My Friendly Neighborhood has its fair share of secrets to find and discover, and none are more so than the undertaking of gaining access to Stage 5 late in the game. A secret area, completion of this area’s puzzle rewards players with something well worth the time and effort to do so. This guide will help you both with the setup to accomplish this feat. Beware of spoilers.
Gaining access to Stage 5 actually begins once the player gains access to the Public Park area. After making your way through here, Gordon will end up in a greenhouse with a new puzzle involving liquids of some kind. We are going to ignore this puzzle, but hanging from a clipboard is an explanation for this puzzle, with the final key you have been searching for, the triangle key. This opens up a world of new possibilities that will send you around the map to complete this puzzle. One of the places will be the editing room in the sewer, across from the fuse box with four shape-themed fuses. Which is where we are heading. There you will find a film reel and film solution. You would be forgiven for thinking these items might be related, but they are not, as the item is for the puzzle in the park, and the film should be watched in the movie theater in the office building’s projection box.
Watching the movie, entitled Heist, showcases a man in a ski mask entering a combination on a locked safe before an alarm goes off. It is such a bizarre thing to see, but since you’re a gamer, you are probably conditioned to write down the numbers, since why give you a three-digit code on a dial combination if not to use it. Now you’re ready… to go to the Stage 4 basement and enter the Set Storage room. There you find a safe with, shock surprise, a dial combination. Enter the code, 7-12-4, in clockwise, counter-clockwise, clockwise order, then open it up, and you will be given multiple things, including a new fuse. Return to the fuse box where you found the film reel. You might have noticed that the fuse connects to two bulkhead doors, but the first time, much earlier in the game, you only unlocked one door by solving this. We now have to enter a new combination of fuses with this new one included, Spade-Star-Diamond-Heart, and you will get the notification that the leftmost bulkhead is now open, head through, and you will enter Stage 5, which is themed like a treasure hunt.
Here, inside the cave on the rightmost side of the front of the stage, is a chest that features three circular sockets. The goal here is to explore this area and find three different colored gems to unlock this chest.
- The first of these gems, the blue one, is fairly easy to find, sitting on a barrel next to the chest for you to grab.
The second two gems will require you to clear two puppets in the center of the stage, the pathway right outside of the cave you were just in, heading towards the back of the stage.
- One free of threats, the second gen is accessible by a wooden staircase on the left side of the body of water. Heading up top, there is an archway you can pass over, with the red gem being in the handle of a sword sticking out of the ground.
- Double back from the second gem and then run alongside the body of water on the right side, which leads to a small pathway where you will find the final, green gem.
Once you have found all the gems, return to the chest and insert them into it. To the best of my knowledge, it does not matter in what order you insert them. This will open the chest. And what was your reward for completing this task, you may ask? A new, powerful Gatling gun known as the Conclusion. This weapon works differently from the others; instead of collecting ammo in the world to use it, it starts with 999 ammo, decreasing every time you use it. While that might seem like a disadvantage in some regards, when I found it was the only weapon I used past then, and I still had ammo left over when the credits rolled.
If you’re looking for more My Friendly Neighborhood, check out our review here. You can also check out our guide for getting the diamond key. Remember to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Bluesky to keep up to date on everything we have going on!
