Vitruvius

I haven't done Elemental Workshop IV yet, and now I am glad I haven't :)
It'll be much more fun after reading this post from Helm Lardar where he talks about Vitruvius's and praises his skills in metallurgy and magic.

Questing

Took some time and completed three quests I had long postponed: Elemental Workshop III, Quiet Before the Swarm and Love Story. Gee, I am glad I did them in exactly this order.

Elemental Workshop III was bad. Not exactly hard, but extremely tedious. I actually like sliding puzzles and this one was indeed beautifully designed, but I am not prepared to do exclusively sliding puzzles for 3 hours in a row!

First two times I tried I couldn't make it in 50 turns, but that was OK. I was finally able to complete puzzle #1 and get a hand on the mechanics. Puzzle #2 was fun, but puzzle #3 was already tiring. I was ready for the end of the quest right there and then. But no. There was also puzzle #4, which I did, but couldn't make #5 without restarting #4! Made one bar and... After some poking around I somehow shut down and lowered the rotating thingy in the middle and had to go back to #3!!! I was almost screaming with frustration at that point... I made it through at the end, but I truly, really hoped there won't be Elemental Workshop IV. Ever. Please.

Quiet Before the Swarm was OK. But I had enough of puzzles at the moment and couldn't appreciate it fully. Maybe I shouldn't have done it right after the Elemental Workshop. Too late. Anyway, going through conversations with nine (!) knights was tedious as well as prying information from five of them in the "mind space". Other then that it was quite good and even relaxing. The bridge problem was cool, I am now giving it out to friends in RL :)

But then I went through the Love Story and loved every second of it. What a blast!
My hero in the game summed up the whole experience perfectly in this one phrase:

Can't say it better, can I?

So that's what I did during last two days...

And there is only one question nagging at me: "why? oh why, can't all quests be on the level of Love Story? why does Jagex keeps mixing Elemental Workshops in between?"

Elemental Workshop III

If you are completely stuck on the puzzle, but don't want to resort to detailed step by step guides, try this set of tips from Steve. He gives pointers on what and how to do without going into details, so you'll still have to use your imagination in order to solve the puzzle.