DOORS has two main floors: The Hotel and The Mines. One is a haunted hotel with 100 rooms of escalating terror. The other is an underground mining complex with new entities, deadlier chases, and a mechanical boss fight that broke even veteran Hotel speedrunners.
If you’ve beaten The Hotel and think you’re ready for anything, The Mines will humble you. Here’s exactly how they compare — and why the gap between them is wider than most players expect.
At a Glance
| The Hotel (Floor 1) | The Mines (Floor 2) | |
|---|---|---|
| Rooms/Doors | 1-100 | 101-200 |
| Boss Encounters | Seek (x2), Figure (Door 100) | Seek (x2), Figure (Door ~199), Queen Grumble (Door 150), Dam Finale (Door 200) |
| New Entities | Rush, Ambush, Screech, Eyes, Halt, Figure, Seek, Timothy, Jack, Shadow, Window, Dupe | Above + Giggle, Grumble, Gloombats, Dread |
| Avg First Clear Time | 15-40 attempts | 30-60 attempts (after mastering Hotel) |
| Speedrun WR | ~15 min | ~25 min |
| Checkpoints | None (full restart on death) | None (full restart on death) |
Round 1: Entity Density and Variety
The Hotel — “One Threat at a Time”
The Hotel introduces entities gradually. Rooms 1-30 teach you Rush and basic hiding. Rooms 30-50 add Screech, Eyes, and the first Seek chase. Rooms 50-100 add Ambush, Halt, and Figure.
You rarely face more than 1-2 entities simultaneously. The design philosophy is: learn this entity’s rules, master them, then we’ll add another. By Room 100, you’ve been tested on everything — but never overwhelmed.
The Mines — “Everything, Everywhere, All at Once”
The Mines assumes you know the Hotel’s entity roster. From Room 101, it adds:
| Entity | Behavior | Difficulty Spike |
|---|---|---|
| Giggle | Hides on ceilings, drops when you pass under | Forces you to look up constantly — breaks Hotel muscle memory |
| Gloombats | Swarm when you use light or step on eggs | Punishes two core survival habits: using light and moving freely |
| Queen Grumble | Giant patrolling instant-kill in The Nest (Door 150) | Entirely new mechanic — stealth and timing, not hiding |
| Dread | Appears if you linger in one room too long | Adds time pressure to exploration and puzzle rooms |
And it doesn’t replace Hotel entities — it layers on top of them. Rooms 190-198 throw Rush, Ambush, Eyes, Gloombats, Giggle, and Screech at you simultaneously, often in dark rooms. This gauntlet ends more runs than any boss.
Winner (harder): The Mines.
Round 2: Boss Encounters
The Hotel Bosses
Seek Chase 1 & 2 (Doors ~34 and ~80): Sprint through corridors, turn at the Guiding Light’s signal, don’t look back. Intense but mechanically simple. Most deaths happen on the first attempt; by run 10, they’re routine.
Figure (Door 100): The final boss. Figure is blind but tracks you by sound. You must solve a breaker puzzle while it patrols. In the final phase, Figure chases you through a burning corridor. This is where most Hotel runs end.
The Mines Bosses
Seek Chase 1 (Door ~142): Now with dripstones you must time your jumps over, plus a minecart section where you crouch under boards while following the Guiding Light. More mechanical complexity than Hotel Seek.
Seek Chase 2 + Queen Grumble: Seek chases you and Queen Grumble patrols simultaneously. You’re dodging two instant-kill threats with different rules. This chase alone filters out players who coasted through Hotel Seek.
The Nest — Queen Grumble (Door 150): Navigate a dark maze, activate anchors, and avoid Grumble’s patrol routes. No hiding spots. No second chances. Pure execution. This section received nerfs post-launch because it was overtuned — and it’s still harder than anything in The Hotel.
Dam Finale (Door 200): A multi-phase platforming boss fight against the Seek Worm. Valves, goop, tight jumps, and precise timing. This is a mechanical skill check, not a knowledge check. You can watch all the guides in the world — you still need to execute.
Figure Encounter (Door ~199): Figure returns in a generator-filled cave. Figure’s hearing was nerfed in a post-Mines update, making this encounter easier than Hotel Door 100 for some players. But it’s still Figure, and Figure still ends runs.
Winner (harder): The Mines, by a wide margin.
Round 3: The Mental Game
The Hotel — “One More Run”
Hotel runs are 30-45 minutes. The pacing is tight. Every death is painful, but the run length is short enough that “one more try” doesn’t feel punishing. You can fit 3-4 Hotel attempts into a gaming session.
The Mines — “I’ll Try Again Tomorrow”
Mines runs are 45-90 minutes. Dying on Door 198 after 80 minutes is devastating. The longer run length combined with denser endgame entity spam creates a mental endurance test. Many players can only handle 1-2 attempts per session.
The emotional arc of a Mines run:
- Doors 101-130: “This isn’t so bad.”
- Doors 131-149: “Okay, this is harder.”
- Door 150 (Nest): “What have I done to deserve this?”
- Doors 151-189: “I’m going to make it.”
- Doors 190-198: dies to Ambush + Gloombats + Giggle in a dark room
- “I need to lie down.”
Winner (harder): The Mines.
Which Should You Play First?
The Hotel. Always The Hotel. It’s not just easier — it’s the tutorial that The Mines assumes you’ve completed. Every Mines entity builds on mechanics The Hotel teaches. Rush teaches you to listen for audio cues. Ambush teaches you to stay in the closet. Figure teaches you to move silently. Without those foundations, The Mines isn’t harder — it’s incomprehensible.
Path to mastery:
- Beat The Hotel 5+ times
- Start The Mines knowing you’ll die 30-60 times before a clear
- Learn one new Mines mechanic per session — don’t try to master everything at once
- Clear The Mines once
- Start speedrunning or trying modifiers
The Hotel breaks your fear. The Mines breaks your ego. Both are worth it.