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Myst V: End of Ages Hints
How do I cross the ice lake?
1 of 23: First, if you haven't found the lake, these hints will guide you a bit.
2 of 23: Before you got to the lake, you had to walk past 3 clusters of huts (or some kind of small structures, whatever you want to call them). Most of the huts just have a single handle that you can flip. However, you will see Esher twice when you approach the huts -- once when you approach the middle group, and again when you walk up to one of the individual huts in the right cluster. (If you're using the free control mode and don't see him, it may help to switch into classic mode, as this seems to bring you more easily to the exact spot where you need to be.)
3 of 23: He tells you that there is life in this age, and that there is no longer heat, but you can make "them" bring it.
4 of 23: Now, once you've started to heat the lake, you need to figure out how that will help you actually cross.
5 of 23: You should also walk up into the middle set of structures -- one of the two buildings there has an open doorway that you can walk through.
6 of 23: There's a diagram in there showing some colored circles in the middle of a few lines. Look around and see if you can figure out what those might represent.
7 of 23: If you go to the ice lake, you should notice the same pattern of lines underneath the surface. So those pipes under the lake are probably what's represented by the lines on the diagram.
8 of 23: Look just to the left or right of the lake, and a few steps back, to find out what the colored circles represent.
9 of 23: Between the huts and the lake, you should see two control stations with three levers each. One set of levers is marked with red circles, the other with blue circles -- the same colors that were on the diagram.
10 of 23: And each of the levers has three possible positions you can move it to. There's a left half-circle next to the leftmost position, a right half-circle near the rightmost position, and nothing in the middle.
11 of 23: Experiment with the handles to see if anything changes on the lake as you move them back and forth.
12 of 23: Something may start growing on different parts of the ice as you move the handles. (If you see bubbles under the ice, but nothing on top, you may have steam going to the red/left side but not the blue/right side or vice-versa. You need to turn on all 6 handles on the huts before you'll see anything appear on the surface.)
13 of 23: That must mean that for any given handle, if you move the handle to the left, the steam will flow to the pipe on the left side of the corresponding junction underneath the lake. If you move the handle to the far right, the steam flows to the right. Moving the handle to the middle cuts off the steam.
14 of 23: The three valves are also in the logical order -- the leftmost of the three valves at either the "red" or "blue" station goes to the first junction the steam will encounter as it comes into the lake from the left (red) or right (blue) corners, and so on.
15 of 23: And it looks like you can safely walk across the growth on top of the ice -- it's giving you enough traction to cross safely.
16 of 23: It should be possible for you to direct the steam in a particular direction so that you can walk all the way to the other side of the lake.
17 of 23: Look at how the pipes are connected, and see if you can force the steam in a direction that creates a clear path all the way from one side of the ice to another.
18 of 23: You'll need to start crossing the lake in the middle (where the "blue" pipes are) and walk all the way to the other side (controlled by the "red" pipes).
19 of 23: But what's at the middle of the lake to you is at the far end of the "blue" pipes, relative to where they enter in the right corner -- the steam will have to go through several junctions to get there. This fact may help you figure out some of the settings.
20 of 23: You can also walk from a "blue" pipe" to a "red" pipe, as long as those two pipes are adjacent. If you still need more explicit answers, look in the next set of hints.
21 of 23: When the steam is still running, go to the left-hand set of controls as you're facing the lake (with the red-colored circles) and move the three handles (starting at the left) to the left, right, and left respectively.
22 of 23: Also go to the right-hand set of controls (with the blue circles) and move those handles to the right, left, and left.
23 of 23: You should then be able to cross the lake by walking across the path that's formed by the steam. I found it *much* easier to do this in the "classic" navigation mode, rather than the "advanced" free move scheme -- for some reason, the game almost never recognized the path in the free-move controls, but let me cross right away in "classic" mode.
