Excellent!

How do I get the gold key under the pentagram in the first map?

Running in Quake HD Pack\drake\maps\arcanum, "run anyway" with Quake Injector. This means DP client.

Once you get into that room, you go up a ladder, up some stairs, and press a button; this makes a bunch of monsters appear; when you've killed all the monsters (iirc there's a vore or maybe zombies on the pentagram) the pentagram opens and you can drop down and get the key.

I feel very conflicted about this. Obviously the scope, scale and technical execution are all extraordinary, and I have read Kinn's gushing praise for this episode, which makes me feel like I really should have loved it too.

But there was one thing that bothered me a lot (because it formed such an integral part of the experience), namely (in my opinion) an over-reliance on the button-finding gameplay mechanic. By the third map it started feeling like all I was doing was moving from button to button to button, and with every door I opened, I was almost immediately told to find another two, three or four buttons. This really broke immersion for me.

Was it just me, or did anyone else have a similar experience with this episode?

Seriously? I have to axe a horde of zombies in pitch darkness before I'm even allowed into the castle? Where does that get fun?

You mean the zombies at the very beginning? I thought those were fun. Tricky and difficult (to me at least), but novel in the way it forces the player to deal with zombies in a way s/he never would otherwise (or at least I wouldn't). I really enjoyed the first map overall (as I recall; it's been a while) -- it was only later on that I felt it had become very repetitive, despite all the technical impressiveness.

I released the first map by itself as the Arcanum demo, and people liked it. Then when I released the final project, suddenly everyone was complaining about the first map. This was confusing. Anyway, it will be changed in the future to something more conventional.

Tronyn: That is weird. I have not played the demo on its own, but to me the first map was the highlight of the pack (but then I do seem to be the odd one out. I seem to be the only one who disliked the dominance of button-searching in the later maps).

Maybe those who later complained about the first map just liked the other maps much more when the full episode was released?

I see what you mean, PulSar's map and my Dis Aliter Visum I/II are all very gloomy and mazelike; overlapping routes are probably easier in outdoor maps where you can actually see how the route overlaps, rather than finding "what, I'm in this room again?" in a series of pretty but similarly-designed dark rooms.

Maybe that is part of the issue, but what I meant was rather that in order proceed through these maps, you basically need to solve very similar puzzles over and over: you never get very far before you reach a locked door and have to go searching for x number of buttons.

That is of course fine as a gameplay device, as it slows things down and makes level progression about more than just running and shooting, but because it was the same mechanic over and over, it felt very artificial to me after a while -- it was too obvious that I was in a game level, as opposed to a real (albeit otherworldly) place, if that makes sense.

Plus, it got frustrating because I started getting the feeling that I could not really move very far and explore or get lost in the map I was in, because pretty soon I would hit the next locked door, and receive the same instructions.

I am speaking from memory here and would need to replay this episode, but: I seem to remember that this was most pronounced in Dei Iudicium, which I really felt was the kind of setting the player should be able to move through more freely (barring resistance from monsters, of course. Loved the spiders here, by the way).

Sorry for being so wordy and I hope this makes at least some sense. As I said, I am obviously the odd one out, so you probably should not be listening to me, but those are my two (constructive, not negative) cents.

Why can't I find this with 'pulsar' filter?