Black tower: six gourds and the black sphere
Also searched as: Black Tower / how many gourds does the black tower need
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.
- Players
- 2 players or more
- Time
- Depends which 6 puzzles you pick
- Location
- 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
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, taken from the candidate challenges in the tower regions (see the puzzle overview for the candidates)
Step-by-step 2 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 (the two endings).
Those 6 gourds are not a specific six: every tower region offers more candidate challenges than a single tower needs, so just pick the 6 cheapest.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 places players actually get stuck most often. Working through them in order usually finds the cause.
Other Black tower puzzles
After finishing: The black key and your first ending, Big Goodbye.
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. (Single source: big-walk.net, both accounts kept.)
Puzzles in this game are not assigned in a fixed order: each tower needs a set number of gourds and has more challenges around it than that, so you choose which ones to clear, in any order. 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.