Len Green :- 8th March ‘98.                                         [email protected]

I have played almost all Quest/Adventure games ever released, but am pretty elderly and no genius. Hence I nearly always need Hints and sometimes Walkthrus {W.T.’s}...... often only here and there, but occasionally comprehensively.

“Riven” fell into the second category .... and with a vengeance !   It is brilliant, and its creation of a fictitious virtual world is breathtaking and stunning.   However, its admirable open-endedness         (i.e. ability to visit almost any island almost any time) clashed seriously with the constant irritating necessity to repeatedly swap the 5 CD-Roms --- my guess is that this may be corrected in the not too distant future by putting the whole game onto one DVD ???   In addition, I personally did not dare touch the zip-mode (as I did in ‘Myst’) during the whole game, for fear of missing some essential clue or other detail.

As a result of all this, and the considerable complexity (for me) of the game, I was forced to use a W.T. very extensively.   Apart from the UHS-W.T., I found three other W.T.’s on the Net.   The W.T. by Mike Marcelais was by far the most helpful of them all (and is amongst the best W.T.’s I have encountered) ---- GRATEFUL THANKS ; without it, I doubt I would ever  have completed the game.   I would recommend anybody who is in any way similar to me to use this W.T. more or less exclusively.   However, I found a couple of very minor errors, and a couple of individual places where the explanation was insufficient for me and I had to browse the other W.T.’s in order to proceed.

My purpose here is to supplement Mike’s W.T. with a few additions &/or corrections for the possible help of others.

(1).  A very minor issue .... purely (and pedantically) academic :-  Having taught Physics (and some Maths) amongst other things for many years, I too found the Riven numerical system extremely interesting.   Its 1, 2, 3, 4, .... then 90° rotation for their 5 times multiples 5, 10, 15, 20, .... is in itself intriguing, and the simple combinations easily giving any number from 0 to 24 is nice.   However, unless I am mistaken, over and above this, Riven’s larger numbers (not actually ‘utilised’ in the game) involving more than one digit, are base 25 and not as stated base 5.   In the example given in the W.T., Age-233 is derived from (9*25^1 + 8*25^0).   The reference in Ghen’s diary to the 234th-Age is derived similarly.   Very clever .......... you could express just a little under ten million (decimal) in merely 5 Rivenese digits, all based essentially on only 4 (+1) symbols !!!

(2).  Another very minor issue .... redundant if you use the illustration and not the
co-ordinates :-  In the coloured marbles (gems) puzzle, if the bottom left corner x,y co-ordinates are the standard (0,0), then 1 must be added to all the marbles'  x and y co-ordinates given in the W.T.,  e.g. :- the orange is (6,4) and not (5,3), etc., etc.

(3).  Immediately after this, I personally ran into trouble finding the Viewer for the ‘Generator Isle’ Linking Book dome.   The description given is probably quite correct, but somehow or another I ‘got lost’ (not exactly difficult in the islands of Riven).   I guess that many had no trouble at all with this (but maybe got stuck elsewhere ?).   But in case anyone else did have similar trouble, possibly the following description may be easier to follow :-

Arrange the marbles correctly ...... down/reverse/forward/reverse ..... pull the lever down exposing the white button ........ press this button (if you have ‘lost your marbles’, nothing happens apart from a ‘click’ ;  the evidence that you have succeeded is that the long vertical thin rod quivers into action, followed by a continuous faint whirring sound) ........ leave the switch down ........ reverse ........ forward twice ........ down the stairs ........ across the bridge and into (the opened) ‘gold-room’ ......... click on the open exit to your front-right 4 times which takes you out of the exit and to the beginning of the bridge (but don’t cross) ........ click right (or left) twice to reverse ........ forward, and press the button to rotate the inner cylindrical wall 3 times, at which point the open rear entrance appears ........ forward ........ click on the open exit to your front-right 3 times, which brings you to the beginning of the ‘walkway’ ........ forward 8 times and you follow the arc round and into the dome ........ forward 3 times to the catwalk ........ left ........ follow the catwalk all the way (forward 8 times) ........ down the stairs (forward 7 times) ........ click left once and then forward 11 times to get right outside the exit, and all the way round the arc of the pathway and up to the opening of the tunnel (but don’t go in) ........ click right, to home in on the button ........ press it and the elevator will take you down a floor ........ click right (or left), then reverse ........ forward 3 times to the stairs ........ forward 4 times up the stairs .............................................. and .........*phffewwwww* ........ you’ve made it to the Viewer of the Linking Book dome on Generator Island.

(4).  Another aspect which took me a while to figure out was the dragging of the 5 sliders underneath the above Linking Book (particularly since the graduations are not marked too clearly). The 5 sliders are always bunched up on the left hand side.   I found it easiest to first drag them all to the extreme right, even though the ‘counting’ always starts from the left.   In my particular case the numbers (it’s said that they’re different for each game ?!?) I ‘translated’ from Ghen’s journal were (from left to right) 10, 14, 15, 20, 24 ; ...... presumably whatever the numbers are, they must always be in ascending order.   So I dragged the (now) left-most slider towards the left to the (longer) 10 mark from the left, and so on, finishing with the last remaining slider (at present on the 25 mark) and moving it 1 position to the left (making it a total of 24 from the left).   I hope this is clear for anyone who has trouble with this.   Incidentally, whenever you press the button beneath the sliders, all 5 sliders always click back to their initial left-most positions ---- if you have done it wrong, then nothing happens after this and you have to try again ....... but if you have done it correctly, all five sliders also move back to their initial left-most positions and almost immediately afterwards the dome opens up and the Linking Book becomes accessible.

(5).  Another place where I couldn’t readily make out ‘whether I was coming or going’ or fathom out the logic of things, was early on arrival at ‘Experiment Island’ (Part III).   Again, others may have had no trouble whatsoever here, and found it easy !   Nevertheless, to clarify the same actions in somewhat different words :-

On arrival at Experiment-Island, first go forward ........ down the ladder ........ forward ........ right ........ twice forward ........ left ........ all the way to the end of the narrow platform to the middle of the lake (4 forward) ........ drag the valve lever to the middle one of its 3 positions, thereby delivering steam power to the whole of the boiler house mechanisms ........ reverse ........ back along the platform (3 forward) ........ left ........ up the stairs (2 forward) ........ left ........ twice forward, which brings you to the Y-junction valve with the lever away from you ;  but don’t touch it yet since it is at present delivering essential power to the boiler system ........ right, brings you to the boiler controls ........ turn the valve lever near the right edge of the screen upwards, thereby turning off the flames and stopping the water from boiling (and bubbling) ........ turn the wheel lever from 12:00 to 3:00 (o'clock) to raise the wide tube and empty the water ........ left, to return to the Y-valve, and pull the lever towards you, thereby diverting the steam into the ‘near’ pipe which is the one that controls the floor mechanism ........ right, and lift the handle near mid-screen to raise the floor inside ........ right ........ twice forward ....... left ........ forward, and the hatch-door is released (noisily), and opens automatically .......... 4 forward and into the large circular pipe .......... twice forward and into total blackness ............................ and after this, it should be (relatively) straightforward  ?!?!?!?