“RIVEN” 
Walkthru  
Supplement.

( Addenda to :- ‘The
Sequel to Myst’ ; by Mike Marcelais ; Nov. ‘97 )

Len Green :- 8th
March ‘98.                                        

Preamble.

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.
Some Hints & Tips.

(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  ?!?!?!?