*A diagram will be posted below (for steps 1-3) if anyone finds it unclear.

1) Split your symbol into possible core symbols. It is possible for the same symbol to have different core symbol combinations, so it is advisable to write all possible combinations down.

2) Under each core symbol, write its respective letters (to find the letters of the core symbols, see ‘core symbols’ under the obsidian cipher tab). Do this for all possible core symbol combinations.

3) Using one letter per symbol, try and re-arrange the letters into an English word. It is important that only one letter per symbol is used, since the core symbols are not bigrams. Do this for all possible core symbol combinations.

4) If no English words can be made, use the same tactic as step 3, except try and find Latin words this time. This cipher is written in two languages, so it is important to consider both languages, however English words generally take precedence.

5) If no English or Latin words can be made, try to alter the core symbol combination. If all possible core symbol combinations (for that specific symbol) have been inconclusive in both languages, the character is probably a null character. While no null characters have been officially confirmed, we suspect that there are a few null characters in this cipher.

(for clarification – a null character is a character with no value. These are added into ciphers to confuse the cryptanalyst into believing that there are more characters/symbols than the cipher has.)