Tomb Raider 3 Walkthrough: Level Order, Save Crystals and the Best Route Through the Game

Tomb Raider III Walkthrough: Level Order, Save Crystals and the Best Route Through the Game

The quick answer: a full tomb raider 3 walkthrough has to cover three things the game never explains properly: the level order, the save economy, and the sprint input. Tomb Raider III: Adventures of Lara Croft runs 19 regular levels plus one secret level across five regions. You play four levels in India first, then South Pacific, London and Nevada in any order you like, then four levels in Antarctica to finish. On PlayStation every save burns a Save Crystal from Lara's inventory. The sprint move introduced in this game lets Lara gain a temporary burst of speed, useful for escaping errant boulders and other immediate disasters.

This guide covers the structure, the mechanics that change how you play, the critical rooms that stop most players, and how cheat inputs differ by platform and version.

The level order, region by region

India is fixed as the opening act. Once you clear it, the middle three regions unlock and you can take them in any sequence. Antarctica closes the game no matter which route you took, with the secret level sitting outside the main progression.

Here is every level grouped by region:

It is not part of the Antarctica run proper, so do not expect to reach it simply by finishing Meteorite Cavern.

The middle regions are not equal in length. Nevada has three levels; South Pacific and London have four each. That imbalance is the single most useful thing to know before you choose a route, because it determines how much game is left before the final stretch.

Which region to do first after India

The order is genuinely free, so pick by difficulty and by what you want to unlock rather than following a fixed script.

The strongest argument for Nevada first is High Security Compound. This is the stretch where Lara is stripped of all weapons and has to use stealth before recovering her pistols. Plan for a long, tense section with no firepower at all. Getting it out of the way while your save-crystal stock is healthiest is the pragmatic choice, since a weaponless section is exactly where you will want to save often.

South Pacific and London are the longer four-level regions. Leaving either for last means a bigger push before Antarctica, and four levels of precision platforming on a thin crystal supply is a worse proposition than three.

If you would rather save the best for the middle, London's four-level block gives you the most sustained run of puzzles, and South Pacific's Coastal Village is a natural palate cleanser after India's temple interiors. There is no wrong answer, only a trade between length and pressure.

The rooms that stop most players

High Security Compound (Nevada). Covered above: stealth first, weapons later.

Madubu Gorge (South Pacific).

Aldwych (London). Aldwych is one of the four London levels.

Save Crystals and sprinting: the two mechanics that change how you play

On PlayStation, saving requires a memory card and consumes a Save Crystal picked up in levels. Saves are a resource, not a free action, and that single fact reshapes how you approach every room.

The temptation is to save constantly and reload until a tricky sequence lands, but running dry halfway through a region is far worse than replaying ninety seconds of platforming.

If you are playing the Remastered version, controls differ from the 1998 original. Check the modern control scheme before relying on muscle memory from the classic layout, and do not assume a technique you remember from the PlayStation release maps cleanly onto the new input set.

How cheats differ by platform and version

According to CheatArcade and Stella's Tomb Raider Site, cheats split three ways: PC move sequences, PS1 L2/R2 button codes, and separate Remastered inputs, covering level skip, all weapons and all secrets. The inputs themselves are version-specific and long enough that reproducing them here would invite transcription errors.

Use the version that matches your copy. A PS1 code will not work in the Remastered release, and vice versa. Level skip is the practical escape hatch for a stuck first playthrough; all weapons and all secrets are for a second run or a cleanup pass once you know the levels.

The Lost Artifact and the Remastered route in

The Lost Artifact is a stand-alone expansion from 2000, and it is included in Tomb Raider I, III Remastered, so a completionist run has extra levels beyond the main campaign.

The Remastered collection bundles Tomb Raider I + Unfinished Business, Tomb Raider II + The Golden Mask, and Tomb Raider III + The Lost Artifact. It launched 14 February 2024 on Switch, PS4, PS5, Windows, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S, and arrived on Switch 2, iOS and Android on 12 March 2026.

If you are starting fresh, the Remastered version is the easiest way in. Just use remaster-specific control and cheat references rather than the 1998 ones. The same route-first approach applies across the classics: our Silent Hill 2 Remake Walkthrough follows the same structure for a very different kind of survival game.

Why TR3 feels harder than the first two games

Core Design built Tomb Raider III to return to the puzzle-solving focus of the 1996 original rather than Tomb Raider II's shooting-heavy style, and critics at the time flagged the difficult, unforgiving gameplay. The practical consequence is concrete. This is a game where reading the next room before moving is faster than retrying it, and where the sprint button is not a flourish but a survival tool.

Sources

• Wikipedia: Tomb Raider III
• Wikipedia: Tomb Raider I, III Remastered
• Crystal Dynamics: Tomb Raider I, III Remastered
• Stella's Tomb Raider Site (tombraiders.net): level walkthroughs, controls, and separate cheat pages for the original and Remastered releases, including Croft Manor's quad-bike racetrack and its known exploit
• tombraidergirl.com: graphical walkthroughs and short solutions, including a full TR3 solution revised for the Collector's Edition and Remastered release
• IGN: Tomb Raider III Walkthrough
• trle.net and TRCustoms: fan-made TR3-engine levels, useful once the campaign is finished
• cheatarcade.com: Tomb Raider 3 Cheats