YMMV / Arcane Dimensions

• Arc Fatigue: A common criticism of the largest levels is that they are simply too big, with so many maddening secret areas that finding them becomes more exhausting than fun.
• Breather Level:
  • The Test Maps. Although their name might suggest otherwise, they are fully-featured levels with proper geometry and textures (with the exception of #11, which is just a plain platform with monsters and weapons on it), but nevertheless, since they were only created for the purposes of testing & demonstrating new features of the code, they are still much shorter and simpler than the main levels.
  • Of the four levels that contain Runes, “Firetop Mountain” is much easier to complete than the others. Not only is it significantly smaller (with only about 150 enemies), but the Fetch Quest required to get the Rune is also much simpler, activated by a relatively easily-found secret and with the items contained in plain sight within a single area.
• Game-Breaker: The Widowmaker Shotgun is incredibly powerful, dealing enough damage to gib zombies in one blast, even in the absence of a Quad Damage. It’s roughly equivalent in power to the Doom II Super Shotgun but without that gun’s disadvantages, having a fast firing rate and fairly mild pellet spread that are both more comparable to Quake‘s initial Double-Barrelled Shotgun. Even its high ammo consumption, spending three shotgun shells per shot, is negated considerably by the mod’s doubled maximum shell ammo capacity (from 100 to 200). It’s also far more common than you might expect, frequently appearing pretty early within levels and often just placed right out in the open, rather than in a secret (though secrets will still open opportunities to unlock it even earlier). Every monster from vanilla Quake will quickly fall before its might; the only thing that keeps it from making the entire game a cakewalk is the new menagerie of tougher monsters and the much larger numbers of enemies that the mod enables.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • An entirely new class of monsters, identified as “Critters” in the mod’s readme.txt file, were created specifically to embody this trope; Spiders, Scorpions, Lost Souls, and Vorelings. They're quick and tiny, usually come in swarms and are guaranteed to infuriate you, especially in the absence of explosives.
  • Crossbow Knights are far more annoying than their low hit points and attack damage might suggest. Their wake-up and attacking sounds are pretty quiet, their projectile travels very quickly on higher difficulties, and they’re typically placed in high-altitude and sequestered spaces to give them a good vantage point, so it’s common for you to find yourself getting suddenly pelted with attacks that you can’t pinpoint the origin of. Don’t be too embarrassed when you get killed by one of these jobbers.
• Older Than They Think: Arcane Dimensions is the most famous Quake mod by far, so a lot of players might not recognize that many of the seemingly “new” monsters were originally created for earlier games or mods, before being incorporated into AD’s setup.
  • Gargoyles, Minotaurs, Skull Wizards, Golems, and Spiders are all imported from 1997’s Hexen II- a fitting pick, since Hexen II was built with Quake’s game engine.
  • Droles, Gaunts, Vorelings, Jim, Freddie, Eliminators, Rocketeers, Death Guards, Death Lords, and Defenders are all taken from Quoth, the earliest version of which was released in 2005.
  • Pyros (AKA Dreadnaughts), Centurions, and Automatons are taken from Rubicon 2. Seekers are modified versions of Hunters from Rubicon Rumble Pack, and their model is ultimately derived from the 1997 commercially-released total conversion, Malice.
  • In a related vein, the concept for the zombie-chopping Shadow Axe originates from the Honey mod, which altered the regular Axe to have the same ability.
• Signature Scene: “The Forgotten Sepulcher”, which actually got coverage on several gaming news sites for its record-breaking size and complexity, being officially the largest Quake level ever built.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Although the mod borrows numerous enemy, gameplay, and level design concepts from earlier mods throughout the Quake community’s entire history, its arsenal is comparatively modest, with only three additions to the roster: the Widowmaker Shotgun, the Shadow Axe, and the Plasma Gun, all of which are mere upgrades to one of the original eight weapons. None of the new weapons or ammo types from either of the official mission packs make an appearance, nor do any popular or frequently-reused weapons from classic mods. Also, there’s no end boss.