Part III – The Clockwork Mansion

Part III – The Clockwork Mansion

Things to know up front-

First- while seemingly complex, the mechanistic rules of the mansion are pretty straightforward-

  • Every section that transforms has only two states. If you pull a switch and see a dining room transform into a billiards lounge, then you know its only two configurations are dining and billiards- no hidden switch will ever turn it into a kitchen or a bowling alley.

  • No transforming sections overlap, or interact with each other. Some are very close, but there is no interplay or interference.

  • Each switch affects only one section, so no 'put out all the lights' type puzzles here.

  • Each section has multiple switches and buttons that activate it. Mainly so you can't get trapped inside one of the retractable bits.

Secondly, there are three overlapping achievements/special actions, and most players will be going for at least one of them-

  • Silence: Eliminate Jindosh without him ever knowing you were there.

  • A Ghost in the Cogs: Eliminate Jindosh without ever raising the alarm.

  • Flawless Extraction: Rescue Sokolov without alerting, rewiring, or disabling his clockwork guardian.

For this walkthrough we'll essay all three. One note- the nature of the mansion and some alleged bugs in the game can make these tricky achievements to pop. One strategy you might consider is eliminating Jindosh, freeing Sokolov, and taking him all the way back to Lower Aventa. Drop him off with Meagan, then save your game. Accept her ride back to the Wale and see if your special actions popped correctly, If so, load your game, and return to the mansion for the remaining loot, paintings, runes, and charms.

Okay, let's get into it.

Open the front doors, and listen to the cordial audiograph.

There is a lever in the next room that will turn the mansion to an ever-transforming kaleidoscope of wonder and death, but there's also a number of achievements, specials actions, and bonuses that involve not doing that, so let's give it a miss on this playthrough. Instead use a crossbow bolt to knock a hole in the glass skylight here, and Blink your way up.

Go to the side of the room opposite the typewriter and drop past some pipes.

Follow the corridor until you see signs for the DINING LOUNGE, and head in that direction.

Open the first window into the parlor and slip inside. Loot some umberwood, then sneak into the piano room and take out the elite guard here. Stash his body by the couches where you entered. Despite the clockwork soldier here showing up in darkvision, it's inert, so don't worry about entering its line of sight.

Instead, lurk long enough for the guards to finish their conversation, then take out the male soldier as he enters the piano room. As soon as he falls, then Blink back to knock out the other elite.

Stash their bodies with the other. Move down the hallway you just cleared, walking away from the inert clockwork soldier. Toward the end, to your left, you can secure a map of the mansion.

Go back up the hall and into the piano room. Go left at the elevator into a small room to snag some coin from a cabinet, then other way, past the elevator, and open a window on your right into a little concrete alcove.

Remember this space- virtually every secret passage in the place seems to criss-cross through here, and it gives easy access to the other two main floors, and the primary elevator shaft. But for now we're going to still the beating Heart. Drop through the open bars in the alcove floor, and make for the buzzing bloodflies (easily dispatched with sword) to secure a charm (Bonecharm 6/8).

Return to the alcove, then the hallway, and make your way right around the waiting room and into a fountained lounge, with a sleeping guard.

Choke him into an even deeper sleep and grab the key from his couch. Hide his body some distance away (down the alcove grate works well), as the guests tend to cover a lot of ground when they get spooked. Use the numerous breakables here to separate those two, and then use chokes or Blink dropstops to take them out.

Return where you dropped down to get the bloodfly'd bonecharm, but this time go to a corner of the room where some rough rock wall has crumbled away to reveal an entrance down to the Assessment Room.

Drop down, blink past the elite guard here, take her out, then proceed forward. Take out the Heart to reveal a Bonecharm in a drawer in this room (Bonecharm 7/8).

Ignore the Wall of Light for the moment- time enough for that later. Return to the Assessment Room ceiling (the glassy surface in the larger space here).

Take the downward stairs to find a note which reveals a non-lethal solution for Jindosh. Now all the way back up the stairs to knock out a lone guard here, then advance to find another guard on the far side of the passage, past the elevator. Carry all the bodies well away from the elevator, as reinforcements will come through here near mission's end. Beyond this find the kitchen, The staff quibble about being replaced. When they stop talking they'll separate- take out the maid then the butler.

Whalebone in the oven here, and in the basket outside. Also a chunk at the bottom of the rocky pool below. When ready, enter the elevator shaft and blink or climb up to level 2.

Drop to floor level, eavesdrop, then hide atop the whale oil dispensing unite until the male guard patrols in.

Choke him and drop him in the corner, then take out the female elite in the next room. Exercise care- even a mild alert status will wake the Clockwork Soldier. (Note, these windows lead back to the concrete alcove). There are two grenades in the cabinet here. You're probably full up after Upper Aventa, but good to know. Jindosh's bedroom is at the end of the hall. Several rewire tools and a valuable silver cameo here, but breaking the glass will alert the clockwork soldier, so leave it be for now. Go out on the balcony, and jump down to some piping (but not too far down).

Follow the pipe to a small landing. Enter the hatch into a small room with access to the second elevator shaft and some sticky grenades. Loot the ore, then enter the elevator shaft and go up to the top most level (2) again. This time, you emerge in Jindosh's lab.

Watch for the sole active clanker on the top level. When safe, Blink up, approach Jindosh at his desk, then Blink behind him. As with all these wretched highback chairs, you'll have to perch up top to choke him out. Time your throttling against the clockwork guard's movements.

Now that Jindosh is out, you can safely rewire the clockwork guard without screwing up your achievements, so go ahead and take care of that- Blinking to its right side and activating its circuit box with the [F] key. A few minutes after beign rewired it will self-destruct, so remember to check this area later for its collectible plaque.

Take the blueprint for Splintering Slugs from the front of Jindosh's desk (Blueprint 3/4) and the painting from behind it (Painting 4/6).

Loot the areas on this level before dropping over the railing again, carrying KJ on your shoulder. Drop him into the electroshock machine, then fiddle with the voltage. The central coil here will indicate how much power you're channeling, but you don't need to fill it. Just set the two bays here to 'Anatomy' (snagging the Rune that surfaces, Rune 6/6) and Optics.

Lobotomize Jindosh even he pleads for you to spare his mind, his very soul. Watch as these are brutally torn from his agonized brain, and ponder how the Dishonored series always manages to make non-lethal options somehow worse than the alternative. You'll have a lot of time to ponder, as this particular atrocity is unskippable.

When he's been fully gentled, activate any other platform and drop down to the space below. Grab the maintenance key by the wall here, and exit through the door to the balcony elevator room we passed through earlier.

Drop down to floor negative one, the Assessment Chamber. Disable the Wall of Light to find yourself in the room where you collected a Bonecharm. Go back to the downstairs area where you found the note about electroshocking Jindosh. (Note: If you want to make your life a little easier, and don't mind a few 'bodies spotted' on your stealth record, drop a level 3 stun mine in front of the elevator before going downstairs). Pull the lever here (it can no longer alert Jindosh). This opens the door into the Assessment Chamber, where you will navigate a room with changing walls to rescue Sokolov. In order to get the Flawless Extraction special action, you have to do so without alerting, destroying, or rewiring the solider here.

Like the rest of the mansion, though, the Assessment chamber only has two states, and all of the buttons just change the room from one state to the next. The key is to unboard the central button and then stand on it, to enclose yourself in Anton's chamber.

Best bet is to wait until the soldier is in a distant corner, sword the button and Blink away, then Blink back when the coast is clear. In general, Blink is your best friend here- all the corridors are less than a Blink wide, so you should be able to teleport around the clanker with relative ease. Technically it is possibly to Blink into Sokolov's chambers while the walls are transitioning, but it's at least as possible to be crushed to death in the attempt.

Inside Sokolov's chamber you'll find a portrait of Grim Alex, which raises a lot of questions (Was she Grim for her entire journey between Addermire and Dunwall? Did she sit for this portrait? Why doesn't Sokolov ever paint laughing babies or happy trees?)

Take the canvas for later contemplation (Painting 5/6). Chat with Sokolov, who doesn't bat an eye at waking up to a metal skullface, even if it's one he made himself.

Talk 'til he passes out, then pick him up and make your way back to the entrance. The boarded button here doesn't do anything special- it's just here so you can escape if you got caught in mid-transition. You can Blink while carrying Sokolov, so the same tactics you used before apply. Climb the stairs here, and three guards will emerge from the elevator. If you placed a mine here earlier, you'll get to watch them be shocked out one by one, otherwise you'll have to dispose of them more conventionally (you can stash Anton in a corner if you need, but he counts as discovered body if spotted, and do be sure to drop him, not throw him).

Take the elevator back to the guest area (the piano room), and retrace your entry route- out through the parlor windows, up past the the pipes, and down through the skylight.

Exit the mansion (you can still come back), and put Sokolov in the carriage. If you want, you can then return to loot the remaining treasures, but I recommend taking him to the Wale right away, to verify your achievements (as discussed earlier). If you decide to do that, zip over to the next section of this walkthrough (Part IV: Lower Aventa Revisited), then pick up back here. If you've done that, or are just feeling lucky, here are the last few valuables the mansion can offer up. Return to the waiting room, where you incapicitated that nice pair of civilians. Pull the lever to call down an office (The office is completely inaccessible when lodged in the ceiling, but now that's moved down, the Waiting Room connects the kitchen area with the Assessment Chamber walkway on the level below. This is one of the few rooms that remains a real part of the mansion after transformation).

In this room, grab the blueprints and general loot, before returning to Jindosh's bedroom (might as well take the elevator- it's on floor 2). Rewire the clanker here, or it'll freak out once you start moving things around.

Look for the photography darkroom, the one with all the silvergraph developing kits (you'll have to pull a lever at least once to bring it up). Enter the room and hit the red button just inside the door to descend to a storage space, which will have a shelf containing a black bonecharm (Bonecharm 8/8). Reascend and explore the rest of Jindosh's quarters. This larger room is split into three section, with the central hub rotating between them (though, like everything else, it only has two positions). In the section nearest the laboratory, use the lever to coax the final painting from the ceiling (Painting 6/6).

In the opposite corner of that same section, note an odd square of floor in the corner by the window. Ride this section down during a transformation to visit a secret treasure cache, and fill up on coin and ingots.

Use the other levers around the mansion to reveal additional loot if you need it (Darkvision is invaluable here)- just be careful of the atrium lever, which deploys an active Clockwork Soldier. Speaking of soldiers, if you want the Clockwork Collector achievement, be sure to grab the tags from the bots you rewired in the lab and in Jindosh's quarters. If you're lucky, one of these killed a nearby inert bot before it self destructed. If not, rewire the bot of your choice and grab the third tag for the achievement (there are additional rewire kits in the Assessment Room cache and the Laboratory, among other places).

NOTE: Do not use explosives or whale oil if you're maintaining ghost status- even if you're out of sight when they go off, you count as having been detected.

ALSO NOTE: The clanker plaques like to clip through the floor and other debris. If you're having trouble grabbing one, try whacking at it with the sword until it 'surfaces.'

When ready, take the carriage (and Anton, if you haven't dropped him off already), back to Lower Aventa.

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