Did we miss anything in this puzzle? Is there something we didn't discover? Let us know!

Triggering the Puzzle

If you enter the lighthouse right after landing on Spindrift Island, the "lighthouse gnome" Vantabular Garsp won't want to talk about the puzzle yet. You'll have to enter Spindrift Town and perhaps talk to Nisar first.


The Puzzle Rules

Garsp won't be very helpful when he finally describes the puzzle to you. He'll tell you that you'll need to "rotate a series of colored arrows to match the resulting lights along the edges." In fact, not only is that not very helpful, it doesn't describe the puzzle at all.

So here's what you'll need to do. The puzzle is made up of a grid of 16 stone tiles. Surrounding the tiles you'll find 20 pillars of light. The idea is to place colored arrows in each of the stone tiles to cause all of the pillars to display white lights.

To start the puzzle, or to reset it in case you mess up, you'll just need to click on the lighthouse control mechanism on the eastern side of the room.


Mixing Colors

If you point a colored arrow at a pillar, the pillar will change to a new color based on the combination of the old color plus the color of the arrow. The puzzle uses a basic red-green-blue system, where red + green + blue = white.

In particular...

• Red needs blue and green to become white.
• Blue needs red and green.
• Green needs red and blue.
• Purple (red + blue) needs green.
• Cyan (blue + green) needs red.
• Yellow (red + green) needs blue.

Strategies

You'll need to place an arrow into each stone tile of the puzzle. If you understand the combinations listed above, then the puzzle shouldn't be very complicated -- except that you can "starve" some pillars by using up the only stone piles that can point to it. So try to be careful when you place arrows, so that you leave room for arrows for all of the pillars. It's probably best to handle the corner pillars first.


Example

The lighthouse puzzle is different each time you play, so we'll work through an example here to illustrate some of the information given above.

Image 1

Image 1 shows the opening arrangement of the puzzle.

Image 2		Image 3

We decided to "white out" the green pillar in the northwestern corner first, and so we added a red arrow (image 2) and a blue arrow (image 3).

Image 4		Image 5

Then we decided to work on the rest of the northern end of the grid, adding a blue arrow to take care of the yellow pillar (image 4) and blue and green arrows to take care of the red pillar (image 5).

Image 6		Image 7

Next we moved to the southern part of the puzzle, starting with the southwestern corner (image 6) and moving along from there (image 7).

Image 8

The final solution is shown in image 8.


Your Reward

For completing the lighthouse puzzle, a portal will appear, allowing you to explore a Hidden Cavern filled with ghostly pirates, drowned officers, and an accursed admiral -- plus lots of pirate treasure. And if you can locate the ancient astrolabe in the cavern, then Vantabular Garsp will offer to join your crew.