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Remnant 2: How to Solve the Water Harp Puzzle

Solving the Yaesha Water Harp music box puzzle in Remnant 2 is a real brain teaser. Here's the answer.

The Water Harp puzzle in Remnant 2 is possibly one of the first you’ll encounter, and solving it takes a bit of out-of-game knowledge and a bit of outside-the-box thinking. You’ll only find the music box-like Water Harp in a specific version of Yaesha. The game’s procedural campaign all but ensures every experience is different. Where you start isn’t where I did, and so on. Whether you reach it first or later on, you’ll eventually end up in Yaesha and will need the solution. Here’s how to solve the Water Harp puzzle.

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How to Solve the Water Harp Puzzle in Remnant 2

Screenshot by GameSkinny
  • Understanding how to solve the Water Harp puzzle comes from a book near the Forgotten Grove checkpoint. It requires you to raise or lower pins beneath symbols on the harp in a specific order to play a tune.
  • There are five symbols and eight rows of pegs. There are five pegs per row. You need to have the correct number and order of pegs up or down on each row, then activate the Water Harp to play the tune the pegs create.
  • Here’s the solution to the Water Harp puzzle
    • Row 1: Fifth peg
    • Row 2: No pegs
    • Row 3: Fourth peg
    • Row 4: No pegs
    • Row 5: Third peg
    • Row 6: Fourth peg
    • Row 7: First peg
    • Row 8: No pegs
Screenshot by GameSkinny

The first page of the book near the Forgotten Grove checkpoint gives you the solution to the Water Harp puzzle. The symbols written on the first page correspond to the symbols on the Water Harp itself.

You’ll need to raise or lower the correct pegs on the cylinder so the order from top to bottom in the Harp matches the order from left to right in the book. In other words, the book is written in standard musical notation, and you need to make the Water Harp puzzle play the right tune.

The tricky part about the Water Harp puzzle solution is the lines in the notation. At first, I thought they meant to have two pegs raised to hold the note. But the opposite is true. Whenever there’s a horizontal line, the preceding symbol’s peg needs to be up, and the line section’s peg needs to be down, showing that the note is being held rather than played twice. For example, the second row has three ups (symbols) and one down (line).

How to Activate the Water Harp in Remnant 2

Midway through your journey across Yaesha, you’ll encounter a checkpoint near an impassable chasm. There’s a huge bronze device with a wolven monster’s face carved on its end. The face depicts the Ravager. In my playthrough, this was near stone ruins in an area called The Forgotten Grove. There was an NPC playing a lute nearby, and I could hear the music. It was after beating Mother Mind.

The device in question is the Water Harp, and unfortunately, there’s no way to activate it initially. You must progress through the entire rest of the world. Eventually, the map will double back on itself, giving you access to a lever above the checkpoint room. Once pulled, it releases the water powering the harp, and playing the song the pegs allow.

Related: How to Get Blood Moon Essence in Remnant 2

Provided you follow the peg organization outlined above, the Water Harp puzzle will play the Beast’s Song (which, coincidentally, is what the Pan nearby is playing on their two-necked flute), and a bridge will rise from the water, allowing you to cross to the Ravager’s Lair Dungeon. If you go back to the instrument, you can get Carnage in C Minor, a secret trophy and achievement. Now you’ll have access to the Ravager — and you’ll need to make a choice.

That’s how to solve the Water Harp puzzle in Remnant 2. There’s tons of content to cover Gunfire Games’ sequel, well beyond this juncture in the game. Check out our guides hub for the game with more tips and tricks.


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Author
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John Schutt
John Schutt has been playing games for almost 25 years, starting with Super Mario 64 and progressing to every genre under the sun. He spent almost 4 years writing for strategy and satire site TopTierTactics under the moniker Xiant, and somehow managed to find time to get an MFA in Creative Writing in between all the gaming. His specialty is action games, but his first love will always be the RPG. Oh, and his avatar is, was, and will always be a squirrel, a trend he's carried as long as he's had a Steam account, and for some time before that.