Pentiment: How To Solve Ferenc's Cipher (Like A Record Baby Achievement)

Andreas will need to gather some clues before he can decipher Ferenc's note in Pentiment.

Pentiment mixes murder mystery with a choices game, where players’ decisions in Andreas’ action will affect the future narrative and the life of surrounding people. The game will start with an artist called Andreas working in the Scriptorium while working on his masterpiece. Later on, the artist will meet a Baron, a noble with an unpleasant history among the town folk.

Eventually, the Baron ends up getting murdered. The prime suspect in the case is Andreas’ mentor, which the artist could not accept. To help figure out the true murderer, players will have to bring Andreas around the town to investigate, but it’ll soon show that conducting a perfect investigation can be quite hard as there are many people Andreas needs to convince.

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To solve Ferenc's cipher and get the Like a Record Baby achievement in Pentiment, players must follow these steps:

After Ferenc suspiciously rushes a note on a book in Scriptorium, investigate his writing.

Next, go to the Crypt and enter the Library in Pentiment. Read the Zodiac Book on the upper floor.

Once Andreas obtains Ferenc's cipher and the Zodiac note, go to the Prior's House and use the disk to decipher Ferenc's note in Pentiment.

To decipher Ferenc's note, follow these steps:

Once Ferenc's note is deciphered, Andreas will get the secret message, higerhard. Players that own the Logician trait will immediately know what this means, but those who don't will have to figure out that the code is a name and an abbreviation.

Higerhard stands for Hic iacet Gerhard, which means Here lies Gerhard. Andreas figured that there may be a piece of evidence hidden in Brother Gerhard's grave, buried by Ferenc for a reason. Next, players need to find a way to dig up Gerhard's grave. Unfortunately, this can only be done by either convincing Father Gernot or playing criminal by digging without permission.

If this is the players’ first time in the Prior's House, then they should also check the desk and the fireplace. The desk will include a letter from Ferenc for the Baron (the same letter Andreas can find in the Abbey's Guest House), while the fireplace contains a burned note that's similar to the one found on the Baron's body.

Pentiment is available now for PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.

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Nahda is an enthusiastic writer with a love for games who one day decides to put the two together. She's now professionally writing niche articles about Genshin Impact.