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Arkham Island is small enough to learn by heart and the game knows it, which is why so much of what is left after the credits means going back to rooms you have already walked through. The Riddler's voice on the radio is the reason. Once he is loose he seeds the island with 240 challenges of six kinds, hijacks Batman's communications to mock him about it, and does not stop until he is traced. Our pages on this game are, for the most part, the answer to that voice: where every secret is, who actually planted it, and what happens when the counter fills. Around them sit two encounters that break the pattern, Poison Ivy in the Botanical Gardens and Killer Croc under the asylum, and one combat achievement that asks for nine moves in a single unbroken chain. The sections below follow what you are doing at the time: fighting, scanning, unlocking, throwing, counting, and finally chaining.
Fighting Ivy, running from Croc
Two of the island's set pieces get a full page each, and our boss guide sets them side by side according to how much Hard difficulty rewrites them. The Poison Ivy fight is the demanding one. The Joker's Titan formula in her roots lets her flood the island with spores, and on Hard her health climbs, her attacks come at random and hit harder, the moment her plant shield opens gets shorter and your healing shrinks, so the page's core advice is constant Batarangs, the Triple if you have it, and reading the green grass that appears before each row of vines. In the second phase her henchmen are a distraction to be shoved off the platform, because they die on their own when the spores begin. The Killer Croc sequence is the opposite kind of page: no punches, no health bar to empty, just a crouched walk through his flooded lair collecting spores while a Batarang to his collar sends him under each time he climbs out, and the Explosive Gel left at the gate on the way in to end it. The page's odd but honest verdict is that Hard, which only makes him surface more often, is the easier way to play it.
Scanning the walls: riddles and the Spirit of Arkham
The first thing the Riddler teaches you is to stop and look. Walk into a new room and a riddle appears on screen; its answer is somewhere in that room, and scanning the right painting, prop, corpse or scene clears it. Our riddle solutions page works through all 51 building by building, including the nine that are not word puzzles at all but question marks painted across the scenery, finished by finding the spot where the dot lines up with the curve. Forty of the 51 need no gadget, and the page's own advice is to sweep for them after the credits, when every building is open. The other thing you scan is older than the Riddler. The 24 Chronicles of Arkham are carved slabs that speak in the voice of Amadeus Arkham, the founder, and were in fact left by Warden Quincy Sharp under the delusion that he was the Spirit of Arkham; the final one only appears, as symbols on the Security Control Room floor in the Penitentiary, after the other 23 are read, and completing the set is the World's Greatest Detective achievement. The riddles page, the Riddler Challenges overview and the Freeflow achievement guide are drawn together in our riddles and challenges guide, which sorts those three by how much of the island each one needs; the chronicles belong with the other collectibles in the next section.
Opening the asylum: maps, trophies and tapes
The trophies page says most of its 101 are behind something: a laser barrier, a vent cover, a wall that only reads as weak in Detective Mode. Our collectibles guide sorts the five sets by who left them, and it is the place to start, but the practical order begins with the nine secrets maps. One sits in every area, the island's three in guardhouses and the rest inside the buildings, and picking it up marks every remaining secret there as a white question mark on your map; four of the nine need nothing, and the rest want the Cryptographic Sequencer, Explosive Gel through a roof, or the Ultra Batclaw. The 101 Riddler trophies are the long job, green question marks stuffed into grates and hidden rooms across nine sections, with the Caves holding 17 and Arkham Island 35 between its three sides. Over half of the entries name a gadget, and the Ultra Batclaw comes up more than any other because it tears down the high panels gel cannot reach. Two are worth knowing in advance: the Extreme Incarceration trophy shuts the cell door on you as you take it, and one in the Caves is introduced on our page as the Riddler's own boast about how well it is hidden. The 35 patient interview tapes are gentler, five recordings for each of seven inmates and each inmate's set kept to one area of the map, so that Scarecrow's are in the Mansion, Zsasz's in the Penitentiary, and the Joker's out on the island in its guard rooms, towers and pier shed; 25 of them need no gadget at all.
Throwing Batarangs at the Joker's toys
The one set that hides from nobody belongs to the Joker. His chattering wind-up teeth sit out in corridors, on towers and beside corpses, and our Joker Teeth page walks 73 numbered spots across the seven areas with the noise as your guide and the Multi Batarang as the tool, since it breaks three at a time. Only six spots need any gadget beyond that, and three sets in the Medical Facility do not exist until you have rescued a doctor apiece, when they spring out of purple present boxes. It is the set to clear while you are passing through, not the one to plan a trip around.
Keeping count: how the Riddler's story ends
All of the above feeds one number. Our Riddler Challenges page is the overview of the 240 and its six kinds, and it is also where the ending lives. You do not need every entry: when the tally is about five short, Batman traces the Riddler's next call and hands his location to the GCPD, with no boss fight at the end of it. Clear the rest anyway and he calls once more to accuse you of cheating, still refusing to admit he was beaten, while sirens rise behind him. Two thresholds sit before that. The trophies page notes that the Riddle Resolver achievement unlocks once 204 of the 240 are done, and the challenges page lists the running rewards as character profiles, mini-games and experience. One honest caveat: the six per-type counts our pages give do not add up to 240 between them, so treat 240 as the Riddler's figure and each set's count as its own page's.
One perfect combo
The one page here built around the combat system rather than a search or a boss is the Freeflow Perfection achievement guide, and it asks for something no other page here does: Batarang, Batclaw, counter, evade, strike, cape stun, ground takedown, standing takedown and throw, in one combo, without taking a hit. The page lists the upgrades that make it possible, gives a sample order that starts with a Batclaw pull and ends with a ground takedown, and names the two rooms to try it in: the opening challenge map's third and fourth rounds, or the thugs throwing a party just before Batman's last confrontation with the Joker, who leave you alone until you strike first. That same party also carries the missable Party Pooper achievement and is the page's suggestion for a x40 combo.
What our pages do not yet cover
There is no story walkthrough here, and no page on the Joker, Scarecrow, Harley Quinn or Bane beyond where they cross the pages above: Scarecrow is dragged under by Croc, Harley holds Commissioner Gordon in the Experimental Chamber where a secrets map waits, and Bane's old room in the Medical Facility holds one of the Riddler's tapes. The challenge maps get a mention on the trophies page, since one Penitentiary trophy unlocks Intensive Treatment (Extreme), but not a page of their own. The rest of what we cover, from the first riddle to the Riddler's arrest, is above.