MAP11: Arch-Violence (Plutonia 2)

MAP11: Arch-Violence is the eleventh map of Plutonia 2. It was designed by Adolf Vojta (Gusta) and Thomas van der Velden, and uses the music track "Become the Hunted" by James Paddock. The level itself is a sequel to Map11: Hunted from the Plutonia Experiment consisting with a maze filled with Arch-Viles though the maze is much larger in size than the original version and requires all three keys.

Walkthrough

 * Letters in italics refer to marked spots on the map. Sector numbers in boldface are secrets which count toward the end-of-level tally.

Other points of interest
Exiting this map the regular way will cause you to start the next map with 10% health or below. However, there is a way to start it with a 200% blue armor:

There are two (three on easy skill levels) blue armors in this map: Also either reserve some rockets or (recommended) four medikits or a berserk pack to fill up your health to exactly 100% and (not needed on ITYTD) a stimpack to give you 10% health more when needed.
 * The first one at the map start where you cannot return to once you left it. It is picked up automatically anyway if you did not start the map with 200% armor
 * The second one in official secret #1 that should be reserved until exiting the map
 * An additional one on easy skills to pick up whenever needed

After pushing the switch that was blocked by yellow bars, a wall northeast of it will lower, revealing a square shaped room, containing two times 15 bullet boxes and a fake exit. Walking over the fake exit lowers the eastern walls of this room, revealing the "final battle" area, containing six bulk cells and a megasphere (and, on medium and hard skills only, eight medikits).

Grab the megasphere and climb the stairs, causing some arch-viles to teleport in. Run back to the west and perform an arch-vile jump to escape the area. From above, kill the arch-viles that cannot follow you up there.

After you cleaned the area, carefully lower your health to 10% or less, by either firing rockets at a near wall, receiving blast damage, or (recommended) by visiting sector 1655 that has a type 16 damaging floor:

First make sure your health is divisible by ten without remainder by picking up the aforementioned health items (but not the stimpack).

From the place where the blue skull key was found, follow the southwestern corridor to an area with a blood filled floor on the northern and southern side, separated by a stone floor bridge and a blood pit. Falling into this blood pit will deplete your health by 20% (or 10% on ITYTD) per second. (Note that this damage is shared with your armor if you are still wearing one.) When your health reaches 20% (10% on ITYTD), leave the pit by running to the western open area which will teleport you back on the stone floor bridge. Now (not on ITYTD) get the reserved stimpack mentioned before to reach 30% of health. Drop down into the pit once more and quickly leave it when your health is low on 10%.

Then pick up the reserved blue armor, cross the final battle area, climp the stairs once again and drop down into the hole to finish the level:

There is a type 11 damaging floor on the ground which means that the player will receive damage until his health is lower than 11% and then the level is finished. As you are on 10% of health yet, you will not receive any more damage but finishing the map instantly, keeping your full blue armor for the start of the next map. (Trying to finish the map just after picking up the megasphere would recude both health and armor until the map ended, resulting in a worse condition for the next map.)

Official

 * 1) From the start, drop down into the maze and try to grab the super shotgun to release the first arch-viles. Then head through the western hallway (left from the start), and turn left after you drop down. Follow this hallway, then go through the gated walls on the left. Press the gargoyle faced switch on the left to lower the platform behind you, which contains a blue armor.
 * 2) From the room with the rocket launcher near the red skull key (in the southwestern area of map), head east towards a blood fall. Turn left, and then turn around the corner to the right. Go straight all the way to the wall and you will see that there is a step down that appears impassable. Open the wall to get two rocket boxes and a medikit.

Non-official

 * 1) There is megasphere in the south of the starting area down in the blood pool. Since you cannot drop down there, you have to perform an arch-vile jump at the blood fall either southwest or southeast of the first super shotgun you see in the map (see official secret #1) to access the area where the megasphere is in.

Bugs

 * 1) The BFG9000 (thing 188) in the northeast area of the map is unreachable, but pushing the nearby switch not only lowers the bars south and west of it, but also lets you access the other BFG-9000 in the soutwest of the fake exit area.

Trivia

 * Amongst possible names for this map during development were Hunted Again and Arch-Nemesis.
 * Like the right-side exit-path in its prequel, MAP11: Hunted in The Plutonia Experiment, this map ends in a damaging floor of Type 11 for an exit, in a room with nine arch-viles that will cast spells to further reduce the player's health until health falls to 10% or below. If playing in vanilla DOOM2.EXE or some source ports, the nine arch-viles in this room are not factored into the kills percentage for the level, so you do not need to worry about them if you are gunning for 100% kills in these versions. However, other ports (such as ZDoom) count enemies wherever in the level they are, and calculate kill percentage based on this count; not only does this make it impossible to get more than 100% kills in such ports, it makes it impossible to reach 100% kills in this level unless one cheats by * using that port's "massacre" cheat (in ZDoom, opening the console and typing KILL MONSTERS) * (select the text between asterisks to reveal)