Caverns - Area 2: Artifact Excavation

Caverns - Area 2: Artifact Excavation is the twenty-sixth level of Doom 3. Features an ancient Martian temple. The Vagary makes another appearance at the end, but it's two of them this time.

Summary
Arriving at Sub Station 3, the marine steps off the lift and is almost immediately attacked by an arch-vile and two Hell knights. Despite being locked in close quarters, he manages to defeat Betruger's minions. He then battles his way through a swarm of wraiths to reach the ancient ruins themselves at Main Excavation.

After finding the keycard to Storage Room 11, the marine can backtrack to Sub Station 3 and gain access to a storage room containing lots of supplies (though he triggers an ambush in the process). He then returns to the Main Excavation chamber, where he encounters another arch-vile. After killing the demon and its minions, he heads through the various ancient chambers. Here he sees the glyphs on the walls that were mentioned on Pierce Rogers's video disk, as well as the strange levitating egg-shaped artifacts also mentioned in Roger's report.

Soon, he arrives in a chamber called the Room of the Stars. On the ceiling is the map of the solar system spoken of in Richard Davis' PDA. Betruger unleashes more demons including Hell knights on the marine. After defeating these demons, the marine moves to the gallery, where he does battle with two vagaries and a swarm of trites. He then gains access to the Excavation Transfer lift which will take him to the final level of the game.

Characters

 * Malcolm Betruger (voice only)

Video disks

 * Tablets. Found in Levitation Room.
 * Ancient Civilization. Found in Levitation Room. The same video disk can be found in Site 3.

Enemies
The enemy count on Nightmare is the same as on Veteran.

* Some imps in this level are spawned by one of the arch-viles, thus their amount can vary. Here only number of distinct spawn points is shown.

Items
The amount of items is the same on all skill levels. There's no difference in the amount of items in BFG Edition. There are two health stations on the level, one in the Storage room with 74 health in reserve. The second is in the Levitation area and must be activated by turning on the generator in the Room of Stars.

Starting inventory
If the player starts the level via a console command, they will start with these items:

Secrets

 * In Main Excavation there are many supplies located on the construction platforms, which can be climbed from the sides like ladders. More of these platform are spread out through the temple and they usually have supplies as well.
 * In The Gallery there's a BFG charge located behind one of the crates.