MAP16: Blood Keep (Doom 64)

MAP16: Blood Keep is the sixteenth map of Doom 64, designed by Randy Estrella. It uses the music track "Warped Hive", also heard in. The level itself is exploring a huge keep and fighting large waves of monsters and tricky puzzles and finding the exit.

Essentials
The level begins with a small, rectangular room with a door to the right. Open the door and kill the zombiemen. Carefully leave this room as there are nightmare imps and cacodemons to the right just outside. Open the door in the room the zombiemen were in, but afterward, turn around and run backwards. A wall will rise up to reveal more zombiemen. Kill them, and look for shotgun laying in a corner of this room. Leave this room, and go into the room with the rising walls and pick up the zombiemen's weapons for ammo. If low on health, there is a medikit here as well.

Next, head toward the window with the nightmare imps and cacodemons outside and snipe them with a rapid fire weapon, such as the chaingun or plasma gun. The hail of projectiles in this area can be dangerous. Use the wall on your left as cover, or use continuous movement to avoid damage. Once you have cleared the area, turn around and pick up some shotgun shells in the left corner of the other side of the room. Then go back, but turn right, and there will be a yellow face on the wall. Use it, and a window will open at the location you obtained the shotgun shells.

Head toward the window, but be careful as multiple imps, nightmare imps, and cacodemons will awaken, and will throw many fireballs at the same time, which can deal a significant amount of damage. Take cover by hiding behind the left wall. The imps and nightmare imps will most likely hit the cacodemons outside, so try and make them throw as many fireballs at the cacodemons as possible to weaken them (note that monsters on this level are flagged to never infight, but will still take damage from each others' attacks). Kill the cacodemons. If any of the cacodemons manage to make it inside, equip the chainsaw and wait for it to come near.

After the cacodemons are dead, equip a rapid fire weapon or the rocket launcher and shoot the imps and nightmare imps in the blue-shaded rooms.

Once you enter the exit room which has eight pillars, the room will go dark as all of the pillars ceilings lower, and zombiemen, accompanied by lost souls, will spawn into the pillars moments later. You must kill them to be able to reach the exit, which is blocked by a gate. Make sure you remain in the middle of the room, as the outer floor will lower and fill with lava after you have killed all the enemies inside. If you are not careful, you will fall into the inescapable lava pit and die. The gate blocking the exit will open after the outer floor has lowered.

Official

 * 1) Right after entering the blue key door and dispatching all enemies behind it, turn right and activate a yellow pentagram wall to raise the pillars blocking the secret. (sector 208) Instead of going up the stairs, activate the bookcase beside it and ride on top of it, and keep edging right to enter the secret cache containing a plasma rifle.

Non-official

 * From Secret #1, take the stairs. Open the door closest to the dead end with the bookshelf and take out any enemies inside the room. Another secret cache is right across the door you just entered, simply activate the bookshelf facing the door to reveal a cache containing a few boxes of rockets and an energy cell pack.

Things
This level contains the following numbers of things per skill level:

Trivia

 * The name of this level reoccurs in the lore of Doom (2016), where it is said by the Lord of Hell that the Doom Slayer sought prey in the "tombs of the Blood Keep," whence the priests of its temples brought them down upon him, trapping him and enabling the demons to imprison him in the sarcophagus later kept in the Kadingir Sanctum. Accordingly, the map which follows this level,, is seemingly equated with Kadingir via the designs of its final arena.