Doctor Arcana and The Secret of Shadowspire: Doctor Arcana and The Secret of Shadowspire Tips

-Hover the cursor over everything! There are spots where the magnifying glass refers to 2 different things closely spaced together, so you can’t be too OCD with curious clicking. The texts which appear when the cursor is an eye are window dressing.

-Some clues are in some pretty odd places, or you need to open a container to get to the clue. Again, this is a “pay enough attention” thing when the hand cursor appears.

-If you are in one of the “death trap” puzzles and cannot make another move without “dying”, simply click outside of the puzzle window to go back to the room and you’ll avoid a “near death experience”.

-All puzzles will completely reset if you click outside of the puzzle window.

-I’ve been told by the developer that looking at the built-in walkthrough will not ding your overall mastery stat at the end of the game.

Graveyard:

Left tombstone puzzle: simple slider puzzle, you should be able to get this just by messing around with it long enough.

Right tombstone puzzle: make a Maltese cross with the pieces.

Mausoleum Entrance:

Door puzzle: if you simply put all the glowing letters up into the puzzle, you can at least unscramble them in your head or on paper elsewhere (but you’ll have to reset the puzzle to enter the letters in the correct order).

Hallway puzzles: may help if you screenshot the clue.

Left side of Mausoleum:

Reflecting puzzle: It’s the bottom you’re interested in; follow the instructions in the clue otherwise.

Rune Tiles puzzle: there are 6 symbols which look like a “z” and only 2 possible ways all the “z’s” will fit. Put them into the leftmost configuration and work from there.

Right side of Mausoleum:

Wall Plaque: swap-2 slider type puzzle; you should be able to trial and error this one out as you see a word or 2 forming.

Skulls puzzle: The developer has told me that finding the clue for this puzzle is sneaky, but that’s not where I struggled. Note how the 2nd and 3rd parts of the clue have an overlap and that should get you started. Believe it or not, I completely missed seeing that overlap in 3 separate runs through the game!

Mausoleum Rear Gate: Follow the instructions on the clues. Once you go through the gate, there’s no going back to the early parts of the game.

West Hallway:

Sun Maze: while you’d think you could simply get this one by spinning the discs around long enough, I wasn’t having any luck. I cop to having to screenshot the solution from the walkthrough. (Sorry, Doctor Arcana.)

West Hallway Gate: this is easy, just follow the clue instructions.

Helios Room:

Door puzzle: hover over the journal to see the solutions.

Rolling Ball puzzle: you can’t click on another directional button until the ball has hit a wall.

Southwest Tower:

Gate: there are only four numbers in the clue (the spaces were throwing me).

Solar Orb puzzle: the left clue is the map and the right clue is the instructions. For each step, pick the symbol which is in the middle of the 2 arrows.

Roman Numerals Maze: avoid the “3’s” in the 2nd row/2nd column, and 2nd row/5th column, as well as the “3’s” in the 5th row/2nd column, and 5th row/5th column.

Sun Gate: unlocks with the Solar Orb.

Amun Ra Room:

Door puzzle: use the journal.

Puzzle box: this is easy, just find the clue.

Hieroglyph Puzzle: eyes are on the topmost row and ankhs on the very bottom; work from there.

Northwest Tower:

Gate: go in order of the clue from left to right, top to bottom.

Hieroglyph Death Trap Pathway: the clue has a sequence of hieroglyphs which you must repeat over and over (the first glyph of the “sequence” is the topmost one, and continuing downwards to the bottom one, which is the last one of the “sequence”) until you get to the top of the puzzle. You can’t go diagonally! If you run out of moves in the pathway, simply click on the outside of the puzzle window to reset it without “dying”.

Matching Symbols puzzle: use the 2 fixed pieces at the top and bottom center to get started. This one takes a long time…

Put the pieces you have into the statue at the Sanctuary to get to the right side.

East Hallway:

Moon Phase puzzle: I cop to jotting down the instructions from the walkthrough in order to solve this one. (Yes, Doctor Arcana is still heckling me.)

East Hallway Gate: follow the instructions on the clue.

Wall Plaque: this is really easy with rearranging the 4 tiles.

Selene Room:

Door puzzle: use the journal.

Maze: Ugh. This one is a matter of going back and forth and rearranging a piece here and there to switch pathways while meandering around until you can finally get into the next to last section and connect it to the exit.

Southeast Tower:

Gate: note the patterns of the lines around each number in the clue as that tells you what button to press.

Lunar Orb puzzle: the left clue is the “key” and the right clue is the “pathway”. Note the moon inside each circle.

Maze: may help if you screenshot and print this to pick out the pathway.

Moon Gate: opens when you put the Lunar Orb into it.

Wall Plaque: find the clue and get the symbols in the corners to match.

Khonsu Room:

Door puzzle: use the journal.

Puzzle Box: the idea is just to get all the clue symbols showing.

Sokoban puzzle: too bad the mechanic is still clunky, as it was in the first game. But I found this puzzle easier than the one in the first Doctor Arcana game. The beetle can move over spaces a marble has fallen into. Do the marbles on the left first and go from there. Be warned, there’s still no “undo” button.

Northeast Tower:

Gate: combine the symbols at the intersection of each number to get the button to press.

Death Trap Maze: the symbols on the clue all have a direction associated with them. You can only go in that direction after picking a symbol. If you run out of moves, just click outside the puzzle window to reset everything without “dying”.

Sudoku variant puzzle: fill in the middle row first. The middle section only has 2 spaces left; the beetle goes in the top space and water goes in the bottom space. You can work it out from there.

Sanctuary:

Left Puzzle Box: use the fixed head and tail pieces on the edges to match up the rest.

Right Puzzle Box: if you get one of the “singles” over to the other group of 3, then you can reposition the larger pieces with enough fiddling around.

The central pathway unlocks upon putting the rest of the pieces into the statue.

Inner Sanctum: Note that the Amber Gem door is inaccessible until you’ve done everything else.

Door puzzle: use the journal.

Amber Gem door: after doing the left and right sides of the Inner Sanctum, you can then use the journal for the first part of the puzzle, but then you do a swap-2 puzzle instead of a door name/cryptex. The walls in the small “maze” of the puzzle won’t let you move the pieces in every direction, but as long as you follow the clue directions otherwise, isn’t that tough.

Left side of Inner Sanctum:

Wall puzzle: use the Arcanum Amulet to push a piece down, then take the piece from the bottom to push others down until all 3 columns match the pattern on the sides.

Itzamna Room:

Symbols Slider puzzle: you can move 4 pieces completely out of one quadrant to see what’s supposed to go there.

Snake puzzle: use the scale patterns on the fixed snake heads to get started. The tail tips go in the corners.

Right side of Inner Sanctum:

Cabinet puzzle: Jot down the symbols in the clue. The lines in the discs form a diamond-shaped pattern. Get 2 of the requisite symbols per “diamond” according to the clue (starting from the center of the playfield) and the rest will come together.

Shangdi Room: If you want to do the Easter egg quest, screenshot the cipher scroll clue as the cipher scroll vanishes after all the coded doors are opened in the Inner Sanctum.

Wall Symbols puzzle: The solution sort of looks like “U with a cross, big H, M”.

Demon Head Maze: this may be easier solved if you screenshot and print it out.

Reaper Hall Death Trap: Fill in the blanks of the tombstones using the letters from the clues and that will give you the order to click the letters of the pathway.

The Archives:

Virtues puzzle: read the entire clue first because the words are out of order as written; you have to follow the instructions.

Shields puzzle: the part which threw me is that the Wyvern is actually above the Stag in the solution.

Gate: it’s a hidden object scene, but the symbols you need will be in the 3 rows closest to the gate row in question. Once you unlock the gate, the solution will go into your journal for future reference.

The Summit:

Ebon Scroll altar: use the fixed sections at the top and bottom as a guide to hook up pieces to those and work from there.

Don’t pick “quit” in the game if you want to do the Easter egg quest, or there are other secrets still to find, because “quitting” permanently takes you out of Shadowspire and there’s no way to get back in.

Easter Egg Quest:

1) Return to the archives room and translate the 4 coded book pages in alphabetical order of the book titles. If you did not screenshot the cipher clue, here it is:

2) The Summit Gate has closed again for a reason…enter the alternate symbols to the gate to access the secret room. If you’ve been observant, you’ll have found them as you were going along.

3) Check out all the stuff in the room and translate the books, then read them by clicking through the pages.

If you have otherwise discovered all the artwork, journal entries, and secrets, then you can go back to the Summit Gate, enter the correct code to get to the Summit Room with the spell and completely finish the game.