Torment Tip(s): The Silver Sphere
Torment: Tides of Numenéra has me utterly enthralled. I had intended to do something resembling actual work today but instead found myself gabbing away with the wacky denizens of Sagus Cliffs all damn day. I’m still bracing myself for some form of disappointment, but so far this game is everything I could possibly want.
So rather than go silent on Day 2 of “Me Trying Not To Be a Lazy Bastard”, I figured I’d share some tips on a puzzle I ran across relatively early on.
One thing I really can’t recommend enough though: DO NOT LOOK AT GUIDES FOR THIS GAME!
Not for your first run-through anyways. It’s just so much fun uncovering these mysteries on your own, consequences be damned, and it feels so much more in keeping with the Torment series’ themes of self-discovery and bewilderment. That being said, if you find yourself legitimately struggling with something, there’s no shame in seeking help; just don’t go out of your way to spoil the “best path” or something like that.
Anyways, on to one of my Torment Tips! Well, this may be the only tip I end up giving, so... Torment Tip(s), yeah.
Early on you should come across a location known as the Order of Truth. You may even end up here as part of the main story path you choose. During the course of your exploration of this building, you will likely run across a mysterious interactible pyramid object that contains a Silver Sphere. Now, clearly this is a Numenéra, and that means you gots to mess with it, but unlike everything you’ve probably encountered up until this point, this puzzle can’t be solved by simply throwing Effort at it.
There’s also nothing that I found in the game world that hinted at this puzzle’s solution, forcing me to come up with the solution somewhat more organically. What follows is a breakdown of this (admittedly simple) puzzle, in 3 parts:
As for the reward waiting for you at the end, that’s for you to find out (SPOILER ALERT: it’s ok).
Silver Sphere Option Reference
This puzzle will require selecting from a specific series of directions in order, based on whether you are removing or returning the sphere to its home. This might be tricky to remember as you’re doing it (I wrote it out in Notepad++ while playing), and isn’t going to automatically give away the puzzle’s solution, so I present it here for easy reference. How you access these options is up to you:
REMOVE
Front: Deep Violet
Left: Lurid Red
Right: Dull Orange
Back: Brilliant Blue
Bottom: Shining Yellow
RETURN
Front: Bright Orange
Left: Deep Violet
Right: Blazing Orange
Back: Cool Green
Bottom: Indigo
Silver Sphere Puzzle Logic
Basically, you want to find some way of removing the Silver Sphere from its “prison”, but every time you try to do so, it magically returns home. Depending on which side of the pyramid you extricate and restore the sphere through, the sphere will change color.
This being Torment, there are some opportunities to flex your stat pools a bit to get some help, one being required for completion, and the other necessary to understand how the puzzle works.
By examining the base of the pyramid, you can attempt to decipher the meaning of the strange writing on the device. Upon success, you uncover the following inscription:
“The crimson dawn greets the seeker. The violet dusk sees the search’s end.”
This is key to figuring out the solution, but as far as I can tell it isn’t required if you’ve just looked it up elsewhere (naughty, naughty). Normally, playing with the sphere allows you to pass it through 4 different openings, but there is a fifth “bottom” access point that is only available once you’ve examined the pyramid’s frame more closely and passed the Perception check there.
Once you have access to the bottom and understand the puzzle’s clue, you can solve this puzzle by playing with the color or the sphere.
Based on the inscription, it’s clear that the sphere needs to start out crimson (or red) and end as violet, but simply removing the sphere from the left side and returning it via the left side doesn’t do anything special. So what needs to be done inbetween?
Or, more accurately, think back to elementary school and learning the order of rainbow colors: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet, aka ROYGBIV!
Armed with that knowledge, solving the puzzle is a snap... or you could just follow the following instructions:
LEFT, RIGHT, BOTTOM, BACK, BACK, BOTTOM, FRONT
Bam! Enjoy your new item!
Extra-Super-Special Solution
What’s that? Don’t fancy your reward? Well don’t worry, cause there’s still one more, even better solution to this puzzle! I’ll give you time to figure it out..
Basically, on top of following the colors of the rainbow, you want to use every color option keeping in mind the intensity of the colors coming from the sphere, like so:
Once you’ve returned the sphere for the final time, it turns into yet another item. In other words, if you want both items, be sure to save this solution for last!
To be honest, while I knew what I was doing for the previous solution, this one was stumbled on completely by accident, just seeing why there were multiples of some colors. I’m not sure why the Orange options work Bright/Dull/Blazing and not Blazing/Dull/Bright, but that’s just how it is.
Anyways, hope you’ve enjoyed this little tip for Torment: Tides of Numenéra and that you’re enjoying the game as much as I am. I don’t know if I’ll be making anymore of these Torment Tip(s) seeing as I’m playing the game blind and it ultimately depends on whether I can actually figure things out on my own and whether I consider these solutions “obvious” or not.
Please let me know if you liked this though and I’ll seriously consider doing more!
