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Doom: The Dark Ages Update 2.2 Released – Full Patch Notes

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id Software has released Title Update 2.2 for Doom: The Dark Ages and shared its full patch notes. So, let’s see what this new update brings to the table.

Patch 2.2 brings new handheld optimizations and quality-of-life improvements. It adds a special handheld benchmark mode and new advanced settings made just for handheld devices. The update also improves sound and visual effects for handhelds. When you launch the game for the first time, it will now automatically detect and set the best settings for your device. You can still change these settings later based on your own preferences.

Update 2.2 also packs some gameplay tweaks and fixes for all platforms. For instance, it fixes 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. Shield will now account for melee stagger and correctly recovers from being staggered out of a melee strike while attempting to block/parry. A crash that could occur when the player used the shield throw on the Plasma Shield Soldiers with the “Power Surge” shield upgrade has also been fixed.

And that’s not all. Patch 2.2 also fixes a bug where the first-person gore effect flickered around the edges of the screen during enemy execution moves when resolution scaling was turned on. It also reduces the damage from some enemies, like the Agaddon Hunter, Cosmic Baron, Hell Knight, and Komodo, so your shield won’t break from just one hit on Nightmare difficulty. On top of that, the devs adjusted the Brink of Death system to work more like it did at launch, improving how combat feels overall.

Like always, Steam will download this update the next time you launch its client. Below, you can also find its complete changelog.

Stay tuned for more!

Doom: The Dark Ages Patch 2.2 Release Notes

New Handheld Optimizations 

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

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 battery

  • Steam 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

Final Battle

  • 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

Hebeth

  • Fixed an issue where reloading checkpoints after the gold and sentinel shrine tutorial could cause objectives to vanish until level restart or transition

Sentinel Barracks

  • 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

Siege – Part 1

  • 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

Siege – Part 2

  • Fixed an issue where an errant Titan could appear in the courtyard when reloading the checkpoint 

Ancestral Forge

  • 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

Spire of Nerathul

  • Chaingun Arachnotron no longer respawns during final encounter of the cathedral stasis emitter section

Temple of Lomarith

  • 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

Resurrection

  • The armored Arachnotron that spawns after the Acolyte dies no longer respawns during first morale fight

Reckoning

  • 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.

27 thoughts on “Doom: The Dark Ages Update 2.2 Released – Full Patch Notes”

  1. The lo󠀀w I󠀀Q tr󠀀an󠀀nies still playing this ste󠀀aming pi󠀀le of sh󠀀it "Doom in name only" must be so overjoyed.

    Reply

  3. I must admit that it's pretty impressive to see that they got it to reach 30+ FPS even on the current SteamOS 3.7, where the ray-tracing performance is still sub-par, even more so on RDNA2.

    The good news is that ray-tracing with AMDGPUs running on Linux is bound to improve noticeably in due time, with AMD themselves discontinuing their own Vulkan driver in favor of MESA's open-source RADV Vulkan driver, which is a very good decision by AMD and arguably even overdue, but better late than never.

    Reply

      1. The reason why ray-tracing with AMDGPUs on Linux is lacking right now is simply because it wasn't a major focus point up until recently.

        As mentioned, that is about to change.

        NVIDIA on Linux already has very performant ray-tracing via the Vulkan API.

        The major shortcoming with NV right now is the performance of DX12 games translated via VKD3D-Proton, however that is in the process of being remedied as well.

        Furthermore there is a completely new Linux kernel driver for NVGPUs in the making, but that will still take quite some time until it becomes beneficial for end-users…

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        1. At the rate MS is pissing off everyone with its "users last" approach in everything nowadays – More than ever is looking for replacements for windows so if linux have a chance to really make a dent, its now

          Reply

          1. No worries, gaming on Linux is here to stay.

            And the best thing about it is the fact that it will only continue to improve over time.

            Right now there are still areas which need work, but even in its current state, people are generally pretty satisfied with their experience, as evident by the universal praise the Steam Deck is still receiving more than three years after launch…

  4. Say what you want about Doom 3, but you have to admit that it's a literal masterpiece when you compare it to this pile of feces that they're cashing in on the Doom name.

    Reply

    1. well, i prefer sci fi over medieval fantasy, but doom 3 version was too metaly and retro for me, guns looked stupid. I defened the game for its story and being longer than most games at the time and those that came before it, but no, i would rather large open maps with slaughterfest army of enemies than doom 3 claustrophobic dark levels and slow movement no room to manuveur, corpses disappearing, terrible gunplay, sorry but doom 3 remains the worst doom and dark ages is the second worse.

      Doom 3 is better compared to trash like chronos the new bore or silent hill f, there is a game called retched and looks like doom 3, which is good because boomer shooter have pixelated graphics and modern games are so bad that doom 3 feels better, both hl2 and far cry were better than doom 3.

      Dark ages is not bad, its just too expensive for a game that should have been a 50 bucks spinoff not 70 and 80 bucks.

      Reply

      1. Cronos and SHf are both quite good, even when they feel like tech demos. Cronos is a clear leftover from both DS Remake and SH2 Remake, and the central plot is quite morönic, but still it has great atmosphere and gameplay.
        Same goes for SHf, which is SH in the name only, but has a nice-ish story and great atmosphere as well. It's an adult horror anime inspired by SH, which is awesome (for those who like animes and SH, ofc).
        My take is that you just distaste walking-sim-like games, although SHf has way more combat that it should, imho.

        Reply

    2. Doom 3 is a tech demo that plays like a*s
      Doom 2016/Eternal/Dark Ages are mediocre FPS games pretending to be Doom.

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        1. REALLY?! Play Doom 2 again and then 2016. It's a bullsh*t console shooter for the masses with a Doom-ish skin that's nothing like the feel of the originals, as is the whole new trilogy.

          Reply

          1. Well there's a 22 years gap between these games, no one should expect the exact same thing lol.

            And Doom has always been a console friendly franchise, to be honest 2016 takes even more advantage of KB/M and high framerates than OG Vanilla Doom.

            Also since you're talking about the masses, Doom is absolutely not a niche game, i think we could agree on that

          2. It does feel as a id Soft game and it’s enough for it to be good, i don’t have any issues with it being different as long as it keeps most of its identity, it’s also what a sequel is meant for after all, Quake II for example is still loved among the community despite being a complete U-turn from the original, same can be said for RTCW compared to Wolf 3D.

            Eternal is maybe a bit funky but 2016 looks like what a 22 years long awaited sequel for Doom 2 could look like, i mean, it respects the original infinitely more than Doom 3 while still being fresh, they were not going to make the same game again as Doom and Doom 2 already look identical.

          3. Agreed, feels more like an arcade styled conslow shooter than a fast paced fps doom game. Finishing moves etc breaks immersion all the time. ID have lost its roots and aim for maximum sales, will it become another example of try to please them all and end up pleasing none down the road… To me it seems they are heading that way.

        2. By being a mediocre console title published by Bethesda that flanderizes every concept presented in those games.
          The fact that you have a dripfeeding progression system is telling

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      2. Amen! Wiser words have never been said! Wow, I'm actually surprised someone said it exactly as it is, instead of glazing those BS games like clueless kids!

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    3. IMO Doom 3 is the weakest of the series, far beyond The Dark Ages which is already weak enough, it's repetitive, has gimmicky and predictable horror elements, simplistic level design and atrocious gunplay and gun sounds.

      Don't get me wrong i like it especially with Ultimate HD + HighDef mod for BFG Edition which revamps graphics and gunplay, but it doesn't stand a chance to Doom 2016 in almost every aspect.

      Reply

  5. Is it called "The Dark Ages" because it's filled with geh stuff?
    Cause the game, per se, is the most colourful Doom I've ever seen!

    Reply

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