How to open the Animal Symbol doors in Hogwarts Legacy

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is dense in mysteries and puzzles. And you won’t find the digital version of the school in Hogwarts Legacy all that different. Within its winding halls there are secrets galore, and plenty of puzzles to solve. One set of puzzles has you figuring out how to unlock particular doors using animal icons… and a bit of counting. Here’s how to open up the ‘Animal Symbol’ doors in Hogwarts Legacy.

Note: For more information, check out our Hogwarts Legacy guides and features hub.

How to open the Animal Symbol doors in Hogwarts Legacy

You can find the clues on how to open the Animal Doors during the course of your playthrough. While heading to the Arithmancy Classroom for the first time, you can find a note that clues you in to how to solve the riddle. However, if you want to get a jump start, read on.

The earliest example of the Animal Symbol door in Hogwarts Legacy is one that’s located in the Central Hall. Once there, you can cast Revelio, which will highlight the door and two wall-mounted ‘dials’ used to solve the puzzle. The door itself has the animal symbols wrapped around it in an arch, and is adored with two triangles — one pointing up, the other down. In the center of the triangles are numbers, and the three points of each will show either numbers or an animal icon along with ‘?’ or ‘??’ for either dial.

It all seems like a real head-scratcher, but the solution is simple once you realize that it’s mostly just arithmetic. Each animal in the arch represents a number, starting with 0 on the left and ending with 9 on the right. The goal is to swap the animals on the dials, which represent the triangles pointing up or down, to count up to the number in the center of each triangle on the door.

Related: How to solve the Charms Classroom puzzle door.

Solving the Common Room Animal Symbol door

Let’s use the aforementioned Central Hall door for example. As you can see from the picture below, we need the symbols for top triangle to add up to 21, and the bottom symbols to 17. The dragon head is on the third spot on the arch, meaning it represents the number 2. Now, with some basic math, adding it to ’11’ gives us 13. We need the upward pointing triangle dial (up the stairs nearby) set to the Spider, which is numbered as 8 on the arch. All combined, we get to 21.

For the second triangle, the ‘creepy hand spider’ is numbered 5 and the Hydra is 9, leaving us 14 combined. To add up to 17 in the center, choose the three-headed snake, which represents 3.

Once both are finished, the door can be opened. Inside are two chests. The one on the right contains an Asylum Mask cosmetic, and the one on the left rewards you with a ‘Skull and Candles Shelf’ collectible.

And that’s how you open the Animal Symbol doors in Hogwarts Legacy. They’re not so bad once you understand that all it takes is a little math.