Hub 1: Winnowing Hall

The Winnowing Hall is the first level in Hexen, the Tutorial, so to speak. 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


From the start of the level, go forward through the door and into a room with a barred teleporter in the center. Be aware that there are two traps in this room. One is triggered when you go near the one of two carvings of Korax's face in the south of the room. The walls will spin around and shoot lava balls; there are flechettes to grab on the triggers. The other trap is activated when you step onto the central platform where the teleporter is. This trap opens four chambers containing Ettins. There are also several alcoves with stained glass panels. Go into the western alcove and smash the northernmost glass panel there, revealing a hidden stairway. Go down the stairs and a switch will emerge to the player's left. Pull it and a series of four doors will slide open. Go up the passage into the next room; some of the walls will lower, revealing more Ettins. There is a switch next to the glass panels on the far side of the room. Pull it and a platform with the Emerald Key lowers. Take the key and leave the room; note that the four doors in the stairway will begin opening and closing in succession, so it is advised to run through.

Go back up the stairs and leave the building, heading southeast to a locked door. The Emerald Key unlocks it and you may proceed. There will be a button straight ahead. Push it and the stone door to the player's right will open. Go through that door and up the stairs to a rampart. Another button will appear. Push it and head back down the stairs and to the south through the newly opened door. There is a bell tower and a small cave; enter the cave and follow the path toward the Silver Key. Upon taking the Silver Key, sections of the cave passage will begin gnashing against each other; watch the timing of the crushers and run through carefully. Enter the bell tower and climb to the top of the stairs, then hit the bell: it will begin ringing. Head back to the beginning of the level and enter the teleporter room. The teleporter is now unbarred; walk into it. There will be a red portal in front of the player; walk through it to enter the first hub. There is also a passage on the right so that the player can explore the level again before leaving. Once the player enters the red portal, they cannot come back to this level.

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.

Trivia

 * "Winnowing" means "to eliminate that which is inferior".
 * 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; the 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.

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 visplane 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 it's 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's 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.