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Neverness to Everness · Level V Puzzle Anomaly · Illusion Town

Lonely Player — Wandering Puppets

The hardest puzzle commission in the game — zero combat, ten puppets to invite, three prerequisite sidequests, and a night-only side-wall entry into Clement Academy. This guide walks every phase, every melody and every puppet location.

Overview

Commission nameLonely Player
Anomaly entityWandering Puppets (Object class)
RegionIllusion Town — Clement Academy on Fiscus Avenue
Time windowNight only (20:00 → 06:00 in-game)
TypePuzzle / exploration — no combat boss
Difficulty★★★★★ Level V — hardest puzzle commission in the game
Puppets to invite10 across 9 staged phases
Arc rewardNone — puzzle anomaly, no Arc payout

TL;DR — 5 Steps

  1. Wait for nightThe academy gates are closed during the day. Sleep at a property or wait at a bench until the clock rolls past 20:00.
  2. Use the side-wall entryDo NOT walk through the front gate — you get auto-expelled. Run along the right perimeter wall and jump onto the electrical equipment box to vault in.
  3. Finish the 3 prerequisite sidequests firstEmpathy Eye Drops, Cheese the Camera and befriending Peepy are all required to clear specific puppet phases. Doing them mid-anomaly is painful.
  4. Invite all 10 puppets in orderTrack puppet → basketball court → garden → gymnasium (5 hidden) → hallway → piano room → cups game → classroom chain (4 connected) → microphone stage.
  5. Tap the microphone to endThe seated puppet at the final stage completes the commission. The other puppets vanish on stage interact — that's the win condition.

Getting Into Clement Academy

Two non-obvious gates protect this anomaly: nighttime only (20:00 → 06:00) and side-wall entry. The front gate is a hard fail-state at any time of day — the security NPC removes you from the property and disables the anomaly trigger for the current night cycle.

  1. Wait until in-game time crosses 20:00. The academy front gate stays sealed until then; trying to enter before resets you to the street.
  2. Fast-travel to the closest Illusion Town point — the Clement Academy front gate is on Fiscus Avenue.
  3. Approach the gate, then turn right and follow the perimeter wall along the side of the school.
  4. Watch the wall for an electrical equipment box (junction box / utility cabinet style). It's the only climbable surface along that stretch.
  5. Jump onto the box, then onto the wall, then drop down into the courtyard. You're now inside Clement Academy at night.
  6. If you somehow walk through the front gate during the day, the commission cancels and you start over the following night.

Mandatory Prerequisites

The three sidequests below directly unlock specific puppet phases. Skipping them does not block the commission start, but it blocks completion at Phase 4, Phase 5 and Phase 7 respectively. Do all three during a daytime cycle before entering the academy at night.

Empathy Eye Drops

Reveals the 5 hidden puppets in the gymnasium (Phase 4).

Recover a missing diary for a girl NPC during the daytime. Returning the diary gives you the eye drops — hold the interact button (T / L1) to deploy them.

Cheese the Camera

Reveals the running puppet fragments in the hallway (Phase 5).

Complete the 4-step Occult Club Student sidequest. The student is only available during the day, so plan a day-cycle around it before attempting the anomaly at night.

Befriend Peepy

Provides the pointer hint for the cups shell game (Phase 7).

5-step sidequest involving cracks on academy walls. Without Peepy's pointer, the final round of the cups game is effectively unsolvable — too many cups, no tells.

All 9 Phases — 10 Puppets to Invite

Running Puppet

Track oval

Race the puppet along the running track while keeping it in your field of view.

  1. Interact with the kneeling puppet at the start of the oval to launch the race.
  2. Follow the on-ground arrows that appear in front of the puppet — they mark the live path.
  3. Avoid the obstacles that pop up on the track; getting hit slows you and the puppet outruns you.
  4. Stay close enough that the puppet is always visible — losing sight resets the chase.
  5. Cross the finish line and invite the puppet.

Court Puppet

Basketball courts

It teleports — let it lift you, then meet it in the middle.

  1. Approach the puppet near the courts. It will levitate your character briefly and then teleport.
  2. Run to the strip of ground between the two courts where it reappears.
  3. Wait for the puppet to materialise beside you, then interact to invite it.

Garden Puppet

Garden

Audio cue: track footsteps with your camera angle low.

  1. Enter the garden area. The puppet vanishes immediately on sight.
  2. Slow down, point the camera at the ground and listen for footsteps — they fade in direction-of-arrival.
  3. Walk toward the source. The puppet will eventually re-appear walking toward you.
  4. Invite as soon as it is in range.

5 hidden puppets

Gymnasium

Use Empathy Eye Drops to reveal them, then invite the final one.

  1. Attack the closed gymnasium doorway to unlock entry.
  2. Hold the interact button (T / L1) to deploy Empathy Eye Drops once inside.
  3. Find puppet #1 near the volleyball/badminton net by the entrance.
  4. Find puppet #2 facing the green door on the side wall.
  5. Climb the ladder at the side of the gym and walk to its end for puppet #3.
  6. Walk on stage, slightly left of centre, for puppet #4.
  7. Return near the entrance — puppet #5 is standing there. Invite the final one to complete the room.

Hallway Puppet

Hallway

Use Cheese the Camera to capture the running puppet.

  1. Approach the static puppet in the hallway. It breaks into pieces on first contact — this is scripted.
  2. Equip Cheese the Camera and trigger one shot down the hallway.
  3. The reformed puppet briefly appears running down the corridor.
  4. Invite it immediately — Cheese the Camera has limited uses.

Piano Puppet

Piano room — 3rd floor, first room on the left

Play three melodies using the numbered piano keys.

  1. Walk clockwise around the central pillar to locate the puppet seated at the piano.
  2. The keys are numbered 1–10 on the interface — they map to the white keys left to right.
  3. Melody 1 — sequence: 4, 10, 8, 6, 1, 10, 7, 5. Press OK to validate.
  4. Melody 2 — sequence: 1, 5, 10, 9, 10, 5, 10, 5, 1, 5, 10, 9, 10, 5, 10, 5. Press OK. (Note: some players have reported this sequence might be slightly off in current builds — if it fails, listen to the in-game playback and adjust the middle 10/5 cluster.)
  5. Melody 3 — sequence: 8, 7, 5, 7, 8, 7, 5, 8, 7, 5. Press OK.
  6. Invite the puppet once all three melodies are accepted.

Cups Puppet

3rd floor, separate building

Shell game — three rounds, escalating cup counts.

  1. Interact with the puppet to start the cups game.
  2. Round 1 and Round 2 are tractable visually if you watch the shuffle slowly.
  3. Round 3 introduces many more cups and effectively requires the Peepy hint hand to point at the correct cup.
  4. Without the Peepy prerequisite this phase is a guessing game and resets on failure.
  5. Clear all three rounds to invite the puppet.

4 classroom puppets + final

Classroom chain — 4 connected rooms

One puppet per room. Last room hides one behind a destructible vase.

  1. Room 1 — interact with the small puppet sitting in the centre of the room.
  2. Room 2 — search the cabinet on the right side, the puppet is inside.
  3. Room 3 — open the locker in the far-right corner; the puppet is inside.
  4. Room 4 — destroy the vase on the back cabinet to reveal a puppet, then invite it.
  5. A final puppet spawns in the connecting hallway — invite to exit the chain.

Microphone Puppet (final)

Microphone stage — building right of the gymnasium

Tap the mic, watch the others vanish, invite the seated puppet to complete.

  1. Enter the building right of the gymnasium and approach the stage.
  2. Interact with the standing microphone on stage. The other puppets in the room vanish on cue — this is the scripted finale.
  3. Walk down from the stage and find the seated puppet in the audience.
  4. Invite it. The anomaly resolves and the commission rewards are pushed to your inbox.

Rewards

Hunter EXP450
Annulith60
Beetle Coin10,000
Fons20,000
U-00NE40
Anomaly Material Selection Box I6
ArcNone — Lonely Player does not reward an Arc weapon

Pro Tips & Common Pitfalls

  • Run the three prerequisite sidequests during a full daytime cycle before attempting the anomaly at night. Mixing them in mid-anomaly forces you to leave the academy and re-trigger the night entry repeatedly.
  • The side-wall electrical-box entry is non-obvious — the navmesh autopath will try to walk you to the front gate, which fails. Trust the perimeter wall route.
  • The garden phase is purely an audio test. If your sound is muted or low, this phase becomes guesswork — turn the music down and the SFX up before you start.
  • The piano melody sequences are the most error-prone step in this guide. If the puppet doesn't accept a melody on first try, listen to the in-game playback before re-entering numbers — the visual key positions sometimes differ from the numeric mapping.
  • Cheese the Camera has limited charges. Save it strictly for Phase 5 — wasting shots elsewhere means resetting the Occult Club sidequest.
  • If you fail the cups game round 3 without Peepy's hint, the puppet does not reset its position — you can leave, complete the Peepy sidequest, and return to retry without re-doing earlier phases.
  • There is no Arc reward, but the 20,000 Fons + 6 Anomaly Material Selection Boxes make this one of the most efficient Fons-per-hour anomalies if you have the prerequisites done.

Video Guides

Community videos for the Wandering Puppets anomaly. Best paired with the written walkthrough — the piano sequences and the cups game are far easier to follow watching someone solve them live.

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