MAP32: The Sickening Grove (Plutonia 1024)

MAP32: The Sickening Grove is the second secret map of Plutonia 1024: The Plutinya Experiment. It was designed by James Caldwell (Obsidian) and uses the music track "Plurry", originally created by Brendan Bradley (Bucket) for the Plutonia MIDI Pack. The par time defined in MAPINFO is 30 seconds.

Essentials
As the level starts you will walk over a berserk pack placed at your feet. There is a seemingly unreachable teleporter in front of you, and a caged arch-vile behind you - do not shoot the vile as this will cause two more arch-viles to appear above you and kill you very quickly. Instead, fire a shot away from the caged vile to wake it up, then run towards the teleporter as the vile attacks to be launched into it. You will enter a dark room with the words "SPEAK AND DIE" on the floor - from this point forward, do not make any noise as this will release several more viles that will hunt you down.

Walk forward to be teleported to the north-west corner of the main area; there is another vile standing on a platform on the east side of this area so use the pillars and walls as cover whenever possible. Take the super shotgun in front of you then head to the south-east corner of the area to find a gargoyle switch; after pressing it, go to the platform on the north side to find that a skull lift has risen that you can activate to get on top of the platform. Pressing the lit skull switch here will raise some flesh steps on the south side of the level, but will also release a vile that can move freely so be aware of it at all times. Go back to where you found the gargoyle switch and enter the south-east building to find the blue skull key (ignore the vile behind the red bars as it cannot see you yet).

With the blue key, carefully make your way back to the north-west corner and press the blue skull button to reveal another gargoyle switch. Press this switch to lower a nearby teleporter then enter it to telefrag the vile standing on the east platform. As you drop back down to the ground a pillar to the south will lower and release another vile into the area; quickly activate the skull lift by the north platform and ride it up again to find the red skull key in an alcove. Go back to the column in the north-west corner and press the red skull button on it to reveal another gargoyle switch, then press this switch as well to crush the viles that are waiting to teleport in (along with an unseen Commander Keen). You can now fire your weapons safely - kill the viles running around the main area then go back to the south-east building and kill the vile inside it to reach the exit teleporter.

Secrets

 * 1) In the main area, get to the east side of the broken white teleporter and use the gargoyle face there to lower a wall behind you which hides a BFG9000 (supercharge on Hey Not Too Rough or lower). (sector 126)

Current records
The records for the map at the Doom Speed Demo Archive are:

The data was last verified in its entirety on April 14, 2022.

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