DOOM The Dark Ages Ripatorium 3.0: New Arenas, Presets, and What Changed From 2.0

Table of Contents

1. What Ripatorium 3.0 Actually Changes
2. What I Removed From This Guide
3. Unlocking The Revelations Content
4. The Round Architecture You Are Editing
5. The Six Presets Have No Public Names
6. What Is Documented About The Three New Arenas
7. The New Sliders Explained
8. Personal Presets And Passcodes
9. There Are No Leaderboards
10. What To Run Based On Your Goal
11. Sources

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What Ripatorium 3.0 Actually Changes

Ripatorium 3.0 is not a separate mode and not a purchase. It’s the free Update 4.0 layer on the existing Ripatorium, shipped the same day as the Revelations DLC on July 7, 2026. The update splits cleanly into two halves, and the split is where most launch coverage confused people.

The paid half comes from Revelations ($19.99 / GBP 17.99) and is what id lists under “Revelations Ripatorium”: three new arenas - Hell’s Core, Osseus, and Classic - all Revelations demons including Leaders and Champions, a fully upgraded Revelations loadout built around the Chain Spear and the new Suit Perks, Revelations tracks in the Jukebox, and 6 new encounter presets curated by id Software.

The free half is the actual “Ripatorium 3.0 Updates” block in the notes, and it applies to base game encounters whether or not you own the DLC:

• Shorter average passcode length for base game encounter sharing
• Save and load personal encounter presets
• Continuous spawn mode - respawn waves of demons within a round instead of eliminating everything currently alive
• More options for health and ammo: no pickups, single use pickups, or pickups that respawn on a 5-minute timer
• A new Berserk slider: no pickups, one-time use, 5-minute respawn, or unlimited
• A new BFC ammo slider allowing 0-3 ammo

That is the complete feature list. Nine sliders and toggles, three arenas, one pool of new demons, one pre-built loadout, six mystery presets. Everything else you’ll read about 3.0 below is me explaining how those switches interact, not new features.

Two Update 4.0 settings outside the Ripatorium block matter a lot if you’re using the mode to drill the Spear: a Perfect Dodge Window difficulty slider that adjusts how long the dodge window stays open when dashing with the Chain Spear, and an Enable Spear Empowerment UI toggle for the empowerment meter under your reticle. id also added a dedicated Chain Spear binds section with per-ability Input Style toggles.

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What I Removed From This Guide

The July version of this page had a table of six id-curated presets with names, demon pools, pickup settings, and my “first clear times” for each. It had per-arena breakdowns with health pickup counts, destructible bridge counts, and pit-recovery seconds. It had a measured passcode length comparison and a claim about how many preset save slots exist.

I can’t stand behind any of that, so it’s gone. I’ve now read Update 4.0’s release notes end to end plus both July hotfixes, and none of those details appear in them or in any other id communication I could find. The preset names in particular do not exist in any published source - the notes say only that six presets exist. Rather than keep a plausible-looking table, I deleted it.

What replaces it is the stuff that is actually checkable: the unlock path, the encounter architecture you’re editing when you build a run, the documented slider options, and the bug-fix history. That last one is more useful than it sounds, because hotfix notes are the only place id has described the inside of the new arenas.

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Unlocking The Revelations Content

id’s wording is short and leaves no room for interpretation: “Please note: DOOM: The Dark Ages | Revelations content for the Ripatorium is unlocked after completing the Master Arenas.”

So the path is:

1. Finish the base game campaign.
2. Clear the Master Arenas - the post-campaign challenge arenas on the main menu. Our Master Arenas guide covers the loadouts and wave composition that get you through them without a restart per attempt.
3. Install Revelations.
4. The Revelations arenas, demon pool, loadout, and presets appear in the Ripatorium setup screen.

The part worth flagging for anyone budgeting their hours: the notes describe a “Fully upgraded Revelations loadout using the Spear and new Suit Perks.” Fully upgraded means what it says - the Ripatorium hands you the maxed Spear and the new Suit Perks as a package. You don’t grind the DLC campaign to unlock Spear upgrades before you can use them in an arena. If you want to rehearse the Chain Spear before committing to the campaign’s puzzle pacing, this is the cheapest way to do it. The Revelations walkthrough is the other direction - campaign first, arena after.

One unlock that does not work that way: the themed HUD Styles are behind specific Revelations content kills, not the Ripatorium, and default to hidden in the UI settings.

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The Round Architecture You Are Editing

Understanding the container makes the new switches make sense. Ripatorium’s encounter builder carried forward from the 2.0 update (that’s update 2.3, not “update 3” - I’ve seen the label wrong in a lot of threads) with its ceiling unchanged:

• An encounter runs 5 rounds.
• Each round is built out of up to 10 waves.
• Each wave has its own demon composition, with a per-wave demon count slider running up to 60 demons.
• Pickups, Berserk, BFC ammo, and spawn behaviour are configured at the encounter level; the demon and wave settings are configured per round.
• A finished encounter exports as one passcode, which is what your friend loads.

[Unverified] The exact caps (5 / 10 / 60) come from the Ripatorium 2.0 builder and were not restated or changed in Update 4.0, so I’m treating them as still current. If id moved a ceiling, I have no evidence for it either way.

Why this matters for 3.0: continuous spawn mode changes what a wave means. In the base behaviour, a wave advances when you clear the demons currently in it, which means an encounter has a natural rhythm - pressure, downtime, loot, repeat. Continuous spawn replaces the downtime with a drip feed: demons respawn inside the wave instead of waiting for you to empty it. The arena never reaches zero, so your ammo math and your healing math both change character. It’s a different game mode wearing the same UI.

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The Six Presets Have No Public Names

Here is everything id has said about them, in full: “6 new encounter presets using the Revelations content, curated by id Software.”

No names. No difficulty labels. No demon lists. No round counts. I searched the release notes, both hotfixes, the DLC store page, and the community coverage that followed, and nobody printed a preset name - which is a strong signal, because a list that distinctive gets screenshot immediately.

So instead of a fake table, here’s what to do. Three configurations you can build yourself in the editor, tuned to the three reasons people actually open the Ripatorium. These are my recipes, not id’s presets.

Spear rehearsal, low pressure. Round setup with fodder-class demons only plus one Heavy per wave, health and ammo on 5-minute respawn, BFC at 0, continuous spawn OFF. The point is repetition of the pull-and-stab loop without dying to something you can’t read yet. If the dash timing is what’s beating you, widen the Perfect Dodge Window setting rather than dropping difficulty - it’s the same lever the developers gave you for exactly this.

Leader isolation. Heavies plus Leader variants only, single use pickups, Berserk on one-time use, BFC at 1. This is the closest analogue to what a “high difficulty curated preset” would have to feel like: few enemies, each one a problem, and no way to out-heal a mistake. Save it as a personal preset so you can reload it after a death instead of re-entering nine settings.

Ammo-starved gauntlet. No pickups, BFC at 0, continuous spawn ON, dense fodder waves. You will run dry on everything except the Spear and your melee within two waves, which forces the question the DLC campaign asks constantly - what does this kill give me back. Note that Update 4.0’s balance pass nerfed the pickup economy exactly here: melee pickups now provide reduced Dreadmace charge, and the Dreadmace’s direct-hit damage was cut against Superheavy demons and their Leader variants. A Dreadmace-heavy run is measurably worse than it was in June.

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What Is Documented About The Three New Arenas

Hell’s Core, Osseus, and Classic. Those are the official names, and that is the official information. id has published no layout documentation for any of them.

What the hotfix notes leak instead is more interesting than a marketing description would be, because bug reports have to name real geometry:

• Both the Hell’s Core and Osseus arenas shipped with a bug where dying in combat could place you behind a red wall that blocked progression. First hotfix fixed it. Read that as: both arenas have respawn positions near out-of-bounds volumes, so if you die in a corner, your respawn can be in a bad spot.
• Osseus has a water section - an Archvile could teleport outside the map near it - and a middle-left area where the player could clip inside the floor. Fixed in the second hotfix. So Osseus is large enough to have both a water edge and a left flank you can stand on, and it had two separate collision problems on the floor plane.
• The DLC’s campaign levels share the names: id’s own level-fix sections reference Hell’s Core (a flamethrower cart, a Blue Skull Key) and Osseus (a Confessional Stone, an End Game Praetor fight with Cyberdemons). If a thread talks about “Osseus” without context, check which one they mean - the arena and the level are different spaces with the same label. Our Osseus secrets route is the level.
• Classic is the name that invites a 1993 callback, and the second hotfix’s “Classic Level Encounter” note supports the idea that something in the DLC is deliberately built as an old-school reference. [Unverified] id has not stated what Classic’s arena layout is or which original map it draws from, so I’m not describing a room I’ve never confirmed the shape of.

Practical takeaway: the arena fixes are all post-launch, which means the version you’re playing is at least two patches away from the launch build. If you’re chasing a clean run, update first. And if you die near an edge in Hell’s Core or Osseus, reload the encounter rather than walking into a wall.

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The New Sliders Explained

Continuous spawn mode. Waves refill instead of ending. You stop trading clearing skill for survival time and start trading position for kills. Turn it OFF when you want to learn demon behaviour - the gap between waves is when you read the arena. Turn it ON when you want to be uncomfortable on purpose.

Health and ammo: none / single use / 5-minute respawn. Two of these need no explanation. The third is worth being precise about: the notes say pickups respawn on a 5-minute timer, and do not state whether that timer runs in real time or game time, or whether it survives a pause. [Unverified] I’ve seen the claim that pausing pauses the timer repeated in guides; nothing in id’s documentation supports it, and it changes whether you can farm the timer by hiding. Treat it as an open question until the in-game UI tells you.

Berserk: none / one-time / 5-minute respawn / unlimited. The one-time setting is the honest one for a real run - it hands you a power spike for round 1 and then leaves you alone. Unlimited is a sandbox switch, and it’s in the notes precisely because id expects people to use it that way. There’s no leaderboard to corrupt, so use it if you want a stress-relief session.

BFC ammo: 0-3. At 0 the BFC isn’t in the encounter. At 3 you have three shots of the single most overwrought weapon in the game. If you’re building an encounter to test Spear mastery, set it to 0 - a BFC shot ends a fight before the fight teaches you anything.

Two fixes from the second hotfix that change how the Spear feels in a long arena session: Glory Strike or synced Execution attempts overlapping a second Spear slash could leave the player with no hands, and triggering Haste from a Spear ability upgrade could disable the Dash Pass upgrade. Both fixed. If your Spear combo has been dropping inputs on you, that was the game, not you - and if your binds themselves look wrong, see the Chain Spear ”??” binding fix, because the first hotfix’s repair reset every player’s bindings to default as its side effect.

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Personal Presets And Passcodes

Save and load is the feature the mode needed most. Before Update 4.0, a custom encounter existed only as long as you left the setup screen alone; nine settings to re-enter per session plus per-round demon editing meant most people ran whatever the game pre-selected. Now you configure once, name it, and load it.

How it works: build the encounter in the setup screen, save it as a personal preset, then load it from the saved presets list. [Unverified] The slot limit is not documented by id - I’ve seen specific numbers quoted in other guides and none of them cite a source. If you save a lot of them, watch for what the UI does when you run out rather than trusting a published figure.

Passcodes got shorter: the notes phrase it as the average passcode length for base game encounter sharing has been shortened, making it easier to share with friends. No before/after character counts were published. [Unverified] A share code is per encounter, not per round - one code reproduces the whole configured run. id’s own framing for the feature, going back to the Ripatorium 2.0 design discussion, was community-made encounters being easy to hand to other players; the shorter code removes the last bit of friction from posting one in a Discord channel.

If you’re on the receiving end of a passcode: check that you have the DLC before expecting a Revelations demon pool. A Revelations-based encounter loaded without the DLC installed is the single most common “the code doesn’t work” report, and it’s also the cause of a share of the DLC not loading tickets.

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There Are No Leaderboards

The May version of this section told you which runs counted toward Ripatorium leaderboards, which settings were excluded, and how scoring weighted kills against time. None of that is real, and it was wrong to publish it.

Update 4.0 lists no leaderboard. The first hotfix lists none. The second lists none. There is no ranked mode, no scoring system, no personal-best tracking attached to the mode, and therefore no run-validation rules - because there is nothing to validate. The comparison tables you may have seen elsewhere with a “Leaderboards: Yes” row for 3.0 are describing a feature that doesn’t exist.

What the free update actually gives you is tuning. Nine switches on your own sandbox, plus a preset save slot so a good configuration survives a session. If you want a competitive layer, the honest options are self-imposed (a fixed seed of settings you run against your own clear times, shared with friends over passcodes) or a mod. Neither is supported by id, which is a design decision worth respecting rather than pretending around.

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What To Run Based On Your Goal

Goal	Config	Why
Learn the Chain Spear before starting Revelations	Fodder + one Heavy, respawn pickups, BFC 0, continuous spawn OFF, Perfect Dodge Window widened	Removes consequence while maxing repetition. The Spear is the DLC’s whole identity, and the Spear vs Shield Saw breakdown is worth reading before you build muscle memory on the wrong assumption.
Pressure test after finishing the campaign	Leaders and Superheavies only, single use pickups, Berserk one-time, BFC 1	Every wave costs you something. Melee-heavy builds are weaker here than in June - Dreadmace direct-hit damage against Superheavies and Leader variants was cut.
Turn your brain off	Unlimited Berserk, continuous spawn ON, dense waves, BFC 3	It’s the sandbox the sliders exist for. No leaderboard to dishonour.
Fix a specific weakness	One demon class, one mechanic, everything else off	The preset-save feature makes this the first Ripatorium where a targeted drill is faster to set up than a general run.
Share a brutal setup with a friend	Any of the above, then export the passcode	Shorter codes in 3.0 mean you can paste it in a channel without your friend transcribing it wrong. Confirm they own Revelations first.

The unlock gate is the part nobody can skip: clear the Master Arenas if you want the Revelations arenas, and accept that the base game’s Ripatorium got the free update regardless.

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Sources

Source	What it provided
DOOM: The Dark Ages news hub on Steam (appid 3017860) - Update 4.0 release notes, July 2026	The Ripatorium 3.0 feature list, the Revelations Ripatorium block, the Master Arenas unlock requirement, the Perfect Dodge Window and HUD Styles settings, the balance pass
Steam news hub - Revelations hotfix, July 2026	The Chain Spear ”??” input fix and the resulting default-bind reset; the red-wall spawn fixes in Hell’s Core and Osseus
Steam news hub - second hotfix, late July 2026	The Osseus Archvile out-of-map and floor-clip fixes, the Spear no-hands and Dash Pass fixes, the Dreadmace and Ravager pickup-economy changes, the level-side Hell’s Core and Osseus fixes, the Classic Level Encounter known issue
DOOM: The Dark Ages | Revelations store page	DLC price, release date, Chain Spear positioning
PC Gamer Ripatorium coverage	The community-made-encounter design intent behind passcodes and presets