Tanoby Ruins & Unown in FireRed: Open All 7 Chambers
Solve the Tanoby Key boulder puzzle in Sevault Canyon to fill all seven chambers with Unown — and see which chamber holds which of the 28 forms.
Published
The seven Tanoby Chambers are empty until you solve the Tanoby Key, a boulder puzzle hidden in a cave on the western side of Sevault Canyon. Push its seven boulders into the seven craters and the ruins fill with Unown — all 26 letters plus the ! and ? forms, every one of them at level 25, split across the chambers so that each one holds only its own handful of letters.
- Game
- FireRed LeafGreen
- Where
- Tanoby Ruins and Sevault Canyon, Seven Island
- You need
- The Rainbow Pass, Surf, and Strength for the puzzle
- Reward
- All 28 Unown forms, at level 25
Getting to Tanoby Ruins and Sevault Canyon
Both places are on Seven Island, and both are postgame: the Rainbow Pass only reaches Four to Seven Island once Celio has the Ruby from Mt. Ember. From Seven Island the ruins are a Surf south; Sevault Canyon is the route north of town, and you need Strength there long before you need it for the puzzle.
Warning — Do not go chamber-hunting first: Walking into the chambers before the puzzle is solved shows you empty rooms and no Unown at all. Nothing on the ruins hints that the switch is a cave on a different route — solve the Tanoby Key first, then come back.
The Tanoby Key boulder puzzle
The Tanoby Key is a small cave on the western side of Sevault Canyon, halfway up the route. Inside are seven boulders and seven craters, and the room is solved when every crater has a boulder in it. The boulders sit as a row of three across the middle of the room with four more below them; the craters sit around the edge — one at the very top, two just inside the upper corners, and two pairs down the left and right walls.
- Bring Strength and a spare minute Strength must be usable outside battle — the boulders do not budge without it, and nothing else in the room can be interacted with.
- Start with the middle boulder of the row of three Stand below it and push it straight up. It travels the length of the room and drops into the crater alone at the top. That one push also clears the space you need to reach the two boulders beside it.
- Send every other boulder to the crater on its own side Each remaining boulder has exactly one crater it can reach on its own half of the room — the left-hand boulders fill the left-hand craters, the right-hand ones the right. Work from the row of three downwards, because the lower boulders need the space the upper ones are standing in.
- Listen for the rumble When the last crater is filled the ground shakes. That sound is the whole reward: the chambers south of the island now have Unown in them.
Tip — A wrong push is not permanent: Boulders that end up jammed against a wall reset the moment you leave the cave and walk back in. Nothing is lost and the puzzle cannot be made unsolvable.
Unown locations: which chamber holds which letters
Each chamber holds its own short list of letters, so catching the full set means visiting all seven rather than grinding one. The chambers are listed here from the eastern end of the ruins to the western end; the percentage is the share of encounters that form takes inside that chamber.
| Chamber | Letters | Forms and rates |
|---|---|---|
| Monean Chamber | A — and the ? form | A 99%, ? 1% |
| Liptoo Chamber | C D H U O | C 50%, D 30%, H 14%, U 5%, O 1% |
| Weepth Chamber | N S I E | N 60%, S 30%, I 8%, E 2% |
| Dilford Chamber | P J L R Q | P 40%, J 20%, L 20%, R 14%, Q 6% |
| Scufib Chamber | Y G T F K | Y 40%, G 25%, T 20%, F 13%, K 2% |
| Rixy Chamber | V W X M B | V 50%, W 30%, X 10%, M 8%, B 2% |
| Viapois Chamber | Z — and the ! form | Z 99%, ! 1% |
Note — The letters add up to the whole alphabet: A in Monean, Z in Viapois, and the 24 letters in between spread over the five chambers in the middle — no letter appears in two chambers, so a chamber you skip is a letter you will not see.
The ! and ? Unown: the exclamation and question mark forms
The two punctuation forms are the reason people come back. Unown ? shares the Monean Chamber with the A form and ! shares Viapois with the Z form, and in both rooms the punctuation form is a 1% encounter. That is one in a hundred battles, in a chamber where the other 99 are a letter you already have — bring Repels you do not need and patience you do.
Unown is a one-form-per-encounter catch with no evolution and modest stats, so the ball is about the shelf, not the fight:
- Unown Normal: Luxury Ball, Ultra Ball — Shiny: Great Ball
Tip — Catching is the easy half: Unown has 48 base HP and no recovery, and it only knows Hidden Power. Finding the 1% form is the whole difficulty; landing it once it appears is not.
What the Unown are actually for
There is no in-game reward for completing the set — no item, no event, no door. Unown counts as a single Pokédex entry however many forms you catch, so the collection is a shelf project, and the reason to do it is the same reason the chambers exist: it is the one place in Kanto and the Sevii Islands where the ruins mean something. While you are on the route, Tanoby Ruins also hides four Heart Scales in the sand, and Sevault Canyon holds a King’s Rock behind its Strength boulders and a Lucky Punch in the house at the top.
Quick answers
- How do I open the Tanoby Chambers?
- Solve the Tanoby Key puzzle in the cave on the western side of Sevault Canyon: push all seven boulders into the seven craters with Strength. The chambers fill with Unown the moment the last one drops in.
- Where is the Tanoby Key in FireRed?
- It is a cave entrance partway up Sevault Canyon on Seven Island, on the canyon’s western side — not at the ruins themselves.
- Which chamber has the exclamation mark and question mark Unown?
- The ? form is in the Monean Chamber at the eastern end of the ruins and the ! form is in the Viapois Chamber at the western end. Both are 1% encounters.
- What level are the Unown in Tanoby Chambers?
- Every wild Unown in every chamber is level 25.
- Do I need all 28 Unown forms for anything?
- No. Unown fills one Pokédex slot no matter how many forms you catch, so the full alphabet is a collector’s goal rather than a requirement.
- Why are the Tanoby Chambers empty?
- Because the Tanoby Key has not been solved yet. Until it is, the chambers have no wild encounters at all.
Seven Island is the last stop of the Sevii Islands chain; the Lost Cave on Five Island is the other postgame puzzle worth the trip.