January 27, 2026: This puzzle has been removed from Arc Raiders altogether as part of the Headwinds update, the first part of the Arc Raiders Escalation roadmap. Instead, player can now purchase Acoustic Guitars from the trader Shani for 70 Cred, or Shakers for 40 Cred.
The Arc Raiders Guitar puzzle in Buried City, sometimes called the Music Puzzle, is about pressing a bunch of musical tone buttons across the map in precise order. With fifteen different buttons, it's definitely one of the more exhausting processes in Arc Raiders right now, though the unique rewards - Shakers and Acoustic Guitars - have some players intrigued nonetheless. If you want to know how to complete the Guitar puzzle and find all the button locations in order, I'll explain what you need to know.
How to complete the Guitar and secret button puzzle in Buried City
The locked door in Buried City near the Red Tower is the objective of the musical button puzzle, with several Acoustic Guitars and other rewards inside. To open it, you need to press 15 buttons across the Buried City map in precise order. The map and list below will lay out exactly where you need to go, and in what order.
- Inside the upstairs Kitchen in the leftmost building of Plaza Rosa.
- From the Galleria roof, zipline down the elevator shaft and head left.
- On the roof of the Warehouse, between two of the vents.
- Inside the newspaper stand stall in Marano Park.
- Behind the couch in the lounge at the top of South Grandioso apartments.
- Outside the second floor window of the pale blue house in Piazza Arbusto.
- Inside a bus to the north of the Library.
- In the red building in Corso da Vinci, fallen down on the ground floor.
- In East Buried Properties, in a ruined building alongside a generator.
- In the lower Hospital stairwell, accessible from the front entrance.
- Underneath the rubble of the collapsed section of the Abandoned Highway.
- On the rooftop of the West Church Ruins, next to a chimney.
- Inside the attic of the Santa Maria building, accessible by zipline or rooftop skylight.
- Inside the small tower below Marano Station and Northwest of Piazza Roma.
- On the ground floor of the building just North of Red Tower, at the base of the stairs. This is also where the locked reward room is!
Once you hit button 15, the locked door in front of you should open, revealing the puzzle rewards: Legendary Acoustic Guitars, Shakers, and more besides. These guitars and shakers don't serve a mechanical function, they're just ways to emote, similar to the existing Recorders that were already in Arc Raiders.
The important thing to know about this puzzle is that all the buttons have to be pressed in order, and if anybody from any team presses them out of order, the entire sequence is reset. This makes it borderline impossible to do without a team or server-wide cooperation, as a random player might press a button halfway through and ruin your progress - without you even knowing. Oof.
Still, credit goes to the Arc Raiders Puzzle Discord server, for being the first known group out there to crack this riddle, basing it on the graffiti of musical notes drawn on the wall near the locked door itself. I personally don't think it's worth the nightmare, but if you want to jam out with friends, I wish you luck.
© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.
