After defeating a chained, sound-sensitive Dark Shrine monster with my dagger, I set out to solve the vault puzzle by finding three sacred ema - crane, serpent, and tortoise. While searching the area and dodging another roaming monster by moving quietly, I successfully located the tortoise symbol.
I started using my dagger to attack the terrifying creature, but it wasn't going down easily, fighting back heavily instead. After an intense struggle, I successfully hunted it down.
I learned that this monster, known as a Dark Shrine, was searching for me by sound rather than sight, meaning I would need to be extremely mindful of my footsteps if I face more of them on my journey.
It was time to look for the three correct ema needed to unlock the shrine vault door. Based on the clues, the puzzle revolved around a crane, a serpent, and a tortoise.
As I moved, I suddenly heard the noise of something walking close by. Guessing it was another Dark Shrine because of the distinct sound of chains, I spotted the monster nearby.
Realizing it could potentially detect me, I knew I should not make any unnecessary noise and needed to be extremely careful.
I found a crane symbol, but interacting with it proved that it was not working here yet, making me realize just how complicated this puzzle really was. On top of that, the movement and noise of the Dark Shrine monster kept scaring me off, leaving me genuinely confused about how to solve the puzzle.
Feeling stuck, I decided to take help from the internet and tried using YouTube to crack the puzzle. Watching the gameplay helped me understand what I needed to do in this part of the game, so I started checking around the area again.
Eventually, I found the tortoise symbol among the three required pieces, meaning I now needed to look for the crane and the serpent in other locations. However, when I checked my map, it wasn't showing me the exact locations the way it had in the YouTube gameplay video.
Trying to figure it out on my own, I felt like I was heading in the wrong direction. I wondered if I needed to get back to the shrine first and dial the symbol I had already found, but trying that method didn't work either.
Realizing I still needed to find the crane and the serpent, I tried following the path shown in the YouTube video to another area, but I ended up right back where I started.
Worse still, the roaming monster heard my footsteps. Panicking, I started running backward, hoping it would not follow me. Thankfully, it did not follow me, so I kept moving ahead quietly this time, hoping the monster would not be looking around for me anymore.
A moment later, I saw the monster again, and it heard my footsteps once more. I quickly ran backward toward the shrine a second time, and thankfully the monster gave up on looking for me.
Once it was safe, I walked back and entered the symbol racks quietly, hoping the monster would not spot me again.
However, I found that I could not interact with these symbols anymore because I had already found what I needed from this specific place. That meant I needed to travel to two more different locations to track down the remaining two symbols of the puzzle.