== GUIDE ==
The clue most people have found is structured like this:
X...;Y...;Z...
The purpose of these three clauses is to direct you towards three trains:
In order to solve these puzzles, you will need:
The steps go as follows:
The trains contain games from the following:
Here are some things to keep in mind:
Hints:
Comment has been collapsed.
To anyone getting "page not found" on a certain part of the puzzle, friend me on Steam and I'll deliver that part of the puzzle personally.
Link replaced; you'll know what to do.
Comment has been collapsed.
== SOLUTION ==
Every hyperlink has extraneous text attached to it. All of them are tied to a single video, and each paragraph has two hyperlinks. That is, except for the playlist, which has the following string:
85:QCC7v
Go to giveaway QCC7v, and use ASCII85 to decrypt the string there to get the following:
error#(rev);R18>>13,6,17,??,??(error#/2(rev));[*5]5[*5]
Train 1
error#(rev) refers to decryption methods A and B. If you look in the main thread, the error is bolded in i am error, one of the featured YouTubers. The subjects of her video recommendations are Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for the Nintendo 64.
Train 2
R18>>13,6,17,??,??(error#/2(rev)) refers to decryption methods D, C, and B. There is an ROT-18 cipher, but it’s tucked away under the generic ROT page on dcode. The number pattern corresponds to the number of alphanumeric characters in each hyperlink, which means that the full pattern is “13, 6, 17, 15, 19. 64/2=32, and I don’t think I need to explain “rev” again.
Train 3
[*5]5[*5]
This is by far the easiest one, a little respite after all of the codebreaking, Each train has four copies to each giveaway, with the exception of the last ones, which have 5 each. Each five copy giveaway has a hidden hyperlink between the links to the previous car and the main thread.
Comment has been collapsed.
I am really happy not wasting any time on this one. I would never figured this out.
Congratulations for everyone who can find these trains.
Comment has been collapsed.
Ah, that's where you lost me, I thought you had explicitly stated that we didn't need to watch the videos so I was like I don't see it.
Comment has been collapsed.
I did say not to scour them in the original version of the puzzle, but I was trying to stop people from watching the videos all the way through waiting for things to click, since you need to figure out the timestamps in order to solve the puzzle. Sorry if that was a bit confusing! It wouldn't be the only thing in version 1.
Comment has been collapsed.
I was fortunate enough to win several games from train 1 and wanted to say thank you here and bump the thread, rather than fill your inbox with a message on each giveaway. Seeing the solution now I realize I had no chance at reaching trains 2 or 3, but I do appreciate all the effort you put in to both versions of this event. Again, thank you very much for the trains and for all the gifts!
Comment has been collapsed.
You're very welcome. I'm so glad that so many people got enjoyment out of this after I flubbed the first version so hard. Enjoy your games!
Comment has been collapsed.
The revamp! I hope we can get some solvers this time around!
I've already noticed a couple changes that have answered some of my questions, if that's any relief
I have to go to work now, but when I get back home I'll take another crack at it lol
Comment has been collapsed.
I'll give it another try, because I think I made it just as far as everyone else, but I suspect that you being overly vague about stuff like Decryption D (it not having a dedicated dcode page, but saying all we need is dcode are conflicting statements and leaves way to broad a range of possible ciphers) and making everything overly complicated, I suspect you'll still have trouble hitting that 12 solvers that you want.
Anyway, I'm going to recommend you check out zelghadis's and Mikalye's puzzle guides.
Comment has been collapsed.
To answer your concern, they don't conflict. "Dedicated" is an important qualifier.
Comment has been collapsed.
Yeah, I'm at the same point as the original. I don't quite know how to "assemble" what I have and I have no inclination of what Decryption D could be. The updated "clues" only confirm what I thought was meant by the original clues.
Comment has been collapsed.
Sigh maybe the puzzle is just ROTten to the core.
Comment has been collapsed.
I take it all back, I must not be far at all, because D is for getting to the second train and I've not gotten to the first train, so obviously I'm stuck at B.
Comment has been collapsed.
Keep at it! You've just got to turn around your thinking.
Comment has been collapsed.
And that's where I'm stuck. I decrypted messages, did what you imply, but I don't know what to do with it.
Edit: eh, I see folks are getting it, so the info is there and Im just not seeing it, so Ill bow out
Comment has been collapsed.
I could have edited the original post, but I wanted to clear the clutter of hints and comments. Also, I didn't want to punish the people who had indicated making progress.
Comment has been collapsed.
Sure. I wanted to keep some surprises, but I guess I could compromise and make that one voluntary.
Comment has been collapsed.
bump for first train solved :)
edit: btw your bump button may be problematic, it goes back to the original thread, not this one, unless that's a clue
edit2: very confused on what the pattern for train 2 is or what we need from train 1. Oh well, it ends in 2 weeks and not the 29th anymore and i got progress!
edit3: one step closer... but not sure what I have that could possibly be 17
Comment has been collapsed.
i got the results of decryption A, B and i think i found the five individuals, but i cant get a code of that
Comment has been collapsed.
bump for all solved! thank you for the trains and for all the help :)
Comment has been collapsed.
bump solved train 1 and 2, I feel drained and exhausted. thank you for the GAs
Comment has been collapsed.
Made it to the first train, trying to figure out how to get to the second one now!
Comment has been collapsed.
I feel like I'm really close to getting to train 2 now. I'm pretty sure I've decrypted the message, but I can't figure out how to use it to find a working code...
Comment has been collapsed.
I just realized I had D and C swapped in the guide. I'M SO GOOD AT THIS! ;_;
Comment has been collapsed.
That clears things up. I was pretty sure what C and D could be (and felt like some of the clues were swapped) but now I'm far more certain. But I'm still getting other chars replaced by � hehe...
Can I ask what step I need the train for, that's for Decryption D, correct?
Comment has been collapsed.
The train won't be of any use until you finish the entire decryption.
Comment has been collapsed.
well for puzzle 2, i solved the ?? numbers. i then managed to decode the 5th clue pretty easily, and i was able to decode the 1st clue after a slight tweak: original decoding had an unknown character for the last character, but adding RQ to the end of the ciphertext fixed it. however, i have not been able to use decryptions D and C to decode clues 2, 3, or 4 yet no matter how much i fiddle with them. am i missing something?
Comment has been collapsed.
I think you're missing a step. Check the guide again.
Comment has been collapsed.
I love the whole thing man! It's too rich for my blood (And a lot of other people's too) but it has been a pleasure to watch and I'm really happy that folk are now cracking the code and getting through to the other side
Great work and I'm sure I'm not alone in the community saying it has been a joy to watch :D
Comment has been collapsed.
Thanks~ It's been quite a ride, really got discouraged after the first week, but I'm glad you stuck around.
Comment has been collapsed.
I know we don't get the figures for traffic to threads like this but I'd like to think lots of people have been keeping an eye on the whole thing and see that it's finally working.
It's been quite the ride for everyone but those who have cracked it will be feeling elated right now. And those who haven't now know that it can be cracked. That's what it's all about :)
Comment has been collapsed.
darn. i think i'm going to need a little hint for part 3. At least we got a full-solve confirmed which is great now :)
edit: okay not solved yet.. but progress yet again. I just need 7+8
Comment has been collapsed.
Man, it's been 2 days and I'm still stuck on the first part... I have no idea what B is supposed to be especially since I don't see a simple way to get the 5 names of individuals from what I have currently, despite seeing some hints of ordering between them
Comment has been collapsed.
Technically it's five characters. I said "individuals" because I used the word "character" somewhere else in the puzzle to mean something else, but "character" is more accurate, so I'll edit that in.
Actually, I way overthought that. Neither is fully correct, but "individual" is probably more accurate, but I should have just said five names. Shouldn't have too much effect on finding the solution, though. Really not important as long as you decode the clues.
Comment has been collapsed.
bump for solved. I was stuck way too long on something simple and thanks to slaveofwant for the puzzles, patience, and the revamp!
Comment has been collapsed.
56 Comments - Last post 1 hour ago by jojo1241
285 Comments - Last post 3 hours ago by CapnJ
863 Comments - Last post 4 hours ago by DaveFerret
640 Comments - Last post 5 hours ago by CalamityUP
30 Comments - Last post 6 hours ago by TinTG
902 Comments - Last post 7 hours ago by InSpec
1,051 Comments - Last post 8 hours ago by sensualshakti
48 Comments - Last post 55 seconds ago by antidaz
8,200 Comments - Last post 1 minute ago by fomi
3 Comments - Last post 5 minutes ago by damianea103
349 Comments - Last post 42 minutes ago by ghostgg10
104 Comments - Last post 49 minutes ago by lext
93 Comments - Last post 1 hour ago by Ratzi
38 Comments - Last post 1 hour ago by tariko
Hey all. You might recognize this post from a now-closed thread, and whether you’re familiar with it’s puzzles’ obtuse difficulty or not, I hope you’ll give this revamp a chance. I was originally going to create a different puzzle, scrap the one I had, but I saw people making progress that must’ve taken a lot of thinking and testing, and I didn’t want any of that to go to waste. Instead, I’m going to give this another shot.
Changes made:
Alright, let’s do this one last time.
I’ve got five videos from five YouTubers with under one million subscribers. These are mostly video essays, feature-length stuff you can’t burn through on a lunch break. To keep them topical, they are all about video games, though only one of them is specific to PC gaming and two-and-a-half are about games that can’t be played on PC legally except by ripping and emulating roms from your own legally purchased console games, which is the "only method I recommend..."
A Brief Review of Pokémon Generations 1-5, by KingK
To ease us in, we have a sort-of popular gaming YouTuber with a six-figure subscriber count. Okay, I say “ease us in,” but the video’s five hours long. Here me out. KingK’s style is very relaxed but methodical. I especially love his Zelda and Sonic videos, but I went with his Pokémon retrospectives because he’s planning to release his Gen 7 retrospective within the next few weeks or so. You could watch the playlist of the original videos for this reason, as it includes two videos not in the compilation covering Gen 6 and the games for N64 and GameCube, though the compilation video has all of the sponsor segments cut out. I sort of wanted to be controversial and recommend KingK’s review of Link to the Past, because I think that video’s backlash was 90% unwarranted, but whatever. Go watch them all if you like.
The Appeal Of Older Graphics, by Internet Pitstop
I was originally trying to keep this recommendation list majority-zero-play-button, but I thought it was a bit too heavy and dry, so I switched in this guy. His whole aesthetic is relaxing, just chilling in a greenscreen. Looking at pretty graphics and animation. The graphics video is a feast for the eyes. I’m also going to break my game-only rule to recommend his video about Yu-Gi-Oh. Well, I guess technically it is a game… whatever.
Ocarina of Time is the Mayonnaise of Video Games by i am error
i am error has such a gentle yet emotional style that gets me kind of weepy sometimes, and that’s a feat. In addition to her big Ocarina of Time video, she’s also made an even bigger Super Mario 64 video. I also want to shout out her Minesweeper trilogy (the first one’s unlisted, see her playlists), and her video on “the pain of losing friends,” which hit like a freight train.
Franziska von Karma: Profoundly Misunderstood [Analysis & Retrospective] by Wendy Rocket
This one is purely a personal pick that I don’t expect everyone to see the same way as I do. It’s a defense of one mid-tier popular character from a mid-tier popular game series, it’s delivered via rantsona, I get it, I don’t care, IT JUST SPEAKS TO ME! But give it a chance anyways, especially if you like Ace Attorney, and especially especially if you just thought of Franziska von Karma as the black sheep between Edgeworth and Godot. Also, Wendy has a less intense video about Manfred von Karma. I’m mostly mentioning it because it’s her only other scripted video, but it's still good, I swear!
Exploring Dead Games by Redlyne
Finally, a bookend of another six-figure sub guy who is well on his way now that his videos are pulling seven-figure views pretty consistently. This recommendation is kind of the dessert. No essay or persuasive point, just entertaining content. I’ve seen all three of these videos thus far, they’re all I’ve watched, but I’m looking forward to watching his 2-hour flash game video. Skimming through it brought back a lot of memories.
Comment has been collapsed.