Thanks, glad you enjoyed my frustration

Heh, I remember the silhouette of the lantern too. Not sure why I didn't count that in there

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Now shut up and make it so you only have to jump once. (Spoilers)
Luig'Ahn KI: (need to update)

Is the fire marble riven puzzle the powering up of the linking books?

I really enjoyed that one.

But as far silly, hardest, ect... puzzles go I would have to say the whole of Myst 4.

LuigiHann's description of the firefly-puzzle ought to be compulsory reading for the Cyan-staff.

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KI# 04504375

BTW, most intelligent puzzle was TPOTS itself.
The idea of interpreting the misty prophetical book into some clear instructions... It's just wonderful!

Interestingly enough, a lot of the puzzles people hated, I liked. I liked the Watcher's Sanctuary puzzle. I love puzzles that force me to think outside the box.

I loved Spire and Serenia in Myst IV. Yeah, even the spider chair and 'rainbow clouds' puzzles.

As for the Pods... I am alone, I think, in the opinion that the Pods were a brilliant puzzle. But I think it is one completely unsuited for how people want to play Uru. As a puzzle meant to be worked out by an entire community, I think it's brilliant, however.

As for Hardest: I would go with the fire marbles in Riven, or the middle three puzzles in Kadish Tolesa. I've never needed as many hints in any Age as I did in Kadish.

Stupidest: Well, I'd not use that word, but the fireflies puzzle. The mechanisms of the puzzle are fine. It just doesn't make sense in context.

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Your story is Unwritten.
Unwritten - Adventures in the Ages of Myst and Beyond
MOULagain KI#27460 - Second Life: Vax Sirnah

You are not even remotely alone in thinking the pods were a good puzzle

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Ki# 3024561
Great Zero Runners Bevin

Hardest: The final puzzle in Revelation. I....Hate....Dream....<twitch>....

Stupidest: Fireflies. See LuigiHann's hilarious post

Craziest: The end of Amateria


P.S.: I hope if anyone from Cyan reads this thread, they'll take it as constructive criticism and not whining

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Have you hugged a squee today?

Most hated: all puzzles involving sound recognition: Monkeys in Haven, spider chair, etc. I always require help on these--they all sound the same to me!. Some of us just have a tin ear!

Hardest: The infamous spider chair. I still to this day don't know where all the clues are to be able to solve the spider locks problem.

Stupidest: The expansions had at least three, and I prefer to use the word "bad" instead of "stupid", puzzles.

Craziest: The spider chair. It's been a long time since I played that game and I may have forgotten, but what was the reason for having locks on the chair?

Hardest: Riven firemarble puzzle. I LOVE Riven, but I had a really hard time figuring out where exactly some of the Domes were on on the pin grid.

Stupidest: Myst IV. Pretty much all of it. I did not like that game. Dream, chair puzzles, spirit present, ugh. It was very good looking, but not very fun to play in my opinion.

Craziest: The whole time travel concept w/ Ahnonay. That or the singing Bahro in Myst V.

I'm not the most qualified to answer these questions, since I will admit to having used strategy/hint guides for every Myst title save Exile, but I'll try to do my best with what I have.

Hardest: If I had attempted Riven without the guide, I might have gone for the perennial favorite of the Fire-Marble puzzle (though at least I forced myself to physically map it out, instead of using the pretty picture), but as-is, I'll probably go with the also-perennial-favorite of the majority of Spire. I must have had the "dense" setting in my brain turned on when I attempted it, since I think I missed about half of the clues scattered throughout the Age, and I had little to no idea what to do with the rest. (Then again, I generally fail rather hard at puzzles, and I almost consider them to be my least favorite part of the whole Myst experience.) So yeah, that was definitely an in-game-hint moment. The thing is, when I replayed the game, after knowing how everything was supposed to work, I was able to piece together the hints on my own without much trouble, and I enjoyed seeing how everything came together. Ah, hindsight...

Stupidest: One word: Ahnonay. I guess I should preface this by saying that I didn't get POTS for a rather long time after playing Uru Prime and To D'ni (and I wasn't around for the Prologue/UU), so I breezed through the walkthrough for it on GameFAQs to get an idea of what sort of Ages I'd find. One short glance at the walkthrough for Ahnonay, and I already knew that I hated it. To this day, POTS remains the only Myst game/expansion/major content release that I followed straight through from the walkthrough, without even the slightest attempt to work things out on my own. My apologies to fans of the Age, but being forced to make logical leaps some 50 times greater than I think I'm capable of making, having to sit through some 100-odd loading screens due to the insane amount of linking, and then having to do it all over again to get that accursed Relto page is not my idea of fun. Heck, after all of that, that 15-minute wait was a relief. Don't get me wrong; the Age was beautiful, and I probably would have been utterly blown away by its revelation if I hadn't spoiled myself on it, but as-is, I can't think about it without getting a bad taste in my mouth.

Craziest: Hmm...I guess this all depends on how you define crazy. If it's in a good way, then it's Amateria, hands-down, 'nuff said. If it's in a "holy-crap-this-is-nuts" way, it's probably most of Todelmer; even though I had to consult the walkthrough quite a few times on that particular Age (in fact, I started it out with a completely wrong assumption and spent a good hour accomplishing absolutely nothing), the end was just jaw-dropping. If it's in a "what-the-heck-was-Cyan/Ubisoft/Presto-thinking" way...I might have to go old-school and say the Myst rocketship. It's a rocket...lying on its side...with an organ inside. If it was Robyn who came up with that idea, I'd like to know what he ate the night before.

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Prepare for Descent...

For me, all 3 are the same.


The final puzzle in Myst 4.


It is, to my mind, one of the most unnecessary puzzles ever. It's after the final save. And it's only purpose is to serve as plot exposition of Sirrus' plot when you solve it. And yet they deliberately make it much harder than necessary.

I would have been extremely happy to solve that puzzle if they had let you move the little icons around freely. But they don't. You have to do a complicated dance, knowing that if you mess up, you may never solve it.


Crazy. Hard. AND stupid.

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For cowards die a thousand deaths, while heros die but one.

Well, unless they're playing video games, in which case heros die a lot too.

I really shouldn't be here probably as I didn't play any of the Myst games. I did buy Myst, found it boring with puzzles that didn't make sense to me, returned it the next day for GK: Beast Within. However, the disc showed the making of Myst and that was very interesting! I'm here because I want to add that I also thought LuigiHann was hilarious in his description of the firefly puzzle. I thoroughly enjoyed readin it so thanks, LuigiHann.

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Will wonders never cease!

For me:

Hardest - I don't get why people insist on saying the marble puzzle in Riven, that one made total sense to me. The only reason I didn't get it on the first try was cuz you had to guess between two colors of marble, and I guessed wrong. Second try - ka-WHAM!! Anyways, I guess it depends on whetehr yer talking good-hard or frustrating-hard. Good-hard would be something like Minkata, where you can figure it out, it just takes some work. Frustrating hard would be like the M4 spider chair; I'll admit I used a walkthrough, cuz there's no way I could have figured that out. Even knowing the answers and going back to the clues, I still can't reverse engineer it!

Stupidest - "move the slider..."

Craziest - Assuming by "craziest" you mean "I must be crazy for putting up with this", I hafta go with the first Dream puzzle in M4, where you hafta turn all the dots white. That took for-stinking-ever! The other ones I didn't mind, where you had to put the quotes in order to recreate the conversation, that was actually kinda cool...

And of course, the Crazy-Cool award goes to the whole Age of Amateria; configuring the individual puzzles that culminate in the rollercoaster ride at the end is the bad-ashest thing ever! (sorry Cyan... )

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Janara wrote:

Most hated: all puzzles involving sound recognition: Monkeys in Haven, spider chair, etc. I always require help on these--they all sound the same to me!. Some of us just have a tin ear!

Thank You
I am not alone. Everytime there is a sound puzzle I just immediately break out the walk-through and find a work around.

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fchall - In or Out of the Cavern
KI# 00154378
AKA: King of Spheres, The Master of Rotations, A Pellet Popping Fool