Doors, barriers and Power
Every map starts with a small, closed-off starting area. To move on, you spend your points opening doors and clearing debris, you hold the barriers on the windows the Drowned climb through, and you turn on the Power that runs the perks and the Forge of Ys.
Doors and debris
- Each closed passage (door, gate, blast door, barbed wire, rockfall, debris…) shows its name and price when you look at it. Hold F to pay and open it.
- Prices range from 500 to 1,500 points (free while the power is off on Discovery difficulty, then half price in the guided match). Once open, a door stays open for the whole squad until the end of the match: only one player pays.
- Opening a door opens a new zone: new wall weapons, new machines… but also new windows and new spawn points. The Drowned come out in your zone and in the open neighboring zones.
- Some passages can’t be bought: they open during the Easter eggs (see The Awakening of Ys and The Last Metro (Nec Mergitur Easter egg)).
Don’t spend everything in the first rounds: each door you open spreads the horde out. Aim for the path to the Power and a zone you can hold. The list of doors and their prices is on Ker-Ys and Nec Mergitur.
Barriers
The Drowned mostly come in through boarded windows. Each window has 6 boards.
- A Drowned tears off about one board per second; at most two Drowned work on the same window, and only one at a time climbs through once it is bare.
- Hold F near a damaged window to rebuild it: one board about every 0.9 seconds (twice as fast with Quicksilver).
- Each board gives 10 points, up to 500 points per round (see Points).
- The Carpenter power-up rebuilds every barrier at once (+200 points each).
Early in the match, a window you rebuild between two Drowned pays as much as a body shot, and it slows the horde. The Carpenter’s Plane (one board rebuilds the whole window) and Rusty Nails (each board placed kills the Drowned pressed against the window) gumballs turn a window into a points trap.
The Power
At the start of the match, the Power is off: most machines are dark.
Turning on the Power: find the switch and hold F. It is free, one player is enough, and it stays on for the rest of the match. While it is off, an Objective panel (top left) and two markers lead you there in every match: “Power” on the lever itself, with its distance, and “Door to open” on the next door on the way, with its price (see Your first match).
| Map | Where the switch is |
|---|---|
| Ker-Ys | The Engine Room, under the Bunker (Bunker Armored Door from the Trenches, then the Service Stairs) |
| Nec Mergitur | Saint-Michel Substation (Substation door, on the Saint-Michel platform) |
What the Power runs:
- the perk machines: without Power they won’t serve, with one exception for Second Wind solo (see Perks); on Discovery, turning on the Power gives Menhir to every player;
- the Forge of Ys;
- the electric traps;
- the lighting of many rooms.
Doors, wall weapons, the Mystery Box, gumball dispensers and fire traps work without Power.
Traps
Each map has two traps, triggered from a wall switch: 1,000 points, active for 25 seconds, then a 60-second cooldown.
| Map | Trap | Zone | Power |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ker-Ys | Fuel trap (fire) | The Trenches | no |
| Ker-Ys | Electric trap | The Bunker | yes |
| Nec Mergitur | Town gas leak (fire) | The Châtelet Corridors | no |
| Nec Mergitur | Third rail (electric) | Saint-Michel (on the tracks) | yes |
- An electric trap kills the Drowned, hounds and rats that step into it almost instantly; a fire trap burns them in a little over half a second. Divers and bosses don’t die in them.
- Trap victims give no points and drop no power-ups.
- The trap hurts you too: 60 health per second for an electric trap, 20 for a fire trap. You can get through the flames at a price (about 40 health for the Trenches zone), but not through the arcs.
A trap is for catching your breath, not for earning points: trigger it when a line of Drowned is on your heels in a corridor, or to finish a hound round. Try to loop them through the zone during the 25 seconds.
Checked against the game on November 10, 2026