Return To Rome

Level by levyhgb

Walkthrough by dmdibl (David Dibble)

This TR1 level is a good showcase for the essential features that were in the original Tomb Raider. Three secrets. There is an appendix on DOS Tomb Raider at the end of this walkthrough.

OMG, This Is TR1! DOSBox

Many people ignore custom TR1 levels, even the handful of good levels. But if you ever want to replay the original Tomb Raider—or experience it for the first time—then you will have an installation for also playing custom levels.  When you first install TR1 the graphics will be terrible. Press F1 in game to switch to SVGA mode.

DOSBox should be used to play TR1 with Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, or Linux, and the installation is simple.  The current version as of this writing is DOSBox 0.74, available from www.dosbox.com. Return To Rome is set up to play with no CD, and so can be played directly.

See the Appendix at the end of this walkthrough for information on running DOS Tomb Raider. And remember to press F1 to improve the graphics.

Walkthrough Starts

Run forward over the first mound to the second mound, stand by the pillar and shoot two apes in front. Then jump forward onto the wall. Notice that the door to the right has only two bars holding it shut; the other two bars have already slid to the left.

Jump into the pit in front, find a push block on the left, pull and push it back several times until it rests on a gray trigger tile. See a camera shot of a door opening. Now jump up and make your way to the top of the stairs. Lara has to go through three swinging blades. Save the game at the room with blue lightning bolts, as it is chance whether Lara can run and jump unharmed through the room.

At the end, climb up into a high doorway. Walk forward off the initial tile, and a lion will come running. Hop backward, drop down, draw pistols and shoot the lion from below by hopping up and down as needed. With a little patience the lion drops.

High Wall Lever

Climb up again and in the room go left to the corner, pull out a block, and pull it aside. Where the block was pick up a key. (Probably a Silver Key. To see it in inventory, press ESC and use the UP Key.) Go out and up the stairs, where Lara will be fascinated by a high wall lever on the right. Pause for a moment, and look to the corner opposite the block that Lara just moved. There is another push block there. However, there is nothing behind that second block, and if Lara moves it two apes will attack. Leave the second block alone.

Go up the stairs and make a standing jump/grab to the back left corner. Pick up a small medipack: items in this level are often placed off center, against a wall. Make a running jump out to a pillar against the wall. Don't jump to the central pillar yet, as that makes Pierre appear and start shooting at Lara. Instead Lara can make a running jump forward, angling a bit left, to the ledges there. Jump over the gap where the entrance is. Hear the chime of Secret #1, shotgun in the back right corner against the wall.

Now Lara needs to get over to the high wall lever on the right wall. From where Lara picked up the shotgun make a running jump to the central pillar. Pierre will start shooting, so quickly set up a diagonal running jump to the wall lever. Land, pull down the wall lever, get into the corner to avoid flying bullets. Make a running jump toward the room entrance, and get out of here as fast as possible. Save the game if Lara lost only a little health. Otherwise you may want to try that central pillar jump again.

(In the original TR1 St. Francis level, Lara had to fight Pierre and inflict a certain amount of damage in order to get rid of him. Here that doesn't seem necessary, which is fortunate as Lara doesn't have enough medipacks to survive Pierre's bullets.)

Water Room

Go back through the blue lightning bolts, and past the swinging blades. Go left down the stairs to the keyhole by the door. The wall lever drew back one bar, now use the key to slide back the last bar.

Go into the water room on the walkway, and around to the far side of the central pillar. There is a crocodile in the water, and two lions up on a high walkway. Once they are dead, stand facing the closed gate and dive into the water to the right of it. At the bottom, close to the gate, pick up a large medipack. Now climb out by the gate and dive into the water on the opposite side, and in the back right corner find Secret #2, shotgun shells and magnum clips.

Swim to the central pillar and pull an underwater lever. A camera shows the gate above opening. Surface in time to see the gate slam shut—the underwater lever is timed. Swim down and use the lever again. This time there isn't any camera shot, so Lara has time to surface and run through the gate before it slams shut behind her.

Spike Room, Pillar Jumps

Draw pistols and run up the stairs. Step into the room so lions notice Lara, start firing at the first lion while backing down the stairs. When the lion drops, stay on the stairs. A second lion will show up, so shoot it while backing up. Now go up into the room.

To the left, behind the far pillar, find an exit. Go up the stairs and jump to the first pillar. Going clockwise around the room, do two running jump/grabs, and a running jump to a wall lever. Use it, and see the door to Lara's right open. Jump over there and inside.

Central Pillar Golden Key

At the top of these stairs stop, see two apes below. Draw pistols and shoot them from the high doorway. Do a safety drop, pull out the block in the back right corner. Use the wall lever that was behind it to open a gate diagonally opposite. Go out on the high walkway. (There is a hole in the walkway by the open gate, and Lara will be back here.) Follow the right-hand walkway until Lara is opposite the central pillar, make a running jump/grab to it, pull up to get the key.

Three Ape Room

Jump back to the walkway, go left and climb several blocks to a room. Maneuver around to shoot three apes. Then spot the keyhole here—Lara's key doesn't fit. Pull out a block from the wall. Pull and push it straight out as far as it will go, against a low wall block. Then push it to the side away from the entrance three times. Lara can now climb on the block and make a running jump grab to a high platform, and in its back right corner pick up magnum clips and small medipack.

Get down, and climb onto the push block again. This time pull up onto the adjacent wall. Run over a collapsible tile to break it. Drop down, step into the corner, and climb two blocks. Use a wall lever, and see a camera of a door opening back above the pool with the crocodile. Continue and climb two more blocks, at the end do a safety drop back into the room.

Silver Key

Go out the room entrance, skip down to the walkway, straight along it to the end, drop down in the hole. Find the open door here, and pick up a key inside. Get out. Lara can pull back up to the walkway. Return to the three-ape room, and use this new key in the keyhole. (Press Ctrl, see the Gold Key, wrong one. Manually rotate the ring to select the Silver Key.)

Falling Sword Room

Enter the room. There are lots of swords of Damocles hanging from the ceiling. They won't fall straight down, but will come flying toward Lara as she approaches. Turn and walk against the right-hand wall. Walk slowly past the first pillar, edge forward and two swords fall. Lara should lose only a sliver of health. Get around the swords, continue right against the wall and a second falling sword will miss. Now run down to the back right corner and two swords will fall behind Lara.

Run across the back of the room to make the end sword fall. Then return to the high opening. If apes are in the opening jump up and down to shoot them. If not, climb up, run into the room on the left side, shoot the apes that are closest, then shoot the crocodiles in the water.

Second Golden Key

Dive down and swim into a hole away from the room entrance, go down to the back right, pick up Secret #3, magnum clips. Swim across this back wall to the other side, and up to surface. Pull out in a rock alleyway. There is an ape and a key in an alcove at the end, right, so find a way to take out the ape. Use the shotgun for the first time. Pick up the key in the alcove. Check inventory, Lara now has two of them.

Go back to the water's edge and pull up to the rocks on the right. Continue pulling up, at the end use a wall lever on the left, and see a camera shot of a door opening back at the beginning of the level, above the pit where Lara moved a first push block. Get down to the right pillars, and take a long running jump toward the pool below. Swim down and right, past the limp crocodiles, climb out to the sword room.

Back to Beginning

In the sword room retrace Lara's route—this time Lara is against the left wall—and just run out. Go right through the ape room, down to the walkway, jump into the water by the central pillar. Pull out, exit the open door, go straight across to a smaller door that opened when Lara used the wall lever. Use first one key, and then the next to open both doors and access the room beyond.

A Waiting Ambush

Step cautiously into the room. Lara can use the shotgun to kill the first lion. She may have one more shot for the second lion. Then open the inventory ring with ESC and select pistols (shortcut keys don't work in TR1). When the lions are dead, go back into the room. If Lara goes left and looks into a low doorway, she can see the tip of the tail of a crocodile that is hiding inside.

Lara can go right, jump up on a block, and see a lone crocodile on this side. He is pretending to be asleep. Lara can jump down, run through the gap in the blocks, and shoot the crocodile when he pursues. On this side go in where the sneaky crocodile was to pick up a large medipack. Now Lara will have to step into a low doorway at the end of this room in order to lure out two crocodiles and shoot them. There is a small medipack back where they were hiding.

Opening the Exit

Find the push block in this room and push it straight five times across the room, to align with the blocks on the other side. Jump up onto it, and pull a high block back twice. Climb on this high block, and jump up into a doorway. Two bats attack, so kill them. At the top of the stairs use a wall lever. A camera shot shows a gate opening back where those two crocodiles were hiding.

Get down, go through a low doorway at the back of the room, prepare to take a safety drop through a gate. As Lara hops back the level ends, and a statistics screen shows.

7 February 2012

Appendix—DOS Tomb Raider

Players who still have Windows 98 or Windows ME computers can play in DOS. Henk Eland, of the now closed Lara's Mansion site, distributed no-CD patched executables, and suggested using Tomb3dfx.exe for its enhanced graphics. Several custom levels are rather dark. There is a program, Tombflares, to modify the lighting in any TR1 level—usually increase brightness by 20% for a level that is annoyingly dark. It is simple to use.

For Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, or Linux use DOSBox. Custom TR1 levels from www.trle.net can be played directly in DOSBox. Below I will talk about installing the original Tomb Raider, as this may motivate more people.

I noticed on forum sites that many suggest playing original Tomb Raider from CD, which seems to miss the point of DOSBox. That is, they install DOSBox, open the file dosbox.conf, go to the end where there is the line: [autoexec]. After this they add something to use their CD ROM F: drive, like mount d f:\ -t cdrom

Instead, I just copied Tomb Raider to the hard drive. The entire CD is only about 120 MB, which is one-third the size of a recently released custom level. Create a folder for Tomb Raider, such as D:\dos. Then create a folder D:\dos\tr1_cd and copy the entire Tomb Raider CD to that folder.

Install DOSBox. Open the file dosbox.conf, go to the end to find the line: [autoexec]. After this add these three lines, based on the folders just created:

mount c d:\dos

mount d d:\dos\tr1_cd -t cdrom

c:

Save the file. What this does is create virtual drives C: and D: for DOSBox to use. The C: drive is d:\dos. The D: drive has been define as a CD ROM (using the parameters -t cdrom in lowercase), although in reality this is the directory d:\dos\tr1_cd.

I have DOSBox 0.72, so I edit dosbox.conf. In the more recent versions, either 0.73 or 0.74 one can use the Start Menu “Configuration”, then click “Edit Configuration”, and scroll down to the end to add the same lines as above.

Now start DOSBox. If you typed in the above three lines, there is a C:\> prompt. If you left out the last line, there is a Z:\> prompt. Type D: then press Enter. Type INSTALL then press Enter. Tomb Raider installs. Accept all the defaults. Tomb Raider insists on installing to C:\ and it will. Actually, after the installation Tomb Raider is at d:\dos\TOMBRAID.

When running Tomb Raider, remember to press F1 to improve the graphics.

Later you may want to open the file dosbox.conf, go to the very end, and add a fourth line:

cd \TOMBRAID

DOSBox will allow the Tomb Raider screen to be resized. Explore the various features. Custom levels can be easily played with this full install. Go to the \DATA folder, and rename the file LEVEL1.PHD in order to preserve it. Then copy into the \DATA folder a playable custom file LEVEL1.PHD. Start Tomb Raider and Lara will be in the custom level.