SegmentNextQuests
This game locks its best loot behind two kinds of obstacle, and telling them apart before you walk in saves a lot of wandering. One kind wants an order: a run of presses that has to go in the right sequence. The other wants an object: something you have to kill for, loot and carry back to the door. Our three write-ups, the Shield Maze in Kenabres, the Drezen Citadel keys and the Abyss bridge puzzles, cover one of each plus a hybrid, and this page sorts them by that difference.
| Obstacle | Where | What it takes | What it pays |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shield Maze door | Torture chamber, northwest of the Kenabres map | Hosilla's Orders, looted from the Hand of Hosilla east of the cellars | Entry to the maze itself |
| Shield Maze rune wall | Last section of the dungeon | Four coloured gems pressed in order | The room holding the Sword of Yaniel, and a chest with Radiance in it |
| Passage on the Wall | Drezen | Three steel keys, one per Dretch | The secret door at the centre of the wall |
| Upper City bridge | Behind the Palace of Incest and Degeneracy | Tap counts on two pillars, five parts to straighten | A chest at the far end |
| Middle City bridge | Abyss Middle City | The same pillar taps, plus at least five party members | A chest at the endpoint |
The locks that want an order
The rune wall at the back of the Shield Maze is the purest version. Four coloured gemstones are set into the northwest wall, the answer runs yellow, blue, red and yellow again, and a wrong press puts you back at the start of the sequence rather than merely wasting a turn.
The Abyss bridges look like a different genre and are the same idea stretched over five moving parts each. Both spans are iterated by tapping a left and a right pillar, and the number of taps per part is the whole puzzle. The piece of knowledge that makes them tractable is that you never have to line up every segment at once: once a character is standing on a part, that part stops rotating with the rest, so you can straighten one section, park somebody on it, and keep working. Our page gives the tap counts we used on both spans, five parts on each, and the Middle City version asks for at least five party members, because somebody ends up parked on each part as you straighten it.
A fourth lock of this kind is written up on another page. Desna's Altar, the obstacle standing between you and a recruit in Act 2, takes two objects and then five presses of three hand icons, and we cover it in the companions guide instead, because what it opens is a person rather than a chest.
The locks that want something carried in
Drezen's Passage on the Wall is the opposite kind of obstacle and the more tedious one, because the answer is three separate fights in three separate buildings. A Dretch holds each key: the Sooty Steel Key in the ruined Temple, on the far right of the room past the entrance to the second chamber; the Fire-Damaged Steel Key in the Dungeon, where the Dretch is locked in the middle cell and you open the cell with the lever on its left; and the Cracked Steel Key in the Tavern, in the far right corner of a room as broken up as the Temple. Kill, loot, repeat, then interact with the door at the centre of the wall.
The Shield Maze door is the hybrid. It is not opened by a key at all, it is opened by a torch on the left of the doorframe, but you only learn that from Hosilla's Orders, a document carried by the Hand of Hosilla in the eastern part of the dungeon past the cellars. The item you fetch is information, and the sequence you then enter is one click.
What has to be true before you start
Two of these are gated on progress rather than on cleverness. The Shield Maze does not open until Devoured by Darkness and Gwerm Family Secrets are both finished, so if the torture chamber is not letting you in, the missing piece is a quest rather than a key. The Middle City bridge is gated on party size, since five members is the stated minimum for holding the parts still. Drezen sets no condition of that kind. What it wants is three fights, one per building, with enemies posted at every stop.
Carry everything out, because one of these is a single visit
The Shield Maze is a one-time trip. Leave it and the door stays shut for the rest of the campaign, so sweep the rooms before you walk out, especially for Radiance, the rare longsword in the chest behind the rune wall. Your party will also remark on the Sword of Yaniel being somewhere it should not be, since it belongs in the Tower of Estrod with the other relics.
Four of the rings we rate come out of these same rooms, which is worth knowing before you decide a detour is optional. Flow of Water and one of the Ring of Protection sources sit in the Shield Maze, the second of them on the Corrupted Mongrel Brute, and Citadel Drezen is the listed home of a +4 Ring of Protection as well as the Ring of Chaotic Fascination. The items guide sorts all of that by who is holding it. For where these rooms sit in the campaign as a whole, and what else is worth doing while you are in each act, start from the Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous guide hub.