Altador Plot - Water Plant Research

[SpringDL]

Sup.

It seems no one understands the real methodology behind solving the water plant puzzle.
Most known attempts and methods consist of either randomly clicking everything until you get it, or going through every combination of wheel / lever positions.
There's nothing really wrong with those methods except for the fact that it doesn't always work for everyone.

The water plant puzzle was one of the last few puzzles I've attempted before quitting Neopets some years back.
I couldn't solve it using any of the known methods at the time; those methods being random trial and error and going through all the possible combinations.
I've gone through every possible combination of wheel & lever positions at least twice to no avail. So I just stopped.

I've had a theory that going through every single combination didn't work for some people because the wheels & levers move the water from specific points and that you needed the water to be in specific areas for the puzzle to be solved.
Depending on where the water was and which combinations you've already gone through, It is possible that you won't be able to move the water where it needed to go because the combination to move that water there had already been used.
Even if you tried all the combinations again to get to that point, the water might not be where it was before and the whole puzzle changes.

Well years have passed and I'm back into Neopets again (for now) and I'm looking for a Round 2 with the Water Plant Puzzle.
This time I'm taking a more methodological approach to solving this thing once and for all.
I'll be documenting my findings in this thread in hopes that it will help others that have gotten stumped by this puzzle.

First of all, let's establish the obvious and known information:
-There are 8 'Pipes' and 4 'Basins' separated in 3 rooms
-They are separated into 3 rooms purely to make keeping track of things (and therefore, the puzzle) harder
-You can think of everything as being in one large room instead of 3 small ones
-There are 4 'Wheels' and 4 'Levers' also separated in the 3 rooms
-Each Wheel / Lever have 2 states

-It doesn't really matter what those 2 states are, but for the sake of keeping things simple, they will refer to [ On / Off ]

            Wheel On:  (+)     The wheel is 'On' when it is aligned vertically

            Wheel Off:  (x)     The wheel is 'Off' when it is tilted at an angle
            Lever On:    h       The lever is 'On' when it is flipped upwards
            Lever Off:    µ       The lever is 'Off' when it is flipped downwards
-There are always 3 instances of water in the plant
-They are either flowing through and pipe or in a basin
 

With that established, I can move onto my methodology.
At the very start of the puzzle, I switched all triggers (wheels and levers) into the off position.
After everything is set to 'Off', I then recorded the location of all instances of water. With that I had my starting point.
What happens after that is that I turn a trigger 'On', see if any of the water moved, then I turn that trigger back to 'Off' regardless of whether anything happened or not.
If any of the water has been moved, I record the following information into my notes:
           Which trigger (wheel or lever) did I switch on?
           From where did the water move?
           Where did the water move to?
           In the end I end up with something like this:
           R2.W1: R3.P3 > R3.B1         (Room 2, Wheel 1: The water moved from Room 3, Pipe 3  to  Room 3, Basin 1)
           (I count the Rooms, Pipes, and Basins from left to right, and top to bottom, but that's not important)

If nothing happened anywhere, I turn the same trigger back into the 'Off' position and move onto the next one.
I repeat this until I end up with a pretty good list of what moves the water from where to where.
At that point I can control where the water goes by referring to my notes.
It was a matter of figuring where the water needed to be, not how to get it there.

Time for some of my Observations:
In general, the Wheels move water from specific pipes to either other pipes or to a basin.
In general, the Levers move water from specific basins to either other basins or to a pipe.
I've had one case where a Lever can move water from 2 different sources to a single location:
           R3.L1: R3.B1 > R2.P2         (Room 3, Lever 1: The water moved from Room 3, Basin 1  to  Room 2, Pipe 2)
     and R3.L1: R1.P1 > R2.P2         (Room 3, Lever 1: The water moved from Room 1, Pipe 1  to  Room 2, Pipe 2)
           This could mean that I ____ed up recording the notes somewhere or that it is possible for a single trigger to move water to / from 2 different sources.
           It makes sense since there are a total of 8 triggers, but 12 locations for the water to go to.
           They would overlap some of the triggers otherwise 4 of the locations would never contain water otherwise (I'll have to think about that).
If you try to move water to a pipe of basin that already contains water, nothing will happen.
Sometimes flipping one trigger 'On' would flip another trigger 'On' somewhere else (I'm not sure if this is just me forgetting to flip the trigger back into 'Off', so be skeptical)
The basins seem to be the destination point of the water as they draw a lot of attention and there is enough for a few simple combinations leaving 1 single basin empty
The answer being a combination of water in different pipes seems to be overkill and completely false.
I've never been able to move water to certain pipes despite having water in nearly every single source point and trying nearly every single trigger.
So the chances that the answer involves filling certain basins and that some pipes just aren't used seems pretty likely

In the end I shuffled the water around until all but 1 basin was filled. If it didn't solve, I shuffled it around until another basin was left unfilled.
The puzzle solved for me when I filled all basins except for the basin in room 3.

Of course everything above could all be randomized for each account, so some things may be completely wrong.

In conclusion:
The Water Plant Puzzle is deliberate. There is definitely a method to the madness.
While you can absolutely solve it through randomness or lucky trial and error, there is a very 'real' method of solving the puzzle somewhere.
 

I'll post an update if I find anything new information or get something more concrete. (If I feel like it)
Maybe I'll try solving it again on someone else's account and see how much of the information actually matches up (if I feel like doing that)
Feel free to use this information as you please and add anything to it if you want to.
 

[Anime]

I just updated our guide for this since I was helping a friend work through it and the guide needed it.

 

What worked when we were messing with it was turning everything to the off position, then going through and turning them on one by one. Some of them will fill one of the pipes or basins in that room with water. Leave those on, and turn the ones that don't do anything in that room back off. By the time the last room came around it solved the puzzle when one of the last levers was flipped to on.

 

Now, we could have just gotten lucky. But given that the ones left on were activating water in the same room, and the fact that that method matches the style of some of the other parts....