The puzzles in Scorn can be surprisingly cruel — and we’re not talking about the puzzles that require you to chop up innocent weird creatures. In Act 3, you’ll have to solve a pair of tricky puzzles involving rotary dials and lights. The solution isn’t clear at all, and you’ll have to pay close attention to all the moving parts to understand what exactly is happening. Like a lot of puzzles, this is classic Myst logic. You have a weird mechanism, and you must figure out how everything works together. Make a wrong move and you can also make this puzzle way harder on yourself.
More Scorn guides:
Act 1 Walkthrough | Act 2 Walkthrough | Act 3 Walkthrough | Act 4 Walkthrough | Act 5 Walkthrough | Moving Faster, Healing & Gun | How To Skip Enemy Encounters
How To Solve The Act 3 Rotary Dial Puzzles
Near the end of Act 3, you’ll need to ride an elevator down to the bottom of a large chamber. To do that, you must solve two puzzles with revolving connectors — you need to revolve the devices in the correct order and turn on all the lights on the device. There are two of these puzzles.
Here’s the quickest and easier way to complete this puzzle. You can only interact with some of the rotary locks — we’ll explain what order you need to turn them from the start of the puzzle. If you’re stuck, restart from an earlier checkpoint to reset the puzzle.
- Rotary Puzzle #1:
- Select the middle rotary dial — move the connector and connect to the left or right dials. This will lock the dials together.
- Turn the dial until the notch on the middle rotary dial is aligned with the extended connector.
- When they’re aligned, turn the middle rotary dial and connect to the bottom light.
- Next, turn the left / right rotary dials. They will be connected — you need to align them properly to face the middle dial.
- To do this, connect the middle dial to lock either the left or right dial — this will free the opposite dial. If you connect the middle dial to the left dial, you’ll then be able to move the right dial freely.
- Do this for both dials so the notch is pointing in the correct direction and lights up.
- Finally, connect the middle rotary dial to the bottom light. All four lights will activate.
The first rotary dial puzzle is just a warm-up. The second puzzle is much trickier — unless you follow these steps. Unlike the first puzzle, this one is almost completely solved right at the start. If you don’t mess with the dials and only follow these instructions, you can complete the puzzle in just a handful of turns.
- Rotary Puzzle #2:
- Starting at the default state, the top rotary dial and the right rotary dial are already in correct position. Don’t touch them.
- Connect the middle rotary dial to the left dial — while connected, turn the dials until the notch on the middle dial is aligned with the connector rod and the left dial is lit up.
- Now turn the top dial and connect to the top. Turn the bottom dial and connect to the bottom.
- That’s it!
The second puzzle is solved. If you adjust the dials, you’ll change it from the default state and have to solve the puzzle the “normal” way — you can make it much easier by connecting the top / bottom both to the left dial, then turn the right dial until it is in the correct position. Do the same for the left. Making sure you can independently turn a rotary dial without turning the others makes this puzzle much easier.
