How to solve the Boiler Room puzzle in Alone in the Dark

Alone in the Dark is a return to survival horror where the prospect of spending an hour solving a puzzle is scarier than the monsters you'll face, so I'll ensure you don't get lost with a breakdown of the Boiler Room puzzle. 

The game sees you travel to a number of locations through anomalies across the Derceto Manor, but getting to these requires a lot of exploration. If you need some help speeding up this process, learn all about the Boiler Room puzzle and what it entails.

How to solve the Boiler Room puzzle

Much like the Astronomical Clock that comes before it, solving the Boiler Room puzzles requires you to find the two Disc Fragments and piece the talisman socket back together. You then need to figure out the code to progress into the next section. 

Finding the disc fragments

Disc Fragment 1

The first of the fragments can be found in Cassandra's Room (marked below), which is located on the east side of the second floor, next to the Gallery where you previously found the Astronomical Clock. 

You'll need the Sitting Room Key to enter here, which you'll have found in a bag after exiting the oil rig section previously. Here are the next steps to get the Disc Fragment:

• Head into Cassandra's Room
• Grab the Margrave Liniment medicine bottle on the table in the middle of the room
• Backtrack to the other side of the house into Lottie's Room to find a note, which informs you Grace has the necessary key
• Head out the door and up the stairs, then use your Palette Knife to unblock the door
• Go through here and take a right into the Mezzanine, then descend a floor to get a cutscene

• After the cinematic, grab the Medicine Box Key on the piano and return to Lottie's Room
• Open the box and collect the Dr. Jenkins Lozenges medicine
• Travel back through the house to Cassandra's Room once more and interact with the other medicine bottles on the small shelving unit

• Arrange the bottles so that the rot patterns line up and reveal three numbers (like the image above)
• Go to the Clues page and use Perosi's Journal to match the numbers to the zodiac signs, which are Pisces, Gemini, Leo
• Enter the combination on the lock in the room to grab the Disc Fragment

Disc Fragment 2

The second Disc Fragment is found in the Boiler Room itself (marked below). It’s worth noting that I got this fragment first in my playthrough, so you can do this section in either order.

Here are the steps to get the fragment:

• Grab the Cellar Key from the Drawing Room (you'll have likely done this after returning from the oil rig section)
• Head into the basement of the house, and use the key you got to open the locked gate in the Food & Wine Cellar
• Follow the shelves and locate the Switch item just next to the electrified water

• Take this to the circuit box on the same wall to turn off the electric
• Now walk past the water puddle to grab the Valve Handle 
• Head back toward the Boiler Room, but be careful of the enemy in the hallway
• Use the valve to stop the steam and walk past it into the room with the man on the floor
• Interact with him to trigger a temporary anomaly before finding the second Disc Fragment on the floor

Using the boiler

Once again, you will need to place both Disc Fragments onto the talisman socket and match up the fragments to create the image (pictured below). I discovered you can find the complete image in the Commonplace Book on your Clues page, which will make the process easier. 

Now you'll need to find out the talisman code to open the portal, which requires you to read the numbers on the gauges on the left of the boiler. The size of these gauges correspond to the size of the sections on the talisman when inputting the code. 

This code is 9-7-5, and after inputting it, you can head back toward the Food & Wine Cellar to get transported to the graveyard.

Check out our Alone in the Dark homepage for more guides. We've also covered how to get the Shotgun.