Doom: The Dark Ages Guide - What does each weapon do and how to complete its Mastery Challenge

Doom: The Dark Ages, being a Doom game, has a wealth of collectibles to find. In fact, to acquire the elusive 100% milestone, you will need to grab every bit of Gold, every gemstone, find and complete every secret area, add every doll and Codex page to your collection, and also fully upgrade every weapon in your arsenal. Needless to say, there's a lot to tick off and since providing a guide on where to find every single piece of Gold would take us the rest of the month to write, let's instead focus our efforts this time on the various weapons available.

In this guide, we'll be explaining what each weapon does, how their upgrades change how they operate, and also how to unlock and complete each of the various Mastery Challenges too. So, with that being the case, let's do this one weapon type at a time.

• Don't miss our Doom: The Dark Ages review

Combat Shotgun

The first weapon you start with. This is a simple pump-action shotgun that can be adjusted to operate in a handful of additional ways. It has four available upgrades, and like every weapon in The Dark Ages, the last will require a Wraithstone to unlock.

• Incendiary - Adds a burn effect to the Combat Shotgun, with burning demons dropping armour pickups


• Smelt or Blast - Smelt improves burning armour drops while Blast causes burning demons to explode


• Tune Up or Flare-Up - Tune Up changes the Combat Shotgun to have a three-round burst while Flare-Up instantly applies burn to fodder demons


• Eat This! - Improves number of projectiles fired during each round

Mastery Challenge: Ensure every pellet hits a demon 150 times.

Tip: Use Tune Up and pump all your ammo into a strong demon to quickly chip away at this challenge.

Super Shotgun

Old faithful. What more needs to be said?

• Speed Loader - Reduces reload time


• Shatter - Improves damage against armour


• Eat This! - Improves number of projectiles fired during each round

Mastery Challenge: Ensure every pellet hits a demon 50 times.

Tip: Enemies stunned by the Shield Saw make very easy, stagnant targets.

Rail Spike Shredder

The Dark Ages' answer to an assault rifle. This fires regular rounds and not energy or crushed skulls.

• Pincushion or Ricochet - Pincushion allows you to fill a demon with rounds and then detonate the demon by throwing the Shield Saw at them or by parrying an attack. Ricochet sees Shredder rounds bounce off targets that are currently stunned by the Shield Saw.


• No Frills - Increases rate of fire.


• Barbed - Detonated pincushion or ricocheted rounds deal more damage, plus Pincushion effect now also works on Shield Charge.

Mastery Challenge: Deal damage to 100 additional demons with either Pincushion or Ricochet.

Tip: Use the Shield Saw to root a larger demon and then use Ricochet to annihilate any fodder demons around them.

Rail Spike Impaler

Another more traditional weapon, with this effectively being a single-shot DMR or marksman rifle.

• Stalwart - Landing Shield Saw hits, parries, or charges drop Impaler ammo.


• Salvage - Picking up Impaler ammo enhances your next shot.


• Lobotomy - Headshots refill a portion of a melee charge.

Mastery Challenge: Use Lobotomy's headshot melee charge ability to regenerate melee charges 100 times.

Tip: While the Mastery Challenge specifically notes to use Lobotomy, you can abuse Stalwart here too occasionally, so be sure to throw your Shield Saw out and parry Hell Surges as much as often. Otherwise, make sure to use the Dread Mace as it takes the longest to charge and is the easiest to consume, while also refilling your Impaler ammunition to the max on each melee use. Otherwise, the only other option here is hard graft and lots and lots of headshots.

Plasma Rifle Accelerator

A fully-automatic energy weapon that is great for destroying plasma shields.

• Feedback - Shooting a demon builds charge, with higher charge leading to faster fire rate.


• Stabilizer or Modulator - Stabilizer reduces firing spread at maximum charge while Modulator increases rate of fire further at max charge.


• Heatblast or Mega Cell - Heatblast allows you to release a charged blast when enough charge has been stored while Mega Cell increases time before charge dissipates.


• Overload - Supercharge the Accelerator by shooting demons while at full charge, this will increase the potential of the Accelerator's other effects.

Mastery Challenge: Cause Overload or Heatblast damage 1,000 times.

Tip: There's no quick way here. Just amass and maintain charge and keep unleashing damage at demons.

Plasma Rifle Cycler

Another energy weapon, except now with two barrels!

• Shock - Dealing enough damage applies shock to nearby enemies, with this enhancing the damage dealt by your attacks.


• Amplify - Increases damage further to shocked enemies.


• Fulmination - Shocked duration is increased, and killing a shocked demon now causes more shock arcs to spread.


• Overload - Supercharge the Cycler by shooting demons to increase the potential of the Cycler's other effects.

Mastery Challenge: Cause Overload or Lightning damage 500 times.

Tip: Generate charge and then let your chaining Lightning damage do the hard work.

Skullcrusher Pulverizer

One of the more unique weapons in The Dark Ages. It crushes and spits skull fragments at enemies in a cone, making it ideal for large numbers of foes.

• Runic Skull - Killing a demon with the Pulverizer or melee builds up charge depending on the size of the demon, with the charge enhancing the Pulverizer's rate of fire and your movement speed.


• Runic Strike - Melee strikes now build and maintain charge.


• Flay - Increases the number of projectiles being shot out over a wider area.

Mastery Challenge: Cause charged damage 250 times.

Tip: Melee a fodder demon to get a quick boost of charge and then use that to springboard your Pulverizer to greater damage potential.

Skullcrusher Ravager

A more precise skull-crushing weapon, which trades a coned attack for a steady stream of fragmented bone projectiles.

• Vampirism - At maximum fire rate, enemies damaged by the Ravager drop health pickups.


• Ignition or Slow Burn - Ignition reduces time to reach max fire rate and reduces movement penalty while firing, while Slow Burn increases max fire rate but also the time it takes to reach this and further increases the movement penalty too.


• Supplier - Demons damaged by the Ravager drop skull ammo.

Mastery Challenge: Gather 100 pieces of ammo by damaging demons with Supplier equipped.

Tip: Fodder demons are the best way to tick off this challenge. Use them as the cannon fodder that they are.

Chainshot

Perhaps the most unique weapon in the game. This fires a chained ball at enemies, smashing them to pieces with immense blunt-force power.

• Eldritch Blessing - Parrying a Hell Surge enhances your next Chainshot shot.


• Gravitational Flux - Chainshot deals more damage to armour when at full charge.


• Cosmic Breach - Fully charged Chainshot shots now explode when hitting a demon.

Mastery Challenge: Cause Cosmic Breach damage 100 times.

Tip: There's no cutting corners here. Just use the Chainshot and let its massive damage and power do the heavy lifting.

Grenade Launcher

Quite self-explanatory. This fires bouncing explosive projectiles at demons.

• Fragment - Every third direct hit with the Grenade Launcher now drops a Cluster Grenade


• Rupture - Direct hits on enemies stunned by the Shield Saw now also drop Cluster Grenades.


• Cataclysm - Every second hit now drops a Cluster Grenade.

Mastery Challenge: Cause Fragment or Cataclysm damage 100 times.

Tip: Prioritise spamming direct hits on tougher demons to generate a ton on Cluster Grenades to complete this task faster.

Rocket Launcher

Also self-explanatory. Massive damage projectile explosive ordnance weapon.

• Cannibalism - Parrying a Hell Surge now causes self-damage with the rocket launcher to heal you.


• Cooked or Blood Sacrifice - Cooked sees parried Hell Surges enhance your next shot, while Blood Sacrifice sees projectiles now dealing more splash damage but also more self-damage too.


• Bloodlust - Extends the duration of Cannibalism

Mastery Challenge: Heal yourself with Cannibalism through close-range self-damage 50 times.

Tip: Get an early parry and then dive in head first into the action, letting your rockets do the talking.