Let's play RHEM.

It's not possible to walk around the other side of the generator, but if you look at danowar's diagram he's got water flowing one way through one and the opposite way through the other. That got us to 50% power.

What if we do this instead, just rotating one of them.

That's no good. We've got an enemy sub after us, we need to take the reactor to 110%.

I reapplied danowar's routing on top of the diagram, and got this:


But the 50% suggests it needs to go through the top generator in the other direction, like so:


So, based on the directions you were facing when looking at the cylinders earlier, and giving orientations for the exit points as if they were the hands of a clock:
Cylinder #1 - long arc at 2 and 6, short at 8 and 10
Cylinders #2 and #3 - long arc at 12 and 8, short at 2 and 4

Incidentally, which valve is the one represented at the T-junction in the lower right? I got a bit lost in the tangle outside the building.

Fixed the numbers, the "upper" generator is the northern generator and using Brickroad's given numbers.

EDIT: But I think you mean it completely the other way round, to get the southern generator in the other direction...right?

So if I'm understanding you guys, you want the discs to look like this:




It's worth a shot. Let's throw the switch.


No good. We're still not getting any power.

It's baffling, really... you guys seem to have a pretty good grasp of what needs to be done here, but the solutions just aren't working.

Now that you mention it...


...the breaker switch outside Building II looks out north over a T-junction. The pipes in RHEM seem to flow south and empty out into the river.

Stupid question, but are we sure the way the arrows flow on the diagram is accurate? This is an odd idea, but maybe there's some screwing with the pipes so that the pipe nearest the Button Box is the "in" pipe, and the pipes where the valve is are the "out" ones.

This is a valid question, and one I'm happy to squish because it's relevant to all other parts of the game.

It's true RHEM will try to catch you unawares, subvert your expectations, and take things for granted. That's the kind of world it is. But it never crosses the line into blatant trickery. Signs and diagrams don't lie to you, connected objects are always related, and feedback is never misleading.

The game doesn't play nice with you. (I mean, seriously, criss-crossing the pipes for no reason? Kind of a dick move, RHEM!) But it does play fair. A puzzle will only seem incomplete until you find the piece you are missing.

This diagram, like all the others, is accurate. But, like all the others, it has to be interpreted correctly before you can apply what it's telling you to its puzzle.

Who's solution is that? He doesn't have the northern one going that way.

I used danowar's:

I don't know what you mean by "northern one". The cylinders are in an east-west line, so one is as northerly as the next. I can't actually manipulate the generators themselves in any way.

Looking at the Generator area on the map, Cylinder #1 is the easternmost circle, Cylinder #2 is the center one, and Cylinder #3 is the westernmost. #1 and #2 are the ones that are right next to each other. To reach #3 I have to walk around the generator over towards the Green Button Box.

I thought the eastern one was north for some reason. Anyway, the only change I made from Danowar's was cylinder 3.

No, I think it was right the way I wrote it. Halfway down this post, we get a shot of the room from the left side of the diagram, facing right, that's identified as facing west. This means that up on the diagram is south, and cylinder #1 is the rightmost/westmost of the set. Brick, could you give that a try?

The T-junction appears to be doing the right thing when the lever's pulled, at least.

EDIT: Three or four new posts snuck in while I was writing that. To clarify, by "give that a try" I meant my previous post.

As soon as I get home from work.

Actually, all the lever does is divert the flow of water. It just goes back to its default position if the circuit isn't completed correctly.

Okay, I'm completely confused as of now. Brickroad, could you edit the piece of paper RHEM gives to the player so that you insert a compass rose and numbers for the cylinders? I think that would really help. ;-)

Obligatory map link.


Mazian is precisely correct. The diagram doesn't match up to the layout of Building II until you turn it upside-down! For some reason whomever drew this diagram made down = south and left = east, so the input and output pipes reverse position.

All that remains to be seen is if his method of getting water through the pipes gets enough water through each generator in order to power both elevators.




Moment of truth. Let's go throw the switch.


That did the trick! 100% power!


Running upstairs and looking out the window, we can see we've successfully routed the water through the generator room rather than the bypass pipe.


Now that the elevators are powered, let's explore the rooms they connect to. First the wooden one near the Four Way Tower. It brings us up to what looks to be the second floor of the tower.


It looks like a small office of some sort (albeit without a desk or computer or lava lamp or whatever else you typically find in an office). There are five alcoves: two along the north wall, two along the south, and one on the far east wall.


In the northwest alcove is this diagram displaying a water tank and a fairly simple network of pipes.


Opposite the water tank diagram, in the southwest alcove, is a picture of two boys and a pair of flower vases.


Crossing over to the northeast alcove we find a control box labeled "SIMULATION".


Pressing the red button causes some symbols to appear. From here I can press any of the six buttons. Doing so altenatesrs the shape in the left column and the color in the right.


Pairs of buttons always change together, so pressing either button in the pair alters the appearance of both buttons in that pair.

In the southwest alcove is a numeric keypad hooked up to a printer. There are a couple helpful six-digit codes scrawled on the wall, so let's start out by trying those.

(To use this machine you have to push the red button to turn it on, then punch your numbers in, then the green one to print. I think it was designed this way to obfuscate how many digits each code was going to be, and I have no doubt that the numbers we have are here because time and/or budget constraints kept the designer from locking them behind insidious puzzles. I won't look a gift horse in the mouth.)


Entering 275371 prints out this page of odd symbols, a few of which have numbers.


446188 gets me what looks like an outline of the boys from the picture near the entryway.

An while I'm here...

If I'm reading you right, danowar, you want to try 991936.


It's just another diagram of some sort. On the plus side though, this means like half the Button Boxes are solved!


Lastly, on the far east wall, is a strange machine of some kind.


The machine consists of a monitor, two buttons, and a box. The box section can be opened and closed, and inside is an oddly partitioned panel. One of the buttons looks to control the monitor and the other looks to open the key-sized hatch next to the image of a key.


Both buttons BZZRT! at me as long as the box is open, though.


Closing the box then pushing the top button causes a message to scroll across the screen:

Well, looks like we at least have a clear goal now: if we find the pieces of this guy's letter he promises to get us home. Since the only other way we know to leave RHEM is to wait for some other poor bastard to come along and then jack his ride, this sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me.

(I suppose it goes without saying, but you really shouldn't worry so much about all plot holes this drags up. Such as, if this device can transmit a letter to this ZETAIS fellow, why didn't KALES just do that and then burn the letter, rather than go through the trouble of hiding the pieces? It's because of the same reason that the guy from the beginning of the game refused to wait a few minutes and take us back with him; if things didn't happen in exactly this precise way, there'd be no reason for a curious stranger to be gallavanting all around RHEM tweaking pipes and completing electric currents and deciphering weird glyphs.)


All that was in that room was a crateful of clues alluding to more puzzles, many of which we haven't started on yet. I suppose that was worth all the trouble we went through to get in there.

We do have another elevator that's powered now, though. Let's go check it out.


Back through the formerly-covered-by-waterfall room and down through the bowels of the Square Building, we come to the elevator's lower-west side. Unfortunately pushing the arrow buttons doesn't open the door. What gives!?


Let's see what the cross button does, then.


A loud sound comes from the elevator shaft after pressing the cross button, and then the arrow button opens the doors for us. Apparently the elevator was up on the top floor when we arrived, and the cross button serves to call it to our level.


Lots of buttons in this elevator! Obviously the up and down buttons move the elevators, and the "in" and "out" buttons manually control the doors. Before you have to go anywhere you have to close the doors.

(Fun fact: what single "puzzle" in the game caused me to be stuck the longest? If you guessed "he didn't close the wooden elevator and couldn't figure out why it wasn't working even after he got the Building II generator running" you are correct! Seriously I spent a couple hours at least scouring and re-scouring that area looking for a second power source, a hidden button, anything. It didn't occur to me to manually close the door from the inside until I happened to notice my cursor change as I moused over to the button one time. D'oh!)


The elevator exits west onto a catwalk which, as you can plainly see on the map, quickly curves around to the south and eventually heads off east.

The outside of this elevator has three buttons: one to open the doors, one to call it to this position, and another curvy arrow. That's right: the elevator has only one door on the inside, even though it has four on the outside. From this position we can rotate the elevator so the exit is either in the east or the west.

Remember, we've visited this elevator from the upper-east entrance before, and saw no such button. That tells us the elevator can only be manipulated from this side. (It tells us a few other things too, but I'll leave those as an excersize for you guys.)


Enough playing with elevators! Let's follow this catwalk! It runs southeast into a dividing wall between those big mountains, there.


It comes out in another area of RHEM. This place looks familiar, no?


Oh goodie! It's our old friend the Pumping Station! We must be on that high catwalk we couldn't reach earlier. Which means...


...the viewing device on the plateau is within our reach now.


Kind of a strange place for a viewing device, since there's nothing much to look at around here.


The view is tiny and pretty lame, but I'll take a good look around just in case.


Ack! A password, seemingly out of nowhere!


It's the outside of the star door set into the Pumping Station's square building. It's a good thing we closed it when we were done with it or we would have missed what seems to be an important set of numbers!


Anyway, let's continue east on the path.


Once again the path brings us through a brick dividing wall.


Then it leads us down the set of U-shaped stairs you can see on the map just above the Manhole room.


Then further east into a rocky area of RHEM.


The path ends with a path off to the south, and a small room that has a similar design to the Round Building's Control Room.


This is the building labeled Simulation Control Room on the map. I bet it's filled with goodies!

First thing's first, gotta step inside and close the door...


Another map. This one's identical to the one in the Round Building Control Room, except of course for our position on it. Looks like we're pretty close to the north side of the Round Building.


Let's push the button on the wall and see what it does. Obviously it turns on a machine off to our left.


Namely, this machine here, on the western wall of the Simulation Control Room.


Each of these four buttons controls the set of ten boxes directly above it, coloring them either white or black. There's no pattern to them that I can see.



Every time you press a button you get random output in that column. Here are a few more examples.


On the wall opposite is a control box. The green button BZZRT!s at me at first...


...but the red button activates a camera that's pointed at a doorway somewhere. Blocking the doorway is a metal panel with a design on it.


Looks like the combination to the door is going to be a four-digit code. The digits go from 0-9. Once I know the code I should be able to punch it in and use the green button to open or close the door.


Finally on the south wall is... whatever this is.


The red button just BZZRT!s at me.


And so does the green one. This stupid control panel isn't of any use at all.

The path outside leading south leads to a small brick building.


Through the window we can see some stairs and a pathway off to our south.


But we can't actually go anywhere because this door is in our way! Which means...


...yep, high up on the wall behind us is the camera.


Wave, everyone!


From here we can very clearly see the path continuing out that doorway and then further south, but we're blocked until we know the combination. So we've got that going for us.


Just for fun, I thought I'd show you guys just how much of RHEM we've seen. Colored in yellow are all the areas up through the Pumping Station puzzle, and areas in green are everything up through the Generator. It looks like we've pretty thoroughly covered most of the core of RHEM, just leaving four somewhat self-contained areas we haevn't been to yet.

Four areas to explore, four letter pieces to find... surely this is just a coincidence!

UNRESOLVED ISSUES:

1. We need to bring four letter pieces back to the second floor of the Four Way Tower; this will somehow be our ticket out of RHEM.
2. The second floor of the Four Way Tower was a treasure trove of clues, images and diagrams.
3. The outside of the star door revealed a three-number sequence.
4. There's a machine in the Simulation Control Room that gives seemingly random sequences of colored boxes.
5. The door outside the Simulation Control Room requires a four-digit code to open.
6. A third machine in the Simulation Control Room doesn't seem to function at all!
7. We can turn the lights on in Building I, and the number of lights determines which in a set of strange symbols we can see on a nearby viewscreen.
8. An odd machine on the catwalk that gives seemingly random output, and is connected to a yellow wire that runs down and off to the west.
9. A machine next to it that shows information pertaining to water tanks. There's a similar diagram set into the wall of the brick building near the Generators.
10. A strange glyph machine to the south of the Pumping Station near a broken bridge.
11. We've decoded the Button Boxes. Some of them were useful in getting a printout from the Four Way Tower, but many still have no meaning. (Purple #1, Purple #2, Purple #3, Red #1, Red #2, Red #3, Blue #1, Blue #2, Blue #3, Green #1, Green #2, Green #3)
12. Wait, if the Button Box combinations were on the White Button Box, what does the sign by the entrance mean?
13. At least THREE buttons on the outside of the lower level of the Round Building which haven't done anything. (North, East, South)
14. A rotating bridge north of the Round Building, locked into the east/west position, that we cannot cross.
15. An incomplete platform that looks like it can be raised into position.
16. We still haven't explored the path leading west from the submerged catwalk.
17. We also haven't tried taking the upper-east exit out of the blue elevator near the Square Building.

Here's the map link.

I know you said to ignore the plotholes, but this guy has a letter he doesn't want read by the "wrong person" so he tears it up. That's fine, but then he tasks any passing stranger with a desire to leave RHEM with reassembling it?

Also, "master copy"? Doesn't that imply there's other, intact copies just floating around somewhere?

Every ounce of grey matter you devote to unraveling RHEM's incredibly deep and complex plot is an ounce of grey matter not being used to solve puzzles.

For the record, the plot of RHEM 2 is "there's an artifact in another part of RHEM that looks like one our uncle has so go take a picture of it so we can examine what it looks like and get into another part of RHEM" and the plot of RHEM 3 is... uh... I forget. Something about artifacts no doubt.

Once again I don't have a lot of time right now for puzzling (gotta get back to work), but I think I can at least see the general ways to get to our four remaining areas:

Water Tank - I believe we can get to this right now by manipulating the water pool near the four way tower to let us take the sunken path

Pentangle Complex - looks like we get there from the East side of the elevator near the square building, so we need to use the side with the buttons to rotate the door around to the opposite side, then hike around the long way and ride it.

Far East area - first we need to solve the Simulation Room puzzle, then I'm guessing the eastern path from there will have a puzzle that lets us raise the bridge very near our starting position. The path south leading to a broken bridge near the Round Building is probably also involved. It also looks like there's a potential pailway out over there, so this one may happen last...

Radio Complex - to get there, we clearly need to exit the Round Building from the lower West exit. No clear way to do that yet that I can see. If it's possible to fix the path North from the Round Building that might let us loop around enough to do it.

...well, that should give us some directions anyway. Water Tank and Pentangle are the easiest targets for now.

Water Tank looks manageable from afar, since we seem to have gotten some clues clear back near the beginning of the game. Also, it looks like a Layton puzzle. Let's go visit.

That photo in the office? The one where the kid is holding a multi-colored beach ball? I bet that's purely decorative. No way those colors are gonna show up later.

Will do.

Same with the giant numbers on their shirts, I'm sure. =)

All up in yo' map link.


To check out the Water Tank, first we have to drain the water out of the Four Way Tower area. So back to our trusty valve!


Then down into the previously-flooded area, and up the ladder on the other side.


This brings us up to the overpass that leads west into the Water Tank area.


The path continues west to some stairs that lead up on top of the tank...


...and over a bridge that goes across the largest of them. Checking the map, you can see there are four tanks: one huge one in the eastern area (which we're crossing now) and three smaller ones in the northern, western and southern areas.


After crossing the large tank some stairs lead down to a ladder that will take us to ground level.


At the bottom of the ladder is this control box. It's just got one large button.


All it does is spits a number out at me.


Facing north from where we came down the ladder we can see a path going off to the west or another that goes through a doorway to the northeast. This area is a little difficult to make out on the map, but we're standing in the middle of the Water Tank area.


We'll explore the sidepath first.


It goes around the corner and ends at this strange contraption. This is the small circle at the southwest edge of the center of the Water Tank area.

This is a very complicated device. First of all, there's this part, which shows me a design when I mouse over it.


Secondly there's this big honkin' lever. Pulling it advances the number marker on the side down to the 1 position, and we hear the rushing sound of water.


Pulling it again advances it down to 2 but doesn't seem to have any other effects.


After it's been pulled four times, it won't work anymore. However, I can rotate the disc in the middle to any of four different positions.


Depending on what position the disc is in, I can get a different reading from the machine.


I've now moved the disc back to its original position. Note that it's giving me a different reading from when we started. Also note that pulling the lever in this position didn't do me any good.


Behind us is a huge pipe with a single button on it.


I push the hell out of it, 'cause that's just how I roll. This causes some water to move around, but I can only hear it and honestly all rushing water kind of sounds the same to me.


Back at the complicated machine, the disc is still in it's original position and the readout has defaulted back to what it started as. Also, the counter has snapped back to zero.


Now let's check the doorway off to the northeast of the ladder.


This pathway wraps around to the eastern side of the northern tank. It's got 1200 printed on it in white paint. There's a control box outside the tank, and a ladder leading to what looks like a door through the middle of the tank.

Why anyone would construct a passageway through the middle of a water tank is beyond me.


Like the one outside the giant east tank, this box just has a single button.


That's all it does. One yellow light and four zeroes.


What's worse, the door leading into the tank won't open. Looking at the map, it does seem that the path we need to be on snakes directly through all four tanks, starting here and ending in the giant tank with a letter piece.


Here's an overhead view of the disc part of the complicated machine.

Looks like we've got our work cut out for us, gang.

All up in yo' map link again.

No peeps talking?

Well, at this point the puzzle seems to involve getting the water towers to various levels so we can walk through. I would hazard at a guess that the number on the water tank corresponds to the device we saw earlier that spits out a number based on the way the water tanks are arranged.

Well, you know, real life and all that jazz.

Digression time. The bit with KALES and ZETAIS tangentially reminded me another puzzle game, Ween: The Prophecy, an old DOS-based Sierra release from somewhere back in the '90s. It also did the ALL-CAPS NAMES routine - you were WEEN, and you had to save the world from KRALL, and there was some useless old guy named PETROY, etc. Every other piece of text in the game was capable of using lower-case letters, though. It also differed from RHEM in two critical ways:

• Inventory-based puzzles. Areas were usually one screen which you couldn't pass until solving the puzzle with whatever was on that screen and whatever was still in hand. No backtracking, no exploration.
• It sucked.

I should totally LP it, if I could just figure out how. "Here's a puzzle game with no useful interaction and no fun at all!"

Okay, back to the water tanks. These images from earlier are clearly relevant.


More floating bridges inside the tanks, so we'll need to set the levels appropriately - just as anticipated.

So, we need to rearrange some water. Remember this box from near the beginning?

Its operation is a little complex - original post. I suspect we're going to need to do some tests with the machinery to verify this and work out the procedures, but it looks like we can do these things:

1. Move all water from one of the small tanks to the big tank.
2. Move 1/4 of the big tank's water to a small tank.
3. Move all of the water from one small tank to another small tank.
4. Split the water in two small tanks 50/50.

It's possible that we can only do 2 and 4, depending on how you interpret the box's output. (EDIT: Come to think of it, that's probably the case. The lever that causes water to rush around only goes one direction, so how would we even activate reverse moves?)

The big tank has 6400... it's a German game, so let's say 6400 liters in it, if we assume the meter's reading the volume. We probably need to put 1200 liters in that first small tank. Does the catwalk offer views of the other tanks, or are we stuck with only that much information? Perhaps 1200 in each of the three small tanks, leaving 2800 in the big one.

Let's take that a step further.

We need to get 1200 liters into Small Tank #2, if we number them 1-3 based on their positions in the big-small-small-small diagram. (Will this require an annotated map shortly? Probably.) The disc thing only lets us directly connect the big tank to small tanks 1 and 2. We're pretty sure we can do a 3:1 big:small transfer.

Soooo... how's this plan?

Set the disc to connect the big tank to ST #1 (the arc goes along the left side). Yank the lever, then go check the meter on the big tank: I think it should read 4800, having transfered 1600 liters to ST #1. If that works, things are in good shape: 1/4 of that remaining 4800 is 1200, just what we need. Twirl the disc around so it connects the big tank to ST #2 (along the bottom side), pull the lever again, and see if that gets us anywhere at the little tank.

End results (in theory):
Big tank - 3600 liters
Small tank #1 - 1600 liters
Small tank #2 - 1200 liters
Small tank #3 - 0 liters
Total - 6400 liters

I can't figure how to get 1200 into all the tanks, though... well, I'll hope that guess is wrong.

Yes and no. The tanks themselves are pretty big and you can see them from pretty much anywhere in the Water Tank complex, but they sit outside of a diamond-shaped brick wall. So from the center of the complex (inside the wall) you can only see the tops of the tanks. To see the sides we have to exit the walled area through the northeast door.

The catwalk leading in from the Generator area ends right about the center of the Water Tank complex and offers us a pretty good view from inside the wall.


Facing east, the stairs leading up and over the big tank, across the catwalk, and back to Generator area.


Facing north. The tank is the cylindrical object where the sides of the brick wall meet. This is the tank we've visited from outside, which had 1200 painted on it. The door you see on the right is the only door leading through the wall to the outer path, which is surrounded by mountains.


Facing west. From here we get a good view of the disc and the four pipes leading into it.


Facing south. This is the ladder that takes us down to the ground level where all the fun stuff is.


Mazian thinks he's on to somthing. First I'll move the disc to connect the Big Tank with Small Tank #1. Before pulling the lever the readout shows the left half of the U-shape filled up with blue, and the right half empty.


After pulling the lever once, there's the sound of rushing water. Now the U-shape is equal on both sides.


Running back to the button on the Big Tank, the number has gone down! This must indeed be giving us a measurement of how much water is in the tank, which means we must have transfered 1600 liters over to Small Tank #1.


Next we'll line the Big Tank up with Small Tank #2. Again, before pulling the lever the U-shape readout is lopsided.


And again, pulling the lever cause water to move about, and the two halves of the U-shape equalize.

If Mazian's right, we should have just moved 1200 liters into Small Tank #2. Let's go see!


Small Tank #2 does indeed contain 1200 liters of water. The tank looks to be slightly over halfway full.


More importantly, the tunnel on the side of the tank opens up now!


It's a tight squeeze, but we manage to crawl through Small Tank #2 and out onto the southwesterly path on the other side.


This brings us to the western tank, Small Tank #3. This one has 800 painted on the side.


The tank is of course currently empty, so there's no opening the tunnel through it. Looks like we need to get 800 liters into this tank.

Remember, we only get two more pulls on the lever before it will stop responding. At that point I have to press the big red reset button and start over. Of course, we don't know how much water we need to put into Small Tank #1 yet, either.

Connecting 1 and 3 should give half of 1600 to 3, which is 800. Do it.