The Sinking City 2 Salt Storage Roman Numeral Puzzle

The sequence and the logic behind it

I, IV, IX, XVI. Press them in that order and the salt storage door opens. The Sinking City 2 salt storage puzzle has no document behind it, which is the single most useful thing to know about it — people lose ten minutes searching the market for a note that was never written.

What makes this puzzle different from every other number lock in The Sinking City 2 is that it is not a date. Every other numeric lock in the game — 1908, 1672, 2137 — asks you to read a number off the world. This one asks you to recognise a pattern: 1, 4, 9, 16 are the squares of 1, 2, 3 and 4, so the next term would be XXV. Knowing that is what stops you hunting the fish market for a clue that does not exist.

Step-by-step

1. Find the numeral panel beside the salt storage door.
2. Press I.
3. Press IV. Not V — this is where most mistakes happen, because IV and VI read similarly in the dark.
4. Press IX. Again, not XI.
5. Press XVI. The door releases.

What is inside and why it matters

Time and Tide is the resource chapter of The Sinking City 2 — the fish market, the cold storage and the wreck between them hold the densest supply caches in the game, and the salt storage is one of them. If you have been rationing ammunition since chapter 2, this is the area where you can afford to fight again.

It is also the chapter with two safes: 1496 in the locker room and 6294 in the abandoned office. Clear both while you are here.

Reading Roman numerals in a dark game

The panel is small, the lighting is bad and the numerals are cast in metal rather than painted, so the practical difficulty is legibility rather than arithmetic. Two things help:

• Raise gamma before you start — see PC settings if you are on keyboard and mouse, or the in-game brightness slider on console.
• Count the characters, do not read them as a whole. IV is two characters with the I first; VI is two characters with the V first. IX and XI have the same relationship.

If the salt storage door will not open

• You pressed V instead of IV, or XI instead of IX. This accounts for most failures.
• You pressed a fifth button. The sequence is exactly four presses; a stray press invalidates the entry on most panels.
• You are trying to enter it as a number. It is a series of buttons, not a combination dial.
• The area is not open yet. Check the map for the active task if the panel does not respond at all.
• You are treating XVI as XIV. Sixteen is X followed by VI; fourteen is X followed by IV. In this lighting the difference is one stroke.