Indiana Jones Great Circle DLC: Serpent Puzzle solution guide

The most challenging early puzzle you’ll encounter in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle’s The Order of Giants DLC is the Serpent Puzzle. This is a water puzzle where you’ll be turning nodes on a 5x5 grid to guide water around the grid and ultimately solve the puzzle.

Helpfully, the puzzle is divided into five “sections” so you don’t have to deal with the entire puzzle at once, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to figure out. For everything you need to know about The Order of Giant’s Serpent Puzzle, we’ve got a full step-by-step walkthrough written below.

Serpent Puzzle explained – Order of Giants

You will find the Serpent Puzzle and the Water Serpent Fountain deep within the Vatican’s Secret Chamber. A five-by-five grid is on the floor, and at what we will call the “top” of the room you’ll find the Serpent Wrench poking from a lone serpent basin.

The ultimate goal is to have water flow into several drains at the bottom of select basins on the grid — the basins with drains have a gold ring around them. Once water is flowing into all of them, the door to the next room will open. 

Your first task, however, should be to make water flow around the grid in order to lift the four metal plates from the puzzle, unveiling the full scope of your task. This neatly separates the puzzle into five parts; before you lift the first plate, and after lifting each of the four plates.

Serpent Puzzle Step 1: Lifting the first plate

For the purpose of this guide we’ll be referring to the side of the room where the Serpent Fountain’s head is coming from as the top of the room, and where you entered to be the bottom. Make sure to pick up a Serpent Wrench and get ready to rotate.

If you look atop the plates, you’ll see snake-like markings. If you make water flow to the head of the snake on the plate, it will lift.

For the very first rotation, use the snake node directly above the middle where the water is being poured down, and have the water flow from the middle into the top right plate. This will lift the first plate.

Serpent Puzzle Step 2: Lifting the second plate

Next use the node directly to the right of the source and angle that water flow upward, and the node above that should direct water to the right. This will lift the second plate, which is on the bottom right. Make sure the gold-ringed drain node at the top of this square is getting water drained into it.

Serpent Puzzle Step 3: Lifting the third plate

The next plate we need to lift is on the top left of the grid, but we need to manipulate the basins in the bottom right to get the water there. Start with the basin directly to the right of the source that you used before, but this time direct the water down. Use the next basin down and direct the water flow to the left.

The top left panel should now lift into the air. If it doesn’t happen, check the basin to the far left of the grid between the two remaining panels and ensure it is flowing water up.

Serpent Puzzle Step 4: Lifting the fourth plate, platforming challenge

On the top row of the grid, next to the gold basin in the top left, rotate this basin so it flows water to both the left and right since it flows three ways. Return to the far left basin on the middle row, and now have it flow water down. This will attempt to lift the fourth panel, but it is stuck.

Now you need to climb the panels you’ve lifted like a platforming challenge and jump to a broken part of the serpent fountain before circling around the top of the room atop the fountain and yanking a Serpent Wrench from the machinery with your whip.

Now the final panel has been lifted, and all you need to worry about is ensuring that each of the gold-rimmed basins with a drain at the bottom have water flowing into them, this includes the basin at the top of the room that the Serpent Wrench was originally found in. 

Serpent Puzzle Step 5: Filling each gold basin

Rotate the basin directly to the right of the source and once again flow the water upwards. This should fill the gold basin on the top right. 

The basin directly above the source should be flowing to the left, and the next tri-flowing basin should be flowing up and left to fill the basin in the top left.

The basin in the bottom right should already be filled if you’ve been following these instructions.

Now we’re taking care of the bottom left basin. Rotate the far left middle row basin once again to have water flow from the top to the right. Follow the water down to the fourth basin on the fourth row from the top, and have that basin flow the water from the left downward. This should fill the entire bottom row with water, and all you need to do is rotate the final gold basin to receive water from the bottom to complete the Serpent Room puzzle.