Doom Eternal's next update summons trans-dimensional Empowered Demons

For most of Doom Eternal‘s demonic foes, the best they can expect is to make a nice corpse. A particularly pleasing splash of gore on the Doom Slayer’s boot. But for those lucky few that manage to take down our man in green, a special reward will soon be in store. Doom Eternal’s first major update will add Empowered Demons to the shooter, turning plucky imps and revenants into a dimension-hopping menace.

Writing in a blog post this weekend, Bethesda outlined how these new trans-dimensional baddies work. If a demon does manage to land a killing blow on the Doom Slayer, they’ll become an Empowered Demon – a jacked-up version of their kind that will start appearing in other players campaigns. Killing them will dump a ton of additional health and ammo, with a nice little XP bonus for avenging your fellow Slayer.

What isn’t mentioned is whether dying to an empowered demon bulks it up even more. I doubt it, honestly, but there’s something lovely about an NPC mook hopping from game to game, feeding off player corpses as it becomes an unstoppable force of nature. Good for you, I’d say, live your best gore-soaked unlife.

Empowered Demons are notably not the same as Invasions, a similarly-teased mechanic that lets you invade another player’s world, Dark Souls style, as one of the denizens of hell. Still no word on when that’s coming at time of writing.

Beyond singleplayer, Update 1 is taking a wrench to asymmetrical deathmatch Battlemode – implementing Denuvo Anticheat, altering the tutorial, adding a death recap and poor connection notification, along with a new “Echelon” levelling system for players who’ve capped out their multiplayer levels. A few quality-of-life improvements are also being added across the board, including adjustments to toxic damage and a vertical dash while swimming.

Finally, the Doom twitter account teased a few location shots for Doom Eternal’s first bit of campaign DLC – showing off both a proper knackered version of the game’s heavenly Makyr temples, and an industrial rig that wouldn’t look out of place in Destiny 2‘s Titan seascape.