MAP14: The Inmost Dens (Doom II)

MAP14: The Inmost Dens is the fourteenth map of Doom II. It was designed by American McGee and uses the music track "The Dave D. Taylor Blues". Also, Final Doom's The Plutonia Experiment has MAP18: Neurosphere as an edited remake of this map but the textures it uses are relatively different.

The level is remarkable in its style and amount of aesthetic details. Consequently, it has the biggest amount of sidedefs for any Doom or Doom II level.

Essentials
From the start, go right and enter the staircase a little way off. Continue past the red door, around the next corner and through the door to the right. Step into the square of light in the next short corridor to open the doors. Go through the one straight ahead. Continue around the building to the right. Go up the stairs and through the door to enter the building. Get a running start and jump through the largest window. You should land on a bridge on the far side of the grey stone barrier. Continue along, across the water and through the arched doorway. Then take a left. At the end is the red skull key.

Return to the red door near the start. If you fall into the water on your way, ride one of the many circular lifts up and drop onto land. Flip the switch behind the red door and red columns nearby will lower. Go through the door behind them and cross into the next outdoor area. Kill all the enemies there, enter the building and get the blue skull key.

Come back to the second outdoor area once more and run through the window again, landing on the bridge. This time, head right after passing through the arched doorway. You will reach a dead end with a window to the right. Run through the window and onto the adjacent platform. In case you fall in the water, you can just use it like a lift. Continue along the next hallway to its end and across the bridge to the blue door. After passing through it, continue straight forward through the building, running across the gap, to reach the exit.

Other points of interest
On Hurt me plenty or lower, there is a berserk at the northern end of the lane with the red door. On higher levels, a medikit is found there.

When you have located the blue key, you can jump to the surrounding water. There is a door behind a corner on the eastern side of the area. When you turn right after entering the door, you will find a barred room with a soul sphere inside. The bars are opened by a trigger in front of them, and are helpful in case the room is populated by an arachnotron. If you stay in the room when the bars close, you can make an escape through a window to another area and use a lift to drop onto land again.

Otherwise, you can travel back to the waters in the blue key area and go to the northwest corner of it. Once you are beyond the wall, you will see a narrow tunnel in the distance. Enter the wooden door there, grab the rocket launcher in the revealed room and press the switch to lower a lift to the starting point. If you step onto the elevation nearby before going through the door, the ceiling in the aforementioned room will start to crush. The motion can be interrupted by returning to the door again. In case the ceiling stops too low, you need to start the crusher again and time the interruption so that you are able to enter the room.

Official
There are no official secrets in this level.

Non-official

 * 1) In the dark chamber that is visible through windows at the start, there is a wall with a torch on it. Press it to reveal a box of rockets. In addition, the chamber itself holds a combat armor.
 * 2) At the blue door near the exit, the lane continues around the building. A door can be opened at the southern end, which reveals a nook next to the decorative formation inside the building. The place holds a medikit.

Bugs

 * If the player turns on the crusher of the rocket launcher room after having opened the wooden door, a Hall of Mirrors effect can be seen on the wall of the crusher at the doorway because a texture is missing (the upper section of sidedef 1,956, linedef 1,259). Obviously, it was a situation the designer had not thought of since the two windows of the room, on the other hand, have the corresponding texture set.
 * Due to the extreme size of the map, saved games will not load sometimes.

Records
The Compet-N records for the map are: