Berserk



The berserk pack is a powerup that looks like a black medikit. Picking one up boosts the player's health to 100% (unless it was already 100% or more) and temporarily fills his vision with a red haze.

The berserk pack increases the strength of the player's punch attack tenfold until the level ends (not only until the red haze disappears), making it powerful enough to smash humanoids to a pulp, or even kill a demon with a single blow. When a berserk pack is collected, the player's current weapon will switch to the fist.

A Berserk punch is somewhat more effective than the chainsaw, although it does have the disadvantages of not doing continuous damage (which means one must be careful of the enemy hitting back in between punches) and needing more careful aim than the chainsaw.

The berserk pack can also be obtained with the cheat code idbeholds.

In vanilla Doom, a player who has the chainsaw cannot use his fists unless he has also obtained a berserk pack.

Berserk packs are included in the items percentage displayed at the end of each level. Most levels of Doom and Doom II have a berserk pack (except for Knee-Deep in the Dead).

A version of the berserk pack is also found in the first Doom novel, as a powerful intramuscular stimulant injection that Flynn Taggart uses which temporarily raises his strength to the point of killing monsters wth his bare hands, though the stimulant nearly kills him in the process due to the strain on his heart.

Doom RPG
In Doom RPG, the berserk powerup is called a berserker and looks like a red soul sphere. Unlike the original, it increases the damage done by all weapons by a factor of 3, and does not heal the player. The increased damage lasts for 30 turns.

Appearance statistics
The IWADs contain the following numbers of berserk packs: