Silver Key
Silver Keys are special items in Blue Prince. Considered to be special keys, they are used to unlock doors in the same manner as regular keys except that the resulting draft generally consists of floorplans which all have at least three doorways.
How to obtain
This item can be found in the following locations.
[Found Floorplan: Mechanarium]
This item can be purchased from the following shops.
- Locksmith — 8
This item can also be obtained from the following sources.
- Trunks
- Dig spots, rarely
- The Dartboard Puzzle in the Billiard Room
- Packages from the Mail Room
- [Satellite Dish Spoiler] The "gain 1 random item" experimental effect
- [Major Constellation: Spiral of Stars] The random item effect from the Spiral of Stars, before the word "showroom" is added
Silver Keys can be guaranteed to spawn in the following ways.
- [Freezer Spoiler] The Freezer always contains a frozen Prism Key in the cooler. If it is thawed with an ignition tool while the Prism Key is unavailable, a Silver Key spawns instead.
[Upgrade Spoiler: Cloister] Drafting the Bunk Room from the Cloister of Mila will always cause it to contain two Silver Keys if one is available to spawn. See Cloister of Mila for more information.
Usage
While one or more Silver Keys are held, it will appear as an option in the special key menu when trying to open a locked door. Selecting it will consume a Silver Key to unlock the door, saving the use of a basic key. Using a Silver Key this way returns it to the item pool, allowing it to be obtained again in the same day.
The resulting draft after using a Silver Key does not follow the usual drafting rules. The floorplans drawn will always be 4-way or T-shape rooms if possible; if not enough are available, then the game will resort to drawing straight and L-shape rooms. It is usually impossible to draw a Dead End floorplan while using the Silver Key outside of extreme circumstances, though "Dead End" rooms which actually have more doorways such as the Secret Passage may still be drawn when applicable.
Silver Keys still respect the usual drafting restrictions based on position within the house. A Silver Key used on an edge tile will generally only draw T-shape rooms, and a Silver Key used in a corner will generally only draw L-shape rooms. They will also try to avoid drawing special floorplans in the first slot; if only special floorplans remain, then floorplans with fewer doors are drawn in the first slot instead.
If multiple Silver Keys are held, only one will appear in the special keys menu but only one is consumed on use, allowing them both to be used as normal.
Special key warping
Ordinarily, the Silver Key's effect applies immediately after it is used. However some doors, such as the side doors in the Great Hall, may be unlocked by the Silver Key with no following draft.
In these cases, the Silver Key's effect is not lost, but will apply to the next draft initiated anywhere in the house. This may be used to draft rooms with many doors from any drafting door, regardless of whether or not it is locked. This even includes security doors, though not Outer Room doors which do not use the usual drafting process.
Details
Beyond the Estate
This section contains datamined information about exact details of what rooms get drawn. It may contain spoilers for various stages of the game.
This section expects understanding of the different draft pools. See Drafting/Advanced#Draft Pools for info about them. The differences between Common and Rare of the free/gem group do not matter for this case, so the Free List is the combination of the Common Free and Rare Free draft pools, and the Gem List is the combination of the Common Gem and Rare Gem draft pools at the current location. The All List combines both of these lists together. (This drafting method uses the lists directly, so duplicates in different pools are actually treated as duplicates when combined into lists, and rooms currently being blocked from drafting can still appear.)
When using a Silver Key, the normal drafting algorithm is not used, except when doing a "Regular" draw is specified, in which case it is used and everything else in this section is disregarded for that draw. The Silver Key uses special lists for its logic:
- The 4-way list includes all 4-way rooms, including Chamber of Mirrors.
- The 3-way list includes all T-shaped rooms and Locker Room, except The Foundation.
- The 2-way list includes all Straight (including Secret Passage) and L-shaped rooms, and excludes the following rooms:
All three slots roll for a room in sequence. Each slot performs successive attempts to draw a room until one of the draws is successful. The default set of attempts is to take the floorplans in a given list filtered to the 3-way and 4-way lists combined; if there are none, it tries the 2-way list; if there are none, it does a regular free draw, no matter which list was used.
Slots roll in order from left to right. A draw attempt will only fail and move onto the next attempt if there are no floorplans in the free/gem/all list that are a room in the respective silver key list; otherwise, it draws uniformly at random. If a draw is a duplicate of a room drawn in a previous slot, the drawn floorplan is discarded (until this slot is chosen) and it tries again.
- If, after the room is discarded from the list, there are no floorplans remaining for the next attempt, a regular free draw is performed instead.
- If three attempts are attempted and are all a duplicate, a regular gem draw is performed instead of trying again.
Each slot's draw does things slightly differently:
- Slot 1 uses the Free List, working as normal.
- Slot 2 uses the All List if you have 4
or more. Otherwise, it uses the Free List. - Slot 3:
- There is a 40% chance to first do two draw attempts with the Gem List; first it tries the 4-way list, then the 3-way list.
- If either the chance or both attempts failed, it uses the All List as normal.
Once all three slots are chosen, validation occurs based on the last slot that had normal drafting occur, as usual when performing drafting. If normal drafting did not occur for any slot, no validation occurs.
Notes:
- This algorithm implies that you cannot access the 2-way Silver Key list (such as to access a floorplan such as Trophy Room or Gallery before it would normally become available) unless there are no 3-way or 4-way rooms available in the current location's draft pool
- Rarity, rank, etc. has no effect from Silver Key drafts unless the normal drafting algorithm is used, after which the odds from a normal draft apply instead.
Interactions
- The Locker Room seems to be the only room with two doorways that may be drawn by a Silver Key without needing to deplete the 4-way and T-shape rooms first, possibly because of its many locker doors. Drafting the Pool is still required to draw it.
- The Silver Key's effect overrides the effect of the Library and can be used to draft rooms that are ordinarily impossible to find from the Library, such as the Hallway or Courtyard.
- The Silver Key's effect is overridden by the effects of the Secret Passage and Prism Key.
- [Upgrade Spoiler: Nook] The Library is still always drawn while drafting in the Reading Nook, even if the Silver Key is used there.
- [Upgrade Spoiler: Cloister] The Silver Key's effect overrides the effect of the Cloister of Draxus, allowing rooms with multiple exits to be drawn instead of Dead Ends.
Spoilers Within
This section contains spoilers for post Room 46.
The Silver Key is able to bypass the unique restrictions of certain floorplans and draft them earlier than what may be intended.
- Ordinarily, the Gallery can only be drafted after reaching either Room 46 or Day 46. However it is possible to draft it using a Silver Key without meeting either of these criteria by depleting all 4-way and T-shape rooms from the draft pool before using it, or by depleting T-shape rooms and using it along an edge tile.
- Similarly, the Trophy Room can't usually be drafted until collecting certain trophies, but it can still be drawn while using the Silver Key in a corner.