The Key Walkthrough: Part III

Note - If you get disorientated at any time, a map of the current location is available by clicking Show Map on the menu bar.

Note - The Zip To menu provides instant access to locations that you have already visited, so you don't have to walk to most places more than once!

 First, let me say that The Key has its own hint system built in. If you are ever at a panel and just want the answer to enter into the panel, you can click on the Hint menu and have it tell you the answer right then. You can always use this to find out the exact password to enter into anything in the game.

When you begin Part III you find yourself on the Graveyard Rimworld. It's a little spooky here, but then that's to be expected - this is a graveyard. From here you'll continue your explorations on a search for The Key. Hunt around a little bit until you find the bedroom - it's inside the house through the door. Inside you'll find a journal beside the bed; it will, among other things, tell you about this person who built libraries on various remote planets. Write down his name - you'll need it. The journal goes on to tell you about a man who was trapped at this very place a long time ago, and eventually managed to escape. (You don't need to worry about his name - just the name of the person who built the library.) It sounds like he didn't have very much fun during his stay. [The name is Joseph Allen.]

One of the things he mentions is something concerning the fireplace. Now that he mentions it, doesn't it look a bit strange? It couldn't be a real fireplace, so it must have some other purpose. Click on the hourglass on the mantle and see what happens! You can now enter the fireplace, and you'll find yourself in a tunnel.

About halfway down the tunnel you'll find a large vault door with a panel on it. Click on the panel and enter the name of the fellow who went around building libraries (you wrote it down earlier). This is one of his libraries, only it's empty now; someone else beat you to it. However, all is not lost: upstairs and to the right, on a far bookshelf, is a book with assembler codes! Write down the one for Atomeron: you'll need it later.

While you're here, enter the other door that's in the library. It will take you to a small cellar. If you turn after entering the room and look up, you'll see a small PDA-type device. Click on it and read what it says; it tells you the story of a poor Captain who had an odd problem. It will also tell you the coordinates for the Hangar Rimworld. Be sure to write it down! You'll need it. [CX10120]
 

Ok, we're moving right along! Leave the library and continue out of the tunnel and into the graveyard. Explore the graveyard a bit; on one of the large gray tombs you'll find a panel that will give you the coordinate for another Rimworld. Write it down. [KJQ-16874]

You've done all you need to do here. Now go back to the Arcadia Comm Tower and enter the coordinate for the Hangar Rimworld. This is a dark place; it seems to be nighttime, and there's no telling when the sun will rise. You have a number of things to do here, but it won't take too long. [There is a door here that you cannot open... Franzi Wanner will refer to it later in the walkthrough.]

Walk over the bridge to the little island, where you'll find an oil refinery. At the back of the refinery you'll find a green light; click on it and it will turn red. You just turned off the oil refinery; this cuts the power to the Hangar itself. This is part of the process of gaining access to the building.

Another thing you will find to the back of the oil refinery is a series of green glowing beams, leading out to an oil rig. They're solid, so walk on them out to the rig. As soon as you step off of it, turn left and you'll see a narrow passage. Follow it, and you'll come to a small panel. On this panel is some important numbers; they tell you various uplink numbers for various items. Write the numbers down, along with the item associated with them.

You can now walk back over the bridge, go up to the door that used to be lock, and enter the Hangar, but you'll find that you can't actually do anything: there's a vault door in the room you can enter but the panel is off. This is natural: you've turned off the power to this base so of course the panel will be dead. What you need to do is get power to that door so you can open it, and there is a system on this planet for doing just that.
 

If you'll enter the lighthouse, you'll find that there is a panel there that will allow you to use the satellite dish outside to beam power to any point on the planet. Remember the coordinates you wrote down from the oil rig? Well, one of them was for a Repository Door - that's the door you want to open in the Hangar. Enter that coordinate into the panel in the lighthouse, and when you go back into the Hangar you'll find that you can now enter the office door.
 

Go open the office door - once it's open it won't close. After you've done this, go back to the lighthouse and enter the uplink number for the Battleship Repository Complex - that's the building you cut the power to earlier. By beaming power to it the base will have electricity, and you'll be able to explore it.
 

You now have full access to the Hangar, and you can explore it and take a look around. You access different floors by using the field doors: each one has a panel beside it, and you can use the panel to tell the field door what floor you want the door to bring you to. You can use this system to access all the different floors that are available, and you'll discover that some levels have access to floors that other levels do not.
 

Head upstairs until you get to level 4. At this level you'll find a staircase leading down to a room filled with holographic images of ships; take the staircase down. What you have here is a display of some of the ships stored in the repository: these ships are stored in the databanks and the holographic images are representations of the ships available. You can find out information about the ships by clicking on the panels on each pad. Search through the ships, and you'll find one ship that you can use that does not need the Core to be activated. Write down the number of that ship: you're going to retrieve it and use it to take a journey. [#1045013 and go to  LZ189834]
 

Once you have that number, head downstairs to the Office. Click on the computer monitor and click on the "Repository" menu item (you can ignore Security; you can't do anything with that.) In that screen, enter the number of the ship you want to retrieve - the one that doesn't need the Core. It will bring up another screen, and on that screen enter the coordinates of the Space Station (which you got from the oil rig earlier). It will accept it, and a ship will appear on the top floor of the Hangar that is pre-programmed to go to the Space Station.
 

Go upstairs to level 6, and you'll see the ship! Click on it, and your atoms will be compressed for a journey to the Space Station, where you will be reassembled. (You can click on the ship again and get returned to the Hangar Rimworld; a nice little animation plays of the ship leaving the station.) Walk to the very back of the space station and to the end of the long room, and you'll find a computer panel that will give you the coordinate to the Dock Rimworld. [VX-17632]
 

Once you have that coordinate, go back to the Arcadia Comm Tower and enter the coordinate for the Dock Rimworld into the hyperwave pillar there. Use it, and you'll appear on the Dock Rimworld - a place where the sun seems to be setting but hasn't quite set yet. This place is very straightforward: just follow the walkway to the staircase, and take the staircase up to the strange towering metal object. Look through the panel at its base, and you'll find the coordinates for what they claim is the Core. Write it down. [ZXC-203945]

If you enter these coordinates into the hyperwave pillar in the Arcadia Comm Tower, you will be told that that location is locked. However, there is another hyperwave pillar, and that one is in Vault II. What you want to do is enter Vault II and put that coordinate into the hyperwave pillar there.
 

First, though, you have to find and open Vault II. Vault II is only accessible through a field door at the end of the Long Hall on Arcadia (it's a long hall built of eroded bricks.) Opening the door requires two things: the passcode and a whole lot of power.
 

The passcode is easy to find: it's on the welcome panel on the Level 1 Walkway on Arcadia. The power is harder to come by. In order to get it you have to get the power plant on Arcadia to react Atomeron on the 3x level, and you have to start up the reactor on the Crater Rimworld and get it going at the 3x level.
 

The settings to react Atomeron can be found in the storage room (the one with the barrels) near the Atmosphere Lab on Arcadia. The settings to produce Atomeron from the assembler can be found in that book you discovered on the library of the Graveyard Rimworld. What you want to do is go to the assembler and enter the assembler settings, so that it begins to make atomeron. Then go to the reactor and enter the reaction settings, being careful to use the 3x settings so that you produce 150,000 units of power.
 

Once that is working, go to the Crater Rimworld and enter the atomeron settings into the reactor panel. Be sure to use the 3x settings here as well. If you have linked the Valley of Stars network (which you should have done in Part II) the power will flow to Arcadia and you'll have all the power you need to enter Vault II. If you have never been to the Crater Rimworld and never even heard of it, you have a problem. The coordinates for the Crater Rimworld are found by going from Rimworld to Rimworld in Part II and doing a search for all local Rimworlds. Only one of these will list the Crater Rimworld, and if you create a link before you see this listing you're out of luck.
 

[It is here that I started having problems and wrote to Jon and received much help.  To find Crater Rimworld you will need to return to VOS and enter the Archive of Power Planets area to link the transporter... you will find the pillar as 2nd on the left when you enter.  Put in the number you have (or use the hints system) and you will be in Crater Rimworld.  Go to the Power section to enter the 3X for Atomeron.    Next you must send the power to Arcadia.  Return to the Comm Dome and click on the panel in that dome and select Frequency.  Scan for a station; you will find one you can link with.  Hit attempt Link and you should now be online, shipping the power back to Arcadia.  Return to VoS and return to Arcadia.

I next found myself facing a Grid on Arcadia without the power needed to enter Vault 2.  If this happened to you also, here is what Jon told me to do. 

First I had to return to the Power Grid and power up the Assembler or I would not be able to create atomeron.  Once the assembler is on the grid, enter these settings into it:  128-96-6-700-75-yes-yes-120-600-90  with the value at top-left being 128 and then follow along filling in the blanks.  This will successfully change it to Atomeron.  (this is over by the assembler - down the hallways)

Next I had to go to the fusion reactor and start it up with these settings (back in the power plant):  15-45-300-3000   again the first value at the top being 15 followed by the rest.

The available power should now be 366,500 units - more than enough - and Vault 2 should be able to be added to the grid.

Now I had no power or air to enter the Long Hall to reach the vault!!  So I started messing with settings but saved my game first!  Power the Grand Central on the Grid for the walkway and then you must go to the Assembler again and use the panel on the right to return air to everything.  I used Zip Mode to return to the Long Hallway.  Now I am finally in Vault 2 and hopefully you are too.]

Now that Vault II is up and running, enter it and put in the coordinate for what was claimed to be the Core. Everything will look good, so touch the pillar. You'll find yourself lost in a maze of thick haze. Far from being at the Core, you're now at the Hazy Rimworld. All that is here is a book - and the book tells you that the coordinates for this place are very similar but not quite the same as where you intended to go. (The last two digits of the Core location is something like 45 and the last two digits of the Hazy Rimworld location are 54). Hmmm! Write down this new coordinate and go back to the pillar in Vault II, then enter the new coordinate into the Vault II pillar. If you try it again you'll see that you go to a very different place: the Gate Rimworld.
 

Do you see that odd contraption in the middle of the room? It has four posts. What you have to do is find four crystals and put them at the bottom of each post. Once you do that, you can use the panel on the wall to start up the Gate. It will read the Core's real location from the crystals and feed it into a specially-built field door, which will rise from that contraption. You can then enter it and you will be at the real Core.
 

However, first you have to find those crystals, and doing this will take a bit of time. Do you see that number carved into the mountain? It says 10832-A, but the 3 is obscured. A long time ago, back in Part II, you may have found out (or may have) that the coordinate for the Arcadia Comm Tower is 10862-A. 62 brings you to the Comm Tower; 32 brings you to Vault II. It seems that changing that digit does something special. What happens at 10802-A? 10812-A? Could this system lead you to a location on Arcadia you haven't seen yet? [Note:  I zipped to the Power Plant to restore power to the Comm Tower here.]
 

You bet. Try the different combinations and you'll discover that you now have access to the Radiation Lab. However, it wants a password, and you don't have a password. You're not out of luck, though: what would happen if you tried the same system for other Rimworlds? None of them work, except for the Valley of Stars. If you try altering the second-to-last digit in the Valley of Stars coordinate, you'll find that you can go to different places - and one of them is a Vault. Inside the Vault is a password, and that password just happens to work in the Radiation Lab.

Great! Go back to the Radiation Lab and enter it. The machine will do its bit, and a few areas you couldn't access earlier due to radiation problems are now open. You can enter two important places: the Underground Labs (at the Memorial) and the Old Fusion Reactor (in the Long Hall). There is one other location that you can now access; it's not really necessary to go there but it is a cool room. Zip to  the Memorial [Turn Around] and turn left at the junction that is right in front of the door and then follow the hallway. You will discover that, while the bars are still solid, the panel on the wall is very different: there is a message there as well as a command that will let you open the door. You can now go through the bars and enter the Memory Hall, where you can see what the various Rimworlds looked like before they started falling apart.
 

To get back to the game: at this point things start to get just a little bit complicated. What you want to do is get the Old Fusion Reactor working, because once you get it working you'll be able to access a new location. However, the Old Fusion Reactor won't start: it doesn't have enough fuel. Even if it did have enough fuel, though, you don't know how to react it.
 

This is where the Underground Labs comes in. What you have to do is take the small bit of fuel that's left in the Old Fusion Reactor [located in the Long Hall] and send it for analysis to the Underground Labs [to Chemistry Lab 66-78-1]. Once you know what it is, you need to make some more, and after you've made some more you need to run some tests to find out how to react it. Then you can send the fuel back to the Old Fusion Reactor and get it up and running. How can you possibly move the fuel around? Well, there just happens to be a series of matter transmitters scattered around, and you can use them.
 

In the Underground Labs is a panel that gives you the coordinates for the Chemistry Lab, Test Reactor, Old Fusion Reactor, and the Matter Replicator (in that order). Use the transmitters to send the small fuel sample from the Old Fusion Reactor to the Chemistry Lab, then go to the Chemistry Lab and see what you've got. It will tell you that the fuel sample is D2O, which is deuterium - also known as heavy water. (That is d2o, by the way - the letter d, the number 2, and the letter o. It happens to be the real fuel for fusion reactors: it stands for 2 atoms of deuterium (heavy hydrogen) and one atom of oxygen.) What you want to do now is make more D2O, so go to the Matter Replicator and enter D2O into it, since it only accepts chemical formulas. It will produce some and dump it into the nearest matter transmitter.
 

[Note: While looking for the Matter Replicator I found a "secret room" that is neat... I won't give it away, but I bet all you gamers will recognize what the panel is talking about.

Go to that transmitter and send the fuel sample to the Test Reactor. Go to the Test Reactor and experiment with the fuel; you'll find the settings you need to react this fuel. Send the fuel from there to the Old Fusion Reactor, and go back to the Old Fusion Reactor and enter the settings you just learned. What do you know: it now works! The panel in that room now comes alive, and you can move it and enter the Junction behind it. The Junction has this unhealthy-looking green fog in it (radioactive, maybe?), and hidden in one of its corners is a book. Among other things, the book talks about a Rimworld and gives you the coordinates for it. At this point, go back to the Arcadia Comm Tower and enter the coordinates for that Rimworld into the pillar and use it. You'll find yourself at the Ruined Rimworld. Your task here is simple: find those four crystals!
 

Three of the crystals are easy to find, but one is harder. As a hint: some of them are found at the tops of buildings, and to get the red one you have to go through some walls. Gravity is low here, so the places where you can scale a wall to see what's on the other side are clearly marked in the text at the bottom of the screen. Pay close attention! If it says gravity is low, go through the nearby wall: you may discover something.
 

Once you have them all, go back to the Gate Rimworld. Click on your inventory, and click on the crystals one at a time. It will place them in the Gate for you. You can then use the panel on the wall to start up the Gate - but you find that it has some trouble. The panel doesn't seem to want to work.
 

What you have to do here is work with the panel. Try one set of settings and see how far it gets; it will tell you where the problem is, and you can adjust that one item until it gets further. At one point it will ask for a PI value; you can get that from the panel on the Dock Rimworld. (Keep in mind that you have to round that PI value; the last digits are 279 but you have to round to 28 since there isn't room to type 279.) If you get frustrated, you can use the in-game hint system to get the exact values to enter into the panel.
 

Once this panel activates you will find yourself at the Core! From here it is easy: all you have to do is decide what choice you are going to make.

Originally written by Franzi Wanner
Revised by Jonathan K. Cooper

Notes in brackets added by raylinstephens

Last updated 9/24/2005