Mountain (Walkthrough)

The Mountain is a puzzle area in The Witness.

MAJOR SPOILER WARNING!

The images and text on this page contain SERIOUS late-game spoilers for The End of The Witness. If you don't want the ending of The Witness spoiled, exit this page now.

You've been warned!

The End - Hints
The End of The Witness combines everything you've learned up until this point and will essentially test the limits of your knowledge and resolve. Make sure you're extremely well-versed in all the puzzle rules and the different ways they interact before proceeding.

THIS IS YOUR FINAL SPOILER WARNING!

Opening the Mountain
Once you've opened the box, the floor will light up, revealing... another puzzle!



There are three latches you need to unlock to gain access to the stairway below the statues, each attached to a specific end point. You need to stand at very specific angles to successfully draw the correct paths.



Your position has to be pixel perfect. If you can't the line to draw around the statues, just keep trying. Once all three latches are open, you can proceed down the stairs into the mountain.

Top Layer
The first thing you need to do once you're inside the mountain proper is go up the white staircase to the control panel. With this, you can draw a physical path across the large gap at the center of the room, but you'll need to get around the pile of discarded objects in the middle.



This path will let you walk between a gap in the trash pile and back out the other side.

There are three blue panel puzzles inside the room across the gap, each with some type of obstruction in front of it. You'll need to take advantage of positioning and perspective to clear the correct path for yourself.



This first panel requires you to start drawing at the top right.



This angle is the only way you can draw a line that makes this puzzle solvable.



For this last one, you'll need to start the line at the top right. Solving all three of these panels activates a blue wire, which is one of four required to open a door outside.



Two wires attached to this door connect to the sequences of burnt out panels on the left and right sides of the room, while another is strung up to the ceiling and down through the middle of the room. Follow this wire specifically to find a purple panel nestled among the trash.



Solving this panel activates a second one also hidden among the clutter.



Solving this panel activates the purple wire attached to the door. From here, you need to solve the puzzles on the left and right sides of the room.

These are tough to complete from afar, so to make it easier on your eyes, go back to the starting room with the control panel and reconfigure the path like so:



You'll only be able to access the right side of the room from here, the side with the light green panels, but that's okay. Head downstairs.



These panels all have their monitors broken in some way, creating visual obstructions that make smaller symbols on the grid harder to see. They also make the path you draw harder to see unless you're up close, so to make the solutions clearer, the paths are drawn over with red lines.

Solving this sequences activates the light green wire going into the door. Now head back to the control panel and redraw the path so we can access the left side:



Again, you won't be able to access the door this way once we finish up with the orange panels, but that's okay for now. Head downstairs.



All the monitors in this sequence are warped and affect the way you interact with the panels. Some of them are only tilted slightly, while others will speed up and slow down depending on the direction you're drawing in. Some will even spin out of control. Take this part slow and trace the line one square at a time so you don't make a mistake and need to start over.

An important thing to remember here is that even if the panel's entry point is somewhere at the center of the screen, you still want to click at the bottom left where the entry point would be if the monitors weren't broken.

Once this sequence is solved, head back to the control panel and draw a new path connecting the room you're in to the door you just activated.



Cross over to the room, descend the two stairwells, and enter the middle layer of the mountain.

Middle Layer
The first thing you'll see when you enter this next layer of the mountain is a row of extremely broken color panels.



Solving this sequence activates a pink wire, which drops down a set of stairs to your right. Climb up to the top and gain access to the control panel for this layer's bridge-drawing machine.



Use this bridge to cross to the other side and encounter a new set of puzzles.



This is a really cleverly designed sequence. With each panel you solve, you have to continually build new solutions that are capable of solving the current panel and all the previous ones. By the end, there is one single solution that single-handedly solves all the puzzles in the set.

Find the answer below.



Up the stairs from this room, you'll find another control panel that lets you draw a second bridge, this one orange. With the current route of our blue light bridge it's impossible to draw anything with the orange, so go back down the stairs and return to the other side of the room to the first control panel.

This next challenge requires you to go back and forth between the two control panels, drawing new paths of blue and orange bridges until you can successfully solve the puzzle on the panels and reach the newly activated door.



Draw this line from the blue control panel, then return to the orange.



Draw this line from the orange control panel, then return to the blue.



Draw this line from the blue control panel, then return to the orange.



Draw this line from the orange control panel, then return to the blue.



Draw this line from the blue control panel, then proceed through the door. Activate the elevator and take it down to the ground floor of the mountain.

Ground Floor
Once you exit the elevator on the ground floor, you'll see a locked glass door blocking off a tunnel at the back of a large, empty room. Sections of the floor eventually light up, revealing puzzles for you to solve. (Surprise!)

Here are the solutions starting from bottom left:



Top left:



Top right:



Bottom right:



As you can see, once you solve the last puzzle in the set, the floor lights up blue, turning the whole room into a grid. These individual puzzles now exist as "symbols" inside the larger room-sized grid and function the same way as Tetris blocks do. Not hard enough? It's also a symmetry puzzle.

Luckily, if you follow the solutions above, you've already built the shapes needed to solve the larger puzzle. Find the solution below.



After you finish this room, the sliding door unlocks, giving you access to a tunnel. Go inside.



Up ahead, beyond the statue of a person solving a puzzle (relatable), you'll encounter another locked door. Stepping on the floor panel in front of it reveals two puzzles, both required to to unlock the door.

Unfortunately for this walkthrough, the puzzles are on a very short timer and generate randomly every time they reset. If you try to screencap the puzzles and pause the game to solve with pen and paper, the panels reset, giving you a new puzzle.

Now for some good news: completing one puzzle locks that solution in place so you only need to solve one at a time. Just try your best and keep at it. Some of the puzzles seem impossible, at least to finish in only a few seconds, so be patient and wait or one that looks easy.

Once you open the door, proceed to the final section of The Witness.

Final Area


The puzzles in this area are wrapped around columns, making solutions difficult to convey through screenshots because of their three-dimensional nature. Instead, we'll provide directions one step at a time and hope that helps.



This pillar needs you to collect all the black hexagon dots before reaching the end point. From the starting point, you'll need to go:


 * 1) UP (2)
 * 2) LEFT (2)
 * 3) DOWN
 * 4) RIGHT
 * 5) DOWN
 * 6) LEFT (4)
 * 7) UP (2)
 * 8) RIGHT
 * 9) DOWN
 * 10) RIGHT
 * UP



This pillar contains six orange suns you need to separate into three sets of pairs before reaching the end. From the starting point, you'll need to go:


 * 1) RIGHT (3)
 * UP
 * 1) LEFT
 * UP
 * 1) RIGHT
 * UP
 * 1) RIGHT
 * 2) DOWN (3)
 * 3) RIGHT
 * UP
 * 1) RIGHT
 * 2) UP (2)



This pillar needs you to separate black and white squares. From the starting point, you'll need to go:


 * UP
 * 1) LEFT (4)
 * 2) DOWN
 * 3) LEFT
 * 4) UP (3)
 * 5) RIGHT
 * 6) DOWN
 * 7) RIGHT
 * UP
 * 1) RIGHT
 * 2) DOWN
 * 3) RIGHT
 * 4) RIGHT
 * UP



This pillar requires you to grab three black hexagon dots while keeping the two orange suns together as a pair. From the starting point, you'll need to go...


 * 1) RIGHT
 * 2) UP (2)
 * 3) RIGHT
 * 4) DOWN (2)
 * 5) RIGHT
 * 6) UP (2)
 * 7) RIGHT (2)
 * 8) DOWN
 * 9) RIGHT
 * UP



This pillar just needs you to build two Tetris-block shapes. From the starting point, you'll need to go:


 * UP
 * 1) LEFT
 * 2) UP (2)
 * 3) LEFT
 * 4) DOWN (3)
 * 5) LEFT
 * 6) UP (5)
 * 7) LEFT
 * 8) DOWN
 * 9) LEFT
 * 10) DOWN (2)
 * 11) LEFT
 * 12) UP (3)



This pillar needs you to intersect with every corner to collect all the black hexagon dots. From the left-most starting point, you'll need to go:


 * 1) LEFT
 * UP
 * 1) LEFT
 * 2) DOWN
 * 3) LEFT (2)
 * UP
 * 1) RIGHT
 * UP
 * 1) RIGHT
 * UP
 * 1) RIGHT
 * 2) DOWN
 * 3) RIGHT
 * 4) DOWN
 * 5) RIGHT
 * UP
 * 1) RIGHT
 * UP
 * 1) RIGHT
 * UP
 * 1) LEFT (2)
 * 2) DOWN
 * 3) LEFT
 * UP
 * 1) LEFT (2)
 * UP



This pillar has two starting points because it's a symmetry puzzle that generates a second line to mirror your own. From the starting point on the bottom of the grid, you'll need to go:


 * 1) UP (2)
 * 2) LEFT
 * 3) UP (2)
 * 4) RIGHT
 * 5) DOWN
 * 6) RIGHT
 * UP
 * 1) RIGHT
 * UP
 * 1) LEFT (2)
 * UP



This pillar needs you to collect a few black hexagon dots. Start at the entry point that looks like this and go:


 * 1) RIGHT (2)
 * UP
 * 1) RIGHT (2)
 * UP
 * 1) RIGHT
 * UP
 * 1) RIGHT
 * UP
 * 1) RIGHT (2)
 * UP
 * 1) RIGHT
 * UP



Once you've completed all the pillars, step into the elevator up ahead and close the doors with the lines at the top.



Finally, turn around and complete the simple lines on the other side to trigger the ending sequence of The Witness.