THE SPHERE 01 – VALLEY OF THE SPHERE

TR3 Level by DRR

Walkthrough by Treeble

Savegames referred in the walkthrough can be downloaded from here.

Lara slides into a cave, landing right in front of flares, but you might want to deal with a pack of three wolves coming from the right hand side of the cave before picking them up. Run left, around the perimeter of the cave, and you will spot a ladder next to a waterfall, do an angled running jump to reach it and climb to the top. Claim the RUSTY KEY and drop back into the water below.

Find some shotgun shells underwater and pull up on a ledge opposite your starting position, climbing up the white rocks to find a small medipack perched up in a ledge over the water. Now head towards the other end of the cave, where the wolves came from, and at the very end you'll see a crevice in the wall and a pushblock you can't get to from here. Not far from here is a hole in the floor, drop through it and find a locked door which you can open with your key.

Up the ladder, take a small medipack before dropping through the next opening on the floor. There are three pushblocks in this room, so let's get to it. Turn around to face them and pull the leftmost one twice, then push it against the corner in front of the door to get it out of your way. Go through the revealed passage and push the block inside the corridor once, which in turn allows you to push the second block from its backside. Return to the previous room and pull this second block once and now you have free access to both openings where the blocks originally stood.

In the back corridor, pull that third block twice. This way, you can jump over the block in the room and enter the rightmost passage into the back corridor, then drop into the hole there and pull back a final block. Climb back up and loop around to the left to find a newly revealed opening on the floor, inside of which is a switch to finally open the exit door.

Climb up the tall steps until you reach another pushblock, which you should pull out three times so you can inspect what lies behind it: this was the block you saw earlier on in the cave. From this vantage point, you can do a running jump to grab the crevice on the wall and shimmy all the way left to a spot where you can pull up. Grab the edge of the waterfall and pull up, then swim past the wooden gate and through the tunnel.

The following two paragraphs are, perhaps, best described in video form. Check "Bit 1" in this video.

As soon as you get to the larger cave, loop around to the right to a small nook. This is the only place you can get out of water, pull up on the sloped rock on the left side, when facing the nook, and immediately backflip to another slope, keep jumping back and forth as you steer Lara to a flat spot to your right. Next up is a bit of a tricky jump: face the river and spot a slope that would drop you into it, jump with a midair roll there and grab the edge. Pull up and backflip with a midair roll to grab the opposite slope then shimmy all the way to the right. Now, pull up and once again jump with midair roll, but this time swerve Lara to the left so she (barely) lands on a flat pillar there. Save your game. If you follow around the corner, carefully, you will find an alcove with shotgun ammo and a large medipack.

Now return to that pillar and face left, where the river gets narrower into a gap. Jump to the slope close to you, quickly bouncing to a slope just off to the right and finally to the white rocky wall, which you should slide backwards off in order to grab the edge. Shimmy to the far end and pull up to backflip onto a flat rock surface. Go around the back of the wall and do a running jump straight ahead over the slope. Just to your right is another slope, so carefully jump around the corner to the flat spot there, working your way to the lowest pillar in the inner corner. Grab the rocky edge and shimmy all the way to the right, then pull up and glide into the opening below. Head on further, jumping over the stream, and finally drop out of the caves to reach the lost valley itself.

savegame.0 - Arrival at the lost valley

The valley itself is a spacious area, so I'll do my best to guide you through. Just as you leave the cave, spot some lower rocks to your right, climb up to easily dispatch a lurking raptor and then grab the taller rock around the bend. Loop around to the right and you'll spot a crawlspace above the waterfall there, pull in to find SECRET #1: a large medipack and shotgun shells. Crawl back out and safety drop into the water below.

A bit further into the valley, just as you get underneath the broken bridge, two raptors show up. Dispatch them and then inspect the rocky faces below the bridge to spot opposite openings. Pull up into the one you can reach (on the outer rim of the valley) and find a small medipack in an alcove before climbing the suspended ladder. You'll be doing this climb a few more times.

When you get to the broken bridge, let's start with the obvious bit first. Leap across and safety drop into the hole. If you look up, you'll see a keylock in the hole, so pull that block out once and slide down to the valley. Once again, climb the ladder to the bridge but, this time around, don't leap across. Instead, when facing the bridge, jump to a greenery slope to the left of the bridge support with a midair roll in order to grab the edge. Shimmy all the way to the right right, over that waterfall, and let go to immediately grab the crawlspace on your way down. Inside, you'll find the first SILVER KEY.

Again get back up on the bridge, leap across and now land on the block you'd pulled earlier to use the key. A trapdoor opens to your right, so drop through the crawlspace and slide to an eerie underground building. Gather flares and a small medipack from the skeletal remains nearby and save your game. As you run down the torch-lit corridor, nothing other than a T. rex shows up. It's a bit of a tight squeeze to fight it in here, so personally I'd recommend sprinting past it and pulling onto a slightly taller rock behind it. Then keep dropping on the floor and backflipping onto the rock to lure it towards your position. Be mindful that it can still push you off if it gets too close and that will quickly spell out your doom.

Once it's finally done for, go up the caves behind you to the left and find a switch in an alcove. It opens a number of doors in the T. rex lair, so get back there and go left to find double doors open on both ends. Go into the small chamber with the wooden furniture and pull into an opening in the wall to find SECRET #2: the SHOTGUN, ammo and a large medipack. Now go straight across to the opposite set of double doors and climb up through the opening in the ceiling, then go straight ahead until you find another switch. This one, in turn, opens the door next to the previous switch; for a quick shortcut, just drop back down the nearby hole and follow the wall around to the right.

Inside the mossy rock passage, find the first GOLD IDOL and climb up the long ladder. Stop by the skeleton for a small medipack and continue your ascent through the crawlspace until you eventually slide down to a waterfall hidden in a far corner of the valley. This is the starting point of our next fetch quest, so get on the rock separating the waterfall from the valley and climb up the rocks to the left, when facing the valley. Jump around the corner and you'll see another raptor roaming the area in front of the temple entrance. Gun it down from the safety of this vantage point.

Without dropping down, walk towards the temple and pull up to the high greenery ledge to your left. Leap to the next one, shimmy past a slope and pull up in the corner there, then hop onto the slightly taller greenery ledge to find the second SILVER KEY. Safely slide to the valley floor using the lower rocks and, since we're still short of one idol to enter the temple, for now run all the way back to the valley entrance on the other end.

Straight across from the entrance, notice a rocky platform between two waterfalls. Inspect the waterfall on the right and you'll spot an alcove, one you cannot pull out from the water as it's too high, so what you need to do is, indeed, a hard curved running jump around the corner to land directly inside the alcove. Again, perhaps a video works better, so check "Bit 2" in this video.

savegame.1 - Past that dreadful jump

Turn around and jump to a crawlspace, then work your way down to the next locked door. Get a large medipack and head inside, but save your game as things can get messy: two raptors are likely to push you onto the burning tiles around the chamber. Once things are finally settled, patch yourself up and retrieve that second GOLD IDOL. Now it's time to open the temple, so climb back out the same way you got in and cross the entire valley again.

As soon as the doors swing open, two wolves lunge at you. Go through the caved in hallway and up the ladder at the end. Drop down and you'll see the path splits, first go down the ladder on the right side to find shotgun shells (this is your way back up here, in case you miss any of the following jumps and fall into the water; what you'll do instead is just reload), then climb back up and save your game.

For the following two paragraphs, if necessary, you can refer to "Bit 3" in this video.

Facing the white rocks, jump to grab the edge and shimmy all the way left, then pull up and backflip with a midair roll so you can steer to the right, sliding down the next slope and jumping when facing the opposite wall again, this time swerving Lara to the left in order to grab the edge of another slope there. Shimmy all the way to the end, pull up and backflip to safety.

In the next room, you face a series of burning pillars. The pressure pad ahead of you turns all of them off, but it's on a tight timer. There's no secret to it other than practice, but for all purposes try to keep your momentum as you hop across and climb up the ladder in the end.

Save your game as you face the wide slopes going down. There's a secret on the way down. My recommendation is to drop at an angle so you slide on the rightmost side of the second slope instead, and immediately jump, swerving right, to land into that small alcove housing SECRET #3: shotgun shells and a large medipack. It's time to face the end boss, so you might want to save your game again.

Slide down the rest of the slopes, jumping over the spike pit at the end, and try to focus your efforts on the two bodyguards first. The red tiles on the floor mean instant death, and these guys are very handsy. When they're out of the way, it's time to focus your attention on the big bad, and fortunately his attacks are rather harmless provided you get out of the way quickly. He'll throw fireballs upwards, which will shower smaller flames onto you. Whenever he does that, just sideflip away. You want to find a safe spot where you can sideflip back and forth safely, all the while pulling the trigger, and he'll be done in no time.

After the dramatic outcome, take the GOLD KEY left behind and use it on the lock next to the doors ahead. Head deeper into the cave and approach the ladder to wrap things up here.