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Are you wondering how to solve Junction Box puzzles in System Shock? We can’t blame you. Although these puzzles are designed to be intuitive, like a lot of the game’s problem solving, the lack of guidance can sometimes leave you simply scratching your head, especially if you’re jumping into the game on a higher difficulty.
IIn this guide, we’ll cover how to solve Junction Box puzzles in Nightdive Studios’ System Shock remake by taking a look at the two types of puzzles you’ll encounter and explaining the mechanics behind them. Make sure you keep up to date with the combat aspects of the game too though; if you’re just starting out knowing how to get guns early in System Shock could save you some valuable time in your hacker’s fight against SHODAN.
What are Junction Box Puzzles?
Junction Box puzzles are the most direct sort of problem-solving you’ll come across in System Shock. Around every level, you’ll encounter Junction Boxes. Opening these up will reveal one of two puzzle types, which we’ll call a Connection type puzzle and a Power type puzzle. Completing one of these puzzles usually unlocks something important. Sometimes they’ll unlock doors into mission-critical areas, other times they’ll open armouries or medical bays, giving you access to vital supplies. Regardless, it’s almost always worth completing them when you come across them.
How to solve Junction Box puzzles
As mentioned, there are two types of junction box puzzle you’ll encounter. Connection puzzles and Power puzzles work on different mechanics from each other. Both also increase in complexity on higher difficulties, but here we’ll cover all the basics you’ll need to know to help you solve them.
You can also solve Junction Box puzzles automatically with logic probes, consumable devices which drop from various robots and enemies all over Citadel Station. Most commonly these will drop from the hovering probe robots commonly found outside the central hub area on the Research level. Keep in mind though, these are still rare finds.
How to solve Connection puzzles
The Connection Puzzle isn’t actually too bad. Simply, you’ve got two square-shaped red lights on the board. You want to ignore the circular light nodes which are practically junk, and create a path using the wires between the powered square light and the unpowered square light.
The best way to do this is to work your way along a sensible path for the powered light, then switch your attention to the opposite light and work your way backwards. The connections feeding into both of the two lights will usually be fairly straightforward, and once you have a clear idea of which way the wires need to be leading out of the powered light and which way they need to lead into the unpowered one, it’s a lot easier to figure out everything in the middle.
On higher difficulties you’ll get new components appearing here, such as unmovable segments of wire that can only be rotated by the use of dials, which will rotate either all adjacent corner wires, or all adjacent top, bottom, left, and right wires.
How to solve Power puzzles
The Power puzzles can be a bit trickier to figure out at first glance. The aim here is to plug in different wires to a number of different inputs. The energy will travel along power lines that will light up as they’re powered. The aim is the hard part: at the top or the side of the box, you’ll have a battery metre, with many small segments which act together as a power gauge. There are also two small blue indicator lines on the battery. What you want to do is to get the power feeding into the battery to fall within a level between the two indicators.
It’s important to remember that each active line that goes into the battery will equal one segment of power normally. Play around with switching certain paths to get power feeding into splitters, which separate one power line into two, and combiners, which merge two or more power lines. Also make note of the fact that your plugs can have single or double power, meaning a power line from a double plug can actually increase the battery by more than one segment.
On higher difficulties you’ll have more power lines and plug sockets to worry about, as well dials that can change the power flow direction. It’s best to try and tackle one plug at a time for the results you want.
That’s all the basics you’ll need to know about how to solve Junction Box puzzles in System Shock. In the meantime it’s worth keeping up to speed with other important mechanics, so if you need some help on how to heal in System Shock or how to get credits in System Shock we’ve got you covered for both of those things.
