Myst Online Cavern Tour

What are the tours?

The Myst Online Cavern Tour is a series of walking tours that cover every location in Myst Online: Uru Live, and may someday expand to cover other Cyan games. The tour guide speaks mostly in-character about D'ni and D'ni Restoration Council history, the functions and purposes of the buildings and machinery of D'ni, and the flora and fauna to be found in each area. But increasingly, out-of-character developer stories are also being included when available.

Because the tours are held in private instances of the game, we take you to locations that you cannot reach in the game proper, such as outside the museum pods, down to the bottom of the great shaft, and inside the DRC conference room in Tokotah 1.

When are the tours?

The season will begin on Saturday, June 25th, 2022 at 11:00 KI time. The tours will be conducted on the fourth Saturday of each month, barring unforeseen circumstances or when that weekend includes a major US or French holiday. The tours last roughly two hours, and we try to conclude them by 13:00 KI time.

The tour season does not have a concrete end date. The tours will continue until we have covered all of the game locations, and tour sessions may be split or postponed as needed.

This KI Time conversion chart shows what KI time converts to in time zones that are fairly common among explorers.

Where do the tours meet?

Tour groups meet in the Cavern Tour neighborhood before the tour start time. When the tours begin, we transfer to the appropriate locations. The tours are held in Mir-o-Bot's private Ages. Mir-o-Bot's KI number is 32319, and you can add him to your buddy list by typing /addbuddy 32319 in your chat.

Who runs the tours?

The tour staff this year is composed of Susa'n and Zeke365 as the tour co-hosts, Larry, the primary tour guide, r'Tayrtahn (a.k.a. Shokhootan Rehn) as a secondary lecturer and commentator, and Mirphak the "gray hat" technical service provider, who owns and operates Mir-o-bot.

Warnings:

For new players: we do our best not to give away puzzle solutions or spoilers, but sometimes it's unavoidable because we explain how everything in the Ages were intended to work. It's always best if you finish up all of the puzzles before attending the tours if you can. This is especially true in Eder Kemo and Ahnonay. We define a spoiler as instructions on how to solve a puzzle, or information that would give away a secret you'd probably prefer to learn yourself.

Additional notes:

Everyone is welcome to join us at any time during the tours.

To hear us clearly, open your game settings, click on the audio settings icon, and lower your ambient sounds, music, and sound effects sliders. Don't forget to adjust these settings back to your desired level after the tour ends.

The tour audio and additional video is streamed over Twitch.tv. We use Skype to conference call the tour team. That means that to hear the team, it is necessary to open a web browser and go to twitch.tv/lwf58.

There are two technical issues that may arise in the stream. Both have solutions that use stream controls that appear when you mouse-over the video window:

First, It may show a constant buffering indicator. The solution is to click on the gear icon in the video window, click on advanced, and turn the low latency switch off. That should help with the problem.

Second, the stream audio volume may be too low, and the game audio too high. There are two ways of approaching that problem. Turning up your computer speaker volume won't help, because it will increase the game audio volume too. The first solution is to mouse-over the Twitch video window. The stream window has its own pop-up volume slider that you can adjust, allowing you to adjust the balance between the stream and game audio. The second solution is to click on the game controls icon that slides up when you move your mouse cursor near the bottom of the game window. In the control window that pops up, there is an audio icon to click on. In it, you can adjust the volume of the game's sound effects, music, and other options to a desired level.

The stream is broadcast simultaneously on Larry's Twitch, Facebook and YouTube channels. You can see previous tours in Larry's YouTube channel.

The Facebook address is: https://www.facebook.com/larry.fontenot.96/

The YouTube address is: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBnze7mizRzi9ZDx4581QnA

Why have a video stream?

There are several reasons.

It allows the tour staff to talk without having to hold down the tab key for in-game voice chatting, which is a a problem. The game assumed that people would speak for short periods at a time, so no provision was made to turn on voice chat without holding down a key. Using a weight on the key can work, but assumes you have a weight that will fit, and leads to "hot mic" issues.

The audio quality in the stream is superior to that of the game by a very wide margin.

Using in-game voice chat requires all of the people listening to be a short distance from the person speaking, and that meant that there were frequent pauses in the tour while waiting for all of the guests to get close enough to hear the lecture. The stream audio is independent of the game, so distance between avatars is not a problem.

Running a stream of the game permits guests who cannot log into the game to attend the tour second-hand. The first time the stream was run, there were two guests that attended via the stream. One of them was Richard A. Watson of Cyan Worlds, and the other was his mother.

Running a stream allows guests to view the tour using any web-enabled device they may have, be it a desktop computer, notebook, tablet or smart phone. All that's required is that the device have a web browser capable of accessing Twitch.

The broadcast software used for the stream permits me to display things I could not before, such as concept art, game textures and sound clips. In previous tours, that was impossible because you can't import outside media into the game.

The broadcast software permits me to display a small window for my web cam, so guests have a face to go with my voice. Whether that's a benefit or not is something I'll leave to the guests to decide.

Tour etiquette:

It's polite not to wander off on your own or run ahead of the group because the tour guide is trying to present everything in an organized manner and may be trying to show you something special.

When we get to choke points in the various Ages where only one avatar can pass at a time, we warp the entire group past those points to avoid wasting time. Attempting to climb ladders or use elevators may cause your avatar to become stuck, which in turn may force you to reset your game. This is especially true of ladders; ladders are typical places where game glitches can trap your avatar. The game was not optimized for large groups, and bugs appear that would not affect a lone player.

This is also important: Please do not voice chat during the tour. If you have any questions, either use text chat or wait until the guide asks for and permits verbal questions. Voice chat outside the question and answer periods will interfere with the guide, delay the tour, and spoil the enjoyment of the other tour guests.

What do I do if I'm late, if I fall and link out, get stuck, or my game crashes?

Before the tour begins, add Mir-o-Bot to your buddy list. After that, if you exit the tour location for any reason, you can send the command link or meet to the bot by private message and be transported to the tour location from wherever you are.

Once you are in the tour location, the w command will take you to the bot. This procedure is used to rejoin the tour if your game or connection crashes or you fall and panic link back to your Relto. To rejoin the tour wherever in the Age it might be, send the bot the command find larry by private message, and you will be warped to the location where the tour group is. While falling, if you are quick enough it's possible to select the bot and use the w command to return to a solid surface before you panic link.

If you get stuck, which happens a lot since the Ages were not designed to handle large groups, try to log out of the game session and then log back in. Then rejoin the group by the methods mentioned above. If that doesn't work, exit the game, restart it, and then rejoin the group. Because the tour audio isn't dependent on the game, you won't miss any of the lecture while the game is shut down and you will be able to see what is happening from Larry's point of view in the stream window.

The Cavern Tours are unofficially brought to you by the unofficial honorary members of the unofficial Guild of Tour Guides, a cadet branch of the very official D'ni Guild of Cartographers. Whether or not the honorary members acknowledge membership up to them, since the Guild of Tour Guides is just a name coined by Larry LeDeay and Richard A. Watson and not an actual organization. The position of the guild as a cadet branch of the Cartographers was created by Richard A. Watson.

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Myst, the Myst logo, and all games and books in the Myst series are registered trademarks and copyrights of Cyan Worlds, Inc. Myst Online: Uru Live is the sole property of Cyan Worlds Inc. The concepts, settings, characters, art, and situations of the Myst series of games and books are copyright Cyan Worlds, Inc. with all rights reserved.

I make no claims to any such rights or to the intellectual properties of Cyan Worlds; nor do I intend to profit financially from their work. This web site is a fan work, and is meant solely for the amusement of myself and other fans of the Myst series of games and books.