Part 1 of how to solve The Nautilus puzzles in We Were Here Forever.

We Were Here Forever is the fourth installment of the We Were Here series. It is a co-op puzzle game where two players have to help each other out in solving puzzles while navigating through mazes and obstacles within a castle.

This guide will cover the puzzles in the first half of The Nautilus, one of the three locations where you and your partner need to go to search for a missing part for the astrolabe machine in the chapel. Check out our other We Were Here Forever guides for the previous challenges:

We pick things up right after your escape from the chapel. After riding the cart to go down from the chapel, you arrive at the abandoned village which will serve as the hub area. Heading to the right from the sign post will lead you to The Nautilus.

Note: if you have decided to do a different location first, make sure to deposit the astrolabe piece into the astrolabe machine in the chapel to be able to proceed to the other locations.

Ride the railcart as it goes up the ridge and into a cave. Make your way through the platforms and into a room where a corpse is sitting on the ground wearing a diving helmet. Decide with your partner on who should wear the helmet and dive down. Whoever wears it will have a limited view through the window of the helmet, and they will also be able to see an air gauge to the side. For the purposes of this guide, you will be the one wearing the helmet.

Then, make your way into the diving hole. The other player will be able to enter the room across the diving hole which allows them to see you from behind a thick panel of glass.

How this works: You and your partner will have to help each other as you make your way through the maze of underwater hallways and tunnels. As the one wearing the helmet, you will have to find valves that will open doors for your partner on the dry side. These valves have symbols near them which corresponds to the symbol on the door that your partner needs to open.

There will also be doors that require air to be pumped to it to open. Interacting with this door will take out a chunk of the air reserves, so make sure that you’re topped up on air before opening these doors.

On the other hand, your partner will be rotating pipes to route air into specific pipes underwater from where you can replenish your air from. In the dry side, there will also be maps that your partner can use to guide you through the maze, with icons indicating points of interest. The air pipes on the maps are marked with icons comprised of several shapes in a specific arrangement. It’s your partner’s job to rotate the pipes to lead air from the main pipe into these specific pipes.

For this guide, P1 will be underwater, P2 will do the pipes. We’ll refer to the ones corresponding to gates as “symbols” while the ones corresponding to the pipes as “icons”. Pipe orientations will be depicted as numbers on the clock if possible (i.e.: 6-12, 9-12, etc.). Here’s the solution:

At this point, P1 goes to the middle of the Nautilus while P2 heads to the unlocked door at the back and follows the trail to reach the docks once more. P2 pulls the lever to raise the Nautilus from under the water. Both you and your partner will be able to go on the docks, but you will still be separated until you solve the next puzzle.

Both you and your partner will see two kinds of boards on each of your sides. One board is a 4x4 grid that has holes and are designated with different shapes, while the other board is a dispenser that dispenses pipes of different shapes and sizes.

On P1’s board, there is an output pipe (orange circle/slash) that has an orange blob in it and a blue input pipe (blue X), and it is reversed for P2.

How this works: The objective of this puzzle is for each of you to direct the blue and orange blobs to their respective input on each other’s grids. This is possible via the other holes on the board. Each hole corresponds to the hole on the other grid that has the matching shape. The catch is that the pipes cannot cross each other, so the pipes should be properly arranged on the grid.

There are only a limited amount of pipes and it is shared by both of you. If you or your partner needs a pipe for your grids, you will have to send the pipe back through the dispenser to send it to the other side. Pay attention to the diagrams of the pipes on the dispenser as they have specific lengths that can only be used either adjacently or diagonally on the grid.

Here’s the solution for the 4x4 grid:

Once that is done, another larger grid will become accessible and more pipe pieces can be dispensed from the dispenser.

Here’s the solution for the 4x6 grid:

After solving the second grid, another 4x6 grid will become accessible and more pipe pieces can be dispensed from the dispenser. This next grid has two inputs on each sides, one each for blue and yellow, so the outputs will have to be split using the new E pipe somewhere on the grid.

Here’s the solution for the second 4x6 grid:

One this grid is solved, the broken door to the Nautilus will open up and you and your partner can meet once again inside. Pull the levers on the panel together to make the Nautilus go back down into the depths once more.

Check out the part 2 of out The Nautilus guide here. For easier navigation, check our complete We Were Here Forever Walkthrough – All Puzzle Solutions:

If you like this Guide, be sure to check out our other We Were Here Forever articles:

Check out this video by Retromation with his friend Orbital Potato as they take on The Nautilus puzzles: