The Salt Storage Room in the Fish Market hides behind a wooden panel with 16 buttons, each stamped with a Roman numeral. Pressing them at random gets you nowhere, and the puzzle sits in the Cutting Area where it is easy to walk past on your way back to Ma Fishface. You only need four of those numerals in the right order.
Quick answer: Enter I – IV – IX – XVI (1-4-9-16) on the panel and validate it. The door unlocks immediately.
How to open the Salt Storage Room
The four buttons you need spell out the perfect squares between 1 and 16. Only 1, 4, 9, and 16 fit that pattern, which is why the solution reads I, IV, IX, XVI from first to last.
| Order | Roman numeral | Number |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | I | 1 |
| 2nd | IV | 4 |
| 3rd | IX | 9 |
| 4th | XVI | 16 |
Once the panel accepts the sequence, the wooden door swings open. If nothing happens, double-check that you pressed IV rather than VI, and IX rather than XI, since those pairs are easy to confuse on the grid.
What’s inside the room
The storage room holds a small stash worth the detour, including a weapon mod and an item tied to another lock on the same floor.
- A Dolorocide Pill in a locker.
- A Grenade Launcher modification that raises damage when a grenade hits several targets at once.
- A clue note that feeds directly into the safe in the Locker Room on the same floor.
Note: the note you grab here pairs with a second clue in the Locker Room. Connecting the two in the investigation menu reveals that the safe there opens with the code 1-4-9-6.
How to collect the hidden Dream Essence
There is also a Dream Essence in this room, but it is not lying out in the open. It sits inside a green crystallized human body on the floor, and you have to break the body to reach it.
Crushing the body counts toward the “The Damned” achievement, which asks you to investigate the sixteen punishments and then break the Dream Essence body. Be aware that stomping the corpse will hurt Faye’s feelings a little.
Where the code comes from
Three pieces of evidence relate to this door, and two of them are enough to work out the answer on your own. The first is in the Pub on the second floor, on a wall board holding 16 plates. Interact with it to collect the file, known as the sixteen punishments of the sailor.
The second note sits on a narrow table against the wall, right beside the staircase that leads up to Ma Fishface’s room. The end of this note lists four phrases that map onto four of the entries in the first file. Match them, read off the number tied to each phrase, and you get the sequence for the panel.
The third piece of evidence points to a simpler shortcut. It tells you to focus on square numbers, and since 1, 4, 9, and 16 are the only perfect squares between 1 and 16, those become your four inputs. Either route lands on the same solution, so you can enter I-IV-IX-XVI without hunting down every note first.
