The Sinking City 2 Puzzle Guide: Solutions & Clues

How Puzzles Work

Every main chapter has one core problem, and side investigations use the same grammar on a smaller scale: gather clues, connect them in the Investigation tab, act, then survive the confrontation. Neoseeker describes the exact mechanic — notes and clues you connect, whose correct combination solves the area’s puzzle and rewards extra loot or Talent points.

The official store pages frame this as the Choose to Investigate Further pillar: optional cases and puzzles uncover secrets, upgrades, and lore. Nothing in this layer is required to finish the story.

All of it feeds achievements: the puzzle network is connected to the game’s 23 Steam achievements, so completionists will solve everything eventually.

Verified Codes and Locks

The best-documented answer is 1908 for the Radio Store apartment safe — four independent sources agree, and GamesRadar shows the in-game derivation: the radio shop opened in 1908, which is 1929 minus 21 years.

The Redemption Church water gate opens with 1672. Gameplay footage shows why: a note records the church built in 1667 and its bell hung about half a decade later, landing on 1672. GameSpew publishes the same code.

The wider code table — the hotel, hospital, and fish market safes, the brain puzzle, and the Roman-numeral salt storage lock — is on our safe codes page, with per-code evidence levels.

The Church Trident Puzzle

GameRant’s church guide covers the obelisk puzzle: you need to place the Trident on top of a statue outside the church, hugging the church wall to reach the right spot. It is the clearest documented example of the game’s placement-type puzzles.

The same area teaches the code-derivation pattern described above, so the church is effectively the game’s puzzle tutorial in practice: read the plaques, do the arithmetic, open the gate.

Prism Stations

A YouTube solution exists for the prism stations chain — the footage implies three prisms to align, with lore tying them to Herbert West of Miskatonic University, his reanimation serum, a typhoid outbreak, and a boxing-champion subject, with prisms returned to the theater.

The evidence here is thin: the video’s transcript is nearly empty, so treat the step-by-step as pending confirmation until the in-game text is quoted by a text guide.

Difficulty Options and Rewards

Puzzle difficulty is adjustable independently — reviewers describe the ends of the slider as breezy, which highlights key clue information, and brainy, which leaves you to your own deduction. Combat difficulty is set separately.

Rewards for solving are concrete: Dream Essence that feeds your Talent tree, weapon upgrades, and skill points. Safe loot adds ammunition and consumables on top.

Because puzzles are optional, a stuck player can also walk away, upgrade elsewhere, and return — the game’s own retreat-and-prepare loop applies to its brain teasers too.

All Documented Codes and Locks

Every code captured during launch-week research, with location and how many independent sources confirm it. The two cross-verified codes are safe to type on sight; the single-source entries are very likely but carry a small error risk.

Full per-code details — loot, chapters, and the derivation logic — live on the safe codes page.