Scorn Spinning Circles Puzzle [SOLVED]

Throughout Act 2 of Scorn, you’ll be solving the spinning circle’s puzzle in order to get past a locked door and progress further. There are up to four different parts to the puzzle, and they’re spread out throughout the entire level, but with our guide, we’ll break it down so that you can complete the puzzle with ease.

It is worth understanding what the puzzle is all about so that the objectives you complete don’t feel meaningless. Essentially, you need to complete the puzzle to acquire a wireless key-like item that can unlock the door with a lit-up panel next to it. We’ll guide you on the exact locations of the door, key, and start of the puzzle, so if you feel confused right now, then worry not, as it’ll all make sense in a bit.

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Key Highlights

• There are four different spinning circle puzzles with their own terminals in Act 2, and it all starts with acquiring the key from a skeleton.
• You need to locate and solve all four in order to complete the puzzle.
• After completing the puzzle, you need to use the key to activate a terminal.
• Completing the puzzle grants you the healing item and wireless key to open the door that leads to Act 3.

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Starting The Puzzle

Before even trying to attempt the puzzle, there’s an item that you need to get hold of in order to initiate the puzzle. As shown in the image above, it is a white cylindrical key that you acquire from a skeleton. It is often referred to as the skeleton key, spinning puzzle key, or cylindrical key. But essentially, whenever we’re referring to the key, we usually mean the key in the image.

You’re going to need it to be able to initialize all of the spinning circle puzzles in the level. And as you complete them, you’ll gain a small circular light on your key, which will be ultimately used to complete the puzzle fully.  

Finding The Key

As you’re going through the ship, you’ll constantly run into a lizard-like creature, indicating that you’re on the right path. Make past it, and then you should be in a giant room with three different rooms. One room will appear earlier, ignore it for now (we’ll come back to it later) and keep going forward.

You’ll eventually come to an intersection of two diverging rooms, as shown in the image above. Head to the right side, and you’ll find the skeleton in the marked area in the image. The door opposite the skeleton is our ultimate goal after we solve the puzzle. With the key in hand, you can move on to solving the puzzles.

First Spinning Circle

Throughout the puzzle, you’ll encounter many of these terminals with spinning circles that you need to solve to complete the entire puzzle. The first spinning circle terminal is found right next to the skeleton (to its right). You can refer to the image to get an idea of what the terminal looks like.

Cracking The Code

The solution to the first spinning circle puzzle of Scorn is actually quite simple. You’ll notice that throughout the circle, there are these holes in the perimeter of the circle. And as the circles go inwards, there’s a hole in each perimeter.

What you essentially need to do, is to use a nail-like structure and connect all of the holes together in the nail. If you look at the image above, you’ll notice that there’s a nail going through all the holes, connecting them. The image is also showcasing what it should look like once you’re done with the puzzle.

As you move around your direction keys, you’ll be able to adjust the nail into one of the areas marked in the outermost circle perimeter. From there, you can start picking up the different holes/notches. And as you connect them, they’ll move with your nail-like collector as they’ll be attached.

Unfortunately, you cannot collect the holes in any order; you need to grab the outermost first and move toward the inner one. In this case, first, collect the hole at the bottom left, then the one at the bottom right, and finally, the one at the top right. When you have all of them connected, take them all in the top-middle, above the light, and activate the terminal to complete the puzzle.

Second Spinning Circle

Unfortunately, the second spinning circle isn’t as easy to locate as the first one. You’re going to have to go on a bit of a journey in order to locate it.

Locating The Terminal

When facing the terminal of the first spinning circle puzzle, start moving left and go back to the first room that we left behind when coming to fetch the cylindrical key. If you look at the image, the left one is where you should be currently. Heading to the left, you’ll eventually find the room shown on the right side of the image.

When you enter the room, the left and right sides both will be barricaded, as shown in the image (red highlight). Use the cylindrical terminal in the middle (highlighted in blue) to clear the way. Your character will use the cylindrical key that we got earlier in order to open the door.

Once you get past the barricade on the left, there will be an elevator terminal. Bring it down by activating the terminal and then go up. When you’re at the top, you need to go into the tunnel on the right.

Keep going forward until you reach the end. If you look to your right again, you’ll see another tunnel-like structure leading upwards. Refer to the image above for a better idea. Go inside and keep going forward. You’ll likely hear many creature-like sounds but worry not, as there’s no combat yet.

After continuing onwards in the tunnel, you’ll eventually reach a bypass that is shown in the image above. There will be a terminal on the right, which you can use to connect the tunnels into one of the three different tunnels in front of you. You need to connect your tunnel with the one that is marked in red in the image.

Keep going forward in the tunnel, and eventually, it’ll open up into a large area with two rooms. The one on the right will be as shown in the image above and will hold the next spinning circle terminal. But do take note of the room on the left, as it has another terminal that will be used later.

The terminal is similar to those that we used in Act 1 in order to operate the machinery like the one in the slide crane puzzle. However, you won’t have the key equipped on your left arm in order to use the terminal, but we’ll return to it shortly for the final spinning circle puzzle.

Solving The Puzzle

The second spinning circle puzzle of Scorn is different from the first one. There are still three holes that you need to connect with the nail. However, the holes are no longer stationary and are moving in circles, with a few places where they stop for a brief moment. At a time, only the outermost, non-connected hole will be rotating.

You still need to connect the circles in their respective orders (outermost first, innermost last). But you need to time your connection and place your nail according to a white marker.

It’ll stop at certain areas, but there’s going to be one specific area where it stops for longer, which you’ll need to use in order to connect the hole. That specific area will be indicated by a clicking noise as the hole stops, and a white break-like marker will also appear inside the hole.

These specific areas will be next to one of the positions of the outermost collector that you have access to. In this case, there are six different locations, as shown in the image. The hole will stop at those areas only once per two full rotations, so make sure you’re prepared.

For this specific puzzle, the holes will stop at the bottom left, top right, and lastly, top left (from outermost to innermost). Make sure that you understand the working of the puzzle quite well, as the next two will follow a similar pattern. 

Third Spinning Circle Puzzle

Once you’ve completed the second puzzle, we can move on to the third one. It’s slightly trickier to get to because you need to disable a fan in order to reach its area.

Locating The Terminal

If you’ve followed the instructions up till now, then you should be standing at the second spinning circle terminal. From there, turn around and head back to the tunnel that you came from. You’ll need to connect the tunnel to another path again; this time around, connect it to the leftmost, as shown in the image.

Keep going in the tunnel, and you’ll eventually find two paths; one will be blocked by a rotating fan. Therefore, you’ll need to head right. Keep going through the tight tunnels on the right side. They’ll eventually lead you to a wide-open room, as shown in the upper portion of the image above.

Go to the room on the left in the image, and you’ll come across a terminal with three pipes, as shown in the lower portion of the image above. Disconnect all of those pipes, and the fan should get disabled. Now, you need to get back to the area where the fan was and where you came out of the connecting tunnels.

When you reach the fan, go through its left side and continue through the narrow tunnels. You’ll reach a room with a slope that leads upwards, as shown in the image above. Continue upwards, and you’ll find the third spinning circle terminal at the top.

Solving The Puzzle

Solving the third spinning circle terminal is quite similar to the second one. The holes will be spinning, and you need to connect them with your connecting nail when they make a clicking noise, and a white break-like object appears inside the hole. The pattern for the third puzzle is bottom left, top middle, and bottom right (outer to innermost).

Fourth Spinning Circle Puzzle

The fourth puzzle is easier to find, but you’ll need specific things, such as the terminal operating key on your right arm. You’ll also have to go back to areas that you have visited before. In case you feel confused with the location descriptions, you can always backtrack and learn about the first spinning circle terminal, as the locations are similar.

Locating The Terminal

By now, you should be standing at the terminal of the third spinning puzzle. From there, turn right and take the elevator downwards. On your right, you’ll find a terminal that will equip you with the key that is used to operate terminals; use it.

As you progress forward, there will be a door, but you can use the terminal to its right to open it up. The door will open up to the location where you found the skeleton and got the cylindrical key in the first place.

From there, you need to head back to the room with the red glowing center, where we started the entire puzzle while trying to look for the first spinning circle terminal. In fact, we need to get back to the same place as the first spinning circle terminal because we can now use the terminal that is opposite it.

Therefore, when you reach the room with the glowing red center, take the elevator up, and go to the connecting tunnels. Connect the tunnel to the middle one, and keep going forward. At the bypass, turn left towards where the terminal is; there would be a skeleton on top of it if you’ve not used the terminal before.

Start using the terminal; you’ll get to move around a cylindrical shaft that points towards glowing green lights below the connectable tunnels. Aim the shaft to the third glowing left, from the left, as shown in the image above. That will release some green fluids into the tunnel.

Go back to the connecting tunnels that you came from, and join the tunnel to the middle tunnel again, the one where you released the green fluids. When you reach the other end of the tunnel, you’ll find the next spinning circle terminal in front of you.

Solving The Puzzle

The final spinning circle puzzle is quite similar to the third and second ones. The only tricky part is the fact that part of the puzzle (left side) is blocked, so you can’t see when the holes are in place.

But there’s a workaround to that problem. You can hear the clicking sound when the hole stops spinning for a bit. That’s when you’ll need to use your connector to get hold of the hole. The first two holes can be connected at the top right and bottom right with ease. The last circle will become hidden but will be at the bottom left. Just listen for the clicking sound.

Final Part Of The Puzzle

Once you’ve completed all four spinning circle terminals in Scorn, your cylindrical key should have four lit-up orbs, allowing you to move on to the final part of the puzzle.

From the final terminal, move back into the connecting tunnels, and connect your tunnel to the leftmost one. Go through the tunnel, and then take a left to end up at an elevator. Go down, and you should be back in the room with a red glowing center.

Use your cylindrical key to activate the terminal shown on the left in the image above. The terminal will slide behind the bigger terminal shown on the right in the image above. Go and activate it in order to start the final part of the entire puzzle.

Completing The Combination

When you activate the puzzle, it should look something like the left side of the image at the top. What you basically need to do is to line up the white lights with the red lights by sliding the key inside.

But only the lit-up areas can slide in between the sections of the lock. And when they’re slid inside, they get locked in place while all those that are outside can keep rotating around. But here is the simple order that you should follow in order to complete the puzzle:

• From starting position, move the rings two down, and move them across the left only once such that the leftmost lit-up circle (key) is inside the lock.
• Rotate four steps upwards, and then slide the key left again such that the second from the left key is now inside the upper section of the lock.
• Rotate four steps downwards, and slide left such that the third from the left key is in the bottom section of the lock.
• Rotate two steps upwards and slide left such that the fourth and final key is inside the middle section.
• All the keys, except the leftmost, should be in place by now. Simply rotate one step upwards, and you’ll end up solving the puzzle.

Once you complete the puzzle, the egg-like figures will descend and open up. Head towards the terminal next to it, and you’ll find the healing spider and a key that you can use to finally open up the door in front of the skeleton, where we found the key and started the puzzle.

With that, you know how to solve the Scorn spinning circles puzzle completely. It is one of the longest yet most important puzzles of the game as you finally get access to your healing item as well as a key that you’ll be using throughout till the end of the game to open many doors.

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Next:

• Scorn: Act 3 Yellow Node Puzzle
• Scorn Combat Tips