Under the weather?
Fret not, for it is group puzzle time
Gifting is my specialty
Making puzzles is in my blood
Fun is the spirit
Merry Christmas!
Work together to get through this labyrinth
Click 21736991 to start

Rules

• Do NOT share itstoohard quiz or giveaway links
• Sharing puzzle methods and quiz answers is encouraged (in fact is pretty much required if you want to make it to the end)
• Addendum: Sharing character quiz links is ok
• Addendum 2: Sharing only the latest unsolved quiz(zes) is okay.

Other Notes:

• All giveaways end on January 8th.
• Solve the "B" stage trivia for a hint on the puzzle portion of the next stage.
• As in my last group puzzle, each question number is for a different platform across the quizzes
• If you ever need to use the steam store for anything, use the US version
• Here's a giveaway.
• Character quizzes only need first names

Special thanks to Demosthenes for donating a couple of games (and giveaway slots, because I ran out). Also, if you happen to find a Doujin quiz, know that it was not my doing!!
Also thanks to Jexel, for this awesome itstoohard site (we need editing powers!), and for inspiration from his group puzzle earlier this year (Some things may look familiar!).
PS: The number of giveaways in profile aren't necessarily the number of gifts. There may be more!

Solutions

Quizzes

All answers are located in the following documents:
Stage Quizzes
Character Quizzes

Stage Puzzles

Stage 1

Use Character Quizzes A and B. Take the first letters of each of the characters in A and add them to the first letters of the matching question in B. Use the following code:
A=1, B=2, C=3, etc.

Add the letters together to get the bit.ly link like so:
.. KTDTGAMSL

• KTDSJCPPM
  .............................
  .. 11 20 04 20 07 01 13 19 12
• 11 20 04 19 10 03 16 16 13
  ......................................................
  .. 22 40 08 39 17 04 29 35 25
  = V N M Q D C I Y

And so the link you get is: http://bit.ly/vNHMQDCIY

Stage 2

The next itstoohard quiz code was hidden inside of the Moo code. Simply replace all instances of M, m, O, and o with a space and you'll get the characters to the next quiz: http://www.itstoohard.com/puzzle/kXyXB1QS. In case none of you noticed, this puzzle was a reference to an old crypto-puzzle.

Stage 3

This was a simple gift chain. The first game in a list was something I won, followed by something the gifter won, etc. Take the first letter of the gifter of the games in question. The complete chain solutions are as follows, with the letters in parenthesis the first letter of the gifter:

<= Homefront <= Tropico 3 - Steam Special Edition (D) <= Natural Selection 2 <= The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition <= Warhammer 40000: Space Marine
<= Bioshock 2 <= Max Payne Bundle <= Closure <= Shadowgrounds Survivor <= Nuclear Dawn <= The Ship - Complete Pack (L)
<= Towns <= The Darkness II <= Binary Domain <= Zeno Clash (R) <= The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim <= Oddworld Pack <= Costume Quest <= The Walking Dead
<= The Ship <= Dustforce <= Hitman: Absolution <= Titan Quest Gold <= DiRT 3 <= X3: GoldBox <= The Ship <= Broken Sword Trilogy <= X SuperBox (O)
<= Quantum Conundrum <= Waveform <= Swords and Soldiers HD <= Max Payne 3 (C) <= Din's Curse <= Deponia
<= Anno 2070 <= Red Faction: Armageddon <= Warhammer 40000: Dawn of War II <= Avencast: Rise of the Mage (X)
<= Altitude (D) <= Metro 2033 <= War of the Roses <= Fallout New Vegas: Dead Money <= Tomb Raider: Underworld
<= Nexuiz (U) <= Worms Crazy Golf <= Serious Sam 3: BFE <= The Binding of Isaac Collection <= Magical Diary

The solution is then: http://www.itstoohard.com/puzzle/DLROCXDU

Stage 4

Each of the games has some amount of DLCs. Use this number and convert into a letter as with the stage 1 puzzle.
? = 8 = H
? = 20 = T
? = 4 = D
?+? = 10 + 1 = K
? = 12 = L
? = 1 = A
0
?+? = 12 + 4 = P
Note that I specified to include all redundant DLCs, only those released before Dec. 25, 2012, and using the US store. The link you get is: http://www.itstoohard.com/puzzle/HtDkLA0p

Stage 5

All character codes given were steamgifts giveaways. Each line corresponds to the Steam games in a specific indie bundle. Take the first letter of the missing Steam games to construct the quiz link. Use the letter/number conversion table given on the bottom for the numbers.

1. 0 - Osmos in Humble Bundle for Android
2. i - inmomentum in Indie Gala 1
3. w - Weird Worlds in The May Hurray Bundle
4. O - Oil Rush in The Fall Bundle
5. D - Dino D-Day in the XMAS Bundle
6. G - Gemini Rue in The Launch Bundle
7. 1 - Irongrip: Warlord in Build a Bundle 2
8. O - Osmos in Humble Bundle 2

The solution is thus: http://www.itstoohard.com/puzzle/0iwO6G1O

Stage 6

Pretty simple. Just use the number of characters in the titles of the games and convert to a letter as in the Stage 1 puzzle. If the requested character is a number, just use the number of characters.

15 = O
20 = T
15 = O
08
06 = F
08 = H
06 = F
20 = T

The solution is: http://www.itstoohard.com/puzzle/oTO8fhFT

Stage 7

The pivotal code is in Quiz Z. The string given there, TCNqVtlh, indicates both the capitalization of the quiz code and which other character quizzes to look in to get the correct link. So a T would mean to use the single H given on the completion of character quiz T.

Letters are hidden in Quizzes
C H L N Q T V

Which correspond to the following chracters:
Q F J 6 E H 2

The solution is thus: http://www.itstoohard.com/puzzle/HQ6e2hjf. Note that there were two extra letters in Quizzes O and R. These were only there to prevent brute-forcing of the quiz link.

Stage 8

Use the Character Quizzes to construct quiz links. The codes to use were hidden in various giveaways, but should not have been difficult to find.

The very natural piece of poetry in the OP:
U2 F1 G7 M3 F6 M9 W9 C1 = ukYxspPg

Hidden in the description of the game on the top of Giveaway 1:
C2 W1 L8 G0 E5 M2 I8 O7 = WIo9BCvY

At the end of the pastebin for the Stage 2 puzzle:
R5 S5 O4 J3 P8 O9 G7 H2 = GKe4VDy4

Given in plain sight in Giveaway 5:
C2 D2 U6 X7 E0 V9 R2 O0 = WzJB3Nm0

Hidden in the very first giveaway code on the 2nd page of comments in Stage 5:
R7 C4 C2 Q6 M4 N8 X2 D0 = 1uwklfk6

In plain sight on Giveaway 11. Just combine the letter-links with the number string on the bottom:
D4 I7 H4 S7 W0 U7 J5 Y7 = Tjny26Kr

Given in Giveaway 15:
H1 D0 M8 K9 W0 L9 U5 Z5 = Q6TL29fg

Given in title of Giveaway 32:
F3 T7 W5 I2 S4 O1 O0 L1 = O6BJjN0j

Each quiz leads to a key. Go to the gallery view of the pictures (delete the .jpg from the imgur link) to see a suspicious code in the description. Arrange the keys in a Rainbow to get the following message:
THECOMPRESSEDPASSWORDISLARACROFT

The picture of the treasure chest is actually a RAR file hiding another RAR file that is password protected. Rename the .jpg extension of the picture to .rar and extract. The password is laracroft as given by the keys. After extracting again, the picture file gives the next quiz link: http://www.itstoohard.com/puzzle/SgRQ5NIV

Stage 9

It's a nonogram/picross puzzle. Use all of the images found at the end of most of the Stage A and B quizzes. Note that the font difference in some of the pictures don't mean anything - I had to manually reinsert some numbers because of an error. The final picture looks like this. And so the solution is: http://www.itstoohard.com/puzzle/ztEAudw5

Secret Giveaways

1. Stage 1A leads here
2. Stage 1B leads here
3. Stage 2A leads here
4. Stage 2B leads here
5. Stage 3A leads here
6. Stage 3B leads here
7. Stage 4A leads here
8. Stage 4B leads here
9. Stage 5A leads here
10. Stage 5B leads here
11. Stage 6A leads here
12. Stage 6B leads here
13. Stage 7A leads here
14. Stage 7B leads here
15. Stage 8A leads here
16. Stage 8B leads here
17. Stage 9A leads here
18. Stage 9B leads here
19. Stage 10A leads here
20. Stage 10B leads here
21. QR code quarters in the Character Quizzes leads to this giveaway. Assembled QR code leads to here.
22. The itstoohard quiz for the purple key in Stage 8 gives the giveaway code
23. The titles of the imgur pictures in gallery mode for each of the keys in Stage 8 spells out the code for an itstoohard quiz. Answering it leads to the giveaway.
24. Hidden in Stage 7A #10. Clicking the image leads to a gallery with 2 images. The 2nd image gives you the giveaway code
25. The title of this thread is a code for the character quizzes. Place the first letters of each word with the numbers, which gives G8 p6 h6 G2 e6. Use the character grid as in several of the later stages to get to the giveaway. Note the the capitalization of the giveaway code depends on the capitalization of the words in the title.
26. Listen to the #5 in Stage 9A all the way to the end. A voice will say 5 different letters. This leads to a giveaway. Note that the capitalization had to be brute forced. Originally I was going to use female voice for lower case and male voice for caps, but I ran out of time.
27. Apparently one of the most difficult giveaways to find. It was hidden on the right hand side of video #9 in Stage 9A. It was embedded inside the image. Unfortunately, the program I used to upload to youtube severely decreased the image quality and it was barely noticeable. But hey, at least I gave you guys a break here - originally it was going to be bucket fill to find.
28. Hidden in the youtube description of #3 in Stage 8A. Giveaway
29. Clicking the image for #9 in Stage 6A lead to this gif. All but a single frame of the gif says "404 not found" if you bucket fill. The other frame gets you to the giveaway.
30. Character code hidden in the description of this giveaway. This giveaway was a part of the Stage 5 puzzle and leads to this giveaway.
31. Simply bucket filling all of the keys for the Stage 8 puzzle gives the code to an itstoohard quiz that leads to this giveaway.
32. A freebie given in the OP.
33. Clicking the link given at the end of Stage 9A leads you to giveaway #17, but copy and pasting the link leads here.
34. The barcode pieces in giveaways 2,6,8,14 lead to this giveaway.
35. The barcode pieces in giveaways 4,10,12,16 lead to this giveaway.
36. The steam store descriptions in the odd numbered giveaways from 1 to 15 are important. The first letter of the titles of the games in the description spells out "red fishy" implying a red herring - this was done because the titles actually led to giveaway in my previous group puzzle. Instead, note that I removed words and sometimes whole sentences from each of the descriptions. You are supposed to count up the number of words in each description, then preform a decimal to ascii conversion to get to this quiz and subsequently this giveaway.
37. The QR image quarter in Character Quiz K was given by a link rather than an imbedded image. The description of the image in imgur gallery view gives the code to this giveaway. Making it a non-embedded picture was actually a mistake on my part and I did not intend to put a giveaway there. But since a mistake was made, in order to disguise it, I added a giveaway :P.
38. Bonus giveaway given in giveaway 20.
39. QR Code from Character Quizzes leads to this giveaway.
40. QR Code from Character Quizzes leads to this giveaway.
41. QR Code from Character Quizzes leads to this giveaway.
42. The bit.ly link identifier (bit.ly/xXXXXXXXX) in giveaway 1 actually lead to this quiz. Solving it lead to a Skyrim giveaway

List of All Giveaways:

1. Magnetis
2. Majesty Gold - HD
3. Prototype
4. Supreme Commander 2
5. Rome: Total War
6. Quantum Conundrum
7. STALKER
8. The Last Remnant
9. Hearts of Iron III Collection
10. IndieGala X (Above Average)
11. Red Faction: Guerrilla
12. Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine
13. Transcripted
14. Just Cause
15. Bioshock 2
16. Deus Ex: Human Revolution
17. Hitman: Blood Money
18. Just Cause 2
19. Homefront
20. Prototype 2
21. IndieGala 9 (Above Average)
22. Nation Red
23. The Club
24. 4 Elements
25. Gettysburg: Armored Warfare
26. King Arthur Collection
27. King Arthur II
28. Victoria II
29. Perimeter 2: New Earth
30. Humble THQ Bundle (Below Average)
31. Nexuiz
32. Mad Riders
33. Anna
34. Roller Coaster Rampage
35. Alan Wake's American Nightmare
36. Indie Gala 9 (Above Average)
37. Legendary
38. Saint's Row: The Third Franchise Pack
39. The Darkness II
40. RAGE
41. Fallout: New Vegas
42. Skyrim