Tomb Raiders Traveler's Guide: The Lost City of Tinnos -- Hints

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	The Lost City of Tinnos	Items: 38	Kills: 90
		The Lost City of Tinnos is a huge level with lots of interesting puzzles. Here are some hints for the tricky parts.
	Exit, Stage Left	After entering the city from the steel shed, you will be faced with a room with plenty to do. The most important feature is that you need to recognize what ladders look like in Tinnos. They are now rectangles carved into the stone. The exit to this room is on the left, but to open that door, you must first retrieve a key to open the metal gate on the right.
	Food Chain	After stepping through the stone door, and climbing up onto a ledge, you will find a wall with five buttons. The correct combination of buttons will open the gate below. If you can't figure out the pictographs, then you'll have to try all thirty some odd combinations, but if you look at the pictographs, you'll be able to figure out which are the correct buttons based on what eats what.
	Debugging	After you step past the gateway into the next area, you'll encounter the first of the two enemies found in this level. Insects will swarm into the room after you step past a certain "trigger point". If you just stand your ground and blast them rather than running around, eventually they will stop emerging. Otherwise, you can just keep moving and take them out as needed.
	Bridge Out	The bridge is broken, but that crystal in the cave on the left is a good hint as to how to get across. A couple of running jumps and a little climbing is all you need. The other side of the bridge might appear to be blocked off by a rock slide, but look around, and you'll find that someone has already bored a tunnel through.
	My What Big...	Those two beasts on the last segment of bridge are simply big, with big claws, and a big tail that launches fireballs. All but the last two you will encounter in Tinnos can be dealt with from a safer location or using some tricks. Don't go toe to toe with these guys.
	Hark, What Light...	After the swinging flaming baskets, you can turn either left or right. The hints below will assume that you turned right and entered the room with the light beam. Don't forget to deal with the insects.
	Just Call Me Mudd	There are four "elemental" rooms that surround the room of light, each of which can be done in any order. This hint is for the earth room. Once inside, you will find the room full of quicksand. The shortest route is to head to the left, but you'll suffocate before you ever get to safety. To navigate the quicksand, you'll want to go counterclockwise around the room. Take your time exiting the room after collecting the mask, to avoid have part of the ceiling fall on your head. Back to the entrance, a side gate will be opened that will lead you back to the room of light.
	You're on Fire	In the fire room, you will find several columns rising up from a pool of lava. Only certain columns are safe. There is a map on the ceiling above the block near the entrance. The map only shows the columns. You'll need a little fire to reveal which columns will not catch fire. After passing the columns, you'll slide down a ramp to another room with four fire-breathing statues. The flames will reveal a path. Just take your time, and you'll get by. Just be aware that you need to deactivate the fourth statue in order to get into the gateway.
	Cry Me a River	In my opinion, the water room is the hardest to complete, but the easiest to understand. You simply need to pull a couple of underwater levers. The hard part will be getting past the rotating blades. Two things will help. When swimming past the rotating blades, try to swim "with the rotation" giving you more time to get past. After getting past the first two, you'll swim down into a pool with a rotating blade and small tunnels. The lever in the left tunnel opens the timed door in the right. After that, there's a room with four rotating blades. There's another lever that will open the gate that leads to the mask.
	You Sound Winded	I'm not sure what air or wind has to do with the maze, but the bulk of the wind room is just a simple maze. All you need to do is keep either your left or right hand on a wall, you'll find your way through.
	Not Done Yet	Just because you've gotten the four masks doesn't mean you're finished. Now head back to the end of the broken bridge where the two flaming baskets are. There's another tunnel on the opposite side of the room.
	Three On One	After pulling the lever to enter the room opposite from the room of lights, you'll find that the room has three gates. Behind each one is one of those nasty black beasts. If you charge into the room, you may end up dealing with all three at once. Besides releasing them one at a time, there's a trick involving the blocks that flank each gateway that you can use to make fighting them easier. After finishing them off, you want to raise the ledge so you can exit this room through a crawlspace at the upper platform.
	Leveraging	The next room has lots of ledges which are controlled by levers. The levers affect multiple ledges and some times different combinations of levers will operate different ledges. The order of pulling the levers is fairly straightforward if you pull them in the order you encounter them.
	Limpid Pools	After exiting the lever and ledges room, you'll enter a room with some shallow pools. Careful exploration will reveal two more beasts, a mess of insects, and a key. If you're lucky, you can get out without ever alerting a beast.
	Lights Off	There's a ladder out of the room with the shallow pools. In the next hallway, the lever opens the gate, and the key hole opens the path to the meteorite cavern. If you haven't already done so, placing the four masks into their receptacles reveals four statues and turns off the beam of light. Down the hole and you're done... almost.