitality and defense, you will struggle mightily at LV 1.  (when I mention "LV" from now on I mean character level, not the level you are playing...) Not till you get tons of levelups and put points into the vital skills will it get easier.  For me the vital skills are Vitality, Defense and luck.  Vitality for the max health, Defense to increase your damage resistance early and Luck to try to get better drops and guns in drops. Enemies can do tons of damage, especially harder ones. Don't play these mods with the monster mod in insane maps like hell revealed UNLESS you are a high level character with good armor, and good stats!  You will be ripped to shreds unless you prepare well..

DoomRL balances this difficulty increase well though with the ability to mod weapons. There are mod packs laying around replacing ammo boxes rarely. There are several kinds. Bulk mod packs increase clip size for weapons (there is reloading for weapons in this mod, all guns need to be reloaded), Power mods increase weapon damage and Technical mods increase weapon switch speed, and Agility mods increase weapon accuracy... It helps to mod your guns a lot. But don't mod TOO much... because one feature is absulutely vital to survive this mod, and this feature, Assmemblies, is  the most OP feature in the whole mod.

Assemblies are Super OP weapons made by using specific sets of weapon mods on a specific gun in a certain order.  For instance, if you take a combat shotgun (the Remington that Shotgun Guys Drop) and add a Power mod and  then a technical mod to the shotgun, you turn it into a tactical shotgun, which is a very OP Auto Shotgun.  Take Plasma Rifle and apply a bulk mod and then a power mod to it and you turn it into a High Power Plasma gun, which is the most OP weapon that can be gotten early in the game, and it is a must to survive tougher maps. Take a rocket launcher and apply a Technical Mod, an Agility mod, a power Mod and then another Tech Mod to it and it becomes an Infusion Launcher, a rocket launcher that shoots weak BFG blasts everywhere when it explodes... These assemblies are ABSOLUTELY VITAL for you to survive the mod. You cannot beat it without them, so keep that in mind. I find the default guns you get are crap so by level 2 I usually have at least one of these...

But one issue in  these mods to me needs another mod to correct, the lack of new enemies. Adding in another mod, RLME adds new enemies into the game (but only for medium difficulty and higher), and that is a must for me. Normal doom enemies get boring very quickly...

The OK:

The mod has issues working with Slaughtermaps. I suggest that you change the monster population to 75% or lower when playing them.  That reduces enemy count but gets rid of the annoying "Runaway script" errors that show up.  This is for wads such as Alien Vendetta, Hell Revealed, etc, anything that uses high enemy counts.  For wads that use Extremely High counts such as Sunder, I suggest you skip them because they often have hard as fuck enemy placement in map 1 and surviving map 1 will be so hard that in this mod it won't be worth it. Basically if the first map involves fighting hordes of tough enemies like Hell Knights or worse then you should avoid it in these mods.


The Bad:

These mods are really fun, but issues prevent them from being the best doom mods I have ever played. Number 1, the damage you take is insane, even with medium to high damage resistance. It is almost unfair.  Pinkies and spectres can one hit kill you if you get unlucky. And one feature almost ruins this mod set... Status effects..

Status effects sound good and all, but the sheer lack of a feature to shut them off, is alarming. Status effects include various debuffs that randomly happen when you take damage. Such as blindness (makes you screen go black for a while), Fatigue (makes you move at a slideshow pace for a while), toxicity (makes you take more damage if it gets higher), Radiation (same thing) and more. These status effects are too common, and resisting them is hard. Some are minor, some are not. I can't count the time these came up and I almost died or died, on medium it was a stupid hindrance that I wish wasn't put in this mod.  The ones that really piss me off are fatigue and blindness. HOW THE FUCK ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO DODGE AND AIM with them on? You tell me Kyle873! I'm sorry, it's impossible to dodge with High Fatigue put on you and then you die and your Rank drops due to random bullshit like that, that shouldn't be in it at all! I've never played any RPG with features this stupid in my life.  And blindness is almost as stupid. Why the hell it's in there I don't know. How are you supposed to aim and dodge if you can't see! You tell me Kyle873!

That feature almost made this mod unplayable. I tolerate it because the rest of the mods features make the game much easier to enjoy, due to the fact that no one made a good RPG mod for Doom that is this good.  But this one feature.... It almost ruins it...


Another issue with this mod is the damage you take, which is a minor issue because heal helps a ton and so does High Vitality.  But it still is insane that Revenants can do 300 damage on medium...  That should not be in this. This isn't Ghost recon, It's doom. High damage makes no sense in a non realistic shooter.  I think this person tried to make DoomRPG a REALISTIC RPG, which is cool and all, but realistic features, when overused can ruin classic FPS gameplay. These two mods almost overuse these features, such as Reloading weapons, shitty ass weapons being given in level 1, bullshit status effects and high damage being done by medium enemies...   It makes these mods good but not great.

I'm still waiting on a GOOD RPG mod that does not use features like this but puts in good RPG gameplay (aka levelups and other features too)...





These mods however, do not work easily together so You need to do the following...
-Make sure to download Gzdoom 3.0.1.
-Unzip the DoomRPG version that works with the latest DooMRLA, NOT the latest version
to your doom 2 folder.
-Install the DoomRLA, DoomRLA Hud, DoomRLA monster Pack and RLME to the doom2 folder.
-Make a batch file like this...

Gzdoom -file DoomRL.wad DoomRLHud.wad DoomRLMons.wad DoomRPG/DoomRPG DoomRPG/DoomRPG-RLArsenal DoomRPG/DoomRPG-RLMonsters RLME.wad

(use that batch file to load the two mods together).

Review Stats:
Score 8.2/10
Good - Great RPG features. skills, stats, selling system, etc, new enemies, lots of new guns
Bad  - Realism, BS Status effects, super high damage being done by medium enemies on Medium,
Hard to get them working together.