Hub 1: Winnowing Hall

The Winnowing Hall is the first level in Hexen. It serves as a prologue and a tutorial. Although it is part of the Seven Portals hub, you cannot return to it once you have left.

Among the first places set upon by Korax's minions, the chapels bell sounds as a death knell for the doom about to befall the rest of Hexen.

Walkthrough


You start off in front of a chapel. Entering the door, you'll find yourself in a large room with a barred teleporter. Beware of the two traps here. The Korax Icons along the south wall will activate if you get near, shooting fireballs for several seconds. If you step on the central platform where the teleporter is, the four surrounding chambers open to unleash Ettins.

There are many stained glass windows in the chapel, some of which conceal items. In the western alcove, you can smash the righthand window to reveal a hidden stairway. At the bottom, you'll find an Ettin or two, health, and a bullhead switch - pressing this will open the gates. Behind the next door is a narrow area where walls will lower to surround you with Ettins. Near the stained glass windows on the far end of the room is another bullhead switch - pull it to lower the pillar with the Emerald Key. As soon as you take it, the gates start opening and closing. They can crush you if you're not careful, so your best bet is to dash through.

Now that you have the Emerald Key, you can open the locked gate outside. To find it, leave the chapel veranda and turn left. Once it's unlocked, you'll be confronted with more Ettins. Near the second wooden gate is a sun/moon switch - press it to open the stone door on the right. The stairs lead up to a rampart with more Ettins, and another sun/moon switch that rises up. Press this to open the second gate. Before you head back down, you can climb up the southern wall for a Platinum Helm.

The second gate opens to a courtyard with a belfry, more Ettins, and Afrits. The belfry is locked, so you'll have to enter the cave, located to the west and covered by trees. There may be more Ettins here if you haven't killed them already. The path will lead you straight to the Silver Key. Once you take it, the crushers in the cave activate - they grind open and shut at varying speeds, so proceed with caution. With the Silver Key you can open the door to the belfry and climb up. Hit the bell to ring it, which solves the puzzle. You can either climb back down, or jump down using the ledges with statues (done properly, you won't take fall damage). You can either go back the way you came in, or through the cave if the crushers have stopped (the stalagmite barrier will have disappeared). Back at the chapel, there will be more enemies, including Afrits. You'll find that the teleporter inside is now unbarred, and it sends you to a room with a portal. A passage opens to the right, giving you one more chance to explore the level, as there is no way to return. Enter the red portal to proceed to the Seven Portals.

Secrets

 * In the room with the emerald key you can kill the ettin without getting hurt by breaking the window in the back and hiding inside.
 * In that same room, when playing deathmatch, there is a hidden door on the south side, behind it is a teleport leading to an icon of the defender.
 * Just after using the emerald key, if you go up the steps and turn around there are stone ledges against the wall that can be jumped up to a platinum helmet.
 * You can kill the ettin in the room with the silver key by standing on the opposite side of the stalagmites and hitting them. With the Fighter and Cleric classes, as long as they are within melee range, this is easy to do.  However, with the Mage class, you will have to position yourself so that the wand attack goes through (there is only one spot where this can occur).
 * The wizard can ring the bell with the magic wand without entering the tower.

Bugs

 * If the player stands in the northeast corner of the room beyond the emerald door and looks towards the bell tower at a certain angle, a HOM effect can appear on the far wall of the outdoor area. This is caused by a drawsegs limit.
 * On hard difficulty, an ettin inside the bell tower is stuck to the wall.
 * This map has various structural debris:
 * A triangle, which has its linedefs facing outward (rather than inward like a normal sector).
 * Two sectors south of the four-door trap.
 * A pair of linedefs just north-west of the four-door trap, which if viewed with the map cheat, gives a false impression of a connecting segment. (One of these linedefs completes a square for overhead viewing.)
 * A linedef connecting the starting area and bell tower area, west of the second door leading to the bell tower. It is associated with a single sector that contains lava.
 * Missing textures:
 * On the ceiling near -1088,1152, which makes the ceiling in front of the entrance look slightly off.
 * Surrounding the teleport near -1122, 2014, but the resulting flaw is barely visible.

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

Trivia

 * "Winnowing" means "to eliminate that which is inferior". In particular, it refers to the process of separating wheat from chaff in agriculture.
 * All of the stained glass windows in this level can be broken, and several of them conceal items. The stained glass depicts the three character classes. Some have an extra pane above them that depicts the ultimate weapon of that class.
 * If the player is using the Mage class, they do not need to get the Silver Key in order to complete the level. At the area with the bell tower, aim at the bell through the window and shoot it with the Sapphire Wand to lower the teleporter in the other room.
 * In the first indoor room, once the ettins are released, they can be killed by triggering the Korax heads and running outside.
 * The player can also hide inside the small rooms that they are held in; there is a switch on the other side of the head so that they will not be trapped.
 * The tall bushes near the clock tower can be burned down with fire-based weapons (Fighter and Mage Fléchettes, Hammer of Retribution, Firestorm and Bloodscourge). Same goes for the dead tree by the cave.
 * Script 253 in this map makes three things (with TID 36) emit an owl song every nine-to-twenty seconds. Two of them are map spots near healthy trees in the starting courtyard (the one closest to the west wall in the passage to the stalactite-barred cave with the silver key and the one in the middle of the eastern part of the courtyard); but the third is the pottery right in front of the player start.