MAP29: Island of Death (Memento Mori)

MAP29: Island of Death is the twenty-ninth level of Memento Mori. It was designed by Thomas Möller and uses the music track "Hidden Anger" by Mark Klem.

Essentials
Leave the room you are in, pick up the super shotgun nearby and go clockwise around the building you started in, all while dodging shots from imps and revenants. Grab the red key from its alcove. Cross over to the western side of the structure the red key was in, and flip the switch on it. This opens the big door in the north of the starting area.

Proceed through the door. Kill off the imps, demons and chaingunner in this room. Head down the stairs in the east of this room to a courtyard with a structure containing four berserk packs. Run to the north, and look carefully for the break in the northern wall (it looks like one wall, but is actually two walls with a gap between them).

Squeeze through the gap, and enter a new courtyard with a pentagram on the floor. Head straight for the red door in the north. Kill the chaingunners and lower the metal wall ahead. In this new room, snipe the imps on the platform in the north, then find the switch in the northeast corner and flip it (beware of chaingunners peeking out from a gap in the east wall).

This will lower the barrier in the west wall of this room. From this moment, do not fire a shot to avoid activating a teleport trap. Run around the square metal structure ahead of you as it lowers, then run full tilt towards the pier in the west marked "exit". If you can straferun, even better. By doing this, you will not only have prevented a large horde of monsters from teleporting in, you will have beaten a set of gates that lowers in front of the pier, trapping you in the area for 30 seconds.

Get onto the boat at the end of the pier to exit this level.

Official

 * 1) Ride up the lift mentioned in non-official secret #3, go north and drop down into the pit. While the lion switches on the pillar lower the pit's floor to the eastern passage, use the gargoyle switches to raise the floor step by step until you reach the western passage and enter it. In the room behind (at the northwest of the map), climb up the stairway and approach the switch. An elevator (sector 497) will lower to the east, which counts as a secret. The elevator leads to a room with five chaingunners, four bullet boxes, five shell boxes, three boxes of rockets and four medikits.
 * 2) Return to the pit mentioned in secret #1 and use either lion switch to lower the floor. Follow the eastern passage into the toxic sludge room (in the northeast of the map). Run up to the wall with the skull on it (sector 520) and open it to find a megasphere. After ascending the newly-revealed stairs in the room west of the toxic sludge room, the access to it is blocked, so you have to get the megasphere before.

Non-official

 * 1) In the courtyard with the four berserk packs, enter the hallway right east of the northeastern berserk. Open the portion of the southern wall lit by the lamp in the northern wall to reveal a balcony with a blue armor, two stimpacks and a super shotgun.
 * 2) After using the teleporter (this works only once) at the end of the hallway surrounding the patio with the yellow skull key and crossing the blood pit, you enter a passage. Open the portion of the southern wall lit by the torch in the northern wall to reveal a secret passage. After killing the spectre upstairs, you find a plasma gun in the south. Approach it to ride a lift down to two imps. Take care about them, push the gargoyle switch at the western wall and ride the lift back up. Quickly enter the opened wall east of the plasma gun to reach the soul sphere you saw before from the blood pit.
 * 3) This one is made for coop-mode: After entering the red door you reach a room with eight green torches. In single-player mode, you have to push the gargoyle switch in the northeast of this room to lower the lift in the west. In multiplayer mode however, this switch is blocked by a ninth green torch. So player #A has to enter the lit square in the southwest while player #B operates the lion switches on the southeastern wall, pushing the western switch twice to raise the square. (The eastern switch lowers it to floor level.) Player #B then has to wait in front of and southeast of the room's northwestern platform before player #A shoots at the red recess in the western wall. This raises a switch under the feet of player #B, lifting him up to the platform where a megasphere is on. (This switch has to be used to lower the western lift.) In single-player mode, stand next to the northeastern switch, use the super shotgun to shoot at the red recess west of the lit square. You probably need several tries until one of the pellets eventually hits the target. Quickly run over on the switch in front of the platform when it starts raising. Using a source port that allows vertical aiming makes this much easier of course.

Bugs

 * If you kill an arachnotron in the western zone (with the yellow square) with splash damage before it lifts up, you can fall in its pit with no way out.

Routes and tricks
In single-player gameplay, under UV speed, NM speed, and UV pacifist rules, the map is extremely easy to finish. Going clockwise around the building you start in not only lets you access the red skull key (which can be grabbed without lowering the platform it is on,) but also opens a shortcut into the area with the berserk packs, which allows you to reach the red key door, and consequently, the exit, very early on. This makes the map completable in less than 30 seconds.

On the other hand, in cooperative multiplayer, the walkover linedef opening the shortcut, as well as the quickest way to the red skull key, are blocked off by green torches. This is intended to force you and your team to travel through much more of the level in order to complete it. However, two tricks devised by Kristian Ronge, the current UV pacifist record-holder on this level, allow the map to be completed through the single-player path even with the torch barrier. The first is performed in the starting area, by moving carefully around the pile of skulls, making sure not to fall into the blood moat, allowing you to obtain the red skull key in that location. The second takes advantage of the ability to trigger linedefs from any height, by opening the blood fountain in the first room, standing at its southwest or southeast sides within activation range of the southern switch, and flipping it to open the shortcuts. From there, the route is the same as in single-player. The tricks are demonstrated in Ronge's 00:49 coop speedrun, which requires ZDoom 1.22 and a command line argument to initiate a faked cooperative multiplayer game.

Current records
The Compet-n records for the map are:

The data was last verified in its entirety on July 4, 2020.

Player spawns
This level contains six spawn points:
 * 1) facing north. (thing 676)
 * 2) facing north. (thing 677)
 * 3) facing north. (thing 678)
 * 4) facing north. (thing 679)
 * 5) facing north. (thing 680)
 * 6) facing north. (thing 681)

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