Don't get so close to those cultists (or any enemy) early on. your getting the full spread from his shotty at 0 range. Eventually you'll get the axe zombie's timing down and learn to "dance" between his axe blows. Until then movement and distance are how you survive encounters.
TNT is a room clearer, not a sniper rifle. Throw it in a room from the doorway and run backwards out of the room. Splash damage is your friend once you learn to respect it. :D

Yeah I should have been more patient. I recall having a similar problem early on with pig cops in Duke 3D. This game is pretty sweet. Up to level four, not bad.

The difficulty in this game is just right if you ask me. Only the hardest difficulty settings is quite the insanity. All those hitscan enemies that put holes in you so fast.

When you get the hang of all the different weapons this game is extremely satisfying to play.

Duke3D was quite easy on the other side but if you want challenge play some Redneck Rampage! :D Holy **** is that game unforgiving. Was I glad when I finished that game.

I always thought Shadow Warrior was real difficult too.

As for me, I'm stuck at E1M5 (I've beaten the Secret Level). Although in my case, it's the constant lagging that bothers me (I play fullscreen at 640x400). Is there a way to reduce the lagging without losing too much graphic quality?

There shouldn't be any lagging. What's your setup? Have you upgraded Dosbox to .74? If you're playing with version .73 (gog retail is .73 by default) the 300X200 is the highest resolution.
There shouldn't be any lagging. If your version of DosBox is 0.73 then 300X200 is the defualt resolution. upgrade to DB7.4 for higher res.

Pole7645, each system varies, but I would check your output mode in your dosboxBlood.conf file. I've found output=overlay tends to squeeze out the most in terms of frames/sec, openGL and ddraw add in a little bit of overhead which can cut your frame rate. Do you prefer to play in windowed or full screen mode?

I prefer playing fullscreen. My current output is DDraw.

After seeing this thread, I was kind of afraid I would be in too deep, but honestly I haven’t been finding the game too difficult. Though I fully admit that I sometimes quicksave like a madman, haha. That being said, I recently started the final episode, Post Mortem, and it seems a lot more difficult than the other chapters! The new Cultists are really kicking my butt! The enemy placement is extremely hellish at times. This has easily been my least favorite episode. I’m still enjoying it and definitely will complete it; I just needed to vent for a little bit. :)