Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy – Case 3: The Sun Dial Guide

How to Solve – Phase 1: The Freight Chain

Voss has been tracking a third artifact: a Minoan Sun Dial recovered near a peak sanctuary site. It has entered the black market and changed hands.

Puzzle 1: The Duty Calculation

Players receive three documents: a printed email thread between Dr. E. Maren and an anonymous seller, the Rotterdam Port Authority Customs Rate Schedule, and the Vectus Maritime Cargo Registry. The seller’s reply confirms the artifact was shipped through Vectus Maritime out of Piraeus, declared as decorative stone and ceramic goods, with a declared value of EUR 13,600. The cargo registry does not list declared values, only duty paid. Players must use the rate schedule to calculate the expected duty and identify the matching entry.

Hints:

• Hint 1: The registry doesn’t show declared values. But you know what the artifact was declared as, and the rate schedule has a table. Find the right category.
• Hint 2: Apply the duty rate to EUR 13,600. That figure is what you’re looking for in the registry.
• Hint 3: Decorative stone and ceramic goods: 7.0%. EUR 13,600 × 7% = EUR 952. Five entries share similar amounts – only one matches origin, category, amount, and date.

Answer – RTM-0729-A

Puzzle 2: The Manifest

The manifest file arrives locked. No password is provided. The filename is: VML–RTM.-0729A.-.cargo..manifest-.jul2026.arch.pdf

Hints:

• Hint 1: The file is password-protected and no password was given. Look closely at everything you were sent.
• Hint 2: The filename looks a bit strange. The separators between each word segment aren’t consistent.
• Hint 3: Periods and hyphens. Dots and dashes. The punctuation between segments is encoding something.

Solution: The separators in the filename encode Morse code. Periods are dots, hyphens are dashes. Each segment separator is one letter. Read them in sequence: M-A-R-I-N-E.

Password – marine

Answer – HENRIK VAEL

How to Solve – Phase 2: Lux

A new message appears in the hub. The sender is not Voss. An old Solène Institute staff credential, left active and never revoked, has been used to log in. The message is short: Voss is not what you think it is.

Puzzle 3: The Access Card

Lux shares three things: photographs of a Solène Institute access card (front and back), five stencil template images (STC-I through STC-V) from a reinitialisation kit, and a scan of the official reinitialisation manual (SLN-ADM-TR-019). The card belongs to a former staff member who left without returning it. Lux does not have the PIN. The reinitialisation system can bypass the PIN if players extract the correct reset code.

Hints:

• Hint 1: The answer is on the back of the card.

Answer – M-4471-SLN-09

Puzzle 4: The Stencil Overlay

The video shows a 6-column, 8-row grid. Characters appear briefly at different column positions within each row before the display resets and loops. The five stencil templates Lux provided are the key: the manual (Section 03) states that exactly three must be selected according to the card prefix and overlaid simultaneously over the grid.

The manual (Section 04) provides the Aperture Verification Matrix to identify the right combination. Once the correct stencils are stacked and placed over the video, one aperture per row remains visible – the character appearing there is the character for that row.

Hints:

• Hint 1: The manual tells you how many stencils to use and how to verify the right combination. Section 03 and Section 04.
• Hint 2: The serial prefix tells you which card type this is. The manual maps prefixes to access tiers, that determines which column of the aperture matrix applies.
• Hint 3: Overlay combinations of three stencils at a time and count visible openings per row. One mismatch with the matrix rules out a combination.
• Hint 4: There is a faint image in the video background, the access card itself, used as an alignment guide. Use it to position the stencils correctly over the grid.
• Hint 5: The video loops. Watch multiple times to confirm each character. Read top to bottom, one row at a time.

Solution: Using the aperture matrix for M-prefix cards (2-1-3-1-1-2-2-3), the correct stencil combination is STC-I + STC-IV + STC-V. Download the video, open it in a video editor (CapCut works well), and overlay the three stencils aligned with the faint access card in the background. One aperture per row remains visible. Read the 8 characters top to bottom.

Answer – D5F#2WT9