The Sinking City 2 Walkthrough IGN — Safe Code

The Sinking City 2 does not have a dedicated IGN walkthrough page, so this route uses the two sources that actually publish step-by-step instructions: Neoseeker's guide hub and GameSpew's full puzzle walkthrough. IGN's own game page covers the title and scores it 8/10, and that verdict is useful context, but the directions below are the ones you can follow room by room.

What the IGN page and this route cover

IGN lists The Sinking City 2 as a survival horror title built in Unreal Engine 5 and scored it 8/10, describing the combat as a praiseworthy imitation of its main inspirations wrapped in the Cthulhu mythos. That is a fair summary of what you are walking into: a semi-open world of flooded Arkham, an inventory system, firearms and melee weapons, and an optional investigation layer that pays out upgrade currency.

The route in this page is therefore assembled rather than quoted. Neoseeker organises the campaign into named parts and lists every collectible, while GameSpew supplies the exact puzzle answers, including the safe codes. For the systems side, see the guide, and for the completion checklist see the trophy guide.

Chapter order from the Annex to the Badlands

Neoseeker's guide runs Part 1 to Part 9, then opens a New Game Plus pass called Ex Oblivione. The order below is the one the game forces, because each area is gated by a key item or a watergate lever you can only reach after finishing the previous location.

• Part 1 - Reaching the Library Annex: Home, Apartment Building, Radio Store.
• Part 2 - The Annex: the sliding bookshelves and the first Emergency Relief Crate.
• Part 3 - The Church: Star key, Trident, obelisk and the watergate lever.
• Part 4 - The Fire Station: the Gas Canister and the electrified puddle.
• Part 5 - The Printing House: the three Printing Plates and the cursed press.
• Part 6 - The Hotel: Lorelei, the Lorelei Chests and the basement generator.
• Part 7 - The Hospital (three parts): the Eye, the Nightmares and the rifle.
• Part 8 - The Fish Market (three parts): Deep Ones, the Shoggoth and the portal.
• Part 9 - The Badlands: the Antarctic temple and the Slither Prime.

The first section alone holds three separate safe rooms and the campaign's first safe, so it is worth clearing slowly. Once you leave an area the game rarely lets you return, and New Game Plus does not carry collectible progress over.

Safe codes and puzzle codes

Every locked numeric or symbol lock that the published guides document is collected in the table below. The safe codes are the ones players ask about most, because they gate achievements rather than story progress.

Lock	Location	Answer
Wall safe	Apartment 5, on the way to the Annex	1908
Hotel safe	Devil's Reef Hotel, Room 301, third floor	2137
Watergate lever	Outside the church	1672
Storage room lock	Akeley Hospital basement, after the rusted lock	1308
Brains console	Hospital Wireless Room	13, 05, 36
Wooden lock	Fish Market East Wing cutting area	1, 4, 9, 16
Obelisk	Behind the church, top to bottom	Snake, X, Arrowhead, U
Cursed press	Printing House secret room	Top right corner, middle, middle right, bottom left corner

The Apartment 5 safe is the first one you meet and the clue is arithmetic: the note in the shop says the owner opened it 21 years ago, and the current year is 1929, so the code is 1908. The hotel safe uses a clue set spread around the third floor, and the church lever uses the bell rather than the building. The Fish Market locker is symbol-based instead of numeric and reads Lighthouse, Rope, Starfish, Octopus.

Collectibles, achievements and bosses

There are two achievement-linked collectible types and they are both missable within a run. Ten Mushroom Jack radios and thirteen Emergency Relief Crates must all be found in a single playthrough, and the crates need an E.R.C. Activator Pen before they open. Documents are not tied to an achievement but often carry the clue for a nearby safe code, so read them even when the reward looks small.

The boss list is short but each fight is a resource check. The hospital holds three large enemies the guides call Nightmares, the Fish Market ends with a Shoggoth, and the campaign closes on the Slither Prime in the Antarctic temple. Talents bought with Dream Essence at safe-room tables are the main way to keep up, and the safe rooms themselves double as manual save points because the autosave only fires at major checkpoints.

If you want the plot instead of the route, read the endings explained page after you finish, and check the characters page for who everyone is.