Elevators are one of the methods of starting a match. They require the player to enter a physical elevator in the lobby, which is set to start a match in a specific mode type and map.
Usage
Elevators can be found inside the game's lobby. These will display the current the map it leads to, alongside the map name, creator and difficulty. At the bottom of the image, there is a progress bar, which at first displays the "Waiting for Players..." message. This changes to a timer when players have entered the elevator. At the right of the progress bar, the current number of players in the elevator is shown.
After entering an elevator, it will ask the player that entered it for what party size they want it to be for. After choosing one, the timer for the elevator will start and a box will appear which displays nearly identical information to the map icon of the elevator. Once the timer finishes, the trapdoor seen beneath players opens and a plane will fly in the sky.
There are currently three Elevator types. The first is a survival elevator, which has a 4 player limit, waits 20 seconds before starting a match and resets its maps every minute. This will start a survival match with the mode being decided by a vote. The second type is a Hardcore elevator, which has a 3 player limit, waits 20 seconds before starting a match and resets its maps every minute. The third type is a Challenge Trials elevator. There are four of them, have a 4 player limit and wait 20 seconds before starting a match.
Legacy Elevators
While currently, there are only two types of Elevators, there used to be far more Elevators types in the game in the past.
Special Elevators
Special Elevators were a variant of Elevators which only hosted special maps. While currently, that only would include maps with special modes attached to them, it used to also lead to some maps with multiple paths due to them having All Paths.
Special Elevators were not random and instead followed a specific order. The time for them to change and depart was also lowered. Special Elevators were first removed from private servers in v1.8.0, then in v1.18.4 they were also removed from public servers, making the only way of playing special maps be Matchmaking.
Event Elevators
Event Elevators were Elevators which generally only housed a single map, though at one point could cycle between two. They were used to access event maps and their respective modes. It has been replaced by Matchmaking starting with the Solar Eclipse Event, brought back with the Null & Void Event and replaced by Matchmaking again in v1.78.0.
MEGA Elevators
MEGA Elevators were a type of Elevators which would lead players into MEGA Servers. MEGA Servers could go up to six players, or in the past eight.
As the increased player count would make the game far easier, special effects would be applied to make the game harder. This included reduced player count, health scaling, reduced sell values and smaller wave bonuses. At one point, tower upgrade costs were also increased.
MEGA Elevators existed in the game since its first public release in BETA v1.0, and would later be removed in v1.3.0, replaced by Special Elevators. While no modern alternative exists outside of bugs, Sandbox does allow for matches with more than four players.
Solo, Duo & Trio Elevators
Solo Elevators, Duo Elevators and Trio Elevators were a variant of Elevators which only allowed one, two or three players inside of them instead of the usual four or higher player counts.
Duo Elevators were first added in Release v1.6.1, while Solo Elevators and Trio Elevators were added in Release v1.8.1. All three would be removed in Overhaul v1.3.0, though Matchmaking does provide options for all player counts.
