A spoiler-light walkthrough of the second-act puzzles most likely to end a playthrough, written to preserve the atmosphere rather than spend it.
Two puzzles in the second act of The Hollow Ward are markedly more obtuse than anything around them, and between them they account for most abandoned playthroughs. This guide gets you past both while giving away as little as possible.
In both cases the answer is environmental rather than inventory-based, and in both cases the game has already told you — through sound. If you are searching menus, you are searching the wrong place. Stop moving, turn the music off entirely if you have not already, and listen for which direction the ventilation changes pitch.
The second puzzle additionally depends on a door you almost certainly walked past in the first hour. It is on the floor below, on the side of the corridor that loops back, and it opens from the other side only.
