History Main / DroughtLevelOfDoom

* Some levels of ''VideoGame/HaloReach'' follow this trope, especially on Legendary difficulty,. For example, in "Exodus", you start out with only a pistol against Suicide Grunts, Skirmishers and Brutes, and ammo for it and the DMR is extremely sparse. Then the game starts throwing armored Brute Chieftains into the squads, coupled with HoldTheLine sequences. Suitable Covenant weapons such as the Needle Rifle are also lacking. The worst is probably the part of "The Pillar of Autumn" where you have to HoldTheLine for about 15 minutes against multiple waves of Brute Captains and Chieftains, with almost no ammunition for your good weapons (unless you trigger an EasterEgg or bring better weapons from earlier parts of the level). Luckily, ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'' has a long and proud tradition of players taking weapons from their slain enemies.

** Medkits are much scarcer on the Hard difficulty setting, which can make certain sections {{unwinnable}} if you blunder away your health beforehand.

*** E4M1, "Hell Beneath", not only has extremely limited ammo and health[[labelnote:+]]on Ultra-Violence, you get 11 health bonuses and nothing more![[/labelnote]] pickups and forces you to fight in very tight quarters, but eventually teleports in a Baron of Hell for you to fight (and triggering one of the secrets unleashes two more), making it ''the'' hardest level in the original game.
*** E4M6, "Against Thee Wickedly", features no armor pickups whatsoever. You're forced to trudge into lava constantly, and the level caps off with a fight against a Cyberdemon. The most you get is an invulnerability, which only lasts 30 seconds.

** ''VideoGame/FinalDoom'': Map 08 of ''The Plutonia Experiment'', "Realm", has no armor pickups on Ultra-Violence and above.

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyI'':
** Gulg Volcano and its unavoidable damaging floors. Tip: ignore the OneTrueSequence and tackle this dungeon last.
** Chaos Temple at the end also serves as this, with lots of floors, mazes, tough enemies, and surprise reappearances of the four fiends. If you can make it to Chaos with any resources left, you're lucky.
** The remakes do this for the bonus dungeons. Thirty floors? [[SerialEscalation Forty floors?]] Deal with it! It's even more egregious in the penultimate bonus dungeon as both of the two bosses you can choose to fight at the end are ThatOneBoss.
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIII''. The endgame goes like this: Last inn and item shop, dungeon, last save point, semi-optional dungeon, long difficult dungeon, PointOfNoReturn, short difficult dungeon, FinalBoss. And that save point isn't really a help, since it means that you'll have to go through the first dungeon if you need to warp out.
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV'':
** After returning from the Moon, you are forced to go straight into the next dungeon, which is full of very strong enemies, culminating in TWO Boss Battles in a row (Although you do get to save and heal in between by backtracking to the save point), all without being able to re-stock on your items!
** The DS remake has a merchant Hummingway (or counterpart) at the single SavePoint in the Giant of Babil. They compensate for this by making the two boss battles harder - unlike the SNES, PSX, and GBA versions, the Archfiends use all their abilities from the first encounters in the rematch, and the CPU battle is murder.
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXII'' can be like this when trekking between key locations. The long road can wear you down with nary a save crystal or a shop in sight as you waste MP and items on monsters that keep swarming you unless you hold the Flee button so they can't catch up to the running party. The game even suggests to the player to create another save file at various save points at the start of a dungeon because of this.
* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIIRemake'' has this as the defining feature for "Hard Mode" unlocked as part of the NewGamePlus: enemies are tougher (more HP and more damage dealt), you can't use items ''at all'', and rest points (in the form of benches that restore HP and MP in Normal mode) only restore HP. This makes every chapter of the game something close to the trope because you can't regain MP at all except at predetermined plot points (usually chapter changes or one or two specific side-quests); careful resource management and equipping your party to minimize the need to for MP (like with Chakra and Pray to heal in combat without using MP, or having the right Elemental combo to enhance your attacks/defense against the enemies you'll be facing) becomes a big part of every fight and each level as you have to make sure you can reach the boss fights with enough MP to keep healing (and revive KO'd characters with magic) and to take advantage of whatever element or mechanic is needed for the fight.

* In ''VideoGame/BioShock1'''s Fort Frolic, ammo, medkits, and cash are significantly scarcer than previous levels, and the HackingMinigame difficulty for vending machines is much higher. And this level introduces [[DemonicSpiders Plastered Spider Splicers]].
* ''VideoGame/BioShockInfinite'' features Comstock House near the end, which is filled with asylum patients that drop nothing upon death and no vending machines. This is to encourage the player to be as stealthy as possible and avoid being spotted, because while you ''can'' just ignore the Boys of Silence and blast your way through, your ammo supply will likely be exhausted well before you can replenish it. Luckily, you're more or less in the clear once you reach the warden's offices (which is well-stocked with China Broom shotguns), and thorough searching can turn up a few weapons hidden in the asylum section.

* In Level 4 of ''VideoGame/{{Valis}}: Legend of a Fantasm Soldier'' for the UsefulNotes/PCEngine CD, there are almost no weapon pickups and thus [[ContinuingIsPainful little to no chance to regain your power if you die or continue]], and [[ThatOneBoss the boss will give you hell]] if you aren't powered up.

* From ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog'':

-->-- '''Gordon Freeman''' on [[Videogame/HalfLife2 Ravenholm zombies]], ''WebVideo/FreemansMind''

*** Torches stop appearing after Kinship's Bond[[note]]and even then, the ones in that chapter are only in a secret shop,[[/note]], even though there's still as many as ''three'' fog chapters left (depending on the story and route taken), the last of which is [[ThatOneLevel Battle Before Dawn]]. That secret shop in Kinship's Bond is also the only place in the ''entire game'' where you can buy torches at a vendor, making it impossible to stock up on them unless you snagged the [[PermanentlyMissableContent member card]]. Through no fault of their own, an inexperienced player can end up blind as a bat in what's already the most infamously hard chapter in the game.

** The Dread Isle, Imprisoner of Magic, A Glimpse in Time [[note]]if you're playing Hector's story and figured out the obscure way to unlock it[[/note]], and Dragon's Gate in ''VideoGame/FireEmblemTheBlazingBlade'' will punish you if you forgot to stock on the pirate ship. You will find yourself running low on weapons and vulneraries rather quickly. There's also the fact that torches stop appearing after Kinship's Bond[[note]]and even then, the ones in that chapter are only in a secret shop,[[/note]] even though there's still as many as ''three'' fog chapters left (depending on the story and route taken), the last of which is [[ThatOneLevel Battle Before Dawn]]. Through no fault of their own, an inexperienced player can end up blind as a bat in what's already widely considered the hardest chapter in the game.

** The Dread Isle, Imprisoner of Magic, A Glimpse in Time [[note]]if you're playing Hector's story and figured out the obscure way to unlock it[[/note]], and Dragon's Gate in ''VideoGame/FireEmblemTheBlazingBlade'' will punish you if you forgot to stock on the pirate ship. You will find yourself running low on weapons and vulneraries rather quickly.