Where to Find the Mandate Encampment Outer Gate Key in Phantom Blade Zero

Quick answer: The key is not at the Mandate Encampment. It lies on the floor of a jar cellar in Pangzhen’s backstreet, just below the Well of Wei Sanchuan bell, next to a blue memory flower.

What the Mandate Encampment Outer Gate Key does

The key is a Story Item. Its card reads “A roughly forged iron spare key. The plain, rigid design suggests it was made in haste.” and “Opens the outer gate of the mountain road leading to the Mandate’s encampment.”

The other Pangzhen and Mandate Encampment keys are in the full keys list, with the nearest bell for each.

Mandate Encampment Outer Gate Key story item card in Phantom Blade Zero

It belongs to the Pillars of Kunlun quest. The gate it opens is the locked gate on the mountain road to the Mandate Encampment, about 9 m from the Mandate Encampment Outer Gate bell. Without the key that gate stays shut, and with it the way into the encampment opens. This is a different key from the Deep in the Valley outer gate, and the quest list covers the other quests.

Where the Outer Gate Key is

The key is in Pangzhen’s backstreet, the part of town the story opens up after Town of Death. The nearest bell is the Well of Wei Sanchuan, a wooden cross with candles in a rocky hollow. On the Pangzhen map it sits right beside the Pond of Fading Song bell.

Pangzhen map with the Well of Wei Sanchuan bell beside the Pond of Fading Song in Phantom Blade Zero

Ring the bell and rest before going for the key, since it becomes your respawn point for the cellar. Its menu offers Traverse, Upgrade Equipment, Store, Train Abilities, Save and Leave. All the Pangzhen bells are listed in the bells guide.

How to reach the key from the Well of Wei Sanchuan bell

The route from the bell is short and entirely on foot. Arrive with full health and full gourds.

Walk away from the cross along the stone floor of the well area. You pass a blood-stained cart with a pickup glint of its own.

Follow the floor into a jar store lined with long rows of sealed clay jars. A green glint on a small table here is a book, “Mystery of Transcension: Notes on the Heart Meridian”.

Mystery of Transcension book card picked up in the jar store near the Well of Wei Sanchuan, Phantom Blade Zero

Leave the jar store through the narrow rock passage between the stone walls.

Narrow rock passage from the jar store toward the key cellar in Pangzhen, Phantom Blade Zero

The passage ends on a wooden platform with red candles on its boards. It looks down into the jar cellar where the key lies.

Wooden platform with red candles above the Outer Gate Key jar cellar, Phantom Blade Zero

Drop off the platform into the cellar. Rows of jars, a cart, a hanging body and debris fill the floor, and the enemies attack as soon as you land.

View down into the jar cellar that holds the Mandate Encampment Outer Gate Key, Phantom Blade Zero

Look for an orange glint on the cellar floor beside the jar rows, with a blue memory flower about 2 m away. Press E to pick up the key.

Orange glint of the Mandate Encampment Outer Gate Key beside a memory flower in the jar cellar, Phantom Blade Zero

To get back out, walk to the end of the cellar where wooden steps climb to a plank wall lined with red candles. Press Space at the prompt to wall-run up onto the candle platform, then take the rock passage and jar store back to the bell.

Space prompt at the plank wall with red candles for the wall-run out of the Outer Gate Key cellar, Phantom Blade Zero

The enemies in the jar cellar

A Heartless Healer leads the group in the cellar. With him are:

A small Vessel
A puppet that is only a lower half
A weaponless female puppet that lies on the floor until it wakes
Weaponless Yang Puppets nearby

On Wayfarer this group can take a full health bar down to almost nothing in about ten seconds, so do not drop in hurt. The Heartless Healer heals: he restores his own health in steady chunks and refills the smaller puppets to full when you turn to them. Stay on him, because damage spent on the puppets while he is up gets undone.

After you pick up the key

The quest banner “PILLARS OF KUNLUN” appears with the new step “Enter the Mandate Encampment”.

Pillars of Kunlun quest banner reading Enter the Mandate Encampment after picking up the key, Phantom Blade Zero

The memory flower beside the key gives the petal “Memory Flower: The Search”, part II, “Together” (1 of 2), which counts toward the +5% HP for completing the memory. In it, Wei Sanchuan recalls that the lake in Pangzhen was Wanyue’s favourite place and that they meant to see it together. He blames the High Elder for destroying her and turning her into something else, and says he is not afraid of what she has become.