The Sinking City 2 locked buoy is a confusing puzzle involving fish and a code that makes little sense and, if I’m honest, I kind of solved it accidentally. However I did solve it and if you’re here, you haven’t. So let me tell you what you need to do now I’ve worked out what’s going on. It’s a weird little challenge that seems designed to be confusing, and not one you can tackle until a while after you first find it, so it’s easy to get a bit lost.
The Sinking City 2 locked buoy solution
The solution to the locked buoy comes from two notes you can find: From Ezekiel’s Wife, which you’ll find on the shop counter not long after leaving the first Safe Room at the Fish Market, and About Ezekiel, which you can find in the Guard Post once you have a Leyden Jar to unlock it.
The important bit from these two notes are the mention of fish:
- The eel and the lantern come first
- The Coelacanth
- The angler has the last word
Scattered around the shop and the office behind the counter are various fish with symbols attached to them. Those fish mentioned above give you these symbols:
So that’s lantern fish/lighthouse, gulper eel/ropes, coelacanth/starfish and Anglerfish/octopus.
These match the code symbols on the buoy lock. While it’s not entirely clear, the note explains the eel and lantern fish are first, although not in what order, while the angler is last. That leaves the coelacanth third, as the only position left unclaimed.
With a little trial and error you can discover that the eel and lantern fish actually go in the reverse of the order mentioned, giving you this combination as a solution for the locked buoy – Lighthouse, Ropes, Starfish, Octopus:
Open it up and you’ll get Doyle’s Hot Streak, a magazine for the submachine gun that increases damage with continuous fire. That’s actually a really useful upgrade against tougher enemies that can take a pounding, especially if you have enough ammo to just keep peppering them increasingly damaging bullets.
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