Resident Evil 9 Requiem: The Final Puzzle full walkthrough

By far the toughest challenge to complete in Resident Evil: Requiem is The Final Puzzle, and the proof is the fact that it took people several days and datamining to uncover a route to solving it.

The Final Puzzle is a complex, obtuse, multi-step challenge that asks you to understand the distances between Earth and celestial bodies, rotate seemingly useless items, and much more. We don’t fully understand it yet – it seems nobody does but the developers – but we’re breaking down everything that the community has managed to uncover so far, which includes a solution that we’ve replicated.

In this guide, we’re breaking down The Final Puzzle in its entirety, including how each step of the puzzle was solved by the community, and a step-by-step walkthrough of how you can complete The Final Puzzle for yourself in Resident Evil: Requiem.

On this page:

• The Final Puzzle start, the Severed Hand code
• The Final Puzzle cypher explained
• Lead Researcher’s Office Puzzle Box code
• The Final Puzzle solution datamine
• The Final Puzzle step-by-step walkthrough

The Final Puzzle start, the Severed Hand code – RE9 Requiem

We already have a short guide on how to use the Severed Hand, but we’ll give you the abridged version here.

Scanning the Severed Hand with the Blood Analysis Machine in either the Blood Lab or the Office will activate a unique puzzle, along with a message that reads: “Let’s play.” It also gives you an mRNA sequence that reads as follows:

• GGC AAG AUA ACG UGU CAU

If you convert this strand into a Protein, it reads as follows

• GLY LYS ILE THR CYS HIS

Which means nothing, unless we take the first letter of each section, and then we have GLITCH.

Does this mean anything? Actually, it could be a red herring, because there’s another use for the code, but first we have to decrypt it.

The Final Puzzle cypher explained – RE9 Requiem

It’s an mRNA code, sure, but there’s actually another use for it, and the first hint we noticed was on the Hourglass item. When you examine the Hourglass and rotate it, you’ll see that under the sand is the following message:

• U = 380,000

A bit strange, but we’ve seen a similar message before. On the Blood Analysis Machine in the Blood Lab:

• G = 150000000

Finally, if you look at the Grace Ashcroft Blood Analysis Report File in the Courtyard Lab, you’ll see this final message:

• C = 4.2 ly

The “ly” is the hint that ties everything else together. Everything else in this file is a “Match,” the final message stands out as being somehow incorrect or out of place. But if you’re familiar with astronomy, you might know that Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to Earth, is roughly 4.2 light-years away. Thanks to Synth Potato for being the first person we know of to figure this out.

Suddenly, you can translate this message as C = Star. With that information, we go back to the previous messages, and we see that 380,000 is the distance to the Moon in kilometres, so U = Moon. If you’re familiar with the themes of the Care Center, you’ve probably also figured out that G = Sun, as 150000000 is the distance to the Sun in miles.

A is the outlier, but a very strange easter egg tells us to ignore this one — thanks to IGN for finding this. You can kick the head of the Toy Uncle Bobblehead – a shootable mascot from Resident Evil 3 – around the basketball court after Leon’s fight with the Tyrant, and kicking it through the basketball hoop will give you the message “There’s no time for playing around.” Once again, play is mentioned. Check the Toy Bobblehead torso in Gun Shop Kendo after, and you’ll be given the message to “Just ignore A.” And that’s what we’re going to do.

To summarise the cypher:

• U = Moon
• G = Sun
• C = Star
• A = Ignore

Lead Researcher’s Office Puzzle Box code – RE9 Requiem

If we look at the mRNA message from the Blood Analysis Machine again, ignore A, and then replace the letters with the celestial bodies they represent, we end up with this message:

• SUN, SUN, STAR, SUN, MOON, STAR, SUN, MOON, SUN, MOON, STAR, MOON.

Head to the Lead Researcher’s Office in the Care Center, and enter that code on the Quartz Puzzle Box machine in the room. When you’ve done it correctly and backed away from the machine, you’ll hear a laughter audio cue play from several rooms away.

This is where the concrete information on how to solve the puzzle ends, but we do have a few leads.

The Final Puzzle solution datamine – RE9 Requiem

Once again, Synth Potato has led the charge on getting this mystery solved and is sharing information found by player GengarCollects. GengarCollects claims to have picked up the item Marie’s Doll when escaping from the Courtyard Lab, and dataminers have confirmed that this item does, in fact, spawn in the exact place that GengarCollects claimed, and we finally now know what makes it spawn there.

Even though there are still some strange mysteries in the game that still need to be solved,  a pair of players on YouTube, Kyro and Rantsycancy, have finally solved The Final Puzzle, but they’ve done it with information gleaned from datamining.

This uses a combination of flag manipulation in the Care Center Basement’s Processing Room and some unusual toilet flushing habits. Even that makes sense, though, thanks to an image in the file that Grace starts the game with. Thanks to this information, we finally have a full step-by-step guide on how to complete Resident Evil: Requiem’s The Final Puzzle.

The Final Puzzle step-by-step walkthrough – RE9 Requiem

It’s finally time. We can confirm that this method 100% works, even on console with no mods. This is a definitive way to complete The Final Puzzle challenge in Resident Evil: Requiem, but just be warned, there are no rewards save for the 20,000 CP, which you don’t even need to buy everything in the Special Content shop. For a full step-by-step breakdown on how to solve The Final Puzzle, read on. By the way, it’s easier to do in Casual mode.

1. Play the game normally, through the Care Center, until you enter the Care Center Basement.
2. Once you’ve collected two Joint Plugs and the Forklift Key, move into the Processing Room, but do not drain the water. Make a save for security in this room.
3. Before draining the water, wait in the Processing Room for a full 15 minutes.
4. After 15 minutes have passed, drain the water, and survive the conveyor belt without dealing the killing blow to a single zombie yourself. Hit them at the knees and push them toward the processing teeth.
5. After this is complete, play through the Basement portion as normal until you return to the Care Center. Place Emily on the sofa in the Guard Office, and go to the Restroom past the Kitchen and flush a toilet eight times.
6. From here, play through the Courtyard Lab section of the game until it’s time to escape the lab. On a flight of stairs just before Grace starts her panicked run animation, you should find Marie’s Doll. If you can’t find Marie’s Doll, restart a save from before the Processing Room is drained and try again.
7. After finding Marie’s Doll, complete the game on your current save.
8. Start a new save, and when you reach the Care Center’s main building as Grace, you should find Marie’s Doll still in your Item Box.
9. Play through the Care Center normally until you acquire the ID Wristband (Level 3). After unlocking Emily’s cell in the Medication Room, place Marie’s Doll in your inventory and carry Emily to the puzzle box in the Lead Researcher’s Office. The Severed Hand is not required.
10. On the Lead Researcher’s Office Quartz puzzle box, with Marie’s Doll in your inventory and while carrying Emily, enter the code we gleaned from the mRNA sequence: SUN, SUN, STAR, SUN, MOON, STAR, SUN, MOON, SUN, MOON, STAR, MOON.
11. If you’ve completed all of the above steps correctly, you will have completed Resident Evil: Requiem’s The Final Puzzle challenge.

We’ve learned some interesting things. For example, a file that points toward 115 infected needing to be dropped into the Processing Room must be unrelated, as we counted 115 infected as they dropped, which took a little over 8 minutes and 30 seconds. This did not allow Marie’s Doll to spawn, but waiting for a full 15 minutes in the Processing Room did enable the doll to spawn.

We’re still not entirely sure how the community was supposed to figure all of this out without datamining, but if you want a reliable way to solve RE9’s The Final Puzzle, you can now do it for yourself.