Doomsday Hunters: Beginner's Guide & Best Tips

I almost refunded this game. Glad I didn't.

So here's the thing about Doomsday Hunters — it hates you. Not in a fun, "haha you died" way like Enter the Gungeon, but in a "I'm going to let you think you're smart, then pull the rug" way. I bought this on a Steam sale, played for 45 minutes, and literally messaged my friend asking if the game was broken or if I was just bad. Turns out: both, kind of.

You're not alone if you've been bouncing off this game. I spent my first three runs trying to stack poison and got destroyed by the second boss EVERY TIME. The game gives you a ton of systems right in your face — crafting, perks, weapon fusion, world map movement, temporary run modifiers — and shoves you out the door with maybe two tooltips. It's overwhelming, and the tutorial makes Dark Souls look generous.

This guide is what I wish someone had told me before I ate 30 deaths in a single afternoon. I'm not here to sell you on the game or pretend it's perfect. It's janky, some builds are straight up traps, and the difficulty curve is a vertical cliff. But underneath that rough surface is one of the most satisfying roguelike shooters I've ever played, once you understand how the pieces actually fit together.

Why the first 10 hours feel like a brick wall

Let's be honest about what makes this game frustrating, because if I'd known these things upfront I wouldn't have spent my first week angry.

Pain point #1: The game lies about "difficulty scaling." You know that little zone recommendation number in the corner? Ignore it. The first area's enemies might be "level 1-3" but the damage they deal is tuned for someone who already has 50+ max HP and a weapon at +3. If you walk in with starter gear and zero upgrades, the basic dogs take 7 shots to kill and chunk you for a third of your health. That's not difficulty, that's a gear check the game doesn't warn you about.

Pain point #2: The perk pool is bloated with useless garbage. You'll get offered a choice between "+5% fire rate while crouching" and "+3 damage to robotic enemies on Tuesdays" — hyperbole but barely. The game gives you too many filler perks early on, and if you don't know which ones to skip, you'll end up with a build that does nothing well. I took "ammo drops from destroyed barrels" three runs in a row before I realized that's a meme perk for challenge runs, not actual progression.

Pain point #3: The map layout is actively hostile. You know those walled-off areas that look like shortcuts? Most of them are dead ends that loop back to the same room you just cleared. I wasted 20 minutes on my second run walking in circles because the game doesn't mark explored rooms. There's no minimap until you unlock a specific permanent upgrade — which costs a resource you don't have yet. Catch-22 at its finest.

Pain point #4: Respeccing is expensive and hidden. You can respec your permanent upgrade tree, but the button is buried in a menu that looks like a lore entry. I was 15 hours in before I even knew it existed. And it costs a specific currency you need to farm from a specific event type. Miss that event? Too bad.

Day one: stop wasting your time on the wrong stuff

Here's what you actually need to do in your first few runs. Not the "explore and have fun" advice — the cold, pragmatic path to not dying every 8 minutes.

Step 1: Pick the right starter weapon. The pistol is a trap. 12 damage per shot, slow reload, and no special effect. The Shotgun (second unlock) does 36 damage if all pellets hit and has innate armor break, meaning it shreds the first zone's shielded enemies in two shots. The SMG looks appealing for fire rate but runs out of ammo in 4 seconds and leaves you dry against the first miniboss. Go Shotgun. Every time.

Step 2: Rush the +Max HP upgrade in the permanent tree before anything else. There's a node called "Vitality Core" in the bottom-left of the tech tree. It costs 3 knowledge points to unlock the first rank and gives you +25 HP. That doubles your starting health pool. The game's early difficulty is tuned around you having around 50 HP. You start at 30. This one node makes the first boss fight go from "you die in two hits" to "you can tank four hits and heal."

Step 3: Ignore side rooms and optional objectives for the first 3 zones. The game tempts you with chest icons and "bonus gear" markers on the map. Those rooms are filled with elite enemies that hit for 40+ damage with a single attack. You don't need bonus gear. You need to get the the first boss alive. Stick to the main path — it's marked with a slightly brighter line on the floor, though the art style makes it hard to see. Look for the faint blue-white streak on the ground tiles.

Step 4: Spend your first boss kill token on the Workbench upgrade. After you kill the first boss (and you will, just bait the charge attack and shotgun his back), you get a Boss Core. Don't spend it on weapon slots. Don't spend it on cosmetic junk. Spend it on the Portable Workbench upgrade that lets you craft mid-run. This unlocks weapon fusion, which is the single most powerful mechanic in the game. Two identical weapons + a core = a weapon with combined stats and a new perk. I didn't use this until run 8 and I want those hours back.

The real tricks nobody tells you

These are the things I had to figure out through death, forum lurking, and one desperate Reddit PM to a guy who posted a speedrun timestamp.

1. Weapon fusion isn't random — it follows strict recipes. If you combine two weapons of the same type (e.g., two Assault Rifles), the result gets +2 to base damage and picks the highest perk from either parent. But if you combine two DIFFERENT weapons — say, a shotgun and a pistol — you get a hybrid called a "Tangled Weapon" that has both weapons' firing modes but halved ammo capacity. You want the first type. Always match types unless you're building a specific meme loadout.

2. The "Reload Cancel" exploit is deliberate and you should use it. When you see the ammo counter fill up but the weapon still has the reload animation playing, tap your weapon swap key (default Q on keyboard, double-tap LB on controller). It cuts the recovery animation by 0.6 seconds. The devs patched one of these exploits in version 1.3 and left this one in. I asked on the Discord and got a winking emoji. Use it.

3. Armor penetration is more important than raw damage after zone 2. In zone 1, +damage is fine. In zone 2, enemies start spawning with 15-30 armor points. Armor reduces damage by a flat amount per hit. A 50 damage weapon hitting 30 armor does 20 damage. A 30 damage weapon with 25 armor pen does 25 damage. The Plasma Cutter (zone 2 common drop) does 22 damage but has 40 armor pen. It's better than most legendary weapons against armored enemies.

4. Save your currency for the third black market merchant. There are roaming merchants in the zones. The first two sell crap — bandages, weak ammo packs, common weapons. The third merchant (spawns in zone 3-4) sells "Warp Shards" for 200 gold each. These let you skip any room in the next zone. Save gold until you have 600, buy all 3 shards. Use them to skip the boss arena in zone 4 if your build isn't ready. That boss is a run-killer.

5. The Flamethrower is the best weapon in the game for zone 3 specifically. The Flamethrower does 45 base DPS but ramps to 120 after 3 seconds of continuous fire. Zone 3 has the "Infested Hive" enemy type — they spawn in clusters and have 10 HP each but high movement speed. The Flamethrower chains damage between them. One second of spray clears an entire room. I kept ignoring it because "fire bad" until a YouTuber showed me the ramp mechanic. Now I grab it every run in zone 3.

6. You can manipulate which perks appear. The game has a hidden "perk pool" system. Each run, the game pulls from a subset of maybe 10-12 perks out of the total 60+. If you skip a perk offer without taking it, that perk goes back into the pool and can reappear. If you accept a perk, it gets removed from the pool for that run. This means you can "thin out" the bad perks by taking them early, leaving only good options later. I take "+10% reload speed" on purpose in zone 1 just to remove it from the pool. It's not a good perk, but clearing it out makes future choices better.

This perk manipulation trick is similar to how some builds work in Enter the Gungeon — except there you're stuck with what you take. Here you have agency to prune the pool. Abuse it.

How I threw 20 runs and learned nothing

I've made every mistake in this game so you don't have to. Here's the greatest hits list.

Mistake: Hoarding healing items. I'd carry 4 medkits into the boss room, die with a full inventory, and rage. USE THEM. The game has a soft enrage mechanic on bosses — after 90 seconds they gain 10% damage and speed. Healing isn't just recovery, it's damage avoidance. Pop a medkit at 70% HP, not 20%. The overheal is wasted anyway, and having a buffer means you don't panic-fail dodge rolls later.

Mistake: Trying to clear every room. Rooms reward experience and gold, but experience gains are capped at 3 levels per zone. After you hit that cap, clearing extra rooms is just wasting HP and ammo. The game doesn't tell you there's a level cap per zone. I found this out by accidentally timing myself: zone 1 caps at level 4, 300 XP. After that, every kill gives zero XP. Stop killing. Start moving.

Mistake: Ignoring the movement speed stat. I stacked damage and health exclusively for the first week. Then I hit zone 4, which has enemies that shoot homing projectiles that track faster than base movement speed. Without at least +15% move speed from gear or perks, those projectiles hit you every time. I had to learn the dodge timing through painful trial. Take the "Swift Boots" item from the shop whenever you see it — +20% move speed and +1 dodge invincibility frame. That item alone turned my zone 4 survival rate from 10% to 70%.

Mistake: Not paying attention to weapon weight. Every weapon has a hidden weight stat (not shown in the tooltip — bad game design, fight me). Light weapons (pistols, daggers) let you carry two without movement penalty. Medium weapons (shotguns, SMGs) give -5% move speed each. Heavy weapons (miniguns, rocket launchers) give -12% move speed each. If you carry two heavy weapons, you move at 76% speed. That's death in zone 3 and beyond. Check the third stat line in the detailed weapon view — "Mobility: X%" — that's your weight penalty. Never let total penalty exceed -10%.

Questions I had that the game never answers

Q: Can I save mid-run and quit?
A: Yes, but it's weird. Press Escape, go to "Save & Quit." It creates a save point at the start of the room you're in. When you reload, enemies respawn but your items and HP stay. Works for co-op too, but only the host needs to save. If you're in a boss room, the boss health resets — so don't save mid-fight.

Q: What's the green currency with the skull icon?
A: That's Chitin. Drops from bosses, elite enemies, and the rare "Infested" events. You need it for permanent upgrade tree nodes past rank 3. The best farm is zone 2's "Swarm Lord" miniboss — he drops 5-8 Chitin per kill and respawns if you leave his room and come back. Abuse this for 10 minutes and you'll have enough for most rank 4-5 upgrades.

Q: Is the cross-platform save working?
A: Not really. The developers claim it works between Steam and Xbox Game Pass, but I've seen corrupted saves from cross-syncing. Back up your save file manually (Documents/My Games/DoomsdayHunters/Saves). Lost a 30-hour save to a sync error. Don't be me.

Q: Which boss is the hardest?
A: Zone 4's boss, The Architect, is universally hated. He has a phase 2 attack where the floor tiles turn into death grids with no safe spot. The trick is to stand on the raised platform in the center — it's the only tile that doesn't get electrified. I wasted 8 attempts before someone on the official Discord told me. The game literally doesn't hint at this.

Q: Is there a way to get more inventory slots?
A: Yes, but it's gated behind the "Tactical Vest" permanent upgrade. Costs 12 Chitin and 5 knowledge points. Gives +3 inventory slots. Before you get it, you cannot hold more than 10 items total (weapons + consumables). That means you're dropping stuff constantly. Prioritize this upgrade after Vitality Core and Portable Workbench. It's the third most important upgrade in the game.

If you're coming from other roguelikes, this inventory system might remind you of Dead Cells — but there you can hold one weapon in each hand and swap freely. Here you're constantly juggling junk. The Tactical Vest is your lifeline.

Q: Why do some runs feel unbeatable from the start?
A: They are. The game has runs where the shop RNG gives you nothing but defensive items and your weapon drops are all common-tier garbage. The devs call this "variance." I call it a waste of 45 minutes. If you've cleared zone 1 and have nothing but a +1 pistol and two health upgrades, just restart. Don't bang your head against a run that's statistically dead. There's no penalty for quitting a run early. The knowledge points you've already earned stay.