Duke Nukem 3D Walkthrough


The Abyss
Episode 1, Level 6

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The Abyss is a level that is rather large, and can be a bit difficult in co-op play, as you die and go back to the start of the level.  On the Xbox 360 version you can use the replay feature in single play, which is rather helpful due to the size of the level.   Anyway, you start off with another river of slime, only this one is much shorter.  In fact, when you come to the mouth of the slime, do not just go down, you will want to get on the right hand platform.  If you stay on the platform, you will come upon a pair of double doors.  Taking out the couple of lizard troopers outside and inside the door will reveal a pair of protective boots.  Take them.  It will be helpful in this level.

When you come out of the small room with the boots, take a drop to the right.  You will land on a ledge right next to the locked blue door.  Depending on your difficulty level, there may or may not be a pig cop here too, so be careful.  There is a rocket launcher here you may need going forward.   Once you pick up the rocket launcher, make your way back following the slime.   After a short while, you will see a much faster moving river of slime than the one you are in.  That faster moving slime will go over a cliff.   If you follow the river of slime all the way to the bottom, you will be somewhere you don't want to be.   Right before you would fall off the cliff, you can see a ledge on the left side of the screen:

You will want to take the path shown in the picture, as this is the way to where the blue key is for the locked blue key door you saw a little bit ago.  Follow this path, and try not to fall off, as falling off will take you really out of the way.  

After you collect the blue key, you need to make your way back along the ledge you just used to get here.   You need to go up the slime waterfall, but you can do that with the ledge shown here. 

Once you get to the top, you need to jump up and make your way back to the blue key door.   If you did not dispose of the pig cop from earlier, you will have to now in order to use the blue key.   Once you use the blue key, the door will drop, and there will be another pig cop waiting to shoot you, so be alert.

There is a path in the area right past the blue door, but the room is rather dark - night vision can help here if you feel too lost (or have too dark a monitor).  Night vision will also show you a side room where you can pick up some health and RPG ammo.  When you come to the end of the path, you are left on a ledge rather high up in the level which will look like this:

After you've taken out the various pig cops and lizard troopers, you will need to make a jump across to the ledge indicated in the screenshot.  You cannot jump to where the cactus us (from here, anyway), so the jump you need to make to progress is the indicated one.   After the jump, you are again left in a fairly dark area, so night vision can help here for sure.   There are two ways out of here.  One ledge you come to has a bridge.  That is not the way you want to go (although there is a medkit over there if you need it).  You want to exit the other way - the one that has a ledge with the cactus you saw earlier on it.  Take the jump over to the cactus ledge, and go look at the "San Andreas Fault" sign.   This will trigger an earthquake, and several major parts of the level will realign, making the place look a lot different when it is finished.

When you set off the earthquake, several major parts of the level will go down quite a long ways, creating a huge drop.   The place at the bottom of the earthquake is where you will want to go.  If you have a good percentage of health, you can survive the jump, but if you do not have much health at this point, you can reduce the damage by riding one of the dropping areas down to the bottom.   In the shot above, if you jump on the area marked with an "X" right after you set off the earthquake, you can survive fairly well the huge drop.   There are health packs down there for you to recharge if need be.

One down the bottom, the way out will be out into a darkened, inclining hallway to your right in the screenshot above.   This path contains several Octabrains and pigcops, so be careful.   Again, night vision will help you spot them.   After a short while, you will come to a plateau in the path where you can go several ways.   The shot below is what some of it looks like when you arrive.  You want to take a further path that continues upwards, in a very similar path than the one you just traversed.  There are other areas you can go, but they are not places you want to be quite yet.

Once you go up the second stairway/path, you will end up looking down into a room with a fire in the middle.    The way out is behind a wall underneath the red & white circle in the picture.  You open it by "using" the small yellow hand image that you see to the right of the door.  

Once you open the door, you're in another small walkway.  This walkway leaves you in a large circular room with a couple of Octabrains.  Take out the Octabrains, as this is a puzzle room, and if you don't kill them, they will come up and get you while you are dealing with the puzzle.   In this room you will see a small opening on the floor, with light streaming in.  That is the way out, so you need to get yourself shrunk.   The first step in the puzzle is to "use" one of the orange hand drawings on the wall.  This one will raise a wall around the perimeter of the room.

Once the stairwell is raised, you need to go up the stairwell.  At the top you will see a cross that you can look through to see the outer area of the location you're in.  When you look out the window, you will trigger some explosions in the distance, and you will see some of the red walls drop.  You need to make sure this has happened.  If you do not do this, you will not be able to progress in the level once you escape this room.

After you've dropped the red lava wall in the distance, you want to stay on the platform you are on.  If you turn around and look behind you, you will see there are two more of those "hand" switches in the room besides the one you've already used.  This next step involves a fast move, so you will need to make sure you do it quickly.   What you need to do is jump up to the hand closest to you, and flip that.  When you do, a section of the floor will start rising under the other hand switch.  That is the time to go over there.   You don't have a lot of time before the rising platform gets too high to jump on.  If you miss the rising platform, go back to the switch you used to raise the platform and use it again - the platform will lower, allowing you to raise it again.   Once you've gotten up on the platform and can reach the third hand in the room, flip it and then turn around.   You will see a shrink ray come at you from the other side of the level.  You want to let it shrink you, then you can jump off the platform, and out of the room through the hole on the floor.  

After you get out of the room, you still be shrunk for a little while.  You will want to come out of the room and take a left.   There is a small medkit and some protective boots in this area.  Take the health if you need it, and you probably should take the boots too, as several parts of this area require you to walk through lava.   You will come to an area that looks like the same thing you saw when you looked out the cross window in the puzzle room.  This is where you need to go (assuming you dropped the walls in the puzzle room).  You will see a darkened area in the distance, that's where you need to go.

Once you make it to the other side of the lava pits, you will see a sharply ascending hallway that is made of the "red fire" walls.  The walls won't actually hurt you, but they look like they well.  You will need to make your way up the path until you come to a plateau.   On the way up the path, there are a few Atomic healths you can grab if you are low on health.

Once you reach the plateau, you will see a window with some light streaming in.  If you look out the window, you will see the alien spaceship.  There is a door which leads to a downward path, that is the way you want to go.

After you make it down the path (which gets quite narrow in places), you will see what appears to be a narrow path over a chasm.  This is the way to go, but it is not a straight path.  It is a series of platforms you have to jump to.  This can be somewhat tedious, and if you fall off, you die.  The jetpack obviously helps here if you have it, but if you don't (most likely), you will have to play a hopping game to get to the other side.  One one of the platforms is an RPG launcher - take it, you will need it shortly.

Once you make it to the other side, there is a very steep stairwell that hugs the wall.  Go up (more like hop up) the stairwell, and you will reach a room that has no possibility of you plunging to your death due to your jumping skills. :)   

In the backside of this room, you will see a large metallic looking door.  It is not locked, so go ahead and open it.  Behind the door is a short hallway leading to the final approach to the boss and the end of the level.   Take out any Octabrains inside here, as if you ignore them, there's a possibility they could come up on your backside in the next part of the level.  At the end of the hallway is a green door that will automatically open when you approach it.  Inside this door is a seemingly blocked path.  However, just inside this door (which will close behind you) is a green alien hand switch.  If you use this switch, a pillar will rise out of the floor revealing the way out, which is a big drop into the floor (as shown here):

When you jump into the hole in the floor, you are dropped into a room, which is just outside the main boss area.  This room has a few things which you might find helpful.  However, if you just drop all the way to the floor, you will miss them.   When you're jumping down the hole, if you hug the wall, you will not end up on the floor, you will end up in one of two alcoves right before the floor.   They are high enough that you cannot jump to them FROM the floor, so the only way to get to them is by landing there on your way down.   One side has a ripper chaingun, and the other side has an RPG.  That is something you will want in a minute.  :)

Once you have collected the two weapons, you can jump down to the floor.   You will be in a circular room with a large door on one side.  That is the door that leads to the boss.  If you search the walls for hidden secrets, you will find two alcoves on either side.  One has some ripper ammo, and the other is RPG ammo.  If you are low on either, take 'em.   Once you have gotten everything, it is time to head into the boss room and face the Battlelord.

Open the door to the room, and once inside, you will see a rather large chamber.  There is a platform to the left with some pod girls, and a few bits of ammo and health scattered around the room.   Once you get to the second half of the room, the Battlelord will emerge.

As this is a boss battle, expect to find this significantly more difficult than anything you've run into in the game up until this point.  There is no real secret or trick to beating the Battlelord.  Just shoot him a lot, and keep yourself from getting shot too much.  Make use of the health and ammo in the room.  There are some items of use behind the podgirls, should need them, but if you go up there, move quickly, as the Battlelord is likely to wipe you out while you're going for the items.

After this level finishes, you will see a cinematic after taking out the Battlelord.  When you've completed watching the cinematics, the game will automatically take you into the first level for Episode 2, "Space Port".
 

 

 


The Abyss Secrets

The Abyss contains a far more manageable six secrets (as opposed to the fourteen from the previous level).  The secrets can generally be retrieved in any order, you are not bound to the order shown here, except that the level is quite large, and backtracking can get annoying.  The secrets below are the areas that are recognized as secrets by the game.  This list of secrets will only show the "true" secrets in the level, not "Easter Eggs" as such (like the 867-5309 joke in Episode 1) - there's too many of those to list.

Secret #1: Hidden Steroids

Right before you get to a flamepit about 1/3 of the way into the level, if you turn around backwards, you will see some pipebombs sitting in a darkened corner.  To the left of the pipebombs is a section of wall that protrudes out.  If you "use" this wall, it will open up a door and some steroids will be in there.  Go collect the steroids for the first secret of the level.

Secret #2: Through the Fire and Flames

Right after the first secret is a fairly easy second secret.  In the flamepit shown below, you get the second secret by merely jumping into the fire.  You will be teleported to a secret room, where your appearance will give you the second secret for this level.

Secret #3: Hidden RPG

The third secret is inside the room you are left in for Secret #2.   If you look around the room, you will see an elevated ledge with an RPG on it.  Go grab the RPG to collect the secret.

Secret #4: Hopping mad about lava!

The fourth secret takes some work to get to.  After you make it out of the puzzle room where you're shrunk, and you start to make your way through the lava canyon, you need to wait.  Normally you'd go straight through the lava canyon, but on the right, you will see a "lava waterfall" with a series of ledges that go up.  The start of this path is shown here.   You need to do a lot of hopping in this sequence.

You need to continue to follow this path started with the hopping.  There is no way to get lost, it only goes one way (unless you fall down into the lava and get swept back to the start).  When you get to the top of the path, you will see where the lava waterfall starts.

To your right is a crack in the wall.  Blow it out with a pipebomb or a rocket, and it will open up another path you need to follow.   Once you follow it, you will eventually be led back to an area near the start of the level.   At this point you probably will want to go back on the path you took to get this secret, otherwise you'll have to go through the rest of the level to get back to where this secret started.

Secret #5: Lonely babe

If you take the path back from where you were at the end of secret four, you will want to stop at the place where the lava river starts.  On the other side of the river is a small platform with a hand on it.   Go there and "use" the hand.

Doing that will open a wall to the left of the hand.  Jump in there and follow a lava river upstream (which can hurt if you don't have any boots).  After a short path, you will come to a rock platform.  Jump onto that, and follow it.   It will lead downward into a cave where a babe is dancing all by herself.  Why she would be dancing on her own inside a cave with nobody around?  Who knows...

Secret #6: Hidden health in tube

The final secret of the level is near the large silver door towards the end of the level.  If you don't go through it immediately, you can open up a secret door on the wall to the right.   Open the door, and go in there. 

Following the path will lead you to an area outside the aliens' spaceship that will give you the sixth and final secret in this level.   There is also an Atomic health in this room you can collect if you need it.

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