MAP38: Hectic (Doom 64 TC)

MAP38: Hectic is the first secret level of Doom 64 TC and is considered to be the most difficult. From a chronological standpoint this is where the player first comes across Hell Knights and Arachnotrons. The BGM is the one heard in Level 14, Eye of the Storm. The main reason for going through this stage is to unlock the jumping cheat (as you can read as message "JUMP AWAY YOU CHEATER" when the next level finishes loading).

Note: In contrast to Doom 64 EX, where the story continues with MAP02: The Terraformer, Doom 64 TC returns to MAP01: Staging Area – there are possibly technical issues which required the other secret levels of the original Doom 64 game to appear in sequence with the other normal levels in the total conversion.

Walkthrough
This walkthrough will provide guidance on using the alternate exit in this level. The normal exit can be activated simply at the start of the level, but using this alternate exit will enable the jumping cheat. The "degreelessness" cheat ("God mode") is disabled in this map. It cannot be accessed via map-change cheat.

All items in the beginning room are booby trapped. Some of the traps can be overcome (see the Items section) with varying degrees of difficulty, but failure will lead to death. Open the door on the right and enter. Pick up the Red key. You will then be lowered into a room with no exit. Immediately, Arachnotrons will appear. Pick up the rockets scattered around the room and dispose of the Arachnotrons. Due to the limited space available, this is difficult to achieve, as the Arachnotrons can corner you if you are not careful, and there is always the possibility of splash damage from one of your rockets or the crushing ceiling — a behaviour opposite to Doom 64 EX. When they are finally killed, you will be allowed back up to the starting room via teleporters — in contrast to Doom 64 EX, the area where you picked the key does not rise again, so it is a slightly safe part from the Arachnotrons and the ceiling.

Now enter the door which was on the left when you first started the level. Collect the items and the Blue key. Turn around, and you will see that the door is now closed, and you have 2 Hell knights on each side of the very narrow bridge. You must kill all of them for the door to open. You must not fall off this narrow bridge, either by accident or because of one of the Hell knight's attacks pushing you off. It is best to use the side strafe exclusively to dodge attacks while unloading rockets at the enemies. You would even consider running to the blue key and immediately running back to the closed entry door, as the ceiling above the key will lower and may crush you too.

The door back to the starting room will open once the Hell knights are dead. Now enter the other door that has not been opened so far. Use the lifts to move to the Yellow key, but take care not to get hit by the darts thrown by demon faces on the walls. Once you have the yellow key, move to the Red bars in the starting room and unlock them, then unlock the Blue and Yellow bars and exit the level.

Enemies
There are only seven enemies in this map (four Hell knights and three Arachnotrons). You have to kill them all to reach the true exit.

Items
Due to differences to Doom 64 EX, you are probably not able to get 100% Items in Doom 64 TC by normal moving or running; the only exception I could imagine would be blasting yourself through the traps like Rocket jumping, but I could not prove that.


 * Getting the Soulsphere seems to be impossible in Doom 64 TC, as the crushing ceiling drops immediately as you touch the sphere, you have no time to reverse out of the niche.
 * Same is for the Megaarmor.
 * The crusher that protects the security (green) armor is triggered from all sides, and probably too fast for a quick reverse either.
 * The only available item here is a berserk pack in the room with the lava. You can't miss it.

Secrets
In contrast to Doom 64 EX, you will probably leave the level even via the hard exit with 0% secrets.