Vampyr - Pandora's Box Quest & Secret Vault Puzzle Walkthrough

This is a walkthrough post for "Pandora's Box", a fascinating and complicated quest in Vampyr. It spans through several main missions and is connected with a subsequent brilliant puzzle that opens a secret vault which, in turn, rewards you with a cool weapon, a special collectible and an achievement.

Main mission "Unnatural Selection": after you find your way via the sewers to reach the Temple Church area but before you go to meet Aloysius Dawson, run around the perimeter of the church to locate an underground passage. At the end of this passage, an Indian fortune teller, Usher Talltree, will be sitting surrounded by curios, doing his magic. Talk to him to get one important hint for Aloysius Dawson, and also have him offer you his quest, Pandora's Box, to find his stolen notebook. If you have enough money, you can ask him to "read the cards" and every time you do this, he will give you hints on several residents. I skipped this part, since it is not needed for the quest.

Go to the Dawson mansion and deal with Aloysius Dawson, making sure your decision about him won't drop the district's status to Hostile. I preferred to charm him, just to be safe. To be able to charm him, you need to have unlocked one more hint about him, given by Carolyn Price, the lady who runs a store with her daughter close to the church. Charming him will make the Ascalon Club furious with Jonathan, but it will hopefully keep the district into a stable status which will progressively become healthy. 


Main mission "Science Without Conscience": after dealing with Geoffrey McCullum at the hospital's attic (it doesn't matter what you choose to do with him), go to Doris Fletcher's theater to find Edgar. Kill the first bunch of hunters and find the key to the basement together with Geoffrey's journal. Down in the basement, find the key that opens the door to where Edgar is held, and locate the locked safe. Look above it and a bit to the left to find a pinned note informing you where to find its key. Go back out to the stage again, and in the corridors to find a new group of hunters, one of which will drop the key for the safe when killed. Return to the basement and open the safe to retrieve Usher's notebook. Do not read it! You won't be able to access the secret vault if you do!

Deal with Edgar (your decision about him shouldn't affect the side mission) so as to be able to complete the episode. Keep in mind that if the district's status drops to Hostile, Usher Talltree will almost instantly die. This will lock you out of the side quest, as not only you won't be able to go back to him, but additionally there is a high chance that there will be no pinned note near the safe, nor extra hunters to drop its key.


Main Mission "Antidote": go back to Usher to give him his notebook. As long as you didn't read it, he will give you a collectible with a cryptic diagram which will help you unlock the secret vault outside his lair. His quest "Pandora's Box" will conclude successfully here. 
 

Now you can proceed with the brilliant vault puzzle. The diagram on Usher's collectible "Origin of the Brotherhood" (from collectibles section The Brotherhood of Saint-Paul Stole) shows a simple map of the small anteroom with the four pressure plates on the floor. Each pressure plate corresponds to a symbol (a circle, a square, a fish and a diamond). 

You will have to check your collectibles to find those that have these symbols on them. You don't need to have found all collectibles but make sure you have the following six: 

The Crime of Lost Knowledge (from collectibles section The Great Hunt)
Laughing at the Guard (from collectibles section The Guard of Priwen)
The Myth of the Horned Vampire (from collectibles section The Legendary Vampires)
Rare Species of Vampires (from collectibles section Species of Vampires)
Origin of the Skals (from collectibles section The Skals)
Blood as Addiction (from collectibles section The Need for Blood)

Each of these collectibles will feature one of the diagram's symbols along with a number of dots which is translated in which order you will need to stand on the respective pressure plate. As there are six symbols and four pressure plates, you will have to step on two of them twice. The puzzle can have a different solution in each playthrough, but I will describe mine which should give an idea of how it should work in any case.

My diagram was the following:

The left side depicts the corridor leading to Usher, the down side depicts the exit. So now you have a rough idea of how to orient yourself while solving the puzzle.

The symbols on the six collectibles were as follows:






The fish symbol is accompanied by one dot, which means I first need to step on the pressure plate corresponding to it. The circle symbol is accompanied by two dots, therefore I then have to step on the respective pressure plate, and so on. To keep it simple, the order in which I have to step on the plates is:

Fish (1 dot) - Circle (2 dots) - Square (3 dots) - Circle again (4 dots) - Fish again (5 dots) - Diamond (6 dots). So basically you check the dots, check the symbols that they accompany, and it is easy to work out the layout of the puzzle and in which order to step on the pressure plates.

After you step on the pressure plates in the right order, one of the walls in the small anteroom will open, revealing the secret vault. Inside, you will find a super powerful sword, the True Dragonbane - just in time for the final boss(es) - and the collectible "Recollections of Paulus Aurelianus", which will also reward you with the Bloody Roots achievement the first time that you unlock it.

Video walkthrough:

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