first play demos from 4 maps:
http://www.quaketastic.com/files/demos/dwell_maps_1-4_ankh.zip

Had a lot of fun 

The map design is top-notch, and it has a sort of "Dissolution of Eternity meets Zerstorer" feel to it. I love the new soundtrack as well. Really looking forward to the next epsiode. 

That's very charitable towards DoE... 

Demos for maps 5,6 and 7
http://www.quaketastic.com/files/demos/dwell_maps_5-7_ankh.zip

Again all maps were great.

I started map 8 but saw the monster count of above 300. Tried for a bit but didn't find the power to continue. 

Ok. Map 8 was cool too :)

http://www.quaketastic.com/files/demos/dwell_map_8_ankh.zip 

The last boss battle was something and a half. Regarding that, I have a question - is there a way to increase the number of particles?

Played on QuakeSpasm. When there's too much monsters around, with the projectiles and particle traits from attacks and gibs flying around, it's obvious that sometimes the particles just dont appear, like for example I fire a rocket and I see only the model, then only sprite of the explosion - no particles in the trail and no particles in the explosion.

I remember seeing that many years ago as well when the horde combat style maps were in fashion, it happened all the time. But I thought the sourceports and engines improved since then? 

There is a command line option for that in QS, -particles. I dunno what the default value is, but you could try with something like -particles 8000. That should do it. 

Thanks, that helped! 

Finally found the Super Secret in That Which Can Eternal Lie. It must have been the single secret I've been trying to figure at the longest ever. And of course it was easier than I thought once I got it. 

Congrats on getting it. It's not a super secret anymore as of patch 2 though. 

Damn, I should have found it faster! Anyway, excellent map - one of my favourites in the episode. 

I haven't found the secret map yet, but completed this otherwise on skill 2.

If anyone is sleeping on this for some weird reason, please don't! It's a fantastic set of maps. Somewhat cohesive (because of the loosely shared theme) but a lot of cool variation and different ideas/approaches. It does have more than a bit of an "identity" or vision as an episode, which I really appreciate.

I think the new music soundtrack also has a lot to do with giving the whole thing an overlay of a unified vision -- it's hard to overstate how much (for me) good new music adds to things.

Anyway: kind of reminds me of my feels playing through Zerstoerer way back when.

I won't say much (yet?) about individual maps; there's been a lot said about those above. One critique though about the end map, which is truly excellent in and of itself:

IMO it can be a mistake to have an episode end on a mega huge map. Finishing this map was a satisfying accomplishment but it threw the pacing of the episode all out of whack. It feels like -- although I don't know if this is actually true -- I spent as many play sessions on the last map as on the rest of the episode put together, which starts to push those previous (also excellent) maps out of my overall memory and flattens out my experience of that cool variation and experimentation that was happening up until then.

Gotta say though, still a great episode, 5 stars, looking forward to the next. 

Although the title does remind me of this, which I used to walk past daily in pre-COVID times: https://goo.gl/maps/UN9VhsCSjv3uo1aD7

:-) 

What a great map pack, I am super impressed. Looking forward to the future ones!

Somehow I stuck on d1m8 after surviving all waves. I have 473/476 kills but neither enemies appear nor I am able to leave the arena.