Keys in Hexen

[TheOrganGrinder]

Putting this one here as an editing question because it concerns a game behaviour that's primarily relevant from a level editing/design perspective.

 

So, keys.  Hexen has eleven of them; my understanding of their behaviour is that they persist from level to level within a hub but are purged from the player's inventory upon the transition to a new hub.  At the very least, they disappear from the map/inventory screen when the player travels to a new hub.

 

There are five 'slots' on the map/inventory screen for keys, and no hub in vanilla Hexen features more than four; Deathkings of the Dark Citadel features all five keys in its first hub.  Neither IWAD re-uses a key from an earlier hub in a later one, which is perhaps notable.

• Are the keys in fact purged from the player's inventory at the end of a hub?
  
• What happens if a hub includes more than five keys, in terms of both their use and their display on the map/inventory screen?

[Grain of Salt]

To answer the second part: you can hold all the keys (in terms of being able to open their respective doors), but you won't be able to see all of them on the map screen.