Video Game / Aetherius

Aetherius is a long-time developed RPG-element centric modification for the iDTech1 engine (via the GZDoom source port) by LordMisfit, also the creator of "Naferia's Reign: Invasion of the Dark Mistress", a similiarly RPG-minded Duke Nukem 3D modification.

Started as early back as 2010-2011 (its public release on the GZDoom forums however was on January 10, 2017) when a dying laptop power supply temporarily forced Misfit to work on a different project while awaiting a replacement power supply in order to get back to work on NR, he discovered of a small ZDoom mod known as DoomspellV2, a basic, but RPG-style mini-mod that had experience points and the ability to level up the player's magicial ranking, giving them more in an array of ACS-controlled magic spells, projectiles, buffs and healing alike.

Obviously a big fan of the concept of FPS mods with RPG mechanics, Misfit used DoomspellV2 as a very skeletal basis, and thus within the first week of this process, Aetherius was born, first known as Deus Vult (2): Doomspell Edition, as the mod was originally built around a mapset known as Deus Vult, and later, its sequel map pack, where the mod's central character class, Flora (or Nera Briscoletti), from Dragon Quest V was added to be a more pure mage like class versus the more traditional, Doomguy-style play of the first two classes: Deggaris Montegger and Illucia Hendershot. Backstories were even given for elaboration on Deggaris, Illucia and this particular version of Flora, who does not have exactly the same genetic backstory as her original self, being more of a half-Zenithian, half-Elohimiar [or Elder God(dess)] who ended up falling from Zenithia Castle as an infant along with her two sisters, and raised by humans to the point she believed for most of her early life that she had been nothing more than merely another human like them, instead of being a human descended from Zenithians like she was in the original game of origin.

Deggaris and Illucia play more like the original Doom Marine, though with extra weapons, some minor statistical differences, and some older weapons having new firing modes or alternate-fire modes, as well as them having a decent range of magicial spells to assist them in battle. Flora however has an entirely new weapon set, including her recently accquired Sceptre of Empyrea, which while looking like a mere magical-ish staff, is actually an incredibly powerful melee-centric weapon, which Misfit would come to feel gave Flora an unique playstyle as a more "frail" magic-oriented combatant with a deceptive penchant for melee combat, as the Sceptre has a sweeping attack arc that can hit multiple enemies at a time, for significant amounts of damage.

Flora also lacks the armor types of the marines, both not having their UAC marine training, and being from an entirely different world than Earth, and though this leaves her very vulnerable to damage in early game, she can find up to eleven permenant armor pieces, which while not strong by themselves, make an incredibly powerful set when put together and cannot be destroyed or lost once found, unlike the malleable armor types of the marines. She also gains other ranged weapons such as up to two of Hexen's Sapphire Wands, the same weapon the mage class of that game begins with, as well as a powerful sniper-like longbow with projectile-erasing holy-elemental arrows which are incredibly devastating against the Hellspawn enemies in Doom.

Among other feature of the mod however, are specialized Aeon Points, either for increasing the player's stats directly, or for the perks system, a feature absent in NR. Perks differ to certain extents between the three player classes, but they cover stats, weapon proficency, inventory/ammo capacity, various "Last Stand" perks, etc. Other features of Aetherius include compatibility with Heretic, Hexen and even Strife: Quest for The Sigil being playable game modes. Each game mode adds extra features to Flora's abilities [i.e. Heretic mode allows her to find and use that game's more magicially centered weapons herself, unlike in Doom mode where the game's default weapons were not of her understanding]. Also there are several mapset compatibility packs for Aetherius, most for Doom, but also a couple for Heretic and Hexen as well.

However it is not just the player who has been improved in Aetherius. Much as in Naferia's Reign, monsters have gotten their own improvements and boosts, such as their own Levels/stats that increase over maps as the player also improves, even to the point it can drastically change parts of their AI at set Level thresholds. They additionally can also randomly evolve when the map loads [or monsters are newly spawned into a map], turning into more powerful creatures, many from the Realm667 Beastiary, but with improvements and alterations to their AI as well.

The base files for Aetherius can be found here, while the packs for other iDTech1 games are here, and mapset compatibility packs are here, here, here, here, here, here and also here. The forum topic for Aetherius is located here as well.

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Aetherius provides examples of:

• Absurdly High Level Cap - Comparatively speaking, even the seemingly normal 100 limit that most JRPG use, for the Marines [and a Flora with none of her armor items accquired] can seem overpowered as hell in certain mapsets. However in the options, you can set the natural level cap to 200, and Flora's level cap will be 200 by default provided she's accquired all eleven of her armor items [each one extends her level cap by ~9], though you can also set it that the armor items don't matter and give her a natural 200 level cap anyways.
  • However monsters do not techincally have a Level cap, and some players have reported monsters with levels over 650 on rare occasions. As you can imagine, these monsters are obscenely powerful, fast and relentless/aggressive (in theory).

• Action Girl - Illucia, and even Flora, as much as she'd rather not have to keep fighting Demons [or whatever the monsters of the day are]. Both are more than capable of dealing with the hordes of monsters they face off against.

• Action Mom - Flora herself, actually. The help page for her character bio is actually incorrect about her usual age during most mapsets when playing Aetherius in that Flora is only 18 during the events of the Deus Vult (2) compatiblity pack(s) and all others are actually 10+ years later, making her actually 28 or older. She is stated to have two children, Degger and Luci, whom she and her husband Andy actually named after the other player classes Deggaris and Illucia in a sort of honor of the help the two marines appearantly gave Flora during off-screen event back during the DV2 mapset. Only a few scant intermission screens directly reference this, but they do exist.
  • Bits of the lore also state that Degger and Luci were conceived the very night that Flora and Andy returned to Zendaria after the latter's rescue and the defeat of the Big Bad of the DV2 mapset.

• All There in the Manual - The many extra help screens that explain HUD elements, give hints, and give information about Flora's backstory and specifics on her weapons. If players fail to read these, there can end up instances of Guide Dang It! concerning various mechanics like Focus or Tension later on in gameplay.
  • The mod does not have a proper 'text file' in the format that a lot of Doom mapsets do, though it does have a readme to help (usually) with getting the mod properly installed.

• Already Undone for You - Played with in a sense in the Strange Aeons compability pack in relations to the original version of the mapset. The timeframe of the compatibility pack is some centuries after the original version occured, with mentions in the final intermissions texts that the original protagonist of "Strange Aeons" who had been searching the dreamlands and such trying to find a means to bring his dead son back to life, ended up commiting suicide in a sort of lake after the end of his quest, to try to seal away some of the stone tablets Flora would find during her own version of the same adventure, causing her to ultimately retrace his steps unintentionally through all five major realms of the dreamlands.
  • However unlike the original protagonist, it's implied in the Episode 4 ending intermission that Nyarlathotep, who had been responsible for the original protagonist's woes in the dreamlands and then the wastelands of Leng as he was for Flora's own during the first four episodes, was permenantly destroyed by Flora in their own confrontation (the original protagonist all but had to kill four of his shadow priests to unsummon the eldritch being from the plains of Leng, instead of focusing on him directly to win due to how overpowered Nyarlathotep was at the time), in a sense avenging the original protagonist without realizing it in the moment.

• Animesque - Flora in general has a more anime-ish design due to her roots as a Dragon Quest character, but most other things don't really look so compared with her. This is noticed more with her HUD portrait, and the images of her used for her character/weapon-centric help screens, all of the art like this of her (and much more) created by ProfessorMegaman.
  • However there is no cel-shading on Flora's actual weapon frames, which cover her Sceptre of Empyrea, her Fists/Quick-Kick (including the more Fist of the North Star-equse punch barrage animation she uses when "Martial Arts Mastery" is level 4 or above), her Poison Needle, her base hand frames/animations for her many Hellcore Souls, her specific frameset for the Gauntlets of Sauron, her specific frameset for the Hell Warrior's Shield, her specific frameset for the Dragon Claw(s) from Heretic, the frames for the Sigil of the One God in Strife, the Gore Balloons in Happy Time Circus 2, and many others, which use non-celshaded renders of her hands and feet and appear more "realistic" versus the artwork depictions of her. More than 85% of these frames of her hands and feet (plus the base sprites of the "dehanded" Sigil weapon for Strife), etc. were made by Sgt. Shivers, an avid weapons spriter and animator famous in the Doom community.

• Armor-Piercing Attack - Many types of attack in Aetherius possess a varying degree of this, though there are none that by default totally ignore all of a target's defense outside of inflicting Critical Hits.
  • Plasma attacks [Plasma Rifle, Arachnotron Plasma, etc] ignore 22.5-27.5% of targets defense [higher if the Marine classes invest in certain perks].
  • BFG attacks [the main shot, the tracers] ignore 45-55% of targets' defenses [higher if the Marine classes invest in certain perks].
  • The Sceptre of Empyrea can ignore between 40-100% of targets' defenses, depending on how high the Sceptre's Level is and also to a lesser degree the RNG.
  • Railgun attacks usually ignore ~25% of targets' defenses, but on extremely rare occasions, they can ignore a whooping 98.75% of their defense, depending on the RNG's mood.
  • Attacks from Hellcore weapons/souls ignore ~25% of targets' defenses (slightly more if the player invests in the "Soul Mastery" perk).
  • Any attack marked as an "Eldritch" attack (which are almost exclusively seen in the "Strange Aeons" compatibility pack) will ignore a significant 75% of targets' defenses.
  • Melee hits ignore a minor ~10% of targets' defenses, more if the player has invested in the perk representing the character's melee weapon proficency.
  • Diaris Arrows ignore ~50% of targets' defenses.
  • Explosives generally ignore between 50-75% of targets defenses on a direct hit.
  • Any attack from a "Legendary Monster" will ignore at least half of their target's defense as well in addition to the above factors if applicable.

• Anti-Frustration Features - Dozens of them, including a myriad of mod-specific options, both legal and 'cheat' equse (i.e. changing the amount of EXP you get [in %], or the amount of overall damage you or monsters take [also in %]). These options & cheats can also be used to make the game more challenging though, if playing on Skill 5 alone [which does not enable fast monsters or respawning monsters by default like normal Doom] isn't hard enough for you.
  • Flora is also very long term an easy character to play as against enemies when you get used to her mechanics and the games button combinations for abilities like Focus and Psyche-Up for example. Also, buffs like Spread Aura which only she can use at will via spells [the other classes have to find powerup sphere corresponding to Spread Aura to use the buff] make DPS a lot easier to increase, even in slaughtermaps.
  • A good number of inventory items also give buffs, heal the player, can be used for attacking or converting enemies into allies, or giving you an instant 2/4-level Psyche-Up to their tension level. In Heretic/Hexen/Strife modes, this further increases when those games' inventory items are also thrown into the mix.
  • In very recent versions, there are binds/command to recall all of a player's allied/charmed NPCs/monsters to their position. Additionally if you target a specific hostile monster (indicated by seeing said monster's lifebar and statistics at the top of the screen) when you use the "Recall All Monsters" bind, those allied monsters will be forced to target the hostile monster you're looking at.
  • For monsters with shields like that of the Hell Warrior from Realm667, Centaurs and Slaughtaurs in Hexen, Death Knights in Heretic mode, shielding will only reduce damage taken from other sources, not fully block it. The shielding modes will however still deflect projectiles though. The Heresiarch in Hexen also has their shield spell altered to where it only greatly reduces damage taken from attacks instead of straight up making them invulnerable. The same has been given to the Maulotaur's goring attack, which originally rendered it immune to damage during the animation.
  • On the subject of many Heretic and Hexen enemies, there are many instances of enemy types that look identical to each other, while some possessed extra attacks or abilites that caused players to be really on guard since they could not tell what exact species of the monster they were facing [i.e. Gargoyles vs NitroGargoyles in Heretic, Centaurs vs Slaughtaurs in Hexen]. This has been changed, as there are now visual differences between these kinds of monsters [i.e. Slaughtaurs have a different skin color as well as obsidian purple armor vs the Centaur's normal appearance, NitroGargoyles are a darker-red vs normal Gargoyles, NitroGolems have visible firey energy around their hands at all times versus normal Golems, the swamp-dwelling Alpha Stalkers in Hexen are a darker-green versus the normal light green of the default Stalkers, etc]

• Artificial Brilliance - When a majority of monsters are at a level above 45 or a multiple of such, they will gain a boost to their speed, and usually a few extra abilities or an extension of their attack patterns. For example: Pinky Demons and Blood Demons (ones whom do not have a Chaingun in their mouths already) above level 120 will start breathing piercing fire at the player or their current target, most of the gouts of flame with a high chance to inflict a Critical Hit on whatever they damage, though they can only do this at moderate range, and if they're up close will still favor biting over fire. Since monsters can randomly get their levels quadrupled on spawn, there's a decent chance even early on to see monsters whom have moderately different AI routines than the player is used to. This also applies across all custom enemies from the Realm667 beastiary that appear in Aetherius, even ones that appear in Heretic, Hexen and Strife gamemodes.
  • Diabloists (evolved Archviles) are even worse, gaining a brand new attack which works similar to a gravity attack out of the Final Fantasy series in which it cuts HP/MP (or if the player is invulnerable, their invulnerablity timer) by a set though somewhat randomized percentage if they successfully complete the spell. This ability cannot kill the Diabloist's target outright, but it can soften them up immensely. The only consolation of this is that if you accquire a Diabloist's soul as Flora, you can perform the same gravity attack against enemies (including even most named bosses like D'Sparil, etc. that have 100k or more HP to throw at you), but without the wind up time the Diabloist requires to do his.

• Attack Drone - [Major] Raging Spirits can server as a mobile sort. They don't attack from range, but like their Hexen WraithVerge selves, rip through enemies over and over, also causing a good deal of stun-lock on individual monsters. They also automatically seek out hostile targets, while not damaging allied monsters they happen to pass through.

• Attack Reflector - A lot of examples, though the most prominently seen one is Flora's Sceptre of Empyrea, capable of destroying or batting back projectiles with the default swing attack if timed right, but also having an alt-fire mode where she uses her magic and stamina to telekenetically spin the sceptre at speeds fast enough to deflect almost all projectiles or ranged attacks (besides Railgun shots), and even somewhat block enemies from getting too close from the front.
  • Other examples: when the "Berserker Fit" perk for the Marines, or "Martial Arts Mastery" perk for Flora, is increased high enough, even the player's punches, quick-kicks and uppercuts [and Flora's Poison Needle pokes]] can sometimes destroy or deflect projectiles harmlessly [at higher levels of "Martial Arts Mastery", Flora will always at least destroy the projectiles, with a small chance to deflect them away instead if she's using melee besides the Poison Needle].
  • Though not a deflector, the shots of the Sapphire Wand as well as the arrows of the Diaris Longbow can also erase projectiles and block tracers from hitting Flora as well, though the Wands are not guaranteed to fire a shot that does this, while the Longbow's arrows always do this. Additionally, if a BFG ball is "erased" this way, it will detonate without releasing its deadly tracers, like how destroying the BFG shots in Doom 3 will stop their own detonation.

• Bad Powers, Good People - Flora with using Hellcore Souls, The Sigil of the One God and Heretic mode's secret weapon: D'Sparil's Staff(Staves). Though Hellcore Souls if overused or she uses the Sigil it will deal her temporary damage (that can still be healed back), none of these weapons have any long-term corrupting effect on her personality or alignment, possibly due to the mix of her genetics in the Aetherius lore being that of Divine and Eldritch nature allowing her to perfectly balance and use weapons of both good and evil aligned natures.

• Bag of Spilling - Played with, but usually subverted in regard to playthroughs of Doom 1 and Heretic, in that all of the episodes in those game modes are modded into one super-linked "megaepisode", ala Doom 2 and Hexen, since Aetherius relies on the gradual statistical progression of the player over the entire game, and to restart each episode from scratch in the traditional manner would've unintentionally set your level back to 0 along with removing all your weapons and inventory, and since monsters' have a base difficulty increase based on the map and episode number in the game, this more than not would've put the player at a bigger and bigger disadvantage at the start of each subsequent episode.
  • However there are also options related to death exits, or forced pistol starts which can be set different ways to that when the player is supposed to die at the end of a level in a Doom 2 mapset (i.e. "Hellbound"'s MAP06, MAP19 & MAP20), that they can keep certain sets of items, or set certain sets of items to be removed that Aetherius would normally prevent the game from taking [i.e. the player's inventory items, the number of backpack-type items they've gathered, Flora's Sceptre of Empyrea, and her armor items are generally never removed by death exits, though her other weapons [including Hellcore Souls] are removable by default]. The marine classes can have it set that death exit will or will not remove their weapons and ammo seperately.
    • One note however is that sometimes depending on the type of death exit utilized by the mapset [i.e. death exits from barrels killing the player and a Romero Head to force a map end after death], sometimes it's still possible the player can straight up survive and not even have to worry about losing anything at all, especially if their SV% is higher at the time of entering these spots, or if their defense in general is just obscenely high at that moment.

• Battle Aura - When you Psyche-Up and enter levels of Tension, a pinkish-purple aura similar to ki auras from Dragon Ball will appear around the player. Higher levels of Tension will enlarge the scale of the aura around them, though using partial invisiblity will also make the aura equally as transperant as the player, adding attention to detail.
  • The red afterimaging-aura of a "Legenday Monster", and the omnious low-roar of said aura while they are hunting down their next target.

• BFS - While Flora's Sceptre of Empyrea is techincally not a sword, it is far more powerful than most swords are in a lot of iDTech1 mods, capable of dealing between 300-1300 base damage to each enemy it hits in it's 135+ degree arc, making it incredibly counternature to her otherwise more mage-like build and partial-frailness in the early game. The Sceptre isn't even that visually impressive looking, appearing as a long silver rod with a pointed gold spearhead on one end (which is never appearantly used for any attacks), and a large red orb with a gold ring appearing to hold it on, yet it is appearantly never been damaged or destroyed in battle, only sometimes temporarily taken from Flora in rare situations [i.e. "The City of the Damned: Apocalypse"] where she can find and recover it.

• Big Bad - If one is even present in the current game depends on the mapset in question or the compatibility pack being played.
  • In the original episodes of Doom, Doom2 and Final Doom, the Icon of Sin Baphomet is still the final boss of the Doom 2 mapset, though he is a lot easier to defeat due to being as immobile as the original Icon of Sin, despite having the ability to spawn more monsters at a time.
  • The Final Doom mode's final boss is dependant on which "path" the player considers canon, as it'll either be TNT or Plutonia, but not BOTH, being that according to the intermission texts in either episode, Xenolatias past self and a brother gatekeeper fought it out in honorable combat to determine whose revenge plan would be utilized against Flora and the humans of Earth in the wake of Baphomet's death. In the canon timeline of Aetherius it was Xenos who won this battle and killed his brother in the end, leading to the events of Plutonia (and then to his ultimate death at the hands of the original Doom Marine during the original timeline that would then set him into his reincarnation as his current form later). But if you choose to play TNT, the timeline implies his brother's past self won and killed his own past self, diverting the timeline, and setting his plan involving the titular Evilution Hellship to attack Jupiter and it's moon Io. Either way, the "Gatekeeper" versions of Xenos or his brother are still easy to defeat, being as immobile as Baphomet was, though the brother gatekeeper has a slightly altered weakpoint on his face versus that of the one on past!Xenos' face.
  • Heretic's is still D'Sparil, while Hexen's is still Korax, and both are given a much larger pool of HP (50x or more) to compensate for how strong the player might be by the point they fight them. D'Sparil can add in new Disciple types to assist him in combat among other new quirks, while Korax can use many more types of the other monsters' attacks against you in sixes, and is a lot more resistant to overall damage, making him a longer fight than expected.
  • Strife's is still the The One God or The Entity or Teiytenth as he is truly called by his Alien Spectre minions. If the player is on the true ending path, you get a large backstory dump in the room before the final boss by the ghosts of the past Alien Spectres you killed, most of them telling you of their plans for Earth and humanity while gloating of the futility of Flora fighting against them and their master. And then you even get a small plot dump from Teiytenth himself on why Flora was brought to the universe of Strife in the first place: a plan for revenge against Empyrea for sealing him inside the egg you see him hatch out of in his lair, by possessing Flora to turn into his personal weapon of mass destruction. Additionally, you fight a third, new phase of the battle, where his broken-off mini-selves evolve into three stronger copies of his original form, which then have to be killed to end the battle for real.
  • ''The Ultimate Torment N' Torture" still has "The Source" as the final boss, whose battle is handled in mostly the same way, except that Flora will make comments when its barrier is lowered by killing its guardians to give the player an easier time of knowing when to attack it, and will also make comments to when the barrier returns and such to remind the player they need to kill more of its guardians to keep forcing it to lower its barrier. After defeating it, in The Stinger, as the Source is slowly reviving itself, it also suddenly realizes of Flora's true "role" in Hell's current fate, and is now even more determined to kill her than before in order to usurp that "role" for itself in a future confrontation in order to possibly bring Hell fully back under its rule.
  • Thamuz is one in both "The City of the Damned: Apocalypse" [in two possible 'skins'], and in "Unloved" [in his Dark Cyberdemon avatar]. Both battles play virtually the same mechanically though, and it's implied his appearance in "Unloved" and Flora's sudden appearance in the "Realm of the Unloved One" (the basis of Flora being stuck in the mapset's events) was him attempting to take revenge on her for his defeat back in "The City of the Damned: Apocalypse" by pulling her into a haunted, hellish realm born from the memories and perverse events in the life of one of his past victims/cultists known only as the "Unloved One" (who is never seen in the compatibilty pack proper).
  • As expected for a Circus and horror themed compatiblity pack, Pennywise/IT the Dancing Clown is the final boss of the "Happy Time Circus 2" Compatibility pack, having taken control of a legion of demonic and alien clowns of various species, some even implied to be from places as Killer Klowns from Outer Space, and creating a sort of "Clown Hell" dimension from which they are invading a dilapitated town very similar to that of Derry, Maine. As for Pennywise himself, he is generally greatly resistant to damage while idle or stalking at the player, and it's only when he goes to release his micro-deadlights at the player that he is fully vulnerable to all damage from the player, even damage from Flora's Sceptre of Empyrea. If you deflect a mini-deadlight back at Pennywise however, he takes an incredibe amount of damage and is stunned for a long period of time [if you get hit by them, the tend to inflict a cornucopia of status ailments however], and fully left open to full damage from your attacks for the duration of this stun.

• Black-and-White Morality - Surprisingly a bit Subverted in regards to the Hellspawn from Doom, there are actually a few not-seen examples of Flora having actual allies amongst the hellspawn outside of the ones you summon via the Summon Monster spell family, or charming them with Monster Munchies, such as Xenolatias [or Xenos as he's commonly called in various intermission texts across multiple compatibility packs], implied to be a reincarnation of the gatekeeper Icon of Sin from Final Doom's Plutonia mapset, who has become a sort of Trickster Mentor and majordomo of hers. Xenos never appears [as of this point] in proper gameplay though, though the closest he seems to have to helping Flora directly is the final level of the "Strange Aeons" compatibility pack, where he sends in an allied Cyber-Annihilator to help Flora fight three of Cthulhu's giant StarSpawn [who are the final bosses of the mapset].
  • Xenolatias is also a sort of variation or alternate version of the nameless gatekeeper character in Gatekeeper's Chronicles by lyuboiv, and a lot of his history is based on said nameless gatekeeper's own history, including the idea of a test or trial like the one he gives Flora which is the explaination for her being in the original Doom, Doom 2 and Final Doom episodes if playing Aetherius with them, him having sent her back in time to a copy of the timeline at the point the events of Doom 1 started, all the way through either the end of TNT or Plutonia depending on the player's choices, all in order to teach Flora a direct sort of "lesson" about the theatre of the "Doom Wars", and not as a ploy to get her killed, knowing she is probably able to survive to experience. The intermission texts in these mapsets elaborate a bit more on this for the player's sake though.

• Boring, but Practical - The Sceptre of Empyrea isn't too visually impressive for a BFS type weapon, but it is a hell of a workhorse weapon, even in spite of being melee-range only, due to being able to hit multiple enemies in a 135+ degree swinging arc for at least ~300 damage per hit.
  • Also the Sapphire Wand(s) as in Hexen proper are not too impressive visually either, but are still just as useful for very long range sniping. Though they do cost some MP to fire, MP regenerates at a decent rate and is not a truly expendible ammo type for them, and they can actually fit their shots in smaller nooks and crannies than the original version's shots can.

• Boss in Mook Clothing - Hades Overlords, a sort of super Hades Elemental is one of these, having a base HP value equal to that of a Cyberdemon, but having some more dangerous attacks and the ability to warp around the area and summon minion Hades Sphere that can self-destruct on the Overlord's target. Additionally, these are the ultimate and final "evolution" of both Cacodemons and Pain Elementals, suggesting they could intended to be a hybrid evolution of either demon.

• Bottomless Magazines - Literally the name of one of Deggaris & Illucia's perks. Each level [up to 5 total] increases the chances of not consuming ammo by 10% [up to 50% maximum]. This is helping in their case since unlike Flora, who has only one non-permenant ammo-type [Diaris Arrows], the Marines have the staple Doom ammo types to supplement their [admittedly not quite as powerful] magic in battle.
  • Other factors can also increase the chance a player doesn't consume ammo [or even MP when used as ammo for weapons], such as the Marines' different armor classes, or certain permenant armor pieces Flora can find.

• Breath Weapon - Pinky Demons and their upgraded, mechanical Blood Demon counterparts become capable of breathing piercing fire when their levels surpass 120. Other monsters that breath fire are the Hellhounds in The City of the Damned: Apocalypse, the Dragon Familiars in "Unloved", the Blood Lich in "Heretic" gamemode, the Source Guardian in "The Ultimate Torment N' Torture" and the Spectral Chaos Serpent in "Hexen" gamemode.
  • All breath attacks like this have a 4x chance to deal a Critical Hit, ignore ~75% of a target's defense, and deal a bonus 12.5% damage on top of that, and some will pierce through multiple targets, based on the concept of how breath attacks in the Dragon Quest series are fairly dangerous overall, even in late gameplay.

• Cap - On the HUD, all status buffs/ailments have a timer showing their durations up to 3-digits long [or a max display of 999 seconds]. This doesn't mean the actual timers max at that value, and can be in the 4-digits or higher depending on circumstances [i.e. playing E3M7 (Gate to Limbo) of the original Doom 1 with Aetherius will likely net the player about a dozen Radiation Suits, each giving 120 seconds to the "Bio Shield" buff timer, but they will likely exceed 999 seconds for such a long time the timer will still be counting down by E4M3, since powerup timers stack instead of being set to a flat value].

• Cast from Stamina - Almost all of the player's melee attacks consume some degree of Stamina to use [except the Chainsaws for the marines], though Stamina regenerates over time. Using the alt-fire of the Sceptre of Empyrea and the Hell Warrior's Shield also slowly drains stamina (and MP in the case of the Sceptre) in order to balance out their powerful defensive abilities. Investing in specific perks can mitigate the drain on stamina certain melee attacks incur, or at least boost your natural Stamina regeneration rate (such as Cleared of Mind, Martial Arts Mastery and Berserker Fit).
  • Focus (a technique that quadruples the speed of MP regeneration and slightly boosts the amount of MP recovered per "interval") will also drain stamina in addition to temporarily slowing down and blinding the player, and also making them 4x more susceptible to damage.
  • Stamina is also consumed when Psyching Up to accquire Tension levels, which depending on the level, can greatly boost healing spells and attack damage for a short duration.
  • Though there are no ailments that straight up drain stamina passively, Exhaustion, as well as being under the effect of the curse of the Ruinous Shield will greatly hamper your Stamina regeneration for their durations, worse so if stacked.
  • Though movement and running do not drain stamina actively, they will hamper the regeneration rate of Stamina to certain degrees. You can conversely boost stamina regeneration by crouching and staying still, having yourself in the cross-armed guard stance when using your fists (or Flora's Poison Needle), or combining both (this also affects the speed of your normally-very-slow HP regeneration as well).

• Character Portrait - Shown on the lower-left part of the screen in the HUD. The image is static however [for the most part], unlike the mugshot face in Doom, and will not express things such as different facial expressions, or look bloodier/more-damaged as the player is hurt. Despite this however, it is important to look at it from time to time as it will show off visual effects depending on what buffs/ailments the player has, such as an anger-vein on their forehead representing the Berserk buff, a distorting gold aura to represent the Fear Aura buff, or afterimages coming off of it representing the 2 different Spread Aura buffs. Multiple buff/ailment overlays can show at once on the portrait too, even an unique one for when Flora is enduring and purging the curse from carrying the Ruinous Shield armor item.
  • The portrait will also go transperant and phase in and out of different transperancy levels in sync with the player's own weapon and character sprites when using the invisibility spell, showing some of the mod's attention to details.
  • In higher levels of Tension, not only does the portrait start looking more and more overlayed with a purplish-pink glow, but the ovular frame behind the portrait begins filling with a purplish-pink flame backdrop that gets more intense with higher tension levels.
  • If you use Divine Avatar however, Flora's portrait changes to an entirely different image showing her with a much less forgiving look on her face than her default passive glance off to the side in the normal portrait, along with glowing (though static) lightning energy around her. The marines don't get a portrait change with this, but still have the glowing lightning effect.

• Charged Attack - The Marines' Railgun starts with its power at 5% per shot. Holding down alt-fire will charge this 5% at a time, up to 100% if the player has enough cells [1 Cell = 1%]. This significantly increases the damage dealt when it fires, but has to be recharged again afterwards, to the point a 100%-charged shot has a chance to 1 or 2 shot a Cyberdemon under the correct circumstances.
  • The Railgunner Captain [a female railgun-using zombie that is the strongest "evolution" of Shotgun Guys] can also charge their own Railguns, but only up to 35% by default, as they randomly charge their railguns when actively looking for their target. This default limit can be changed [to higher or lower values in increments of 5%, even as high as a full 100%] in the mod's options though. The damage formula for their attacks however is all but the same as it is for the player's railgun, so be warned if you turn this max charge option up.

• Charm Person - The Monster Munchies, from the Dragon Quest series are an inventory item that when used, will launch a shot that both bounces off walls/floors/etc and seeks the closest hostile monster and [usually] turns them over to the player's side. However additionally, their Attack and Defense are buffed by a factor of 3, and their speed increases by 50%, making them significantly more effective at fighting multiple monsters for the player, even monsters of the same species as itself. Additionally, this item will usually effect even Doom's traditional boss-level monsters, but will not affect named bosses [i.e. D'Sparil in Heretic, Korax in Hexen, Pennywise in Happy Time Circus 2, Thamuz in Unloved/The City of the Damned: Apocalypse, etc].
  • If the <Spell Alternates> key is held down when using this item, the shot will fly straight forward and just bounce off walls/floors/etc until it hits a hostile monster, so the player can aim at a specific creature instead of it seeking to an undesired monster type.

• Combat Medic - All three characters, being they get the Healing spell family, as well as various healing inventory items to use, not only on themselves, but on allied/charmed monsters if the player uses the <Spell Alternates> key with them.

• Of Corsets Sexy - One of Flora's eleven armor items is the Pearly Corset, which though it will add to her bonuses when found, is never actually shown being worn on her sprites [though none of the armor items will visibly appear on her sprites or weapon frames]. One of it's unique bonuses is a +25-30% EXP boost, for both normal EXP and for the EXP the Sceptre gains when used. It also increases her resistance to bullets by about 25% as well.

• Contractual Boss Immunity - Subverted in regards to monsters that normally take no splash damage from attacks in the original game in that a lot of spells and more powerful attacks in Aetherius that have AOE will ignore their splash damage immunity anyways, such as the Magic Missile spells, etc. Various other attacks with AOE splashes will also similarly ignore these monsters' AOE immunity, but is dependant on the attack and which species of monster it is.

• Critical Annoyance - When very low on health, a red-hued tunnel-vision effect shows on screen, alongside the sound of the player character's beating heart. One note of interest is that Flora's heartbeat is a lot slower even when low on health vs Deggaris/Illucia's, due to her not-so-human genetics in Aetherius' lore.
  • However this is also an indicator that tension will charge faster while in this low-health state, and a few other possible perks players might have when health is low.

• Critical Hit - The most prevalent used is by both players and monsters, where the attack will deal 1.9-2.1x its usual damage (more for the player if certain perks like Clearer of Mind are invested into), and ignore the entirity of the victim's defense. When the player is hit by one "Dealt a Desperate Blow!" will show in your messages/console alongside a specific sound playing. Monsters who take crits will get a sort of cross-cut looking damage-flash behind the numeric damage value shown, and a different sound goes off, even across the entire map. This type of Critical Hit is based on how many Dragon Quest titles would calculate them.
  • The second type is unique to Flora's Poison Needle and has its own seperate chance from the other type of Critical Hit, usually around 12.5%. When inflicted this way, the Needle instantly kills most non-named enemies and bosses by dealing 3-5x their maximum HP in damage, which will also overkill enemies like Death Incarnates who otherwise could get back up later from being defeated. Against named bosses however, the chance is significantly lower, and it will only inflict around 12.5 or 25% of that boss's HP in damage.
  • One special note about the Poison Needle is that if you poke the Possessed Balloon, Big Bertha and Super Bertha enemies in the Happy Time Circus (2) Compatibility pack(s), they are always instantly destroyed by it in one hit. This also applies to thrown Poison Needles as well.

• Cursed Item - The Divine Shield is one of Flora's eleven unique armor items, and one of the strongest in terms of raw AB%/Defense. However most of the time, it will not drop in this form, but in the form of a cursed shield called the Ruinous Shield. Much as the Cursed/Paladin Shield in Final Fantasy 6, Flora will have to grab the shield and endure its curse [which slowly depletes her HP and MP down to a certain low % level (though cannot kill her directly), lowers her stamina regeneration, and weakens all of her attacks and defense (with exception to Hellcore Souls which still do full damage, and which also have their drop rates from their respective monsters tripled by having the Ruinous Shield)], and once an armor item of Flora's is grabbed, cursed or not, it cannot be dropped unless one uses GZDoom's console and the right commands and knowledge of the internal item names to remove them (which is techincally cheating).
  • If it is the first or second armor item found, the player will have to make a tough decision to take it and endure a higher number of possible deaths due to its many temporary penalities, or leave it behind. One positive note is that the curse will slowly disipate (the % above the shield's icon in the HUD is the uncurse-progression) as the shield is held over time, when Flora takes damage, when she or allied monsters kill hostile monsters, and more so depending on the number of other armor items she has gathered, with the Dove's Ribbon being the best singular armor item to combat the negative effects of the Ruinous Shield due to it's enhanced regenerative bonuses for HP and MP. If the Ruinous Shield is the final armor item to be grabbed, the curse will disipate within a minute or less because of the positive energies of the 10 other armor items accumulating against it, while it might take multiple maps worth of time (several minutes anyway) to uncurse it if it is the the only or second armor item she is carrying.
  • There is however a very rare chance that the uncursed Divine Shield will straight up appear, instead of the cursed version, but this is almost a 1% chance when either version of the shield is set to drop.

• Deadly Gas - The Poison Cloud spell family is both this and a sort of suctional vortex combined, both corroding most things that get caught in it, while pulling more victims towards it at the same time. The different spells denote the vortex strength, general damage dealt, and their radius, but one note is that the player's armor is ignored by the damage inflicted by their own Poison Clouds, a problem especially for Deggaris as he has a special affinity for dealing poison-damage to other things over the other classes which can screw him over badly if the player stumbles into the cloud. One upside though is that the Bio Shield buff (given by Radiation Suits), completely blocks damage to the player from their own poison clouds.

• Defend Command - There are three of these in Aetherius, the first being a defensive mode induced on Flora when using the alt-fire of the Sceptre of Empyrea, which telekinetically spins the sceptre in front of her as a shield to block and reflect incoming attacks. At the Sceptre's lowest level, this defensive mode cuts all damage Flora still receives by at least half, and increases as the Sceptre's level does.
  • The second is the alt-fire of the Hell Warrior's Shield, which while just having it equipped partially boosts the player's defense, the alt-fire will make the player hold up the shield in front of them and reduce damage by a greater amount and deflect projectile attacks off of them back at attackers.
  • The last is the "guard" mode of any character's "fist" weapon (also Flora's Poison Needle weapon). This puts them a into cross-armed guard stance that reduces damage from all sources by at least half, but will also give a bonus damage reduction of another 50% from other melee attacks from enemies (including the new stomping attacks of Cyberdemon class monsters). This mode also slows down the player somewhat, but still allows them to Quick-kick at enemies. Additionally, this defensive stances boosts both HP and Stamina regeneration by 20% to 80%. Increasing the Marines' "Berserker Fit" perk, or Flora's "Martial Arts Mastery" Perks will boost the defensive bonuses given by this mode.

• Dancing Mook Credits - The cast call at the end of Doom 2 is significantly expanded in Aetherius and will show off almost all the new monsters, and even one superboss-level monster that can only normally be fought at the end of the "Deus Vult (1)" Compatibility Pack [i.e. the Sauravatar]. These credits however do remove the player characters entirely, and only show the enemy monsters.

• Demonic Possession - Not of the player classes, but of the Hellspawn [or other enemy NPCs in other gamemodes] themselves, via a specific version of the LegenDoomLite modification (specifically an older a 1.x version) made by Yholl that was modded for use in Aetherius.
  • This allows monsters to be randomly chosen when loaded into a map to be able to transform into Legendary versions of themselves, accompanied by a hellish screech, a hellish red aura surrounding them as well as rejuvenation (and then some) of their health, as well as a huge boost to their attack, defense, movement speed and maximum health whenever said monster is brought to low health. This also makes said monsters far more aggressive, gives them the ability to ignore some of their target's defenses, among other boosts. This makes them also give more EXP and rewards on death though, and killing a legendary monster in Aetherius always has them drop either an HP or MP restoration inventory item, but they can also sometimes drop a SoulSphere, MegaSphere, or even permenant-stat-boosting seeds, or in the case of certain monsters, a higher chance of dropping their soul for Flora to use against future demons.
  • Unlike most versions of LegenDoomLite however, the Aetherius iteration is more efficient in terms of allowing monsters who spawn in the map after the initial map loading to be randomly chosen as Legendaries (in part due to use some ZScript as well as DECORATE and ACS unlike the official versions), and it also prevents friendly monsters who transform into Legendaries from turning on you. Additionally, you can charm Legendaries to your side with Monster Munchies as well, giving you a supercharged and powerful monster ally if you get lucky to encounter this situation without them plastering you against the walls first.
  • There also are a pair of perks that are specific to fighting legendaries called "Villain Killer" (named intentionally by the author as a inverse on the Hero Killer trope) and it's "EX" version, which only Flora can access the latter of. This basically increases the damage you deal specifically against Legendaries, reduces how much defense-ignoring ability their attacks have, and such. Additionally, if playing in "Heretic" gamemode, the Firemace, a not-as-great slot 7 weapon, can deal five times its normal damage against legendary monsters by default.

• De-power - In the proper lore for most Compatibility Packs, due to her long time in and out of combat for the 10 years since her first foray against the Hellspawn (represented by the "Deus Vult 2" compatibilty pack), Flora canoncally is implied to be usually far far stronger than she ever can become during actual gameplay [even if you get her maxed out at Level 200 and have all eleven of her unique armor items and the Sauron item set (including the One Ring itself)], but is almost always temporarily depowered back to Level 0 and only starts the mapset with the Sceptre and her fists as weapons as an excuse for her to be back in dire straits at the beginning of a playthrough. It's also implied in the various intermission texts that after the mapset ends, Flora is sent back to her time, her universe and her full powers are restored to her, plus some or most of the extra power she had gained during the mapset, making her slightly stronger than before overall in the lore.
  • A lot of in-lore reasons for being depowered are because the mapsets are considered these sort of "trials" for her to take from time to time in order to keep her combat instincts from becoming too rusty in times of peace, which are always done in special dimensions/universes cut off from the main timeline, and many are orchestrated by Flora's sort of Hellspawn friend/majordomo called Xenolatias [or Xenos as he's referred to in the intermission texts], though his trials, such as sending her back to the times of the "Doom War" [the excuse lorewise for playing the original Doom, Doom 2 and Final Doom mapsets, putting her in Doomguy's original role], have him depowering her temporarily so she doesn't immediately end up streamrolling the Hellspawn she ends up fighting in those war theatres.
  • He does generally have "good" intentions behind these trials, such as "teaching" Flora exactly how the original Hell invasions of Mars, Phobos, Deimos and Earth had gone over 160 years previous and what the humans and Hellspawn had gone through on their respective sides of the war, including the death of Baphomet (the first Icon of Sin), Xenos original master in his first "life", as well as a battle against either his OWN past self in Plutonia, or if in the Evilution mapset, end up fighting his brother gatekeeper instead in a divergence of the original timeline.

• Desperation Attack - All monsters with exception to those that self-destruct to attack you [i.e. Suicide Bombers and Hades Spheres] can sometimes throw a supercharged version of their normal attacks at you when lowered below an average of 25% of their maximum health, and will always do so if lowered below 2% of their maximum health. These attacks deal 30x their usual damage [though this multiplier can be changed in the mod's options], though they can usually be spotted by the fact that projectile crisis attacks [including "Tracers" that replace hitscan bullet attacks] leave particle-like afterimages of itself as a trail behind them, and the monster will also emit a specific sound when executing a crisis attack. This is not the same as a Critical Hit however, and a monster can also critical hit with a crisis attack on top of that sometimes.
  • This can be a rare situation late game where even a seemingly-overpowered Flora can be (almost) defeated suddenly out of nowhere if the player is not mindful of monsters' health levels [which can be seen by looking at a monster to make their lifebar/stats appear on screen], though in a lot of cases, a very late game Flora can still survive crisis attacks with some decent effort.
  • There is also one situation the player can do this kind of crisis attack. If Flora is very low on health while using a Hellcore soul, she has a chance [or straight up guarantee if her health is critical] to throw a crisis version of the attack she shoots from that soul. The same health % thresholds apply to her as they do the monsters in this case for if she will shoot a crisis shot or not.
  • The Hell Warrior's Shield is also capable of this, being a sort of not-as-official Hellcore-class weapon, but it's also the only weapon of this nature the Marine classes can also wield in the mod.

• Did You Just Punch Out Nyarlathotep? - Flora pulls this off in the "Strange Aeons" compatibility pack in the fourth episode's boss battle. Though she can kill four his shadow priests to unsummon him much as the original protagonist of the original version of Strange Aeons was all but forced to do defeat him, she actually has the power to destroy Nyarlathotep directly, due to her genetic hertiage having a sort of divine/eldritch backdrop of its own to it that allows her to fight eldritch beings in a way most humans couldn't attempt to.
  • The intermissions text for the end of episode 4 even implies Nyarlathotep's permenant death at this point, and other intermissions earlier in the compatibility pack have implied Flora has permenantly destroyed a few other eldritch beings in her past adventures off-screen appearantly, and that ol' Nyarly was by no means the first of them.
  • Cthulhu himself lucks out in episode 5 of the compatibility pack, only because he was still sleeping at the bottom of the rising city of R'yleh, and it is his giant StarSpawn that are left to suffer at Flora's hands in his place, being they were appearantly the masterminds behind the stone tablets she finds throughout the episodes [and the one at the Earth bazaar in the prolouge intermission text].
  • Unfortunately for Atlach-Nacha, the spider-goddess also sometimes called the "Spinner in the Darkness" (and the mother of all Leng Spiders), she is not so lucky in Episode 3's ending, also being killed off by Flora when she is forced to fight the spider-goddess in mortal combat, lest she let Atlach-Nacha free into the living worlds of the awakened to wreck havoc on the physical universe. The intermissions after the fight imply that she too was permenantly destroyed in the battle, for her foolishness to go after Flora to try to break out.
  • After all of this, Flora comes out of these experiences with no real permenant traumas or metaphysically broken limbs, although she does have a somber moment in the final intermission texts upon learning of the original protagonist's fate and of his history in the dreamlands centuries before her own adventure, prompting her to return home quickly to reunite with friends and family on Zendaria out of her usual motherly-concern for them, knowing that any day, any time, a sudden event could tear those friends and family away from her, possibly forever...

• Disc-One Nuke - Flora's default melee weapon, the Sceptre of Empyrea might not initially qualify despite it's ability to hit multiple enemies in an 135-degree arc for ~300 damage each, but because the Sceptre itself can also gain EXP and level up, this causes its base damage, range of coverage ahead of Flora, the speed of your swings, and other things to progressively evolve. There are 17 levels to the sceptre, from 0 to 16, A level 16 Sceptre bash does almost ~1300 base damage per hit it hands in its arc, for example, versus the ~300 base damage for Level 0.
  • The Dual-Wielded pistols can surprisingly come close to this, as they can become an effective Chaingun replacement [though the Minigun is the best bullet-specific weapon in spite of slowing down the player while firing it to keep it steady], due to having about the same base speed of attack as the chaingun, but with slightly better DPS. And tapping the dual-pistols still keeps both of the initial shots perfectly accurate as well.
  • The Howitzer mode of the Rocket Launcher is a far cry from Blood 2's attempt at the same weapon. The shots can fit through much more confined spaces than physical rockets can, so if you can get the crosshair on the target, they're taking ~2x the damage of a standard rocket for the cost of still just one rocket. The slower firing rate only can compensate for this for so long, especially once you put Aeon Points into the Demolitions Expert perk. Also because the alt-fire of the rocket launcher is a much faster firing but much less accurate version of a normal shot [regardless of the shot type selected], sometimes the firing speed bonus outstrips the hit to accuracy with this weapon, though this still can risk AOE damage to the player like other rockets do.

• Distressed Dude - He never appears in the game proper, but the help screens about Flora reference her husband, Andy Burns, another character from Dragon Quest V (who ended up marrying Flora in the original game as well if the hero didn't choose to marry her himself). The help file references Andy having once been kidnapped to be used as bait to draw Flora into battle to bring out her latent potential by a powerful villian, but in almost all of the Compatibility Packs, which take place 10+ years after she saves him from that villian, he is never said to be in any direct danger in the intermission texts.

• Easier Than Easy - Some options in the mod can effectively do this to a game, however one specific cheat option: Power Fantasy Mode works this way by boosting the attack damage, defense, regeneration speed, etc of a player by 5 or 10 times. The creator however alludes this to more of how Musou titles play with the "one-person-versus-an-army" concept than it's meant to mock players, or for if the player just wants to vent some frustration on the monsters after a hard game.

• Early Game Hell - Depending on your initial skill playing as Flora, you might find yourself constantly save-scumming in the early game due to her overall lack of durablity [she not only has the lowest HP range of the three classes, but takes a bit of extra damage compared to the default Doom Marine as well], which means even the Zombieman's shots can deal ~30 damage, and since Zombiemen can sometimes fire more than one shot before stopping, even they can semi-easily defeat the player in a few seconds if not treated with care.
  • Later on, as Flora gains more spells and accquires some or more pieces of her armor set, she begins to quadratically grow in power, though she can still occasionally get one-shotted if a weakened enemy nails her with a crisis attack [which are 30x the attack's normal damage].

• Emergency Weapon - The Sceptre of Empyrea is one of these for Flora, despite it being her central weapon overall, due to it hitting up to seven enemies for ~300+ damage in a 135 degree arc. It can be a real lifesaver due to this.
  • Melee in general however is also fairly more effective at saving your life against some monsters since melee has a higher chance to stun monsters (also stunning them for 1.5-3.5x longer versus most attacks) vs most non-melee attacks. The Quick Kick in particular can also shove monsters a good distance away from you on a hit in addition to the enhanced stun, giving you some breathing room.
  • Electrical attacks vs mechanical monsters will not only stun them more often, but their stun animation will show an arc of extra electric around them, indicating they were shorted out momentarily, also good for a follow up attack or escape. This even works on Spider Masterminds, Cyberdemons, and their two "evolved" counterparts, the Spider Demolisher and the Cyber-Annihilator.
  • Melee is even more effective versus the Archvile and its evolved Diabloist counterpart, stunning for a long time, more often, and doing 2.5x or 5x the usual damage to them versus other monsters. They are obscenely weak to melee in Aetherius, but pure Magic damage will be a lot less effective on them in return [0.4x or 0.2x damage].

• Enemy Summoner - In addition to the Pain Elemental, there is also the Hades Elemental and Hades Overlord, which both can spawn in Hades Spheres, explosive, electrical red orbs that live solely to self-destruct on their enemies. Killing a Hades Elemental can also spawn four extra Hades Spheres to attack you. The Hades Overlord thankfully, despite being the stronger of these two by far, does not spawn extra Spheres when killed.

• Excuse Plot - Mostly subverted. Most of the Doom-centered "Compatibility Packs" for Aetherius actually have some semblance of an explanation for why Flora is stuck in the perdicament she's in related to that mapset, usually because she's been forcibly depowered on a temporary basis for a trial due to her demon-majordomo friend, Xenolatias [or Xenos for short, as is normally said in the intermission texts for Doom 1/2/TNT/Plutonia, Heretic, Hexen or Strange Aeons compatibility packs] wanting to give her a challenge to keep her skills from getting too rusty. Others like The City of the Damned: Apocalypse and Unloved don't give as clear of explanations to why she is thrown into those situations though.
  • Strife however very much puts Flora in a different universe from her own, starting in the same location as the original nameless mercenary had been, basically replacing him and eventually joining The Front to fight The Order, with the excuse for her not being attacked immediately by most Acolytes for being a woman that some other Acolyte or Order-afflilated robot will take care of her soon. Templars sometimes will even compliment Flora's resolve if you chat with them, attempting to convince her to join the Order directly, and the final boss actually intends to steal her mind and body to take revenge on Empyrea herself for sealing him in the egg he emerges from at the end of the game, and even has an extra phase to the battle if you did the true ending path. This is also one of the few compatibility packs in which those events in her life are those the mod's author considers to have been a straight up canonical event in her life, implying she even took the Sigil back with her to her home universe for safeguarding after the events of the gamemode, though implying she can still use its fullest powers even with the Entity alien dead and gone.
  • The "Hellbound" mapset/compatibility-pack states that Flora was sent on another "trial", to an entirely different universe where the "Doom War" occured in a different yet similar manner, and has to clean up the mess that universe's Hell has caused, while being temporarily depowered at the start of the mapset by Xenos again for the sake of "giving her a challenge" (basically the mod's excuse for Flora not being even more overpowered than she can normally become during actual gameplay, and she is not usually excited to be temporarily depowered in these situations either, perferring to just keep her fuller powers all the time, as this is something Xenolatias puts her through to keep her "from getting too rusty" over time, in his words).
  • The "Strange Aeons" compatiblity pack revolves around Flora finding a strange stone tablet at a bazaar on Earth, and then sleeping at a nearby hotel only to find herself suddenly in the abandoned house of who is latered learned to be the protagonist of the original version of Strange Aeons, long after his own death, and is forced to traverse the same dreamworlds, locales and hazards as said original protagonist, until facing Nyarlathotep himself. Flora even straight up manages to kill him, possibly permenantly this time, after their battle at the end of the fourth episode, though she still has to find R'yleh in episode 5 and stop a plot involving the aformentioned stone tablet and five similar tablets she's accquired over the levels that could rise Cthulhu himself back out of sleep. After defeating his StarSpawn with a bit of help from a Cyber-Annihilator sent by Xenos to help her, the city sinks back into the ocean and the six stone tablets disintergrate, returning Flora back to the normal awakened world, and ending the mapset on a somber note as she learns of said original protagonist from "Strange Aeons" and of the circumstances behind his demise.

• Evil Weapon - Some like Strife's Sigil of the One God are considered this by most people in the lore, though despite this, Flora manages to make better use of its power than the original nameless mercenary does in the original Strife timeline, and lore states after defeating Teiytenth (The Entity) that she takes the Sigil back with her to her home universe to safeguard it from use by any other evil beings who'd covet its powers.
  • Hellcore Souls are also a sort of subclass of this, being Flora is literally turning some of the Hellspawn's own magic against them. It's implied her weird divine and eldritch mixed genetics in Aetherius allow her to handle both weapons of good and evil natures with little to no long-term consequences on herself for it.
  • The mod's creator has also dropped hints that future addons might (if possible) add weapons like the Soul Cube, the Unmaker and the Crucible as weapons Flora (and sometimes the marines) will be able to use with extra perks added onto them, one being a "good" weapon, the others not so much.

• Evolving Weapon - Flora's flagship weapon, the Sceptre of Empyrea actually has its own Level and EXP values, starting at Level 0, and maxing out at Level 16. The appearance of the weapon never appears to change, though it's effective attack range extends gradually per level. The damage of the Level 0 Sceptre is ~300 points, while the Level 16 Sceptre does a base amount of ~1300 points of damage to each thing it hits per swing.

• Fire, Ice, Lightning - All three elements are covered in various spells that all three character classes learn as they level up, though Lightning is the late comer of the three elements, while Ice is the earliest [via the short-ranged but powerful Chill Touch spell]. Some weapons in various gamemodes also carry one of these attributes [i.e. the Phoenix Rod(s) in Heretic are obviously fire-elemental].

• Fragile Speedster - Flora easily. Despite this, she will grow out of the "fragile" part eventually, one way or another.
  • An example that can be done somewhat earlier in the game: investing in the "Life Up" and "Life Up EX" perks will not only give Flora as much as an extra 50% HP overall across the game, but will basically cut all damage to her by at least half, and will somewhat raise her Survivablity Rate, making her significantly harder to kill. Deggairs and Illucia do have "Life Up" as well, but do not have "Life Up EX", so they can only boost their Max HP and reduce overall damage to them by up to ~25%, though in mid-game where they start to lag a bit behind some monster types, this can still be helpful.

• Friendly Fireproof - Enforced in most aspects. Any projectile fired by the player and/or monsters allied to the player will pass through each other and themselves harmlessly with no damage. This even includes super-powerful attacks like BFG shots and Rockets.
  • However, non-projectiles, usually Hitscan attacks, such as melee attacks, the tracers emitted by an actor shooting the BFG, AOE splashes, or bullet-hitscans, will not harmlessly pass through players and allied monsters in these situations. However to mitigate this, players and their allies also only deal ~25% of the usual damage to each other with these attacks to minimize the chance of this being a major issue. This is because the author does not yet know how to make these kinds of attacks ignore players/friendly-monsters, and is subject to chance of a method is discovered.

• Gatling Good - The Minigun is exactly what you'd expect. It has a slightly higher DPS per bullet vs the Chaingun [and the same as bullets specifically fired by the Dual-Wielded Pistols]. However the Minigun does have a "heat" meter that means you cannot hold it down forever unlike the chaingun, and it additionally will cause you to slow down while firing to a certain degree based on your "Bullet Accuracy" perk, since you need to keep the Minigun stablized for decent aim.
  • There is also a Minigun Zombie that is an evolution of the Chaingun Guy. Fortunately, he is actually sometimes an easier foe to deal with, since becoming a zombie seems to have caused them to forget that rule about keeping the Minigun stable, and their shots are way more inaccurate than yours, or that of a Chaingun Guy's. Getting too close to them however is still dangerous.

• Good Old Fisticuffs - All three playable characters can also use their default fists to punch, even Flora who has a much stronger default melee weapon. The fist weapon[s] however also allows the player to enter a cross-guarded arms stance for defense purposes, but allowing you to still quick-kick enemies who get too close. It also further reduces damage to the player from enemy melee attacks versus their non-melee attacks, making it good for fighting Hell Clerics in close range, who are notorious anti-melee combatants with incredibly high melee damage output and also decent ranged damage.
  • The fist weapon also lets the player perform uppercuts which are a much stronger form of single punch though with slightly shorter horizontal range but slightly more vertical coverage. With certain perks at high enough levels, even uppercuts can destroy or deflect projectile attacks as well [as can the normal punches].

• Goomba Stomp - One of the few concepts taken from mods like Brutal Doom and Project Brutality is that Aetherius gives the Cyberdemon and Cyber-Annihilator monsters a proper melee attack in the form of a stomp attack. Unlike the above mods, said stomp is not automatically a One-Hit Kill, but will generally be one early on in a playthrough. The stomp is considered a subclass of melee damage, so certain things can reduce the damage it does overall.
  • The Cyberdemon and Cyber-Annihilator can also switch from shooting rockets immediately into a stomp attack if the player gets close enough to them between rocket shots. Stomps also have some degree of AOE damage as well.

• Grenade Launcher - The Rocket Launcher has this as a firing mode when playing as the Marine classes.
  • Flora doesn't have a proper "launcher", but RockBomb Shards are a more than suitable replacement for actual grenades that are inventory items that can be thrown (even having a quick-bind to throw them), as their explosions have a rare trait in Doom mods, shared mostly only by Blood, where all the frames in the explosion deal some degree of AOE damage and shove enemies around, though unlike the grenades shot by the rocket launcher, they do have a "fire" attribute.
  • Despite most Hellspawn resisting fire to some degree, Rockbomb Shards do admirably at destroying groups of low to even mid-high tier monsters like the Barons of Hell. Moreso, Rockbomb Shards do not inflict self-AOE damage to the player, so they are safe to use even in close quarters. One final note is that the Rockbomb Shard, being exertionally thrown by the player, is affected by having the Berserk buff, in terms of its flight speed and to a lesser extent it's direct impact damage.

• Guide Dang It! - If one doesn't peruse the many help screens in the mod, they may never become aware of the abilities of Focus or Tension or of how to use them, or that the Poison Needle weapon Flora can find, while dealing minimal damage most times, has the ability to randomly one-hit kill even enemies that were considered boss-level monsters in the original Doom like Cyberdemons, etc.
  • Aetherius can be a somewhat difficult mod to get the handle on immediately due to the myriad of possible mechanics available to the player, as some playtesters and streamers who played it have stated, but some have also stated that once you get used to how to do everything, the flow of the mod plays very fluidly.
  • Sometimes even installing the mod itself could be a bit confusing, due to the way it's distributed via GitHub, and due to it being in a folder format [GZDoom can load mapsets/mods as folders, as a subsitute for PK3 files]. The author has tried over time to better explain the process of installing the mod, and the front page of all the different GitHub repositories related to the mod will have a readme section to help install them.

• Guns Akimbo - Deggaris and Illucia can dual-wield the traditional pistols [which are actually slightly more effective overall than the normal chaingun since the bullets will deal slightly higher overall damage].
  • Flora can dual wield the Sapphire Wand from Hexen that the Mage class originally uses. She can also dual wield almost all weapons from Heretic in its respective game mode, plus a new secret weapon, but minus the Gauntlets of the Necromancer, which do not even appear in the Heretic gamemode proper. In Strange Aeons, she can also dual-wield the Impaler Crossbows, but instead of using ammo, she uses MP for firing it, and the Crossbow has a shotgun-equse spread alt-fire mode for an extra MP cost.

• Guns vs. Swords - More of Guns vs. Sceptres. The Marine classes, Deggaris and Illucia use all of the original game's weapons, plus some new ones, such as dual wielding pistols, a Minigun, a Plasma Repeater, an energy Railgun that can be charged up to 20x its base strength [5% for a normal shot vs 100% for a maximum shot], a Karasawa high-density plasma-shuriken launcher, and some of the original weapons have new fire modes [the Rocket Launcher can shoot grenades, drunk/seeker rockets, and has a hitscan-style Howitzer mode not too unlike that of Blood 2, the Plasma Rifle has a rapid-fire random spread emergency mode, and the BFG9000 has its 2704 beta attack as the alt-fire].
  • Meanwhile Flora has virtually no gun or firearm weapons, and mostly uses more medieval themed weapons (as you'd expect from a Dragon Quest character), such as her flagship Sceptre of Empyrea weapon, as well as Hexen's Sapphire Wands [as used by the Mage, except they can be dual-wielded], a Holy-elemental longbow that serves as a magicial railgun that can erase enemy projectiles in its path, as well as the possible souls of several natural-form Hellspawn known as Hellcore Magic, similar to the soul system in Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow and Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow. In Heretic mode, she also gains the ability to use and dual wield all of that game's weapons, plus a brand new one [though the original Gauntlets from Heretic are absent since a "Gauntlets" secret weapon exists that works more like the one the Fighter in Hexen uses]. In Strife mode, she can also use the Crossbow w/ both Electric and Poison bolts, and also use the game's titular Sigil of the One God super weapon.
  • All classes also additionally can use the aformentioned Gauntlets of Sauron, able to drain HP/MP [and even Armor Points for the Marines] to the player when punching a hostile monster with them, in addition to accquiring the damaged shield of a Hell Warrior, which can be used for an idle defense buff when equipped, a greater defense buff when alt-fired to guard yourself, and a slow but piercing green fireball that goes through all enemies in its path.
  • If playing the Happy Time Circus 2 Compatilbility Pack, all three characters can also use all of that mapset's weapons in addition to their defaults, such as the Clown Grenades, Gore Balloons, Gut Flinger, Gas Rocket Launcher, Popcorn Gun and Crazy Balls.

• Half-Human Hybrid - Flora's retconned genetic history in Aetherius basically makes her not at all human despite appearing so, and having the personality traits of one, mostly because she was raised from birth as a human by other humans due to circumstances just after she was born. This makes her by and far the character with the most potential of the three playable character classes, while Deggaris and Illucia, while much stronger than even the classic Doom Marine, are still (as we know) 100% human.

• Heal Thyself - The Heal spells, as well as the Medicinal Herbs, Miracle Potion and Yggdrasil Dew [the latter can heal a group of allies plus the player at once provided said allies are within a decent distance of the player]. These items and spells can be used on yourself, but if the <Spell Alternates> button is held down, the healing spells turn into projectiles that seek the nearest allied monster/NPC to heal them.
  • If you use this button with an inventory item capable of healing, you can visually target an ally at close range [this is indicated by seeing the ally-in-question's lifebar/stats at the top of the screen], and being close enough when "using" it to heal them instead of you.
  • Heretic/Hexen mode also allow use of the Quartz Flask, Mystic Urn and Mystic Ambit Incants. Strife mode also allows use of the Med Patch, Med Kit and Surgery Kits in addition to the above for healing [yourself or allies].
  • However only the Major Healing spell, Mystic Ambit Incant, Mystic Urn, and Surgery Kit can heal someone above 100% health/HP.

• Heart Container - Though they're not as efficient as an actual heart container, the "Maximum HP Bonus" resembles the Mega Man X heart tanks from the PS1 titles, and they give a ~1HP max bonus boost per pickup [higher amounts way later in the game].
  • There are however also other permenant stat boosting items, in the form of the many seeds from the Dragon Quest games. There's also a couple of seeds that give Aeon Points, or an ultra-rare Fygg fruit from Dragon Quest 9 that gives the player +16 to most of their stats, a big deal if found.

• Heel–Face Turn - If the player [or an allied Archvile/Diabloist/Banshee] resurrects a once-hostile monster, they are turned into your ally. This works in reverse however if an enemy resurrector revives a once-friendly monster/NPC.

• Heroic Ambidexterity - Implied with all instances of dual-wielding weapons give the implication that Deggaris, Illucia and Flora are fairly ambidexterous.

• Heroic Mime - Not fully straight with Flora, as she has voice clips occasionally when leveling up, summoning in monster allies, using Healing spells, etc. However she does not have very specific types of voice clips, such as one-liners or weapon pickup sounds like you'd hear in BUILD engine games, as her voice lines are actually lifted from Dragon Quest Heroes 1. The marines don't have any voiced lines, though they do have different sound sets for grunts/pain-sounds/etc.

• Heroes Fight Barehanded - All characters have a "fist" weapon for close quarters combat, despite having other possible melee weapons (the Marines' chainsaws, Flora's sceptre, the Gauntlets of Sauron, etc.), and all are still a lot less gimmicky in terms of use than the original fist weapon of the Doom Marine in the original game, since they can perform a cross-armed guarding stance to return damage, uppercut enemies, and with high levels of melee-centric perks, punch as fast as lightning, to where even Flora would seem like a sort of Kenshiro and/or Star Platinum expy.
  • Also much as in the original game, the Berserk buff multiplies the damage of these melee attacks tenfold. If you punch a wall with berserk active (or with a "Strength" stat at 32 or higher), the screen will slightly shake versus when punching without Berserk to imply how much force the player is putting into their punches/kicks/uppercuts.

• Hitscan - Much like Mods such as Demonsteele, hitscan attacks by default are replaced by Tracers, very fast projectiles more meant to feel like proper ballistic fire from monsters. This can be set back to the default hitscan attacks via an option, however take note that Tracers are considered projectiles and thus will harmlessly clip through allied monsters and the player themself if the Tracers were fired by you or another allied monster, where as hitscans [also melee hitscans] cannot harmlessly pass through them and will deal friendly fire damage [albiet very reduced damage].

• 100% Completion - Aetherius rewards players for being completionists, for kills, secrets and items, each type giving 1+ Aeon Point(s) (or 10+% of the EXP for the next level if that option is set), and then a full level completion bonus which gives 2+ Aeon Points (or 20+% of the EXP for the next level if that option is set).
  • The individual bonuses are more per category if a certain threshold of kills/items/secrets is met or exceeded. Every 512 Monsters, 8 Secrets, and 384 items on the counter is +1 Aeon Point (or +10% EXP) for that completion bonus. This will also boost the full level completion bonus as well.
  • Though not a completion bonus, you can also meet certain kill/item/secret quotas over the course of the game for bonus Aeon Points. By default, this is for every 512 kills, every 8 secrets, and every 384 items found, and the bonus resets/repeats itself.

• Hyperspace Arsenal - By default this is set to be subverted, compared to the likes of the author's other mod, "Naferia's Reign: Invasion of the Dark Mistress", which had all but unlimited inventory for all the different items the mod's party could hold. Aetherius does have an option that allows all but unlimited (i.e 9999 of each) carrying limits for all inventory items for those who don't want to deal with this, though this has no effect on ammo limits.
  • Ammo and the amount of each inventory item the player can hold is determined by multiple factors, such as how many of the mod's "backpack" analouges are currently in the player's possession. Backpacks and their equalvalents (Flora will instead find "Interdimensional Bags", for example) do not just instantly double ammo capacity, but slowly and gradually extend both the limits of ammo types and inventory items, meaning finding more than one backpack is encouraged, and some enemy types are even more likely to drop a backpack analogue when killed, such as Hell Nobles.
  • Your "Strength" stat as well as your Level also have an overall effect on the number of items and limits of your ammo you can carry. Essentially a dynamic inventory and ammo limit system. This is partially altered in Hexen's game mode where backpack-like items do not exist at all, instead giving the player 5x their default limits from the get go, and not requiring backpack-like items at all to extend ammo or inventory limits.

• Kick Chick - Illucia and Flora can do this via the quick-kick bind with any of their weapons, with or without use of the "Berserker Fit"/"Martial Arts Mastery" perk(s), though having these perks at high levels give both kicking speeds comparable to Chun-Li herself, and with a much higher damage output on top of that.
  • Of extra note is Deggaris is also able to quick-kick with any of his own weapons, though his kicking speed is fairly slower, even with "Berserker Fit" maxed out than that of Illucia or Flora, though still much faster than someone like Duke Nukem at that point.

• Kill It with Fire - Fire is very effective against some enemies outside of the Doom gamemode, such as Hexen's Wendigo, Heretic's Ice/Frost Golem evolution, Heretic's Ice Lich evolution, Hexen's Ice/Frost Stalker evolution, and so on. Only Zombies and normal Revenants in the default Doom gamemode take any extra fire damage, while most others will take some degree of reduced damage from fire, especially Dark Imps and Death Incarnates, who take almost no real damage at all from fire.
  • Though they cannot be killed permenantly until the boss of the mapset is defeated, Clay Devils in "The City of the Damned: Apocalypse" will take a lot more damage from fire, and they are downed for a lot longer before they self-resurrect if defeated by fire.

• Kill It with Ice - Extremely effective to use Ice against Archviles and Diabloists, as it will deal 66% extra damage, and stun them for an extended time. Ice is also generally a more effective element in the default Doom gamemode since most Hellspawn favor fire over ice. Pyro Demons (one of the strongest evolutions of Hell Nobles) take absurdly high damage from ice and are stunned for multiple seconds when hit by it.
  • Additionally, over 90% of all monsters across all of the Compatibilty Packs and gamemodes will freeze solid and eventually shatter from fatal ice damage, much as in Hexen proper. This removes their existence from a map entirely, meaning they will not be able to self-resurrect/respawn or be resurrected by other monsters. Some rare monsters who don't freeze solid would be the Clay Devils in "The City of the Damned: Apocalypse", a permenantly self-resurrecting monster that is intended to be avoided in the long run as they will slowly gain extra Levels/stats each time they self-resurrect. The other monster is the melee-only "Skeleton Warrior" in the Strange Aeons pack, who only has a small chance to freeze solid from fatal ice hits, up to a set amount of times, where they will then just burst apart into a pile of bones.
  • This is also one other way to permenantly remove Death Incarnates from a level and thus, possible self-resurrecting, without having to overkill them first.

• Last Chance Hit Point - The "SV%" stat, or Survivability Rate is the chance of this happening for the player in a % value. Flora in particular can raise this as high as 80+% if she gets her hands on all eleven of her unique armor items and at least Sauron's Helmet and Gauntlets [more so if drops for The One Ring are enabled and she accquires it as well]. Defense buffs also increase this to a certain degree.
  • Additionally, all three classes even have unique perks that when invested into will specifically activate when they survive a hit like this, such as instantly Psyching Up one or more levels, a large and sudden amount of MP recovery, or emitting a blast wave that shoves everything around them back, or Deggaris's own where he slips into a temporarily invulnerable rage for ~30 seconds.

• Let's Play - Though not many full ones exist, two streamers and one Youtube member have done full playthroughs of the mod at different phases in its development, such as WhamNinjaMoleHill (version from mid 2017), JohnSuitePee (a very very recent version from February 2020) and multiple older and newer playthroughs by the author's good friend SeriousCacodemon which can be found on his videos page. The above three are also credited on the credits page of the mod as playtesters.

• Level Scaling - Monsters will slowly level up alongside the player, though some options also persist that can add both a fixed number of levels and add a percentage more levels to a monster on load-up to make the game more challenging overall. However, unlike in "Naferia's Reign: Invasion of the Dark Mistress" which silently rerolled the stats/levels of any non-active monster on the map when a character leveled up, monsters in Aetherius do not get their levels rerolled this way, usually only having them set when the map loads or individual monsters are spawned into the map, though if monsters are killed and then resurrected, their stats do get rerolled upon resurrection, and some monsters like the Clay Devil (in "The City of the Damned: Apocalypse) will gain bonus levels based on how many times they've resurrected, gradually making them more and more difficult and more desirable to just avoid fighting over time.

• Lightning Bruiser - Even the mage-like and somewhat frail Flora will eventually turn into one of these at some point, usually around the time of finishing Doom's 2 MAP31/MAP32 analouges of the current mapset. This is further accentuated with the Sceptre of Empyrea being able to level up itself over time, making the already somewhat-overpowered melee weapon an outright beast in mid to late game.

• Loose Canon - In regards to the role (if any) that specific mapsets and Compatiblity Packs are considered true canon to Flora, Deggaris and Illucia's stories in Aetherius. Many can be loosely considered one-shot "what-if" scenarios, such as "Knee Deep in ZDoom" or even ones like "Hellbound" and "Epic 2", in terms to if or if not they're things the characters actually experience in the canonical lore.
  • On the other hand, it's implied the events of the Strife gamemode are indeed full-on canon events for Flora in the grander lore of the mod (also implying she takes the Sigil back to her home universe to guard it from being used by more undesirable types back in its home universe, for example). More so, some Compatiblity Packs will momentarily reference things from other ones, such as references to events from "The City of the Damned: Apocalypse" in the intermission screens of "The Ultimate Torment N' Torture", or references to both of those compatiblity packs in the intermission texts of the "Strange Aeons" compatibility pack when Leng Spiders are explained, referencing the spiders loosely in service of Darkmoon in TCOTD:A, and the mini-boss ones serving The Source in TUTNT.

• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me - The Hell Warrior's Shield is an unique weapon all three playable classes can equip, dropped by said somewhat-annoying Hell Noble class monster [who is also no longer fully immune to damage himself while having the shield raised], and is considered a hybrid of a normal weapon and a Hellcore-class weapon, though it will use MP as ammunition for it's main attack, which is a slow, green piercing fireball that will tunnel through anything in its path for moderate damage. However the shield can also be used for defense, and even when just unsheathed as your current weapon, provides a decent defensive buff to the player. If the player holds down [or taps, depending on the mod option] the alt-fire key, they will raise the shield and become more resistant to damage and be able to deflect projectiles back at attackers. Holding up the shield like this isn't truly free though and slowly drains the player's stamina meter (though you can increase stamina regeneration overtime via various buffs, perks, etc. to the point it'll negate the cost entirely for some classes).

• Luck Stat - Deftness, represented by a green icon with a four-leaf clover in it on the HUD. This also slightly effects EXP bonuses, being that every 96 points of it gives an extra 100% EXP for any kill (or +1.0416666~% bonus EXP per point). Also will make stat-boosting seeds drop more often when it exceeds certain thresholds. It also slightly affects the occurance of critical hits as you'd also expect.

• Magic Wand - The Sapphire Wand is a weapon for Flora that is ported over from Hexen, being it is the first weapon of the "Mage" class in that game, but is also a bit improved on and altered in general. The shots have smaller hitboxes, so they fit in tighter spaces than the original version's do, and while they don't do a ton of damage, they still pierce multiple targets, though they only deal damage once per enemy, so super-wide monsters like the Spider Mastermind aren't utterly devastated [until way later in a playthrough]. They also have a 3-shot burst fire mode, though the shots take a hit to horizontal accuracy and do only 2/3s their normal damage each. They also now cost a base of 2MP per shot, though this cost can be lowered to 1MP eventually via the Wand/Staff Mastery perk.
  • Also they can be dual-wielded if you find a second wand lying around. And another bonus is that if you have one/both wands equipped, they give a minor boost to your natural MP regeneration speed (though this bonus also gets stronger with the 'Wand/Staff Mastery perk boosted, to the point having two wands equipped gives a +210% regeneration speed boost). This bonus can also be paired with the Focus'' ability for insane MP regeneration in bursts.
  • The shots from the wand(s) also have a small chance to be a type of shot capable of erasing enemy projectiles and blocking enemy tracers/bullets, though unlike Diaris Arrows, these are not even close to a guarantee. There is a different sound for the shots that do this though, and the shots appear scaled up slightly [but are no larger in terms of their actual hitboxes] to help the player note this. Multiple factors [again including the Wand/Staff Mastery perk] can boost the chances of these shots being fired though.

• Mecha-Mooks - Blood Demons are custom, mechanically upgraded versions of the original Pinky Demon, which are stronger and faster in multiple ways, and unlike most mods depicting them, also erratically and random strafe left or right in bursts as they charge at their targets, causing disorder and chaos. Some even worse so have been given Chainguns that're placed in their mouths and give them a ranged attack against the player. If the Marine classes kill this specific type of Blood Demon, their Chaingun falls out of their mouth, intact for the player to grab.

• Mercy Invincibility - There is one instance of this, when a player survives an otherwise fatal hit w/ 1 HP left, they will flicker for 1.5 to 2 seconds and be unable to take any more damage until it stops.

• Mission Control - Not really seen most of the time, but the help page for the Sceptre of Empyrea implies that its titualar creator, the godbird Empyrea from the Dragon Quest series, can communicate with Flora through it [it's also implied in the Strange Aeons mode that Empyrea can also communicate with Xenolatias this way as well, to coordinate their efforts to unlock the mysteries of the Eldritch stone tablets Flora's been finding throughout the gamemode's five episodes]. The ending stinger of "The City of the Damned: Apocalypse"'s gamemode also has a few rare instances of seeing Empyrea's dialouge on-screen before she teleports Flora out of the area to get her home.

• Mons - There are multiple ways to "recruit" enemies to your side, either by using the Summon Monster spells (which even have ones specific to summoning Archviles/Diabloists and Cyberdemons at higher levels, or by using a Monster Munchies when a monster is nearby to convert them into a buffed-up ally. Friendly monsters [and NPCS in general will emit white or gold sparkles every few moments when you're near them to indicate to you of their friendliness.
  • There are also key binds to recall allies to your position, and if this bind is used while targetting a hostile monster (if you can see said monster's lifebar/stats at the top middle of the screen), all recalled monsters will be forced to target said hostile monster despite whether they had a previous target or not.

• Night-Vision Goggles - The Light Amplification Goggles can do this with the right GZDoom game settings. The "Night Vision" spell also does this. This will also reveal nigh-stealthy monsters and make them a lot less transperant and easier to see when used. Also, depending on the option for Light Amplification set in GZDoom, the player character's eyes glow either white or green depending on the option, showing attention to detail.

• No "Arc" in "Archery" - The Diaris Longbow, as well as the Crossbows in Heretic, Strife and Strange Aeons, will fire all their shots with no gravity to pull them to the ground.

• One-Hit Kill - The Poison Needle weapon for Flora, a weapon also imported from her own native game series of Dragon Quest, is generally a very weak weapon that while it will constantly stun monsters, only does 1-2 points of damage, if even that. It however has the gimmick of that when it inflicts a "critical" hit, it deals overkilling amounts of damage to the victim [3-5x their maximum HP, assuring even most self-reviving enemies like Death Incarnates are down for real]. This chance of a Critical Hit is fixed and not the same as the normal critical hit rate of the player though, averaging about 1 out of 8 times.
  • However unlike in Dragon Quest, you can find extra Poison Needles which can be straight up thrown at enemies, and depending on an option, will have to be manually retrieved, or will automatically return to you upon hitting something, but for an MP cost. These thrown needles work exactly like the melee version, instant-kill critical hits included. It's also a rare ranged weapon that is affected by the Berserk status, being an "exertion-thrown weapon", and does 10x its normal damage in either melee or thrown form [and will fly faster at enemies if in Berserk status].

• One Person Army - Your character will become significantly stronger than any original iteration of the classic Doomguy after leveling up a few times. However Flora is almost quadratically stronger in this aspect due to how her weapons and spells work over longer gameplay time, as well as her unique and non-destructible armor items [if the player can get most or all of them], to the point most players will feel fairly overpowered by the time they pass the secret levels in Doom 2, while at the same point, the Marine classes are generally on even footing, if not struggling to keep up with certain monster types, or somewhat stronger overall than most other monsters.

• Parrying Bullets - The default swing of the Sceptre of Empyrea, and punches/kicks/uppercuts [when certain perks are at high enough levels] can destroy or deflect projectiles while still attacking at the same time.

• Pinball Projectile - A good number of attacks from both player and monster alike do this.
  • The Magic Missile spell family is the first example probably encountered. The shots are non-elemental, and aren't super-powerful on their own, but they can bounce off walls to attack enemies off screen, and if the <Spell Alternates> key is held down, they also become "seeking" missiles that go after the closest monster in their "line of sight".
  • RockBomb Shards (a non self-damaging grenade inventory item) can be tossed and will bounce about 8 times before erupting into flames. It is also a rare attack whose impact damage and movement speed are also affected by having the Berserk buff, as they are thrown via physical exertion, which Berserk amplifies.
  • The charming food piece shot by using Monster Munchies will also bounce off surfaces, whether you set the shot to seek out a nearby hostile monster or not.
  • The energy "shuriken" created by the Karasawa weapon for the Marine classes does this as well, making a slight *bzzt*ing sound for each bounce.
  • Of course, the grenades fired by one of the Rocket Launcher's firing modes have a limited number of bounces in them as well.

• Power-Up - In addition to the original powerups of Doom/Heretic/Hexen/Strife, Aetherius adds new ones, such as a Berserk Sphere in Heretic mode that has the same effect as a full-sized Berserk Pack in Doom.
  • Other powerups include ones that give Double Damage, Double Defense, Speed Up, a Fear Aura that scares away enemies, a Spread Aura effect that multiplies the number of shots per attack by 3 or 7 times [akin to the Rune from Skulltag and Zandronum], or the Divination Sphere, that gives a megabuff that gives 4x Damage, 4x Defense, 2x Speed, boosted natural regeneration rates, a High Jump buff, and even a boost to the firing speed of many weapons, a buff normally only the Divine Avatar spell can give you, but in sphere form. Lastly, there is even a Time Freeze Sphere that stop time around the player for 15 seconds at a time. All spheres and their time durations can stack too, including the original powerups like the Blur Sphere, Invulnerablity Sphere, Light Amp Goggles, Radiation Suit, etc.
  • "Strange Aeons'' gamemode also adds the Double Fire Rate sphere and the Infinite Ammo sphere on top of the above as well.

• Purely Aesthetic Gender - Played with in regards to playing a Deggaris [a male Doomguy-like class w/ low magic potential] vs Illucia [a female Doomguy-like glass w/moderate-high magic potential].
  • Some differences are prevalent in their HP/durablity, MP levels, as well as some of their starting weapon loadouts. Deggaris has akimbo pistols to start, as well as the base Shotgun. Illucia has only a single pistol, but also the shotgun and plasma rifle, as well as being speedier and capable of using more overall magic spells than Deggaris [with exception to the Poison Cloud spells which Deggaris gets all of while she gets none].

• Quad Damage - The Divine Avatar gives this kind of 4x damage effect [but it also gives a 4x defense effect, a high-jump effect, and much more movement speed, faster attacking speed, faster/stronger regeneration, etc. as a sort of superbuff for the player] when either cast as a spell, or accquired through finding a Divination Sphere. There are other damage-multiplying buffs and powerups, but they are usually only that of the double damage type.
  • Another type of powerup/buff that doesn't directly increase the damage of each shot is the Spread Aura buff, which allows the player to shoot 2 or 6 extra copies of their current attack for free, similar to how the Rune of the same name in Skulltag and Zandronum would do this. This effect even works on healing spells, throwing Rockbomb Shards, shooting Monster Munchies, or using melee attacks.
  • The Berserk status effect is still a 10x multiplier for all exertion-based melee damage, and a partial multiplier now for Chainsaw weapons. This even affects the Sceptre of Empyrea with its' ~300 base damage per hit (making it closer to ~3000 per hit via Berserk). Because of this however, the mod author changed Berserk to no longer persist until a level ends, giving it a tangible time limit [though the timer for the Berserk buff, like others, can have its timer layered, even past 999 seconds].
  • In Heretic mode, the Tome of Power is removed, but Flora can use the Tomed modes of each weapon by using the weapon's alt-fire, though this also additionally costs some of her MP to use these to compensate, with the Firemace's insta-kill mega-sized spheres costing 50 MP per Firemace to fire.
  • A permenant example is the Falcon Knife Earrings, one of Flora's eleven unique armor items, and one of the rarer drops. This is for good reason, as it will permenantly double all damage she deals with all attacks for the rest of the current playthrough, in addition to giving a further +33.3~% damage bonus to her Punches/Kicks/Uppercuts on top of that, though it gives very little defensive protection individually compared to her other armor items.

• Quick Melee - Quick-Kicking specifically. This is available to all three classes, with any of their weapons. The kick can shove enemies backwards a good distance to give yourself breathing room, and can supplement attacks well due to the kick also having a higher chance to stun all monsters, and put them into a somewhat extended stun period. The kick can even destroy or deflect projectiles when certain perks are at high levels without hurting the player [unless they destroy an explosive attack].
  • There are a few rare instances where you cannot kick though, such as when Flora is using the alt-fire shield ability from the Sceptre of Empyrea, since it wouldn't make sense for her to try to kick at the Sceptre while doing this.
  • You can however kick even while firing your weapon in recent versions. Older versions of the mod had it you could only kick when you weren't already in the middle of an attack animation.

• Random Encounters - Most of the stock Doom and Heretic monsters, and some Hexen ones [and a single Strife monster] have the chance to "evolve" when a map loads, turning them into a stronger monster within their "type" or "species". Zombiemen can turn into Plasma Rifle Guys or Repeater Zombies, or even Rocket Zombiemen, for example, and that's just Zombiemen. Hell Nobles in particular have close to 10 possible types, from Hell Knights to Pyro Demons or even Flying Balrogs and Hierophants. Even the Spider Mastermind and Cyberdemon have at least one evolution themselves, both much more dangerous than the originals.

• Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs - If the "Berserker Fit" perk for the Marine classes, or the "Martial Arts Mastery" perk for Flora are at a high enough level (4 or 5), the player's default "fist" weapon will have them able to do this, and the punches are also able to destroy or deflect enemy projectiles (mostly) harmlessly. Flora's punch animation also changes in this state, becoming more like the kind you'd see Kenshiro and/or Star Platinum able to do.

• Rare Random Drop / Random Number God - One of the most prevalent aspects of Aetherius is the sheer amount of RNG involved in almost all things. Especially when playing as Flora when her unique and non-destroyable armor items can randomly drop from an enemy sometimes. Hellcore Souls are also subject to this, though there is a 4x better chance to get a soul from a monster type you do not yet have any souls of at least. Also the rare Fygg (+16 permenantly to most stats) and The One Ring (a drop of similar rarity and covetation to the Ring of Varda in Symphony of the Night) items are also one of those items you need to have a four-leaf, Cacodemon-shaped clover to find constantly.
  • In recent versions though, The One Ring is not set to drop by default and the option must be changed for it to spawn at all. This is because of how broken things get once the Ring is found by the player. The other items in the Sauron set, such as his helmet and gauntlets, will still be able to drop by default however.

• Red Shirt - Front soldiers in Strife mode are a big inversion on this in Aetherius, provided the player accquired as many Stamina and Accuracy upgrades as possible [especially before the siege of the castle, where up to three of these can be accquired each]. The mod takes into account that any of these upgrades you accquired, so did they, thus making them take a lot more punishment and deal a lot more of it. Sometimes when you first get to the castle, the Front Soldiers will tear through more than half of the Order's Acolytes and Crusaders alone before you know what's even happening. Thankfully, being allied NPCs, you'll still get 65-90% of the EXP from their kills.
  • When using the Teleporter Beacon, this also applies to the Front soldiers that are teleported in. If you use one when you're fully maxed out on Stamina/Accuracy upgrades, they'll be just as maxed out as you on them. The castle siege is just the most known and prominent example the player will encounter of this attention to detail with the Front soldiers' stats.

• Regenerating Health - Though this exists, it is extremely slow, in that on average, it takes 3-5 seconds to regenerate one 'interval' of health, usually only 1 HP worth at a time. If playing as Flora, she has extra options for regeneration by grabbing the Dove's Ribbon, which adds more regeneration strength and speed, as well as negating health degeneration at >100%, and allowing natural regeneration up to 200% HP. The Divine Avatar spell also gives this effect to all classes when used [and layers with the Dove Ribbon when playing as Flora], but only lasts ~30 seconds per cast.

• Regenerating Mana - MP regenerates a good deal faster versus HP, though it still only regenerates 1 MP per 'interval' [at first]. It's only about 1.2-1.4 seconds per interval. This can be hyperaccelerated by using the Focus ability by holding <Run> and <Zoom>. It boosts regeneration rate by 4x, and it will sometimes add 1-2+ extra MP per regeneration interval.
  • If you play as Flora, once you get the total value of Sorcery and Therapeusis to a multiple of 20, you'll regeneration more MP in general per interval [+1-2 MP per 20 total points], and even more so while Focusing. Deggaris and Illucia need a slightly higher total of the two stats for their multiple for this, but they can also get to this point as well.
  • Increasing Sorcery and Therapeusis also gradually lowers the time needed for each MP-regeneration interval as well, so this works doubly for MP recovery purposes, and for Flora, makes it more viable to constantly use the Sapphire Wands, which directly consume MP as their ammo. This is good because Diaris Arrows, while also being able to pierce multiple enemies for far more damage [and always enemy erase projectiles] are less common, and are [in Doom mode anyways] the sole truly finite ammo type Flora has.

• Road Runner PC - Though all three current characters in Aetherius have some degree of faster movement speed than the original Doom marine, Flora is far and away the fastest among the three in terms of base speed.
  • Additionally, mulitple factors can both increase or decrease your movement speed, such as certain buffs, or how overcharged the player's stamina is. You can also set a base speed % for the player to move at or a % for how much stats/buffs/etc affect the player's speed in the mod's options.

• RPG Elements - Just as in the author's other major project for Duke Nukem 3D: "Naferia's Reign: Invasion of the Dark Mistress", Aetherius is greatly inspired by RPGs such as Dragon Quest, among others.

• Run, Don't Walk - As in Demonsteele, running is the default movement type, as walking no longer works. The Run key is now used for several button combinations for things such as Focus [hypercharging MP regeneration at the cost of blindness and reduced defense], and Tension, taken from later games in the Dragon Quest series.

• Secondary Fire - Most weapons:
  • The Rocket Launcher and Plasma Rifle for the marine classes have a burst-fire mode that sacrifices accuracy for both faster firing, and in the case of the Plasma Rifle, a sort of rapid-firing multi-shot, "mini-shotgun" effect. The weapon perks affecting these weapons will choke their accuracy to being better overall, but it still won't give them perfect pin-point accuracy. The Plasma Rifle and Rocket Launcher zombies can also use these rapid fire modes of these two weapons at random, sometimes taking unsuspecting players by surprise.
  • The BFG9000 has it's beta-version attack, a spread of up to 40+ red and green plasma balls described as "looking like Christmas". The BFG Commando can also use this variant of the BFG's attack against the player.
  • The Karasawa High-Density Energy Weapon normally shoots a sort of shredding, bouncing energy shuriken ahead that pierces multiple targets. The alt-fire will fire a shotgun spread of seven of these shuriken shots in a spread, and takes a long time to cool down from the shot before shooting again or deequipping the weapon. Thankfully, unlike the above weapons, the Karasawa using zombie seems to be unaware of this firing mode and doesn't use it against you.
  • All characters' fist weapons will have them throw an uppercut with the alt-fire mode.
  • If the character has found Sauron's Gauntlets, they can be used as a punching weapon similar to the Fighter's gauntlets in Hexen. The alt-fire throws a powerful haymaker, but at the cost of ~15-25% of the player's stamina per haymaker.
  • Flora's Sapphire Wand(s) have an alt-fire, based on another Hexen-centric mod known as "Wrath of Cronos", which is a 3-shot burst fire for 3x the MP. The shots however have a hit to their horizontal accuracy, and do only 2/3s of the damage of a non-burst shot.
  • All weapons from the Heretic gamemode have their tomed attack as the alt-fire, due to Flora's magic expertise allowing her to do this without the use of an item. The compensation for this though is that the alt-fires also cost some of her MP to use, with the instant-killing megaspheres of the Firemace each costing 50 MP per shot [or 100 MP when using dual-wielded Firemaces]. This also extends to the new "secret weapon" in the game mode (which can also be dual-wielded if you are lucky enough to find a second of its type somewhere in the game).
  • In Strange Aeons' compatibility pack, the Scepter[s] of Souls and the Impaler Crossbow[s] also have alt-fire modes, the alt-fire of the Scepter of Souls being a bigger area of effect ahead of the player that also does more damage, and the Crossbow's alternate fire a "shotgun" spread of arrows like its normal fire mode.
  • The Hell Warrior's Shield has a sort of alt-fire that depending on a mod option, has to be held down or tapped to put the shield up to further defend the player from incoming damage [and will usually deflect projectiles off of them back towards attackers]. This will consume a bit of stamina constantly in exchange however.

• Sequence Breaking - Since jumping and crouching are enabled in Aetherius by default for the sake of mobility and evasiveness in combat, it can become easy to do this in many mapsets which were made with vanilla mechanics and tactics in mind. Even if Jumping and Crouching are turned off, the Flight spell family will do as it states when used, allowing the player to fly around and risk breaking sequence anyways, to the point the author generally just perfers you keep Jumping/Crouching on and "resist the urge to sequence break anyways".

• Shield-Bearing Mook - Hell Warriors are the default kind in the main Doom gamemode, while Death Knights can appear in the Heretic gamemode, Centaurs and Slaughtaurs appear in the Hexen gamemode, and Acolytes in the Strife gamemode.
  • However unlike in their original incarnations, they are no longer completely immune to most damage while shield-guarding [though the Acolyte's shield originally had no purpose mechanically, it does let it guard against a small amount of damage while flinching and shooting at the player in Aetherius], however, the monsters who could deflect projectiles, still do, so be careful nonetheless.
  • Killing a Hell Warrior drops its shield for you to accquire as a weapon. Having it equipped gives a default defensive boost to the player, but using the Alt-fire mode puts the shield up for a bonus defense boost. Additionally the primary fire will shoot the green, ripping shots that Hell Warriors could use against you.

• Shock and Awe - Various electric attacks exist, spell and monster attack alike. Most mechanical monsters are both stunned longer and usually take a lot more bonus damage from lightning/electric attacks. Some monsters are very resistant to electric however, such as Hades Elementals and Hades Overlords, and some armor items can make the player more resistant to electricity themselves [though it cannot temporarily paralyze a player like in some games].

• Shout-Out - When you die, there is an option to have one of several special "Game Over" themes play, even including the memetic "You are Dead" song from Total Distortion, the entire 2 and a half minutes of it. Others include Dragon Quest's own "Thou Art Dead" theme, as well as "Game Over Yeah" from Sega Rally, or the super creepy march-like theme that plays when you die in Robinson's Requiem for other examples.
  • The Hellcore Magic system, comprising of Flora taking the souls of certain demons for her own use, is directly inspired by the Souls system in Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow and Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow and the Shards mechanic from Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, down to having 9 levels of strength for each soul. The souls are almost exclusively "Bullet" soul types, going by Sorrow terminology, none of them being passive effects, though some having multiple fire modes and some having alt-fire modes to do things like resurrecting monsters or summoning certain allied monsters. Also, all souls in the game are from non-mechanical and natural Hellspawn, such as Imps, Cacodemons, Hell Nobles, or even new monsters like the terrifying Hades class monsters.
  • There is one inventory item in the default mode of Aetherius that is either not from or inspired directly by Dragon Quest, that being the Miracle Potion, taken instead from Sudeki. The potion was an item concept pitched to the creator by a friend who is both a playtester and working on future addons for the mod that include some Sudeki characters and elements, and the potion was added as a singular "full-heal" item for HP and MP after Yggdrasil Dew was given more important uses [such as fully healing the player and a large group of their allies within a certain vicinity of them]. The Miracle Potion was also very recently given the extra perk of greatly diminishing Flora's Hellcore Heat [by >125% per potion] when used, and got a boost to its overall drop rate due to this.

• Shows Damage - Of the "Flying Numbers" variety. The DamNums mod is not necessary to run with Aetherius as it has its own damage-indicator system that also has damage backdrops behind the numbers that differ depending on if you did a normal hit, a Critical Hit, hit a weakness attribute of the monster, or a resisted attribute of the monster.

• Snake People - In addition to the Ophidians, Heretic mode also has two evolutions to their species in Aetherius: first being the half Ophidian, half Nell Noble Abyssal Guard, who care a staff that shoots golden, fairly-powerful shots in a random spread, but isn't so snake like, having the lower body of the aformentioned Hell Nobles while having the upper body of the Ophidian.
  • However a higher evolution is the Serpathor, a medusa equse snake amazonian that both has a near-instantaeous glare that can either paralyze lesser targets, or greatly slow down the player's movement speed for longer than most attacks that can debuff speed. Worse, she has possession of a Pheonix Rod, and has little wind-up or tell to her attack, meaning up close, you're in a huge amount of danger of getting flambeed by one, though their shots deal half the damage of your own Phoenix Rod, and they can some times drop them for you to pick up [or more likely, drop Flame/Inferno Orbs to use with the Phoenix Rod].

• Speed Blitz - Flora will be renowned for pulling off these during the game compared to the other classes, especially if you upgrade her "Martial Arts Mastery" to the point her punches alone would make Kenshiro and Star Platinum proud of her.
  • An extra bonus option will even change Flora's battle shouts when punching or kicking when said perk above is level 4 or above, though this does not change anything in actual gameplay.

• Special Attack - When Flora's Sceptre of Empyrea has reached Level 2, and Flora herself reaches Level 8, you can perform a 360-degree spin attack by holding down <Strafe Left> & <Strafe Right> and hitting the primary fire button. You can also perform this in the middle of having the sceptre "primed" for a regular swing and hitting <Strafe Left> & <Strafe Right> together. An icon even shows up at the bottom right of the screen w/ the weapon's stats to show the player the attack is available.

• Spin to Deflect Stuff - Flora can do this with the alt-fire of her main weapon, the Sceptre of Empyrea, though it will cost 2MP a second and some stamina per second [lower when the Sceptre's Level increases] for her to do this. It deflects or blocks almost all ranged attacks [except Railgun attacks, which will still deal reduced damage to Flora though] from the front and somewhat to both her sides. It also acts as a "Defend" command in RPG terms, reducing any damage Flora does still receive from other angles or railgun shots is at least reduced by half while doing this. At higher Sceptre Levels, this defense bonus is even greater as well.

• Spread Shot - Given as a buff by either a specific powerup sphere or a spell that only Flora learns to use. Similar to Skulltag and Zandronum having its "Spread Rune", this buff multiples the number of shots from the player [regardless of their type] by 3 or 7 times in specific patterns, depending on which of two levels of the buff are in effect.
  • When Hellcore Souls are at or above Level 4, they shoot two [or four at Level 7+] copies of the attack in question for basically free, giving them more coverage and overall effectiveness.

• Status Buff - Being a mod with RPG-elements, many are present (though most are exclusively incurred by the player, not monsters), such as Attack Up, Defense Up, Haste, Berserk, Night Vision, Near Invisiblity, Bio Shield, Flight, Stealth, Invulnerablity, Time Freeze, Fear Aura, Spread Aura (levels 1 & 2), and Divine Avatar.
  • Some higher level monster types can get attack, defense and speed buffs when their health levels get low however, this is unique to only a handful of monster types.

• Status-Buff Dispel - The only known one of these is if an Diabloist successfully manages to cast his gravity style spell on you while you're invulnerable. Though it won't fully remove your invulnerablity, it will greatly reduce the remaining time you have being invulnerable. It otherwise will just reduce your HP and/or MP by a set % of your remaining amounts.
• Status Effects - Being a mod with RPG-elements, many are present (though almost all are exclusively incurred by the player, not monsters), such as Sleep, Poison, Exhaustion, Blind, Slow, Attack Down, Defense Down, etc.
  • Poison, though it constantly deals low-damage in fast intervals, will never be able to straight up kill the player, never taking their HP below a certain %.
  • Sleep, though immoblizing and blinding the player, can also greatly accelerate the player's regenerative factors, but can also be escaped faster by "wiggling" the movement keys.
  • Exhaustion reduces the regeneration rate of your Stamina and makes attacks that consume stamina consume slightly more than usual.
  • Surprisingly, polymorphic status ailments like the Chicken and Pig transformations in Heretic and Hexen cannot be inflicted on the player currently, while they still can on enemies and non-player NPCs. Most of the time if a transformation is normally required to fit in a small passage, the player is encourged to crouch to crawl through instead.

• Summon Magic - A spell family in Aetherius with five variants, ones for weaker monster types, mid-strength monsters, high-strength monsters, Archviles/Diabloists only, and Cyberdemons/Cyber-Annihilators only. However while these are more or less infinite use with the player having a regenerating MP pool, summoned monsters are no where as effective as their charmed counterparts, created by using Monster Munchies on a hostile monster, and summoned monsters cannot be charmed at all. Charmed monsters are 3x stronger, 3x more durable, and 50% faster than their summoned variants. The only other way to make charmed monsters is to charm an Archvile/Diabloist and (if a certain option is enabled) they will resurrect any dead monster (friendly or not before doesn't matter) as charmed versions.

• Super Mode - There are multiple categories/types.
  • Tension is a mechanic that is taken from the Dragon Quest series of which a character would give up a turn of action to power themselves up for a stronger follow-up attack or healing ability, or could charge up multiple times to a set threshold for a super-powerful heal or attack. The different levels are denoted by specific numbers, such as 5, 20, 50 and the rarer to accquire 100 (sometimes called "Super High Tension"), which was not always a guarantee to jump to from a 50 tension in its debut game. An attack from a character with the maximum of 100 tension would deal seven and a half times its usual damage. However when a tension-sensitive action was triggered, the character would immediately power down to 'normal'.
  • Aetherius handles this a bit more in a real-time format, since it is not a turned based RPG. By standing still and holding down the <Run> and <Use> buttons together, your character's "psyche meter" (a light pink meter on the left side of their portrait) would go to the top, and then the character ascends to the next level of Tension [5, 20, 50, and 100 levels return, but three stronger levels: 250, 500 and 1000 also exist, with "1000" giving a twenty-five times damage multipiler to the player]. However, the higher your try to ascend your tension level, the higher the chance that a full psyche-up attempt will fail (though you do not lose any of your already accquired tension levels if this happens).
  • Psyching up consumes stamina to perform, and moving even a little will cause a cooldown timer [a smaller red meter next to the character's portrait] to appear, stopping you from psyching up more until it empties out. Your current tension level will persist until you perform an attack or use a spell to heal, then a slightly darker-pink meter begins to empty out, giving you a few more seconds to use your boosted power before it fades. Another note is that depending on your options, a third meter, the "Overpsyche" meter, will begin to fill at various speeds, based on how high your current tension level is. If it reaches the top, the player begins taking "Overpsyche" damage every 1.5-3 seconds in gradually growing amounts (though it cannot actually kill off the player this way) until the player finally performs a tension-sensitive action.
  • Divine Avatar is a sort of megabuff that is given by the spell of the same name [accquired at Level 31 for all three characters], or the Divination Sphere, a recent addition that is a powerup-sphere version. Among the boosts given by this are a 4x damage multiplier, a 4x reduction in all damage taken, a 3-4x increase in the player's jumping height, a good boost to their movement speed, an increase in the attacking speed of the player, a boosted HP, MP and Stamina regeneration, with HP being able to naturally regenerate to 200% of its maximum during the duration, Flora will get a boosted cooldown rate when using Hellcore Souls, and many other lesser known perks. It will only last 30 seconds per cast, and more complicatedly, the spell is double it's normal MP cost while the buff itself is in effect, meaning you have to have over 100% MP available, sometimes closer to 150% MP to cast it again before the timer runs out.

• Super-Reflexes - The EV% stat, or Evasion Rate, determines how often the you will automatically dodge attacks, even if they appear to hit you dead on (you will also dodge any AOE damage from said attacks provided the damage splash occurs in the same moment the attack hits you). The on-screen damage indicators for the player will show a satisfying "MISSED!", complete with the sound used for dodging attacks in the Dragon Quest series (though unlike in Dragon Quest, attacks that just deal no damage at all will instead show "NO DAMAGE!" on the HUD instead of being treated as a "Miss", and use a different sound to correspond to it).
  • Evasion is boosted by multiple factors, such as your Agility stat, the "Dodge More" (and EX) perk, as well as the "On The Move" perk, which specifically adds Evasion when you're moving around but not when standing still. However the most prominent means to increase this temporarily is to grab a Blur Sphere or use the Partial Invisibility spell. To make up for the dodgy reliablity of Doom's partial invisibility, the mod's author has it grant up to +33.3~% evasion [the actual amount is less if your base Evasion is already pretty high, so a base evasion of 50% for example only gets a +16.6~% evasion boost, preventing the player from getting a full 100% evasion rate and effectively becoming invulnerable via dodging attacks].
  • Additionally the player randomly gets a minor boost to both their damage and defense from being in partial invisibility mode, and inactive enemies will not usually notice the player from a long distance and still sometimes not notice them in closer ranges. Moreso in recent versions, the chances of an active enemy making an attempt to attack the player lowers as well, even for more dangerous monsters like Hell Clerics who will also strafe around erratically less often while the player is partially invisible (provided the player is the Hell Cleric's current target).
  • Moreso, monsters currently do not have an Evasion stat of their own, however sometimes if you're Blinded, you can randomly just deal no damage whatsoever when your attack hits an enemy, which is the closest thing to a "dodge" that monsters can do.

• Time Stop - Both a sphere powerup and a spell family [though earned somewhat late versus a lot of other kinds of spells].
  • While you have time stopped, you can both hear the ticking of a clock for each second that passes, as well as that of your character's heartbeat. Interesting enough, Flora's heartbeat is a lot slower versus the marines due to her genetic hertiage in this incarnation making her basically not human at all.
  • Another bonus option alters the sounds made when time is first stopped and is resuming. The alternate sound set will be very familiar to fans of JoJo's Bizzare Adventure.

• Time Travel - Certain compatibility packs, such as "The City of the Damned: Apocalypse" justify Flora's presence as being the result of malciously-forced time travel upon Flora by possible enemies, putting her into the year 1917 to fight the Darkmoon cult, a broken-off segment of the Cabal from Blood who forsook worship of Tchernobog to worship a much worse/evil demon called "Thamuz". Defeating Thamuz temporarily saves the titular city from their evil (based on a document seen in the ending sequence), and allows Empyrea to break through the temporal barriers keeping Flora in 1917 and allowing her to go back to her own time and home at the end of the map during The Stinger.

• Too Awesome to Use - Usually subverted. Due to the dynamic inventory limit system in Aetherius, you'll often find yourself considering using items early on that you'd otherwise be saving for late in the game, since you can only hold a very small amount of certain ones at that point in the game. This is meant to encourge the use of most of your rarer items and learn how useful they are in situations in general.

• 20 Minutes into the Future - Aetherius takes place in the Earth years of the twenty fourth century, stating that Flora's original quest to save her husband as mentioned in her specific readme page, was in 2307 AD, some 150 years after the appearant events of the original Doom (most believe Doom takes place around 2145 AD), and 10 or so years before most events encompassed by the mod's "Compatibility Packs" happened. Granted, Flora's own world of Zendaria still is much more medieval in terms of its overall technology and era compared to the much more futuristic Earth, though she utimately is still very good friends with Deggaris and Illucia.

• Unfriendly Fire - Though infighting is still as available as in normal Doom, due to kills giving experience if the player does so, letting hostile monsters infight will rob you of some EXP in the long run. Allied/Charmed monsters killing hostile enemies however will give some EXP to the player, but only 65-90% of the normal amount vs the player killing the enemy monster directly.

• Videogame Dashing - Can be done via double tapping a directional key or a strafe key, or holding down a specific button along with a directional/strafe key. It works more like a dodge move in that the player is immune to almost ALL damage [even damage inflicted by damaging fluids/hazards], and also that the player can dash through projectiles and monsters [in the event of being cornered].
  • One issue however is you can end the dash stuck in environmental objects, requiring another followup dash to get free. Dashing also uses stamina, though not a lot [~5%], and you will visibily flicker transperantly during a dash to denote your immunity to damage].
  • If a certain option is set, dashing through monsters also does minor damage to them as well. Additionally, inactive monsters will not spot you dashing past them if you dash between two corridors.
  • Air dashing is also possible, with two options, one to dash perfectly horiztonal in the air with no gravitation effect on you until it ends, or to dash with a slight 'jump', but that the dash will be set to let you fall [if you start the dash in mid-air]. Dashing off a platform will make you drop to the ground if you were standing on it at the time of the dash, regardless of the option above.

• Video Game Flight - As early as Level 2, the player [no matter which character they play as] will accquire a Minor Flight spell, allowing 10 seconds of flying per cast. Flight spells w/ longer durations appear at later levels as well. This can make mapsets intended to disable jumping/crouching broken if the player doesn't care anyways about breaking order in the map.

• Violence is the Only Option - Unlike most Doom mod protagonists, Flora is implied to not be a big fan of constantly fighting demonic Hellspawn, the forces of the Serpent Riders, The Order, or other such evils, and only does so because she puts the whole of innocents and people of better natures above her own personal feelings and welfare. She does get along with Deggaris and Illucia despite this, according to the lore, even naming her and Andy's children after both Earth marines due to the assistance they gave Flora in her first ever fights against the Hellspawn when she had to save Andy from their master, and also for helping her get a better understanding of Earth itself and its differences from her homeworld of Zendaria.

• Visible Invisibility - To mitigate the issue with the Blur Sphere or Partial Invisibility Sphere hampering a veteran iDTech1 player's dodging of protectiles, Aetherius also makes this buff increase the player's EV% or Evasion Rate by up to +33.3~%, which is the chance the player automatically dodges an attack, even if it looked like it hit them dead on. Luckily more invisible or transperant monsters like those randomly given nigh-stealth, do not gain a similar evasion bonus against the player's attacks [or that of other monsters].

• Your Soul Is Mine! - Flora, when killing most non-mechanical/natural Hellspawn, has a chance to cause them to drop their literal soul on the ground for her to grab and then utilize for herself to use that creature's attack[s] against others. This is known as Hellcore Magic, and it is very similar to the soul system in Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow and Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow in the Castlevania series, also partially to Shards in Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, in that like Shards, souls can max out at a level of 9, increasing their base power, speed and shot patterns.
  • Other notes are that when a monster drops their soul, their body will become unresurrectable and then seconds later will vanish completely off the current map. Additionally, if a monster drops a soul of which Flora is already at the maximum level of 9 of, the soul turns into a miniature Soulsphere that gives half the normal benefits of a full Soulsphere, still up to the same maximum limits as that of a full Soulsphere.
  • Other notes are that when Flora has a soul equipped, she holds the spiritual representation of the soul itself above her left hand: a sphere with the image of the respective creature inside of it. The soul itself will bob up and down above her hand, shaking somewhat, as if trying to free itself from her control, and the soul will even occasionally emit one of the same sounds as the monster in question while shaking more violently, a type of attention of multiple details.
  • The souls Flora can accquire are that of Imps, Dark Imps, Cacodemons, Cacolanterns, Abaddons (weapon slot 4), Hell Knights, Barons of Hell, Belphegors, Bruiser Demons, Archons of Hell, Pyro Demons (weapon slot 5), Death Incarnates, Archviles, Diabloists, Flying Balrogs (weapon slot 6), Hades Elementals and Hades Overlords (weapon slot 7). All of these monsters are ones who attack using natural methods of Hellcore Magic, and are almost exclusively non-mechanical in nature.
  • Also, all souls Flora accquires are considered equalvalent to Sorrow's "Bullet" type souls, having attacks and alternate fire modes, but no passive buffs attributed to them, besides making Flora more resistant to the same type of monster's projectile attacks, and being more damaging against the same type of monster as the soul itself is.
  • A final note is that while Hellcore Souls do not techincally have an ammo limit, there are still drawbacks to using them, in that each time Flora fires off an attack from one of them, her own soul slightly "heats up", to the point it can start taking damage (unless you are invulnerable) from using Hellcore if her "heat" goes above 100% too far (you'll even hear a "sizzling" sound when this happens to indicate the potential direness of the situation), even to the point it can kill her by accident. The HUD however does show your Hellcore Heat [or HLCR], and various items and powerups related to health recovery can also help cool down Flora's soul faster than just letting it do so naturally. The Miracle Potion inventory item will cleanse away >125% Hellcore Heat [being HLCR can max at 1000%], while other items like some of her unique armor items, can mitigate the general overall "heating" of her soul for each attack she uses, or by increasing her Soul Mastery perk, which also gives her other Hellcore-related benefits/bonuses.