Black tower: six gourds and the black sphere
Also searched as: Black Tower / how many gourds does the black tower need
- Players
- 2 players or more
- Time
- Depends which 6 puzzles you pick
- Coordinates
- Reports differ: north front entrance of the black tower, or the giant green door on the west of the island
- Reward
- Black key, and your first ending: Big Goodbye
The short answer
The black tower is the last one, and it wants 6 gourds, not 5. Once all six are in place the black sphere opens and the first ending triggers. By this point the whole map is open, so which 6 you did genuinely does not matter - any 6 gourds will do.
Plenty of people think they miscounted at this step. They did not: the black tower simply asks for one more than the previous four.
Before you start
- Red, green, yellow and blue towers all done (any order, though red really should be first)
- Any 6 gourds
Step-by-step2 steps
- 1
Check you have 6, not 5
The black tower has one more slot than the four before it. If you counted 5 and thought that was enough, that is why you are stuck.
- 2
Six in place, sphere opens
With all six gourds seated, the black sphere opens. You get the black key, and that is what triggers the first ending.
Faster:Everything on the map is reachable by now, so just pick the 6 cheapest puzzles using the chairlift, tunnels and trains.
Where it goes wrong
These are the questions real players search for most. Working through them in order usually finds the cause.
After finishing:The black key and your first ending, Big Goodbye.
Video walkthrough1 videos
Click a thumbnail to play it here, or click the title to open the original on YouTube.
Where this solution came from
The figure of 6 gourds comes from The GameSlayer and bigwalktips' 100% pages. The sphere and door bearing is explicitly flagged as inconsistent player reporting on big-walk.net, so this page keeps both accounts.
Puzzles in this game are not assigned in a fixed order: most of them reward the same generic red gourd, so you can clear any set of challenges around a tower. That is why two guides list different puzzle line-ups for the same tower — neither is wrong. Unless a coordinate is credited to a named source it is a community measurement, and later versions can shift it; once you are in the area, trust the landmark over the number.