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Happy belated birthday s.gifts!

Are you a long time gamer?

Maybe you're a master of puzzles?

I've got a challenge for you.

Let's see how much you really know.

This is your chance to solve puzzles as a group.

Organize your notes carefully.

Not all clues can be used right away. 08016248

http://www.itstoohard.com/puzzle/OfCAvF2o

Notes:

• Approximately 2/3rds of giveaways are contributor giveaways with limits ranging from $1 to $100
• You can share answers, solutions, links whatever. You can't solve this on your own.
• All giveaways end in 16 days.
• Solve the "B" stage trivia for a hint on the puzzle portion of the next stage.
• Each stage's trivia is for a different platform (ex. stage 1 is NES games)
• Have a freebie.

Solution

There were a total of 34 giveaways, 200 trivia questions, 210 sprites, 9 puzzles and 9 hidden giveaways. For the trivia stages the community did a good job of collecting the answers.

Puzzles

Stage 1 - No Puzzle

Players were provided with a direct link to stage 1 trivia: http://www.itstoohard.com/puzzle/OfCAvF2o

Stage 2 - Terraria armor sets

The clue contains a link to an image containing 8 armor sets from the game Terraria. If you take the first initial of the name of each armor set in order, and format their capitalization as specified with the xxXx formatter you get the code: http://www.itstoohard.com/puzzle/gmSaCNhI

Stage 3 - Six degrees of separation

The clue is a six-degrees of separation style listing of a game, followed by the steamgifts winner, followed by a game that winner gifted, followed by the winner of that giveaway, etc. When you connect Illbeans to Rand, you have eight answers. Take the first initial of each answer and you have your next itstoohard puzzle code: http://www.itstoohard.com/puzzle/tITyHgSR

Stage 4 - Achievement double string

The clue contains a link to an image containing a list of steam achievement icons. The clue hint contains a count list of the number of achievements for each game used in the list. Using a site like SPAH you can fairly easily identify the icons. Alternatively you could also chop up the image and reverse image search them as most if not all of them will show up on google. Once you have identified the icon you can take the first initial of each game to create the sentence WHO LEADS THE TUNNEL SNAKES. You can also use the first initial of the NAMES of each achievement to spell out an alternate sentence SHE WORKS FOR ALBERT WESKER. The answers to these two questions are Butch and Ada creating the code: http://www.itstoohard.com/puzzle/ButchAda

Stage 5 - Common themes

If you read the first initials of each item it spells out LOOK FOR THE COMMON THEME IN THESE LINKS. Each line contains a series of links to giveaways with a common theme that can be reduced to a single character or digit.

• Lost Order of Keiv - All games made by GSC Game World a company located in Keiv, Ukraine that was recently shut down.
• Figures Opposite Reality - All games have a starring character that starts with "S".
• Title Holder Elite - All games won by an SG user with a name starting with "S".
• Codes Of Mystery May Offer Notions - All of the steamgift codes have a 2 in it.
• The Hardcore Experts Max Everything - All of these games have 22 achievements in it.
• Identifying Name - All games with the first initial "D".
• These Helpful Evaluations Stall Expenditures - All games with a meta score of 88.
• Largess Is Not Killing Subsoap - All Faery Solitaire giveaways.

Format each answer to create the itstoohard puzzle code: http://www.itstoohard.com/puzzle/Gss22D8F

Stage 6 - The sprite grid

The clue contains a link to an image which contains a grid made up of 210 different video game characters. Identify the 8 characters specified in the hint to create the next itstoohard puzzle code: http://www.itstoohard.com/puzzle/kTmpATbL

Stage 7 - The keys

The clue contains a link to an [image]() which contains a barcode and the words FINALKEY. If you decode the barcode (lots of free phone apps can do this) and combine 32507096 with the word to create another sprite grid code: F3 I2 N5 A0 L7 K0 E9 Y6. This unlocks the last of eight different keys and gives you the format for finding the other 7. In previous stages there other 8 digit numbers that can be combined with 8 character words to form more sprite grid codes.

• The first is created from the initial forum post which contains 8 lines. The first initials of the sentences creates the word HAMILTON, combined with the number on the last line creates the first sprite grid code. H0 A8 M0 I1 L6 T2 O4 N8
• Hamilton is a clue to look at my Steam profile image which is of Hamilton from Hamilton's Great Adventure. On it is a chopped up QR code. If you put it back together it leads to an old BioShock giveaway with a description containing the numbers. B6 I2 O3 S8 H6 O9 C7 K1
• Stage 2 Terraria link is the numbers. T0 E4 R1 R9 A6 R2 I7 A3
• Stage 3 IllBeans clue has the numbers. I4 L0 L2 B5 E7 A4 N1 S1
• Stage 5 clue contains numbers with a link to a giveaway for Lucidity. L4 U9 C2 I0 D6 I5 T8 Y3
• Stage 5 clue contains numbers with a link to a giveaway for Darwinia. D3 A1 R0 W2 I9 N9 I3 A9
• Stage 5 clue contains numbers with a link to a giveaway for Droplitz. D2 R6 O2 P3 L8 I5 T4 Z1

Once all 8 keys are opened, you get a link to the next stage: http://www.itstoohard.com/puzzle/0ZpGiXr6

Stage 8 - Sudoku

The clue is a sudoku puzzle. The 8 digits represented as # are the 8 digits you need to create another sprite grid code. Combine it with the giveaway game "Stacking" to create the sprite grid code: S3 T6 A2 C5 K9 I8 N4 G7. This leads to the itstoohard puzzle code: http://www.itstoohard.com/puzzle/rs2Dw8Rf

Stage 9 - The stone grid

The clue contains a link to an image. All previous 16 trivia questions presented the user with a 3x3 stone block image with colored corners. As hinted, if you bucket fill (using Paint, PSP, etc.) the arrows within each block you will reveal the hidden digit. To solve the puzzle you fit these blocks into the frame such that the colors of each corner line up and read from left to right, top to bottom the 16 values which form another sprite grid code: A7 L1 J4 T5 R3 H4 F9 C0. This leads to another itstoohard puzzle code: http://www.itstoohard.com/puzzle/GFIsRYHR

Stage 10 - The invisible clues

This stage is another key stage. The last of the 5 keys is hidden at the bottom of the giveaway, hidden as two separate space characters (ascii 0x20 and 0xA0) There are 16 sets of 8 characters. If you treate 0x20 as 0 and 0xA0 as 1 and convert the binary values to ascii you get the sprite grid code: H0 S7 C2 K0 L5 Z1 U4 W9.

• The first key is hidden in the stage 2 Terraria clue. Bucket fill to reveal sign language symbols forming the code: U5 F6 P6 G0 Q2 Y0 U6 E1
• The second key is hidden in the stage 4 achievement icons clue. Bucket fill to reveal braile forming the code: W3 K8 P4 F2 E8 C4 J0 U1
• The third key is hidden in the stage 6 sprite grid clue. Bucket fill to reveal the hidden 11th row containing My Little Pony characters. Use their names and the listed numbers to create the sprite grid code: T3 Z2 N6 S7 S5 D1 F4 P9
• The forth key is hidden in the stage 9 stone grid clue. Bucket fill to reveal morse code forming the code: D0 O6 Q5 G2 V9 K4 A5 P8

Once all 5 keys are opened, you get the link to the final stage: http://www.itstoohard.com/puzzle/uMEc0AX6

The Hidden Giveaways

1. One of the links in Stage 5 leads to a giveaway for Dark Messiah. The description contains a link to a Mini Ninjas giveaway.
2. In the stage 6 trivia the clickable image for the Half-Life question actually opened to a strange picture. It's a stereogram. You have to look at it cross-eyed to see the hidden code. http://www.itstoohard.com/puzzle/dMc3Kv8h
3. The thread title for the forum post (P1 U2 Z3 Z4 L5 I6 N7 G8) is a sprite grid code that leads directly to http://www.itstoohard.com/puzzle/S2CaD6ri
4. The stage 10 trivia solution linking to the next giveaway had a different code in the text vs. the actual link. The text lead to http://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/CQ5KY
5. (two giveaways) The video clues for stage 7A (The Super Castlevania IV song) and stage 10B (The Bolz! song) both had an image flash on screen for a moment. The images were for mazes created by TheGreatGooglyMoogly for his maze puzzles. The maze images were of the first stages, but with a purple/yellow dot identifying a location within each maze. If you go to the giveaway that was available on each of these locations, you would see everyone had posted hex codes that TheGreatGooglyMoogly used to validate player entries. If you look at my (Jexel) posts you would see my 8 digit posted codes are not valid hex values. They are actually 8-digit itstoohard puzzle codes. That lead to two keys: http://www.itstoohard.com/puzzle/VYodSxMh
6. Each stage B trivia giveaway had a single line of ascii blocks followed by a roman number 1-5. If you stacked these in order, separating into two separate stacks, you get the sprite grid code: J3 S0 B7 Z7 M4 Q8 W1 V7. This leads to the itstoohard code: http://www.itstoohard.com/puzzle/tHbhVJLm (You had to guess the casing since I didn't provide the format)
7. The stage 6 format specifier www.itstoohard.com/puzzle/xXxxXXxX was an actual itstoohard puzzle code.

The Complete List of Giveaways

• Metro 2033
• Sid Meier's Civilization V: Game of the Year
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
• Tomb Raider: Anniversary
• Dustforce
• Mafia II: Digital Deluxe Edition
• Legend of Grimrock
• Dead Island
• Trine 2 Collector's Edition + Trine 1
• Dungeon Siege Complete
• Gotham City Impostors
• Hector: Badge of Carnage - Full Series
• Jurassic Park: The Game
• Total War: SHOGUN 2
• Stacking
• Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution
• Vessel
• Rayman Origins
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
• Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble!
• Mini Ninjas
• Assassins Creed Brotherhood
• Penny Arcade Adventures: Precipice of Darkness Combo Pack
• Bulletstorm
• Blur
• Ys: The Oath in Felghana
• Ys Origin
• Minecraft
• Call of Duty: Black Ops II
• MacGuffin's Curse
• Cubemen
• Cave Story+
• Really Big Sky

Thanks for playing!