MAP17: Tenements (Doom II)

MAP17: Tenements is the seventeenth map of Doom II. It was designed by John Romero and uses the music track "The Healer Stalks".

Walkthrough
Walk across the pathway over the nukage, passing through a doorway. Take a left here. If you center yourself just so in this corridor and aim carefully, you can run down the narrow, twisty, jagged bridge to the Red keycard (A), pick it up, and be able to run backwards, without turning around, to make your escape before the monsters released are able to do you damage.

In the hallway just outside of the entry room and the room with the Red keycard are two rooms reached by a flight of stairs. Using the Red keycard, first enter the western one (B). Press the face on the East wall. This will reveal a lift and a face panel in the other, eastern room (C).

Enter the other room of the pair, push the face, and ride the lift down. Deal with the nasties, then move along the platform along the southern edge, reaching a passageway to the right. Pressing the face panel here reveals yet another lift, which you ride up to the eastern gallery which overlooked the entryway. A switch is in the southwest corner. Pushing it will open the door leading into the central area (D). Leave this area by opening the face panel behind a partition in the northwest corner, and drop back into the entrance room.

Enter the now-accessible central area, and head for the doorway to the East (the one on your right as you enter), taking a long hallway bounded by fences on either side. At the end of this hallway are entrances to two similar rooms, each with two platforms at either end, separated by a nukage pool in the middle (E). Start with the one to the North. Turn your back to the nukage, drop in, and press the button in the center of the bulkhead in front of you, lowering the platform on your (the eastern) end. As soon as you can get on the platform to ride it up, press a switch halfway up the northwest corner (you don't need to be level with the switch, just standing in front of its location and facing it) to open the gray granite panel at the end of the hallway.

Run from the rising platform to this panel and enter the passage it reveals. Throw the switch in here, which raises a bridge in the southern room in this area (F), which you will now enter at the end of this passageway.

Quickly walk (or run) across this bridge and continue all the way to the opposite end of this room. The center of the platform at this end will lower into the nukage; drop in and press the switch. This will raise the sunken center portion of this platform, and raise the bridge in the northern room. Cross this new bridge to pick up the Blue keycard (G).

Cross the nukage pond in the central area and enter the Blue key door. Along the southern wall is a set of stairs leading up. One of the top steps is a trigger for opening a small chamber near the bottom of the stairs containing a supercharge and, further on, a partial invisibility. However, you don't need to pick up either if you don't wish to yet; you just need to enter the chamber. Doing so will raise a wood panel with a skull switch in the room back up at the top of the stairs. Press this switch to reveal a passage in the corresponding room opposite this one (H).

Follow this passageway to a gallery which overlooks the nukage pond in this area, with one window large enough to easily pass through. Crossing the threshold of this window briefly lowers the platform at the opposite end of the pond on which the Yellow skull key is located (I). Grab it and ride the platform up, exiting the room for the central pond and the area to the left.

Pressing one switch on the back of the wooden wall at the entrance to the Yellow skull key-protected area reveals another switch (J); press it to open the gate. At the North end of the room past the gate is a bridge shaped like a 3(K). Take the left (West) fork, run across the end of the bridge, and enter the chamber to your right. A ramp winds up along the perimeter; press the skull switch at the end. Head back to the room just inside the Yellow gate and head to the bridge once again, this time taking the right (East) fork. Push the switch on the wall to lower a lift and ride it to the top (L). Another switch at the top opens a short narrow passage; entering it will open another passage, which you must likewise enter to open yet a third (M). Entering the third passage opens a back wall in the first passage, and so on, until the exit (N) becomes accessible.

Secrets

 * 1) Upon reaching the central nukage pool (with the soul sphere on the pillar), go east through a corridor leading to a pair of seemingly uncrossable nukage pits to the north and south. Fall into the southern pit and flip the switch to lower the ledge you fell from. This reveals a secret passage leading to an earlier part of the level (O).
 * 2) At the far north end of the map is a narrow raised walkway shaped like a "3". Drop into the nukage pit north of the walkway (P), turn around, and press the grey stone wall of the walkway to lower it. Ahead is a lion-head switch (Q). Flip it to open up a wall back to the north. Jump into the hole from the east side of the walkway (R). It leads to a BFG 9000.
 * 3) After pressing the switch in the room with the caged Arch-Vile, a door opens on the east side of the room just south of the aforementioned "3" walkway (S). After lowering the lift in this new room, step on and immediately start pushing on the south wall (T). You will fall through a hole in the wall (U). A secret megasphere lurks behind (V). Open the wall to the right of the megasphere to escape (W).

Bugs

 * 1) The five Spectres in the red-door room are immobile and cannot attack unless the player gets too close to them. Though some of the Spectres can still become mobile if others surrounding them are killed.
 * 2) In the early released versions of Doom II, this map contains a critical flaw. The teleporter pad in the lava pit that surrounds the Arch-Vile cage was accidentally flagged as operable in multiplayer only. As a cause of this, falling to the lava pit in single player results in the player becoming trapped and will likely die due to the damaging floor. Therefore, the only way to escape the lava pit is by enabling the "no clip" cheat.
 * 3) It is possible to jump over the yellow barrier at the North of the central nukage pool.

Records
The Compet-N records for the map are: