Personal Study is currently in early access mode. Here’s a walkthrough of some of the harder puzzles, imho.
Tablet Puzzle
Having gotten this far without too much issue, I decided to start here. I’ll try to not give the answers away, but you might find out why this puzzle was difficult to deal with. You’ll come to a large stone door with an hourglass tablet in the middle, and several more strewn about the floor nearby, Sun, Star, Skull (Death), and Moon.
Once here you’ll encounter a “Cut scene” where Evi cannot read the old writing in the book. Head back up to Sebastian, I won’t spoil the surprise for this part. Go through the cut scene and head back down to your puzzle, Sebastian will meet you there for another cut scene.
Sebastian translates for you and you now have clues for the puzzle. Each clue has the corresponding symbol attached to it. Look around the ENTIRE table for all the clues, or you might miss a simple one that would leave you confused.
I won’t spoil the clues so much, but there is one thing that will definitely get you stumped. If you are reading this guide after getting to that point in the game, you’ve probably read all the clues and realized, “I’m missing a tablet.” The life tablet is nowhere near the table with the clues. What you’ll have to do is backup from the stone door with the tablets and look to your left on the wall. You’ll find what you are looking for there. Now you’ll have all 5 tablets and can complete the puzzle.
Tapestry Puzzle
Having gotten through that awful stone tablet door you’ll find yourself at the next brain-wracking puzzle. We’ll call this the Tapestry puzzle, simply because if you put the wrong object with the tapestry it burn the tapestry, and they shuffle both the tapestries and objects.
The objects themselves are found scattered about the room:
One on a table just to the left of the door you entered.
One on a table in the area in the middle.
One each (2 total) on a table the raised sides next to the pillars, one in front, other in back of the pillars.
Last one on a table on the raised platform in the back of the room.
The five objects are:
Sword
Raven/Crow
Crescent Moon
Star
Caduceus (I think you can figure this one out from context)
I’ll give you hints since this puzzle does not have any:
The Sword accompanies its wielder victorious.
The Raven perches near the dead on glorious. (battle)
The Crescent Moon sits above the Maiden Fair.
The Star lights the night, dispelling dispair.
Caduceus accompanies the twins of Life and Death.
I hope these clues assist you in getting that puzzle solved without too much guessing.
And let me know if you have better clues, or want to judge how corny mine were.
Dragon Puzzle
This was the last puzzle that gave me grief when playing, and probably for the reason you are already familiar with. The “hint” system in this game leaves much to be desired. More often than not I stumbled into answers, which should have been more obvious. Even if it’s just the character giving you slight hint. I’m basically going to walk you through how to solve this one.
From the door you entered go into the left hallway and turn right. Once you are past the FIRST bookshelf on the right there is a vase with 3 staves in it. You can only grab one of these. Grab it, it’s a tool that’ll help you later.
Once you have the staff, look for a wall light at character height that is an ever-so-slightly different color than the rest of them. (I know, I said I’d walk you through it, but even I want you to feel like you achieved something.) Once you’ve interacted with the light, you’ll see the staircase open up. If you didn’t go around the outside, this staircase is in the back of the room.
Go down the staircase and you’ll see lots of pipes, turn all the levers. Then jam the staff you’ve been carrying along with you this whole time into the gears on the apparatus to disable the shield protecting the dragon statue.
Now, go back upstairs and you’ll be free to disassemble the dragon statue as you see fit to open the doors in the hallways. I recommend going to the left door (from where you entered) first to save yourself a wee bit of time, but I also recommend making sure you search that ENTIRE room.
And that was the last puzzle that gave me any grief.
Have fun 💗
