OFF: Zone 2 Guide

OFF’s areas tend to evolve into more complex and less explained puzzles as they go on, and that becomes pretty evident by the second area, which has a ton of puzzles that can leave you stumped for a long while.

Area 2 features a strange, rotating library, a park full of some wacky ass shenanigans, and a town that seems to really not want you anywhere near it, alongside a bunch of literature to scroll through.

All of these can be pretty tricky to wrap your head around unless you vigorously write everything down and interact with every object you can find, so that’s what I’m here to help with.

I’ll be guiding you through each major section of Area 2, through the multiple library visits, several segmented off locations, and all the books that you’re supposed to be taking note of.

The Library

Area 2’s weird layout is slightly simpler once you realize that going up or to the left around the library just takes you to a different side of the same building, and heading down from there will take you to a different section of the area each time.

For example, you can move through the areas until you see two arrows pointing up, then head down, which will take you north to the shopping mall, where you can meet up with Zacharie and buy some items.

Nevertheless, start by going to the left side of the library, then buy from the man who will sell you a page you’ll need later. Then, entering the library, and heading south, to talk to the receptionist at the desk, who will tell you about the third floor.

Head up the stairs, and you’ll notice all the bookshelves with real books have a light blue base underneath them. I’d recommend inspecting each of these and screenshotting the titles and books they contain or just writing down the info.

Most of it isn’t important, but the directions can be useful, and the titles will come in handy to know later, as well as just having some nice lore to indulge yourself in, and make the end of the area far cooler.

Head further upstairs, and you’ll note four bookshelves with readable pages, all of them having a faint imprint of a playing card on the back. You can also find three pages in this room, all containing playing cards as well.

Naturally, match each page to the book with the matching playing card symbol, and once you’ve gotten everything matched up, a noise will play confirming you got it right. There are also two chests in this room, obscured by bookcases.

Talk to the receptionist, go up, and have a fight with a cat, then head back down south to talk with the Judge, who will tell you to head back to the shopping mall up north, which now lets you explore properly.

This place is a maze, and an absolute headache to navigate. Plus, all the posters on the wall have neat flavor text that typically makes it take even longer, so prepare with a ton of healing items, you’ll be here a long while.

You can head to the right and down immediately to get a free Fortune Ticket, then head back up and go to the left this time. You should come across a door that leads to a yellow save point, and this is where things open up significantly.

You’ll need to wander quite a bit, so keep the save point room in your mind as a point of reference. From that room, head up, right, and keep heading up till you get stopped, then check all the rooms above you, where you’ll find the Judge.

He’ll tell you about his brother, Valerie, and entering the door to the left will let you call a Pedalo, which will appear outside once you’ve left. There are plenty of optional items in the maze, but none of them are all too worth the headache, in my opinion.

The Park

Head around the library and go due West, where you’ll find the Pedalo waiting for you, ready to take you to the park. This area is a quick diversion, and you only really need to visit each room for a brief moment.

The West room lets you ride a rollercoaster for a fun picture, but you’ll need to hit a switch in the East room, which has a Pedalo puzzle, making you ride across the motors that can be solved by taking the thinnest lines until you’re at the top of the room, where things get a bit tricky.

Get in the middle of all the motors here, then take the motor directly above you, then carefully navigate around all the motors to get up to the left, with a switch that you can flick OFF.

Once that’s done, go back through the room, back to the top, where the motors should put you in a prime spot to head down and grab the last item from this room, which can be obtained by popping the balloon.

Once you flick that switch, you can access the gate in the west room, where you can climb up the stairs, push the statue of Zacharie onto the front seat of the coaster, and take a ride with him for a fun picture.

Finally, head to the north room, where you can play a balloon game, which is solved by popping just enough that your opponent is left with exactly one balloon, and that’s easiest to do by popping two, then one, then making sure you can’t be left with four balloons.

This leads to an enemy encounter with the guy you were playing against, and after you beat him to death, you can steal his tie. This grants you access to the secluded town to the east of the library.

Before that, head back over to the start of the Pedalo room, and speak to the man blocking the south entrance, who will see your picture with Zacharie and grant you access to a room with a bunch of permanent stat increases.

The Town

Now, heading to the east, equip the tie you got earlier and talk to the man guarding the blockade. You’ll see the weird cat spouting nonsense, then summoning a ton of ghosts that you need to kill under a very generous time limit.

A couple of them are inside houses, but otherwise, this shouldn’t be too tricky, due to the fact the timer isn’t counting down during combat. This will have you getting kicked out, with the Judge asking you for help with Japhet.

Make sure you heal up and grab a few items from the shop, as this fight isn’t terribly easy. Speak to the receptionist again when you’re ready, and he’ll unlock the roof for you.

The Roof

The climb up can be pretty cumbersome, with several enemy encounters along the way, but I’d recommend doing your best not to use any of your valuable items for these encounters, as a save point is provided later.

Along the way, there are several books with very bold page numbers you need to take note of. The first has the numbers “1, 4”, the second has “2, 9”, the third “3, 9”, and the fourth has “4, 7”, with the fifth having “5, 1”, then “6, 6”, “7, 4”, and finally “8, 0”

You can probably already guess, but just like the first number puzzle in the area, the first number indicates the order, and the second indicates the number you need to input, making the code “49971640”.

Go and input this code on blocks in the keypad formation at the top, unlocking the way up to fight Japhet. Get stocked up on items, and get ready to deal as much damage as possible, because he possessed Valerie and hates our guts.

The first phase is rather easy. Just beat up the cat until the bird fully reveals itself, as he can’t fight back super well until then. Once the music changes, Japhet’s attacks get stronger, he gets very tanky, and will frequently silence you.

If you’re super reliant on competences, you should have Omega cure this status asap, but you can usually manage to scrape by this fight with the debuff on, so don’t be afraid to tough it out and spam attacks.

The other status effects, such as Poison, aren’t nearly as debilitating, but if you find them to be causing you a ton of trouble, go ahead and use Belial’s Meat to cure yourself. Keep the Batter alive, and get right back into battling.

Once the fight is over, the zone is purified. Like with Zone 1, you can head right back in to explore this purified zone, but the enemies here are very tanky and hit pretty hard, so I’d only recommend it once you’re in the endgame.