quote:

Originally posted by ArienMalfoy:
I wasn't saying I disagreed with the fact that she writes dreams. I was disagreeing with their negative opinion of Serenia, specifically the description of "horrific".

My post was for LynComeLately who said that Catherine wrote Serenia as "her" idea of heaven.

Ah, sorry. I thought it was aimed at mine.

I must admit . . . much as I am *not* looking forward to the hippy, new age Serenia, I will be awfully glad to get out of the darkness of Spire. The glowing crystal is beautiful, the moody clouds and storms are dramatic, and the music (the orchestral parts, with cello) is my favorite so far, but the darkness begins to feel oppressive.

I agree, though I probably like Spire less than you. Not only do I find the constant darkness rather depressing, but I'm not at all mathematically or electrically minded, so it is the hardest and least interesting Age for me.

Don't get me *started* on the numbers and the math!

I may be able to *do* basic arithmetic (and sometimes not even that) but the math concepts just don't register properly for me. I see the numbers written on all Sirrus' notes to himself, but they're just symbols to me, not "meaning."

I just saw your response as I was coming back to ask for a nudge on the spider chair. I've been limping through by taking quick glimpses into the walkthrough book, trying to get just the barest direction when I have no clue how to proceed - without a total give-away, which I know I'll regret.

So, I've already been to the bottom of the island and set the cables according to the markers that I saw on each crystal. Now what? Sirrus' notes show the numbers 8-12-4, and yet the chair itself has the numbers 11 and 4 inscribed at the side. How should I be thinking?

The numbers on the left of the chair are the amount of power you need to reach that level.

8-12-4 is not a valid answer.

Not a valid answer to WHAT? How do I figure out what question to ask?

The codes for the gears settings are found at what are called "The windpipes" (3 of them in Spire). Each pipes has a kind of slider which shows you a symbol plus a white dot.

You have to know that there are no zero "notch". The first position is # 1.

Unused example: if you need a # 5 setting, you have to move something by 4 cicking sounds (1+4= position #5)

One spoiler image for windpipe # 1 (pentagon symbol). This image is really fuzzy...
Windpipe Image...click here

Note that: The other two are extremely well hidden and hard to find.

quote:

I see the numbers written on all Sirrus' notes to himself, but they're just symbols to me, not "meaning."

Oh ditto that! In fact, I had to use a walkthrough for pretty much all the puzzles in Spire. Now, I admit that I've always had to refer to walkthroughs or get hints on boards like this for all of the Myst games, but usually I just needed a bit of a nudge from time to time. With Spire, it was virtually constant.

I don't blame that on the Age or the game designers though, because I've met plenty of people who did not have that issue. This particular Age just didn't match up with my particular knowledge and abilities, that's all. Not saying you are putting any blame, just saying I don't, that's all.

Mostly I wandered through Spire like a blundering idiot, trying to figure out what the puzzles were and where the clues were. The "windpipe sliders" were ambiguous to me... didn't know whether to count one way or the other. And never connected them to crystal shapes. Plus, once I figured out that the shapes of crystals meant something (but didn't know what), I couldn't figure out which crystal was which shape. Actually, if you look at the crystals themselves, rather than their "holders," you can't tell what shape they are (well, maybe one of them).

Hey, for almost the whole game, I thought "Nara" was a place, not a material! Got that from Myst III: Exile, where Atrus wrote about Nara locks. I thought that was where they were made, like maybe Narayan.

Arien, actually, I agree totally. The game designers developed a fascinating world, based on concepts some people's brains, but by all means not all, refuse to decipher.

People's different skills and mindsets is something that was discussed on this board back when I was trying to get through Tomahna with my old computer a couple years ago. I noted that while others expressed exasperation over the fuse box puzzle, that particular puzzle felt like "second nature" to me and I was never even tempted to check the help menu. Through the discussion, I realized it was because I could approach it as a "volume" concept, not a numbers problem.

On the other hand, sitting in the Spider Chair watching the circuit breaker pop open again and again was totally discouraging to me. Oh, I knew what it meant all right - I'm the daughter, ex-wife, and mother of various types of electricians so I know what causes a circuit breaker to break the circuit. But I also knew that if the walkthrough solution didn't work (which is what I'd used to get there) I was without a clue how to proceed.

Then nanoukmetal so kindly posted his screenshot of the circuit board (in the "Stop laughing at me" thread) and I had my answer - just as I had been signing on to ask the question.

nanoukmetal, yes, I found the crystal's shapes only because the walkthrough clued me in to their importance, and to that I may have added guesswork. I knew what the number was for each. What I would never have considered was that the "zero" position was actually "one," although if I'd understood what the walkthrough was saying at the first crystal, where the walkthrough said it was 4 and that reflected the first position as 1 . . . <sigh>

This message has been edited. Last edited by: LynComeLately,

I find that my problem is just not knowing what to do next, or where to start in the first place. That's why "nudges" often work for me. But when it comes to electrical stuff or things that are heavy on mathematics, I need a step-by-step walkthrough.

But would I have these games any other way? No. I like the fact that they present different challenges to different people. If I can get through a game without consulting a walkthrough one single time, it's just not a challenge as far as I'm concerned.

Now if I have to consult a walkthrough for EVERY puzzle, that's just frustrating and irritating. But the Myst games aren't like that for me. I find them to be the perfect balance of ease and challenge for my individual skill and intelligence level.

I, on the other had, am very logical puzzle oriented. I have a hard time with riddles, but give me a problem of numbers and I'll solve it so fast you won't have time to wipe that silly look off your face. It just comes naturally to me; I've memorized the bases of 2 up to 10 (2^10 = 1024, 2^8 = 256, etc) and can work with hexadecimal numbers. (e.g. turning them into base ten numbers) Spire posed little problem to me until I got to the d*** windpipes. What the hey? What are the sliders on the crystals supposed to even mean? I couldn't figure out what number the sliders were supposed to indicate (is 1 the top position or the bottom...) and it seemed like even then they wouldn't work. (6 possible combinations for the given numbers across all the sliders, let's get crackin'...)

My favorite place was Spire, and though I loved the music from the Serenia beginning, I didn't like the people. I wanted them to leave me alone unless they had something useful to say. My least favorite place? Haven. I. Hate. Monkeys.

Hey, Jacabyte, haven't seen you here for a while.

I really envy you your math abilities. I hope they open doors for you in the RW too.

I too hate monkeys . . . but I love cats. The Mangrees may have looked somewhat like monkeys, but there was just enough kitty-nature that they won me over in the end.

But Serenia? You're right. I could have ignored the music, but you can't ignore the people.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: LynComeLately,

quote:

Originally posted by JacaByte: My least favorite place? Haven. I. Hate. Monkeys.

Lol, I loved the Mangrees. But I like monkeys, so there ya go.