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Myst III: Exile Hints

Is there any way to free the bird that's trapped in a plant?

  • 1 of 13: In a word, yes.
  • 2 of 13: You may not remember, but you've probably seen this plant before.  Finding that first plant would give you an optional but very helpful hint on how to solve this puzzle.
  • 3 of 13: So the basic idea is that you want to look for this plant's roots and find a way to shock them.
  • 4 of 13: You might want to start by going down the path until you walk past a site with a painting on the wall.
  • 5 of 13: The path forks just next to the painting -- take the left fork.
  • 6 of 13: You'll find the plant's roots here, sitting in a dry basin of some kind.
  • 7 of 13: There's also some sort of sac plant above the basin.
  • 8 of 13: Start by trying to fill the sac.
  • 9 of 13: Now, look for a way to empty the sac into the basin.
  • 10 of 13: Earlier in this age, you aimed a beam of light at a similar container plant to get it to explode.
  • 11 of 13: If you've filed the sac, it should explode when you light it up, sending the squid into the pool below the sac.  The electricity that the squid produces will send a shock up the roots of the plant that's holding the bird, forcing the plant to free the bird.
  • 12 of 13: If that doesn't work, look through all of the plants in the chain to make sure they're pointing where they need to be.
  • 13 of 13: In particular, double-check to see if the "sunflower" is pointing at the sac that's currently filled.  There are three different sac plants that can hold the squid, and you must fill the third one that you'll find.  When you're near a painting on the wall, take the left fork down.  Both the second and third plants are on this fork -- you need to take the squid all the way to the third plant, at the bottom of that fork.  Whenever people have reported a problem here, it's because they left the squid back at the second plant, closer to the painting.