Hexen/Guardian of Steel

Like the Guardian of Ice, this level needs two visits to complete. If you came here from the west side of the courtyard in Seven Portals, skip to Part 2 below.

Part 1
Most of this level is symmetrical from side to side. You begin in a small room; behind you is a portal returning to Seven Portals. Ahead is a very long corridor leading up to the left and right. You'll encounter a new enemy here: the Centaur. They have a shield that they frequently use, which blocks shots and will reflect projectiles back that may impact you. If you're playing the Fighter, they're trivial with your #2 weapon, which gets past the shield. Use Flechettes when playing the Cleric: they'll stick to the poison cloud and not budge until they die or the cloud expires. You can get several of them to run into and get stuck in a single cloud. As the Mage, it's tedious with the wand, but the time-delayed explosions from the Flechettes can help a lot.

Both ways the corridor leads go to identical, mirror-image areas. At the end is an L-shaped room with two windows looking into another dimly-lit room. A door shaped like a square column also leads into here. Note the switch on the wall outside first: there's one on the other side too and you'll need to play with them later. Go inside: you'll see a stairway leading diagonally up, another stairway leading down, and a metal panel of geometric sections that looks a lot cleaner than the other surfaces. Things made of this metal can be moved, opened, etc, generally from remote locations.

Take the stairway down: in here is a small room with a low window looking into a lower area made of rusty metal, your eventual destination. You might be able to clear out enemies from here, although it's a bit difficult to get weapons-fire through the window. There are items here too.

Central area
Go up the diagonal stairs to a large, tall central room whose center is taken up by a big closed-off area. You'll find the diagonal stairs coming up from the other side of the level. In the other corners are rusty columns. On either side are big windows up on the wall. One looks into a frozen area, with regions out of sight beyond, where a few ice-creatures called Wendigos may attack. They're very easy to kill but the ice shards they shoot do a lot of damage and scatter fragments on impact. The other window looks into a tall, irregular-shaped rusty room with a bunch of enemies you can clear out through the window. In the middle of the room, try jumping up to the statues and looking around them. If you can get weapons-fire around the statues (experiment with them) you can clear out the enemies wandering around inside. You'll be able to get inside yourself later.

Rusty area
If you haven't yet, go to and explore the other side of the level, then return to the central room. On the remaining two sides of the room are doors, one of which needs the Steel Key. Open the other (watch out for the Chaos Serpent), and ride the lift inside down. The corridor at the bottom goes left and right. One way will be blocked by that clean metal like what you saw earlier. Go the other way, to the rusty lower room you saw earlier, and find and pull the lever.

If you look through the cage, you'll see another room beyond the opposite side of the cage. You'll need to get into there, because there's another lever inside. Explore the area, and take note of the clean metal and how you think it may function. Now, go back to the L-shaped rooms at the ends of the long corridor, where the switches are. The two switches affect the clean metal in some manner. Experiment with them, and you'll see how it works. (Hint: play with the switches while you're watching the automap.)

You'll have discovered that the clean metal is a long barrier that the switches slide back and forth, opening one rusty room and simultaneously blocking the other. With the other rusty room open, go back down and pull the lever on that side. In here, if you're playing the Cleric on skill levels 4 or 5, you'll finally get your #2 weapon.

You're done here for now. Return to the portal and exit back to Seven Portals.

Part 2
When you first enter and begin exploring, it'll look like you're back where you were last time, but with newly-spawned enemies--until you get to the central room. You've actually been on the opposite side of the level, which in fact has "4-way" symmetry. This new side works exactly like the first side did, except on this visit the rusty columns in the corners of the central room are now open (the diagonal stairs you just came up passed these) and you now have the Steel Key and can enter the locked door. The rusty lower area on this side has two levers like the first side did. The red and silver cross-shaped item you'll find down here is a Banishment Device: it sends enemies to where you most recently entered the level; a counterpart to the Chaos Device. (This doesn't work on boss enemies, although in the original (1.0) version of the game it may have.) After accessing the rooms and pulling both levers, your tasks are completed. Return to Seven Portals by the portal on either side. The remaining unvisited parts are bonus areas you can get to shortly.