I was playing on "Ace" (4th of the 5 difficulty levels), and level 6 kicked my butt. I had to bump down to "Hotshot," and even then it was a challenge.

And if the internet is telling the truth, there are something like 30 levels. WHOA. I'm only 1/5 of the way through the game, and it's already beating me.

Don't get me wrong, I love a challenge. I'm just kind in disbelief that I've met my match. I had no trouble playing Doom or Quake 2 on the hardest settings, but here I am struggling through level 6 on "medium" difficulty in Descent.

In a word...yes. It is.

I'm a fairly decent descenter and I can only get through like level 4 on Insane.

One of the reason I love Descent...it's literally insane on insane!! ;) Play some multiplayer and you'll meet some of the people who can beat the game on insane fairly easily :)

So would a joystick be considered essential equipment?

before in my teens i could beat it on insane frequently. Now i cant. I do think that if i had a joystick like i did as a kid at least i would not suck as much.

Well I just started playing with a joystick...it's definitely much more natural. (Get one with a twist handle)

BUT I developed a keyboard control config that technically you can get as good with it as you can with a joystick...but it'll take alot more work! :)

Future Pilot, thank you times two for your helpful responses :) I am now quite curious about these Descent Rangers.

Descent is definitely one of the most challenging shooters ever made.

You're quite welcome! I am myself a Ranger... albeit an inactive one seeing as how I don't have much time cause i'm in flight school. :)

Nah, a good keyboard/mouse configuration usually works best.
I never been confrotable using a joystick with descent, it plays more like a FPs than a space combat simulator.

I disagree here. The Logitech 3d Extreme Pro is a great stick and its cheap. It seems to work quite easily with the rebirth mod as well with minimum configuration. I just set some custom slide keys but use the stick to steer.

I am currently in level 10 on the default Rookie difficulty and some parts of the game are completly insane even on that difficulty. The regular enemies aren't much of a problem, but so far I have not figured out how to deal with either the Supermechs (red robots that shoot homing missiles) or the Driller (silver robot with vulcan gun). Driller will often fire and hit you before the door has even fully opened and Supermechs don't leave you much chance to dodge their missiles. My current way of dealing with them is to load&save after essentially every hit I make to them and stay as far away from them as possible, but even with that and knowing where they are hiding I have a rather low success rate and have to retry far more then I would like to. Shield refills are also getting extremely rare.

The difficulty really doesn't feel right and I am really wondering if faster CPUs/Dosbox emu is screwing with the AI or something like that.

Apparently missile tracking is framerate dependent in the DOS version, and you can fix this with the Rebirth mod. However, even with Rebirth, I'm not able to dodge the tracking missiles except by taking cover :-/

I have trouble with the same two enemies, btw. I kind of think the Driller was a bad design decision. It deals hitscan damage quickly enough that your reaction time is irrelevant, and the best way to avoid damage is to do something cheap like shoot homing missiles around a corner.

My favorite fights are the ones with lots of simple enemies. Also, in direct contradiction to the preceding sentence, I loved the level 7 boss.

note: I am currently on level 12 in my first playthrough.

I believe the difficulty is very much in line with the original release, both running in DOSBox or with Rebirth. The following generally works pretty well for me.

The Drillers are the most annoying in my opinion though I find that using the vulcan cannon on them is highly effective since they seem to be somewhat stunned by the continuous stream of hits from that weapon. When you know where they are, you can often come around a corner or through a door guns blazing such that they don't have the opportunity to fire at you. Homing missiles can also turn corners to some degree so you can engage them sight unseen as well.

For the super hulks (red homing missile guys), if you're in an open area, you can reliably dodge the missiles if you're moving towards them and strafing horizontally and/or vertically, preferably all three direction at once. In tight spaces it can sometimes be a bit more tricky since if there isn't a door or terrain to hide behind, the missile might be able to track you around the corner somewhat. Those cases are definitely more tricky. The key in general though is strafing and delivering a lot of firepower quickly and accurately so they get at most one shot off which hopefully is dodged. The vulcan cannon has a similar effect on these guys, they can't really shoot if you keep it trained on them.

I'm by no means an amazing player, but I have struggled through the original Descent on Ace, it can be done! Good luck!

I don't think it is essential, and I personally go back and forth over whether I like the mouse or joystick more. I've used a CH Combatstick, Sidewinder Precision Pro, Logitech 3D Extreme Pro and Saitek X45 at various times. The Sidewinder and Combatstick were by far the best of those four in my opinion. The X45 was too heavy for a game like Descent and the Logitech wore out very quickly.

The advantage of the mouse is the accuracy of aiming certainly but the disadvantage is your ability to turn smoothly and quickly. Rebirth recently added a flightsim mode for the mouse so you can use it more like a joystick but I haven't tried that. For me, I found the turning problem with the mouse forced me to get much better at strafing and helped give me a better sense of spatial orientation since I couldn't rely on looking in the direction I was flying as quickly.

The problem is that they will hit you before you can even fire a shoot and take away a third of your shield. You can work around that by a bunch of load/save cycles, as sometimes they will take a while longer and let you attack first, but still no idea on how to do that in any reliable fashion and even a homing missile won't help when they instant hit you the second you open a door.

Anyway, I have finished the game now after switching to the easiest difficulty and that difficulty seemed quite fair. It also helped that later levels contain far less of those mentioned enemy types then around level 10.

Descent II so far seems a good bit easier by comparison, but I am not so far into it yet and Descent only got crazy a third in.