&quot;Thanks For Skyrim!&quot; - Treasure Hunt (SOLUTION)

Hello and welcome to "Thanks for Skyrim!" - a treasure hunt giveaway for - you guessed it - Skyrim :)

Please no giveaway link sharing, and no posting answers in this thread ^_^

This is my second puzzle, and I believe it is a bit more tricky than the previous one.

Giveaway requires $31 contribution value.

Giveaway end countdown.

Good luck and have fun!

SOLUTION

The first challenge was to find the link to the puzzle. There were 6 italicized characters in the announcement text which spelled source - which hinted at the need to view the page source (via right-clicking on the page and clicking view source or whatever works for your browser) in order to find the hidden itstoohard.com puzzle link.
The Nintendo64 puzzle: the next step of the puzzle required you to decipher the text using the base64 decoding scheme, which was hinted at by the Nintendo64 pic in the background.
The decoded text turned out to be a quote from Skyrim: "I used to be an adventurer like you, then..." You had to answer with the last part of the quote which was "I took an arrow in the knee"
The red herring proved to be quite challenging for many people. In order to get past this step you had to understand that the red herring picture was both a solution and a distraction. The actual image of the red fish had nothing to do with the puzzle; the answer was not in the picture, but was hidden in the file instead. Opening the image file with any text editor and scrolling down to the very end of the file (note the filename "Where fish ends the hunt continues") revealed the link to the next step.
The music puzzle. 134 players, 133 solvers. Seriously?! :) The track that was offered was an arrangement of the Super Mario Bros. main theme by Koji Kondo (performed by London Philharmonic Orchestra).
The letters puzzle: you were presented with five lines of text. If you took the first letters of each line the result spelled IMGUR - an image-hosting website. Opening imgur.com/sNzrjxi revealed the last step of the puzzle.
The final puzzle: the giveaway code was hidden in an audio recording, next to the excerpt from the "Dragonborn" theme by Jeremy Soule (Skyrim OST). The five-letter code could be made visible by opening the track in an audio editor capable of displaying sound spectrogram. The spectrogram showed TYYAl. After overcoming the initial confusion between the two similar-looking letters (I and l) and reversing the code (which was hinted at by the reversed musical excerpt) you finally received the giveaway code to use on SteamGifts: lAYYT.

Thanks everyone for participating in my treasure hunt! ^_^

12 years ago*

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324 Comments

xXSAFOXx

Bump for solved,Thanks for skkyrim :D

12 years ago

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mbishop94479

Oh, red herring, tell me your secrets...

Edit: I'm thinking that part of the fish .gif is clickable, which is supposed to take me to the next step. If I'm right, which I'm probably not, would that not work in some browsers?

Edit 2: halp

Edit 3: solved the fish's puzzle. Now for the letters.

12 years ago

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Belfour

Works with every browser.

12 years ago

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L1NU5

Stuck at the red herring. I think I know the answer, but IDK what to do with it, or I'm missing a part of it :/
I want to learn how to do the "thing" related with hint 1. I would like to know how to do that for future forum giveaways by me.

12 years ago

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Kadath

And now stuck in 6 :3

Edit: I believe i found out 6. <3

12 years ago

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eddy25

thatfishmustdie
ű
k, i killed the fish, :D finally

:S:S!!!!!!!!
stuck 6. The letters puzzle

12 years ago

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ludwik

me too, that 6th hint is not enough :/

12 years ago

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eddy25

or we are just retarded.

12 years ago

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danilodw

12 years ago

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Can't seem to solve that letters puzzle. :( Tried looking at different cyphers. No dice.

12 years ago

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Solnaga

Ciphers?

12 years ago

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Such as Alberti cipher, decoding wheel. That sort of stuff. Maybe I'm just trying too hard, but still I don't know where or what exactly should I do. :D

12 years ago

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You're definitely trying too hard :) The solution is quite simple, as you'll realize when you see it :)

12 years ago

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Well, there's still time to try. And stop munching those leaves so much. ^_^

12 years ago

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Solnaga

Ciphers? :3

12 years ago

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Ciphers. ^_^

12 years ago

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Solnaga

Confused :o

12 years ago

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Minorukun

Finally solved =)
That was a great puzzle !

12 years ago

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whore

Thanks for Skyrim!

12 years ago

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TormenT

I'm stuck on red herring :(. Till that moment I solved puzzles without hints. Now I have no idea what to do...

12 years ago

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SaPOWrra

Indeed hahaha
Maybe we need a program to do something with the image ?

12 years ago

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TormenT

Maybe we should change this herring scales back to normal or make them golden? Maybe than it will answer our questions? :D

Or we should just take it and cut down the tallest tree in the forest with it? If you know what I mean? ;p

12 years ago

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Mew2

It can't be done!

12 years ago

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TormenT

Och please!

12 years ago

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SaPOWrra

Nice one with the nintendo hahahaha

12 years ago

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MizuhoChan

I've come back and I still have no idea what to do with these damn letters. I really need this giveaway to be over, so I can find out, the lack of knowing is killing me... oh, that was easy... now I feel dumb. Doh.

Right, well, I'm not going to get this audio thing. But that's not really a puzzle, so it doesn't bother me. So hurray, I solved the super hard puzzles \o/

12 years ago

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Casseia

Much deserved bump! Hard, but fair, treasure hunt!

12 years ago

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Toff

Bumping for solved. :) Such a beautifully crafted puzzle.

12 years ago

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Farseer

Oh my god!!!
First you was just looking at me, but now you eating something!!!
This is crazy! Cats are learning!! God , help us all!

12 years ago

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Deleted

This comment was deleted 6 years ago.

12 years ago

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Deadlock

Finally done ! Great puzzle, thanks !

12 years ago

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deolic

I won Skyrim so I don't need to solve that :)

12 years ago

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Dominator86

Bumping for solved :D

12 years ago

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DefieO

Gave up on this, i dont know what to do with this source word. Dont know how to get this nintendo picture also.

12 years ago

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Well, im in the music one, im pretty sure that the weird sound has something to do, since i know the song played there. Cant find anything about what to do with it.

Edit: tried with 4 programs already, changed it on 100000 ways, nothing.

Edit2: someone who already solved it said something like "i had problems reading it", so i think its not about listening to it D:

12 years ago

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Daud

Yeah me too. I'm stuck at the last part with the music. Hell I even know what the music is from but I'm pretty sure I'm reading the letters all wrong. Can't be assed to bruteforce the letters though so grats to those who solved. :P

12 years ago

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dont give up :D im still trying to do something with it, i think the music has nothing (or a little) to do with the puzzle itself, everything may be in those weird sounds

12 years ago

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i would love a hint for this D:

12 years ago

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i cant believe im in the last stage but im not going to finish this D:

12 years ago

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crazyseeder

u can solve it now ;) :P

12 years ago

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danilodw

I'm stuck on 6 yet... still trying, have no idea what to do... =(

EDIT: IMGUR!!! Never noticed that site... =(
Bad luck... =(
Very nice puzzle by the way! Keep doing that! ^^

12 years ago

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Solution posted.

Thanks everyone! ^_^

12 years ago

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Lunk

Nice puzzle! I got as far as the final step and figured out that I needed to reverse it and had a pretty good idea what the relevant portion was, but couldn't figure out how to extract letters/numbers from the sound pattern. I'll have to keep that trick in mind when I'm looking at future puzzles. ;)

12 years ago

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Thank you, glad you enjoyed the puzzle :) And yeah, it's great when you learn a new trick :)

12 years ago

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