When The Ancient Gods Part 2 DLC hit, id Software made drastic changes to the game's difficulty that included lowering damage of all demons, slowing down the AI of all demons, including their attack speed, widening vulnerability windows on enemies like Marauder and Blood Maykr, and lowering the amount of demons that spawn in specific levels. As a result of this, the game in its' current state is laughably easy even on Nightmare and is not fun because of it.


Thankfully, however, dedicated fans have created mods that restore the pre-TAG2 balance. These mods are free to download, easy to install, and will NOT get your account punished in any way!

Because of Steam's superaggressive policy on foreign files and links, I won't be able to link directly to any of the mods mentioned in this guide, and you will have to do some googling of your own. Please bear in mind that I can't do anything to simplify this, as a previous version of this guide was stricken down for linking to the mods.

To get the mod launcher, you will need to join the DOOM 2016+ Modding Discord. You can do this with an unverified burner account if you need to.

The invite code for the Discord server is ymRvQaU.

Once in the server, navigate to the channel #eternal-tools and scroll up until you find the EternalModInjector. Download the zip file to your computer.

Now unpack the zip file into your DOOM Eternal folder, which is at Steam/steamapps/common/DOOMEternal. You'll know you did it right if EternalModInjector.bat is in the same folder as DOOMEternalx64vk.exe

You will need two mods: Challenge Restored, and Original TAG1

You can get them by going on google, searching "Challenge Restored Nexusmods" and "Original TAG1 Nexusmods" and clicking the first link of each, which will bring you to their respective mod pages on NexusMods.

At the Challenge Restored page, navigate to the Files section and you will be given selection of three variants: Balanced, Faithful, and Semi-Faithful.

Faithful restores the demon AI to exactly how it was before the TAG2 update.

Balanced also restores the demon AI to how it was before, but also affects the AI of the newly added enemies to make them harder and more in line with the rest, as well as scaling aggressivity of demons according to difficulty.

Semi-faithful is the same as Faithful, but features the difficulty scaling from Balanced.

It is up to personal preference which one you use, but don't install more than one at a time.

Once you have downloaded your preferred file, go to the Original TAG1 page, navigate to Files, and download the only file available.

Once you have both mods on your PC, move the .zip files into the Mods folder within your DOOM Eternal folder (Steam/steamapps/DOOMEternal/Mods). DO NOT UNPACK the mods!!!

Now that your mods are in place, run EternalModInjector.bat and wait for it to finish working. It should automatically load you into the game, but if it doesn't, run the game yourself through Steam.

The mods should be installed now. To test if they work, load The Ancient Gods: Part 1 and clear out the first combat encounter in UAC Atlantica. Two hell knights should spawn at its' end after the revenants. If they spawn, that means 'Original TAG1' is working.

Verifying Challenge Restored is a less exact science, but if you load any map with arachnotron (one spawns in UAC Atlantica shortly into the level), it should fire his turret really fast with very short pauses inbetween its' laser blasts.

When an update comes to the game, be it just a hotfix or a whole new content bundle, it is good habit to verify the integrity of game files, and then launch EternalModInjector.bat again to reinstall the mods.

If the update for the game is sizeable, you will likely need to download a new version of the EternalModInjector due to changes in file structures.

The two mods may stop working in the future as updates roll out and may require updating to a newer version. Consult the mod pages after an update to be sure and report any issues you encounter to the mod authors!

If you have any issues with the mod functionality, ask around in the DOOM 2016+ Modding Discord server. They are always willing to help!