I won't lie I made this mod because I'm a little bitch. I didn't like how Nightmare was so... volatile. Drop from full stack to critical health in seconds, kill like 2 guys to fully recover, repeat and hope you don't stub your toe between steps 1 and 2. It could feel kinda cheap at times and also made pickups between encounters feel rather worthless (what good does full health do if I lose it all in one attack anyway? Why worry about low health when killing two guys puts me back at the top?). I had the thought, "it would have been cool if Nightmare was focused more on making it harder to recover your resources than taking them away more aggressively"... and then later I realized, why don't I just do that myself?

This mod makes several changes to parameters on Nightmare difficulty (and some universally, because it was the only way) that aim to make Nightmare a little less about how much something hurt and more about how hard it is to get back up, all while retaining the same overall level of difficulty.

Two versions of this mod were made (well, actually a whole lot more were, but two are being released). This is because the mod by design scales more harshly with certain types of levels, becoming significantly harder than vanilla Nightmare. If you plan on playing some of the more intense Master Levels or some of those crazy modded maps out there, consider using the second version (but feel free to try with Type A if you're up for it too). Detailed changes are listed below:

General Changes:
- Enemies do a bit less damage
- Enemies drop less health when killed
- Specifically, the health they drop doesn't scale as much with how low your health is. You'll still get just as much health for Glory Killing an imp at 150 health, but killing one at 10 health won't get you much more than that at all
- Drops from the Crucible, Blood Punch and Ice Bomb are unchanged
- Maykr Drone headshots drop half as many health packs
- Armour absorbs a portion of incoming damage rather than all of it
- Armour drops are reduced

*All pickups placed in stages are unchanged

Version-Specific Details:

Type A—Intended for vanilla campaign stages and similar challenge levels:
- Enemies deal 80% of regular Nightmare level damage (1.6× Ultra VIolence damage)
- Armour absorbs 33% of incoming damage (applies across all difficulties)
- Armour drops reduced to 25%*
- *Specifically, armour drop packs from the Flame Belch and Meathook are worth half many points now (2 -> 1), and enemies should drop about half as many packs in number (applies across all difficulties). The way they drop is a bit funky so it may not always come around to exactly half but it should be pretty close.

Type B—Intended for tougher Master Levels and crazy modded stuff:
- Enemies deal 75% of regular Nightmare level damage (1.5× Ultra Violence damage)
- Armour absorbs 50% of incoming damage (applies across all difficulties)
- Armour drops reduced by 50%*
- *The same amount of packs are dropped, but their value is again reduced from 2 to 1. This applies across all difficulties still, as it would lead to an excess of armour otherwise due to the lower absorption rate.

Result:
Nightmare now plays a little differently. You won't get knocked out as suddenly, but maintaining your stack becomes a constant priority—you can't rely on huge drops when you're low on health to recover and you can't rely on your armour to protect you either since it will only soak up some of the damage. You'll want to play a bit more safely and go for Glory Kills more often to keep your health stacked up as often as possible, and you'll find pickups to be a lot more valuable too.

Playtester Reviews and Accolades:

overrall I thought it was fun and pretty balanced, I have played UN up until cultist base which felt the exact the as vanilla, final sin were I honestly take too little damage to be a good judge there it felt like vanilla, taras nabad where it maybe felt a little bit harder but not much and some modded levels, the modded levels varied a bit how balanced it felt tbh

—M1, DOOM Discord

isnt that the point of nightmare?
being hard and all
there other difficultys doing less dmg

—belakor1234, DOOM Modding Discord

this is CHALLENGING AND FUN
feels good honestly
oh shit i forgot to turn mic off

—Kylie, DOOM Modding Discord

yeah this feels a bitu more manegable ill prob end up using this one in my mod list tbh consumed earth felt boarderline impossible and now it at least feels somehwat doable

—Kylie (On Version B)

when you sent that I was in the middle of sleeping for like 17 hours

—Tammie (Plobbus), DOOM Discord

If you have any feedback of your own to give, let me know in the comments!