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Goddamnit, that was the one part of Myst I fucking loathed. Kind of a neat idea, but executed poorly and so frustrating. The rest of the game is so good that it cancels out, but still. Every time I replay Myst I just cheat through that part.
Okay, so I looked up a guide to see if it had any tips about deciphering the sounds. I didn't want it to give me a solution, but rather a methodology.
Turns out the Selenetic Age doesn't play by the rules. The Mechanical Age contains the info you need to match the four main tones (north, south, east and west).
Selenetic age sound compass is easier than you guys are making it out to be.
There are only 4 sounds. The first 4 rooms you go through have only one exit, so you hear all four sounds before you have rooms with multiple exits, and the secondary directions are two sounds played together. That's not impossible to solve.
Selenetic age sound compass is easier than you guys are making it out to be.
There are only 4 sounds. The first 4 rooms you go through have only one exit, so you hear all four sounds before you have rooms with multiple exits, and the secondary directions are two sounds played together. That's not impossible to solve.
It's not impossible, it's just frustrating for some people
Selenetic age sound compass is easier than you guys are making it out to be.
There are only 4 sounds. The first 4 rooms you go through have only one exit, so you hear all four sounds before you have rooms with multiple exits, and the secondary directions are two sounds played together. That's not impossible to solve.
Selenetic age sound compass is easier than you guys are making it out to be.
There are only 4 sounds. The first 4 rooms you go through have only one exit, so you hear all four sounds before you have rooms with multiple exits, and the secondary directions are two sounds played together. That's not impossible to solve.
it's staggeringly fucking obtuse if you do not know music theory or are tone deaf
When I saw it was a maze, I got out my trusty pencil and paper and mapped it out. I started with the tried and true method for maze solving of always turning right. Turns out, that was the shortest path through the maze and I didn't even need the map.
broken image link
0
NocrenLt Futz, Back in ActionNorth CarolinaRegistered Userregular
I feel ashamed... Myst has been one of my favorite series, but I've only finished 1, 3 and majority of Uru.
I will say though that Uru Live was the reason I subbed to Gametap.
Hell, I even contributed or started a URU thread in the MMO forum.
Well, the directional clues were actual distinct sounds
the keyboard was the problem for tone deaf folks
Friend of mine played through machinarium a while back and he couldn't finish the game because it ends with the same music note puzzle. Yeah, puzzle games aren't very kind to color blindness and tone deafness.
Note how very carefully this (bewildering) scenario draws the player in. You know nothing at this point -- but both the interface and the situation leave you with no question as to how to begin. You see a closed book; you open it. You have a mouse and cursor; you click on the only object on the screen. The world gets even stranger then, but you are already part of it. You have taken the step in. You are complicit in the story.
It's like, everything in the whole age, right up to that point was solved by listening to sounds. But no, I should totally try to solve this last puzzle by drawing a gigantic map and ignore those weird noises completely.
Somewhere there is a piece of paper with an incomplete Selenetic subway map (drawn by my brother), and four symbols below it. I think we settled on a curly drawing of a spring, a receptionist bell, a tin can, and... maybe a bird? It's been a while.
A few years back I bought realMyst from GOG and played through it in an evening with two friends that had also beaten the original slideshow version long ago. It was fun to see how much of the solutions we could remember. One friend said that back then he had opened the combination lock in the cabin by brute-force. He actually played through channelwood before figuring out the tower rotation. Seriously, playing myst games cooperatively is super fun, just for how much it tells you about the way your friends think.
There is a tiny, tiny phosphate mine behind the generators. It takes a lot of work for one man to run a mine like that. That, and matches are pretty dangerous on an island full of trees. Best to keep them locked away in the only wooden structure on the island.
Especially after that incident when Achenar was ten...
Sometimes the purist in me rankles at remakes but I'm a fan of Real Myst. I think being able to play Myst with rolling waves and rolling fog and day/night cycles and falling rain and fluttering butterflies was cool.
By popular demand, it's time for the Mechanical Age!
Huh. The first clue is obvious, but I wonder what the second one is for.
Now I just gotta turn these cranks to put the time at 2:40 and...
Hooray! Gear bridge!
Just gonna go ahead and flip this on.
Ah, so that's what "2,2,1" means. This puzzle is tricky to explain through screenshots, but the basic idea is that the left lever turns gears 1 and 2 clockwise once, and the right lever turns gears 2 and 3. The plumb-bob-looking thing on the left lowers each time you turn the gears. Once it hits the ground, you can't turn the gears anymore. Now, when you first try to do this, it might seem impossible to get right in the limited moves you're given. However, if you play around with the levers long enough, you might try holding a lever down for a bit. If you do this, you'll find that both gears move only on the first rotation. After that, only the middle gear moves. So the trick is to line up the top or bottom gear, then hold down the lever on the rotation that puts the other outer gear in its proper position in order to rotate the middle gear to where it needs to be.
Like so.
This rotates the large gear way back at the start of the island.
Inside this large gear is a linking book.
Well, this looks familiar.
Not sure what this is for, though.
Ooo, fancy.
The hallways are pretty simple to navigate, so I quickly find what appears to be Sirrus' room.
Models of the ships.
I'm guessing that's Catherine, his mother and Atrus' wife.
These gems light up when I hover over them but don't seem to do anything else.
He's into chess, I see.
A...throne? Got a bit of a complex, huh?
...or a major complex.
A mechanical bird. It moves if you wind it up.
The telescope shows a whole lot of nothing.
Just outside his room is a not-so-secret passage. I'll explore it later.
Well, good to see Achenar is still creepy as fuck.
It...kinda seems like you're supposed to do this Age first. Not only does it have a ton of character details on the brothers, but this thing right here just straight-up gives you the sound code for the Selenetic maze.
Gah! Shit! Snake-in-a-box! Kill it with fire!
Yeah, that's pretty unsettling. Wonder where he found that local wildlife.
...it's from Channelwood, isn't it?
Achenar has a throne, too, but it's a bit more Spartan. There's also a secret passage on the left. It leads to...
WELP
This is so not cool.
Not at all.
Okay, yeah, I'm getting the hell out of here and back to Sirrus' room. After all, if Achenar has a secret room, then I'm guessing...
These guys are so predictable.
Oh, a treasure horde. Not exactly noble, but far less psychopathic.
Hmm...seems there's some brotherly strife going on.
There's Sirrus' page. I pick it up. Now to find the exit.
I go back to the hidden staircase and solve the incredibly simple puzzle there. It reveals...
AN ELEVATOR!
SO EXCITING!
You may have noticed that elevator has three buttons. That's because the middle button is a time-delay switch. Hit it, then walk out of the elevator. The elevator will then lower, granting access to...
These levers. Look familiar? Time to rotate the building.
I go east first.
Now that looks important.
I find a similar set to the north.
I plug those symbols into the console back at the start.
And there's my way out.
Only one last Age left to explore. Sirrus' release is nearly at hand.
It is totes electrified
I remember I played through a couple times before I even noticed that switch and when I flipped it it startled the crap out of me
Channelwood is the last Age, and it's a bit of a doozy.
Open the safe, get a match.
Use the match to ignite the pilot light.
Turn the crank to turn on the fire, increasing what I assume is the water pressure.
The pressure makes the tree elevator go up. However, going up serves no point unless we want to get a bird's eye view.
So we go back in and turn the crank back to turn off the pressure.
The treevator slowly goes down...
And we jump in to find the linking book.
Here we are in Channelwood. The puzzles in this section aren't too difficult. I figured them out almost immediately, despite not remembering anything about this age. The real trick is navigating this web of walkways. I imagine this Age would be significantly easier in realMyst, since the slideshow of Masterpiece Edition makes it really easy to lose your place.
Anyway, most of the puzzles in this area involve water and the rerouting thereof.
You'll notice that pipes run across all the walkways.
There seems to be an engine here, but nothing's powering it.
Same situation here.
This is the key. At most forks in the paths, you'll find these switches. They control the direction of the flow. So let's first direct the water to the second generator we found.
This lets us raise a bridge.
And using the bridge, we can access this crank that extends the pipe.
Now we can divert the water to this elevator.
Oh. That's the Myst linking book. That was quick. All right, let's try the other elevator, then.
Okay, see that spiral staircase on the right? That's where I need to go. Basically, I go down the stairs to unlock the door on the bottom. That'll give me a shortcut up, which lets me divert water to the engine that powers the elevator that reaches the third level.
...but this door's locked too. Huh.
Just to give you an idea of how complex this map is.
I eventually stumble upon this switch by accident. It opens up the staircase door.
Everything else goes according to plan.
Lavish, organized and no traces of blood. Definitely belongs to Sirrus.
With a brother like Achenar, I don't blame him for keeping a dagger under his bed.
Well, there's the red page. I could just go back right now, but let's explore a little more.
Huh. Wonder why his room got all messed up. Actually, I wonder why this whole treehouse area is half destroyed.
Moving on the Achenar...
...what the fuck?
Okay, well. Not putting my hand near that thing.
Achenar has some strange interior design sensibilities.
Oh, so he's recording creepy holomessages of himself for the natives. Awesome.
Sirrus left a message giving him shit for it.
Anyway, let's head back.
Only one page left to go. Sirrus tells us to open the final book on the middle shelf and write down the pattern on page 158. Using this in the fireplace will open a secret room with the final pages. He also tells us not to open the green book, because it will apparently trap us. Yeah...I'm sure he's being totally honest. First, though, I want to do one last thing on this island. Remember the torn note I found way back near the beginning? I found the second half in Sirrus' room. Put together, the note reads:
"Myst Switch Vault Access
Island of Myst
The vault is located in very plain view on
the Island of Myst, and access can be
achieved very easily if the simple
instructions are followed. First, locate
each of the Marker Switches on the island.
Turn every one of those switches to the
"off" position. Then go to the dock and,
as a final step, turn the Marker Switch
there to the "off" position."
Okay, so...that doesn't make total sense. I'm not sure why both notes say "off" position. What you actually need to do is flip every switch on the island (all 8 of them) up. Then, head to the dock switch and flip it to the down position.
Boom.
Anyway, back to the library with our mystery page in hand.
I copy this pattern down.
Because Sirrus and Achenar are both clearly megalomaniacs, I touch the green book.
Atrus confirms that, yes, his sons are definitely douchebags. Atrus had told them never to touch the red and blue books. Because his sons and grown mad with power and greed, they assumed their father was just trying to keep the riches in those worlds to himself. In reality, the books are just traps. So when the brothers trapped their father within D'ni, they, too, found themselves stuck when they entered the forbidden books. Atrus has a Myst linking book with him, but it's missing a page. The same page that we just found by completing the Marker Switch puzzle. I enter D'ni to give it to him.
This place looks like it's seen better days.
Atrus thanks us for our help, saying he now must punish his sons for their betrayal and make sure they never harm anyone else.
...and then he just leaves us here.
Let's follow him, shall we?
Woah.
Shit.
Even the pages? Man, Atrus does not fuck around. With the books and pages all destroyed, it seems as though the brothers will never get out of their prisons.
...and that's the end. We can go back to D'ni, but Atrus will just be sitting there writing. Bit of an anticlimax, huh?
Maybe I'll see if I can make realMyst work better so I can play through the new level that's supposed to bridge the story gap between Myst and Riven.
Posts
Turns out the Selenetic Age doesn't play by the rules. The Mechanical Age contains the info you need to match the four main tones (north, south, east and west).
So I guess I'm doing that next.
just the puzzle in the rocketship took me forever because I am basically tone deaf
I brute forced the last puzzle
just settled in and stopped giving a shit
The rocketship puzzle was really easy for me, because I've been in a choir for, like, half of my life.
It's pretty much the only puzzle in the game where I look at it all smug and go, "Yeah, I got this."
It's not impossible, it's just frustrating for some people
Shit
I never even noticed that.
So...yeah. Finished the puzzled using GSM's tip. Added another red page to Sirrus' book.
it's staggeringly fucking obtuse if you do not know music theory or are tone deaf
the keyboard was the problem for tone deaf folks
Channelwood or Mechanical Age?
I dug the music
dug that chess set
I will say though that Uru Live was the reason I subbed to Gametap.
Hell, I even contributed or started a URU thread in the MMO forum.
Wow, way back in Feb 2010...
http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/112260/myst-online-uru-live/p1
I will totally do that.
Friend of mine played through machinarium a while back and he couldn't finish the game because it ends with the same music note puzzle. Yeah, puzzle games aren't very kind to color blindness and tone deafness.
you remember, with all the colored orbs
Myst is actually a test meant to weed out the genetically inferior.
You have failed.
Real Myst, Riven, Myst 3, Myst 4, Myst 5, Uru, Uru Live.
Somewhere there is a piece of paper with an incomplete Selenetic subway map (drawn by my brother), and four symbols below it. I think we settled on a curly drawing of a spring, a receptionist bell, a tin can, and... maybe a bird? It's been a while.
A few years back I bought realMyst from GOG and played through it in an evening with two friends that had also beaten the original slideshow version long ago. It was fun to see how much of the solutions we could remember. One friend said that back then he had opened the combination lock in the cabin by brute-force. He actually played through channelwood before figuring out the tower rotation. Seriously, playing myst games cooperatively is super fun, just for how much it tells you about the way your friends think.
Are they really expensive matches
Especially after that incident when Achenar was ten...
fuck me, did anyone else play Amerzone?
Made that puzzle a tad more challenging.
By popular demand, it's time for the Mechanical Age!
Huh. The first clue is obvious, but I wonder what the second one is for.
Now I just gotta turn these cranks to put the time at 2:40 and...
Hooray! Gear bridge!
Just gonna go ahead and flip this on.
Ah, so that's what "2,2,1" means. This puzzle is tricky to explain through screenshots, but the basic idea is that the left lever turns gears 1 and 2 clockwise once, and the right lever turns gears 2 and 3. The plumb-bob-looking thing on the left lowers each time you turn the gears. Once it hits the ground, you can't turn the gears anymore. Now, when you first try to do this, it might seem impossible to get right in the limited moves you're given. However, if you play around with the levers long enough, you might try holding a lever down for a bit. If you do this, you'll find that both gears move only on the first rotation. After that, only the middle gear moves. So the trick is to line up the top or bottom gear, then hold down the lever on the rotation that puts the other outer gear in its proper position in order to rotate the middle gear to where it needs to be.
Like so.
This rotates the large gear way back at the start of the island.
Inside this large gear is a linking book.
Well, this looks familiar.
Not sure what this is for, though.
Ooo, fancy.
The hallways are pretty simple to navigate, so I quickly find what appears to be Sirrus' room.
Models of the ships.
I'm guessing that's Catherine, his mother and Atrus' wife.
These gems light up when I hover over them but don't seem to do anything else.
He's into chess, I see.
A...throne? Got a bit of a complex, huh?
...or a major complex.
A mechanical bird. It moves if you wind it up.
The telescope shows a whole lot of nothing.
Just outside his room is a not-so-secret passage. I'll explore it later.
Well, good to see Achenar is still creepy as fuck.
It...kinda seems like you're supposed to do this Age first. Not only does it have a ton of character details on the brothers, but this thing right here just straight-up gives you the sound code for the Selenetic maze.
Gah! Shit! Snake-in-a-box! Kill it with fire!
Yeah, that's pretty unsettling. Wonder where he found that local wildlife.
...it's from Channelwood, isn't it?
Achenar has a throne, too, but it's a bit more Spartan. There's also a secret passage on the left. It leads to...
WELP
This is so not cool.
Not at all.
Okay, yeah, I'm getting the hell out of here and back to Sirrus' room. After all, if Achenar has a secret room, then I'm guessing...
These guys are so predictable.
Oh, a treasure horde. Not exactly noble, but far less psychopathic.
Hmm...seems there's some brotherly strife going on.
There's Sirrus' page. I pick it up. Now to find the exit.
I go back to the hidden staircase and solve the incredibly simple puzzle there. It reveals...
AN ELEVATOR!
SO EXCITING!
You may have noticed that elevator has three buttons. That's because the middle button is a time-delay switch. Hit it, then walk out of the elevator. The elevator will then lower, granting access to...
These levers. Look familiar? Time to rotate the building.
I go east first.
Now that looks important.
I find a similar set to the north.
I plug those symbols into the console back at the start.
And there's my way out.
Only one last Age left to explore. Sirrus' release is nearly at hand.
Yeah
It, like, lights up or something?
I think that means it's electrified?
It was hard to tell.
I remember I played through a couple times before I even noticed that switch and when I flipped it it startled the crap out of me
pretty sure these are just survival horror games in the day time
at least that is what my brain told me as a little kid and i'm going to trust it.
the screenshots of Achenar's rooms are really dark on my monitor and it's hard to see all his creepy shit
Steam | Twitter
So I'm really feeling the nestolga here
Channelwood is the last Age, and it's a bit of a doozy.
Open the safe, get a match.
Use the match to ignite the pilot light.
Turn the crank to turn on the fire, increasing what I assume is the water pressure.
The pressure makes the tree elevator go up. However, going up serves no point unless we want to get a bird's eye view.
So we go back in and turn the crank back to turn off the pressure.
The treevator slowly goes down...
And we jump in to find the linking book.
Here we are in Channelwood. The puzzles in this section aren't too difficult. I figured them out almost immediately, despite not remembering anything about this age. The real trick is navigating this web of walkways. I imagine this Age would be significantly easier in realMyst, since the slideshow of Masterpiece Edition makes it really easy to lose your place.
Anyway, most of the puzzles in this area involve water and the rerouting thereof.
You'll notice that pipes run across all the walkways.
There seems to be an engine here, but nothing's powering it.
Same situation here.
This is the key. At most forks in the paths, you'll find these switches. They control the direction of the flow. So let's first direct the water to the second generator we found.
This lets us raise a bridge.
And using the bridge, we can access this crank that extends the pipe.
Now we can divert the water to this elevator.
Oh. That's the Myst linking book. That was quick. All right, let's try the other elevator, then.
Okay, see that spiral staircase on the right? That's where I need to go. Basically, I go down the stairs to unlock the door on the bottom. That'll give me a shortcut up, which lets me divert water to the engine that powers the elevator that reaches the third level.
...but this door's locked too. Huh.
Just to give you an idea of how complex this map is.
I eventually stumble upon this switch by accident. It opens up the staircase door.
Everything else goes according to plan.
Lavish, organized and no traces of blood. Definitely belongs to Sirrus.
With a brother like Achenar, I don't blame him for keeping a dagger under his bed.
Well, there's the red page. I could just go back right now, but let's explore a little more.
Huh. Wonder why his room got all messed up. Actually, I wonder why this whole treehouse area is half destroyed.
Moving on the Achenar...
...what the fuck?
Okay, well. Not putting my hand near that thing.
Achenar has some strange interior design sensibilities.
Oh, so he's recording creepy holomessages of himself for the natives. Awesome.
Sirrus left a message giving him shit for it.
Anyway, let's head back.
Only one page left to go. Sirrus tells us to open the final book on the middle shelf and write down the pattern on page 158. Using this in the fireplace will open a secret room with the final pages. He also tells us not to open the green book, because it will apparently trap us. Yeah...I'm sure he's being totally honest. First, though, I want to do one last thing on this island. Remember the torn note I found way back near the beginning? I found the second half in Sirrus' room. Put together, the note reads:
"Myst Switch Vault Access
Island of Myst
The vault is located in very plain view on
the Island of Myst, and access can be
achieved very easily if the simple
instructions are followed. First, locate
each of the Marker Switches on the island.
Turn every one of those switches to the
"off" position. Then go to the dock and,
as a final step, turn the Marker Switch
there to the "off" position."
Okay, so...that doesn't make total sense. I'm not sure why both notes say "off" position. What you actually need to do is flip every switch on the island (all 8 of them) up. Then, head to the dock switch and flip it to the down position.
Boom.
Anyway, back to the library with our mystery page in hand.
I copy this pattern down.
Because Sirrus and Achenar are both clearly megalomaniacs, I touch the green book.
Atrus confirms that, yes, his sons are definitely douchebags. Atrus had told them never to touch the red and blue books. Because his sons and grown mad with power and greed, they assumed their father was just trying to keep the riches in those worlds to himself. In reality, the books are just traps. So when the brothers trapped their father within D'ni, they, too, found themselves stuck when they entered the forbidden books. Atrus has a Myst linking book with him, but it's missing a page. The same page that we just found by completing the Marker Switch puzzle. I enter D'ni to give it to him.
This place looks like it's seen better days.
Atrus thanks us for our help, saying he now must punish his sons for their betrayal and make sure they never harm anyone else.
...and then he just leaves us here.
Let's follow him, shall we?
Woah.
Shit.
Even the pages? Man, Atrus does not fuck around. With the books and pages all destroyed, it seems as though the brothers will never get out of their prisons.
...and that's the end. We can go back to D'ni, but Atrus will just be sitting there writing. Bit of an anticlimax, huh?
Maybe I'll see if I can make realMyst work better so I can play through the new level that's supposed to bridge the story gap between Myst and Riven.
Just kill me now.