The Shrine Vault puzzle in may seem like a walk in the park, but finding the right ema can be quite overwhelming when you have faceless monsters running at you and punching you in the back of the head.
While this isn't the first puzzle you have to complete, it is the first one that stopped me in my tracks. And there's no avoiding this riddle, unfortunately, as you need to solve it to continue through the Shrine Path and chase after the mysterious Fox Mask.
The trick to gathering the emas is to look for the odd one out; all the other wrong emas will repeat throughout the alleyways, and knowing that you won't find them in the order that they come in on the clue page, then it's smooth sailing. Unless you're playing on Lost in the Fog level difficulty, then you have a whole world of pain in the form of a confusing riddle waiting for you—godspeed.
How to solve the Shrine Vault puzzle in Silent Hill f
Here are the solutions to every Shrine Vault puzzle, based on your difficulty level:
Story
You're looking for three emas with the following pictures on them: Serpent, Turtle, and Crane, in that order. Once you've found the first one, head north to the next group of hanging emas, then head southwest to gather the final one.
Then head to the Shrine Vault to unlock the door by entering the lock combination using the sigils above.
Hard
You're looking for three emas with the following pictures on them: Tree, Kudzu (a purple flower), and lightning, in that order. Once again, after you've found the first one, go north to the next group of emas, and then head southwest to grab the final one.
Then head to the Shrine Vault to unlock the door by entering the. See the lock combination using the sigils above.
Lost in the Fog
You're looking for three emas with the following pictures on them: Two heads in a carriage, a weird tree ghost guy, and a sentient umbrella with its tongue hanging out, in that order (see images above if these vivid descriptions didn't do it for you).
As with the other difficultues, once you've found the first one, head north to the next group of hanging emas, then head southwest to nab the final one. Then head to the Shrine Vault to unlock the door.
This is where things can get a bit tricky. Unlike the other difficulties, Lost in the Fog presents multiple options for the code, and it's your job to decipher the riddle and figure out which three symbols will work.
The key here is to read the riddle again and pick out key details, in this case, what each Yokai had removed: [[link]] "The Yokai of the Carriage had their heads removed. The Yokai of the Umbrella, their
arms. The Yokai of the Kettle, their legs." Then look at the images and see how many heads the Yokai of the Carriage has, how many arms the Yokai of the Umbrella has, and how many legs the Yokai of the Kettle has.
Spoilers: it's two, four, and three. Meaning you want to pick the second, fourth, [[link]] and third symbols of each row. Or you could just see the lock combination above—the choice is yours.