The Sinking City 2 Trident Puzzle: Obelisk Symbol Order

Where the trident is

The trident in The Sinking City 2 is not in the obelisk area at all, which is why this puzzle stops so many people. It is mounted on the upper floor of the church, behind a locked door.

To get in you need the Star Key. It is on a corpse outside the church, lying near the gate lever you use to open the churchyard. Grab it before you go in, and use the same key on the small outbuilding in the grounds — there is an ERC crate inside, and you will want the ammunition before the sequence that follows this puzzle.

Take the trident off its mount and carry it out to the obelisk. Calvin stows it like a quest item, so you do not lose a weapon slot.

Step-by-step solution

1. Place the trident on the obelisk. The interaction only appears once you are holding it; the obelisk is inert otherwise.
2. Rotate the four bands into order. Reading from the top down, the sequence is snake, then the three-headed spear, then the arrow, then the horn — the curled sign that the evidence text calls the womb.
3. Confirm the arrangement. The obelisk locks the bands and begins the ritual.
4. Stand well clear. Lightning starts hitting the obelisk. Standing next to it hurts and can interrupt you.
5. Wait for all three strikes. Two is not enough. The third is the one that charges the trident.
6. Take the charged trident back to the church. Return it to the same mount on the top floor to trigger the next story beat.

Where the game tells you the order

The order is not arbitrary and you are not supposed to brute-force it. The evidence document A Call Upon Believers lists the four signs by name in the order the ritual wants them. If you read it before touching the obelisk, the sequence above is simply what the document says.

This is the design pattern The Sinking City 2 repeats for the rest of the game: the answer is in a document, and the document is usually within thirty seconds of the mechanism. It also means picking up paperwork is not optional busywork — the same act feeds Dream Essence through the Investigation Space.

What you get for solving it

Returning the charged trident opens the church's second state in The Sinking City 2 — the alternate dimension with the statues — and moves chapter 1 toward its close. Practically, it also unlocks the path to the rest of the church interior and the loot in it.

If you are collecting, this is a good moment to sweep the churchyard before you continue: once A New Day ends you cannot come back, because the game has no chapter select.

If the trident puzzle will not complete

• You are reading the order upside down. Top to bottom, not bottom to top. The snake belongs at the top.
• You walked away too early. Three strikes, and the trident has to be picked up after them — an uncharged trident will not fit the church mount.
• You are standing in the strike zone. Getting hit interrupts the sequence and you will have to confirm again.
• You never picked up the Star Key and are trying to solve the obelisk without a trident. The obelisk shows no prompt at all in that state.
• Something is stuck in collision. Frogwares' own known-issues post says to reload the last save; that clears the rare case where the trident cannot be re-placed.