Update v1.1 - Reduced difficulty in The Enigma due to mass protests by solvers. Hope you all can see clearly now.
Update v1.2 - Final week frenzy! Hint drop rate increased to let more people get trapped in.

News : Gracee is the first solver! Kudos! Aurorable is free!
News : mandrill is the second solver! Kudos! SexyBudgie is free!
News : AuthenticZac is the third solver! Kudos! keohookalani is free!
News : grich is the fourth solver! Kudos!
News : thed4rkn1te is the fifth solver! Kudos!
News : SadisticChicken is the sixth solver! Kudos!
News : tso184 is the seventh solver! Kudos!
News : SoulNibbler is the eighth solver! Kudos!
News : chour is the ninth solver! Kudos!

Rules

• No group solving
• No link sharing
• No spoilers
• No blacklist tears (Resolve it elsewhere)
• No begging for hints (We will give you plenty)
• No death threats (We will up the difficulty immediately)

Details

• Levels : 2-3
• Difficulty : Very Easy- Impossible
• No. of stops : Around 100+ or so. (Not giving an exact number, because reasons)
• End time : 30th November 2015, 12:00 PM PST.
• Big prizes (Not restricted to) : The Walking Dead : Season 2, A Wolf Among Us, Saints Row Ultimate Franchise Pack, Borderlands 2 GOTY, Just Cause 3, Metal Gear Solid V, Darksiders 2 : Definitive.

Hello denizens of SteamGifts.
Remember me? I was that one guy who held the RAGE events back in May/June. Ah, good times. I had only but begun my time here as a gifter, so back then, I was still learning the ropes of it all. And while the whole thing was a rousing success, it also left me in a life crisis. What was I doing it for? Why bother continuing it? Did I really gain satisfaction out of it? I answered my own questions, with another question. What am I really on Steam for? I’m not that avid a gamer, and I most certainly do not aspire to be a lifetime trader. That’s when I realised, that I don’t want games, but I love giving them to others. I don’t need money, but I can use it to bring a smile to a certain someone’s face. And to do this, I don’t need groups. I need a community. Hence why I decided to completely overhaul the way I spend my time online, ditched my group, and began full time work on this platform. On close evaluation, it became apparent that a puzzle is the one type of event that is universally loved by this community. Which is good, because that gives me the means to break every last one of you. For my amusement.

Welcome to this monster of a puzzle train, guaranteed to leave you in either tears(aka “Why do I suck?”) or a state of nerd rage (aka “F@@K U GR SUCK D@@K”). Now, why would you even wish to do this? Wouldn’t your mind immediately sound the alarm and say NOPE to this? You are correct. But you are also clueless as to how far I can go to get my way. I have a contingency for this exact situation, and it’s about time I played it.

I have managed to kidnap SexyBudgie, keohookalani and Aurorable to help me with making this train (against their will, of course). And since their lives are at stake, they made sure I wasn’t let down, and gave it their all. So don’t think for one second that they went easy on you folks.

I will release each of them for every person who manages to complete the entire puzzle. This entails completing my challenges till you are worthy enough to enter my home of puzzle addicts. The clock is ticking. Their health and sanity are in your hands……..
(Cut to static.. Video feed begins.)

There is a bleak room with a table and chairs. Sitting around the table are four people. One looks very animated and happy. The other three look despondent. The animated one looks like GR. He turns to the rest of them, “So this is my idea….”

The faces of the other three look sad as he rambles on. One of them flees to the corner of the room and curls up into a ball. The two remaining at the table with GR have grim looks on their faces.

Weeks Later

Aside from GR, the rest of the people in the room look completely exhausted. Where he continues to get his energy from, is unknown, but he is still lively and animated and excited.

“Let’s roll this out,” he exclaims. The rest merely put their heads on the table and begin to snore. GR merrily jumps up and leaves the barren room and locks the door behind him. “I’ll bring food in a bit, you’ve finally earned some,” he calls back.

Don’t leave Keohookalini, Aurorable and SexyBudgie in GR’s hands any longer! Save them! Solve the Train!

To counter leaking, we are putting all big AAA's behind a closed group. This group can only be entered if you solve the whole puzzle. So put your days to good use.

I'll also be adding some extra padding to this monstrosity from time to time. I mean, it's not like there isn't time to kill..... So when I do, you would know. Remember to keep tabs of every nook and cranny till then.

To the new solvers, please read the Zelgh guide before you begin. Its a must. To everyone else, if you get stuck anywhere, make sure you go to the hint thread linked below and give your vote to the section you are stuck on. We will release hints every 12 hours.

Want hints? Go here.

Shall we play a game?

SOLUTION

Every section has been broken down in detail. Sorry about the 4 week delay. I completely forgot to post this. Well, here it is.

0. Entry points - Split Paths

The image on the first GA contained entry points for both the branches. The easy path had the more obvious one, with the GA link visible when you hover over the image. But if you follow the image back to its source on imgur, you would see that the title contains the link : jqFyE, with the footnote, “I am always one step ahead of you.” Shift each letter with the one preceding it in the alphabet, and you have secured your way to the Hard branch. (Starts from the Maze Madness section).

1. Baby Labyrinth

Each description had an italic letter and a string hidden in the source code. Further, there were clues in the descriptions in each room that hinted at which kind of encryption method to use. The first wasn’t encoded. Binary said things were getting a bit more complicated. Oct referenced a stop sign. The Hex room, referenced people pouring honey out of a beehive (which is made up of hexagon shapes in nature). B32 was a poor reference by speaking of a Stratofortress which is actually a B52 bomber. B64 was reference through a bus line in New York that went by that exact line number and could be googled. ASCII85, was referenced by a route to travel through Scotland that if researched through the clues would lead to it’s name, A85. There was no real hint for the final one, as the progression should have seemed clear enough by that point.
(Note by Budgie: I don’t think anybody noticed those :P)

m 1
W 00110010
C 146
o GU
w Ng==
Q 2Z
Z 34
4 56

Each string hidden in the source code was a coded number from 1 to 8. 1 is 1 in decimal, 00110010 is 2 in binary, 146 is 3 in octal, 34 is 4 in hexadecimal, GU is 5 in base32, Ng== is 6 in base64, 2Z is 7 in ASCII85,, 56 is 8 in CHAR/DEC. Xlate tools could have been used to decode. After decoding you had to order the italic characters by those numbers and that gave you “mWCZowQ4”. The description in the final room said something about being questioned, which should have hinted at a quiz.
That was the code for an ith puzzle: http://www.itstoohard.com/puzzle/mWCZowQ4
The quiz was relatively simple and was based on Berlin. All answers could be retrieved using Google-fu skills. Upon successfully completing said quiz, you were handed a five character code which led to The Enigma.

2. The enigma

You had to consider only the descriptions which had the illuminati eye in the attached picture. Eye: http://i.imgur.com/i0bAAUG.jpg No eye: http://i.imgur.com/mcwWi5B.jpg From those descriptions, you had to take the first letter of each bolded capital word. The order was that of the giveaways, with the central (“deeper”) giveaway as the last one. The strings were: ILLUMINATI ZOMBIES, GROWLING VEGETABLES, APRIL 6TH, BIOLOGY QUIZZES. The first letters form the string “IZGVA6BQ”, which, decoded from base32, gave “FMPx0”. That was the code for the following giveaway: http://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/FMPx0/

3. Smaller problems

Each description had 3 italic letters. The case of the italic letters determined the case of the decoded letter.

cua
acu
gau
gaa
ACC

That was genetic code. You could have used this table to decode HERE (Move from the center to the outside). The case of the italic strings provided the case for the letters: ltdeT, which was the code for the next giveaway.

4. I hate colors

There were 5 white and black fast changing gifs. The 2nd and 4th just contained numbers from 1 to 12, in order (1-6 the 2nd, 7-12 the 4th). These were merely clues telling you that you needed to order things from 1-12.

The other gifs had on each frame a big white or black character and a very small grey number Except the second F in the first gif. It was left out and when puzzle solvers found all the rest, they would need to take a leap of faith and place the last character in the missing spot.

1st gif: M 6, F 1, Q 12, F ?
3rd gif: 5 2, L 9, K 5, E 10
5th gif: N 3, T 7, X 11, U 8

Slowed and resized first gif, with the numbers pointed out on the first 3 frames: http://i.imgur.com/59JPFsZ.gif
Ordering the characters by those numbers and presuming, by exclusion, that the second “F” from the first gif is number 4, you got the following string: F5NFKMTULEXQ, which, converted from base32 gave “/ZU2tY/”. The next giveaway was: http://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/ZU2tY/

5. Strange Paths

You had to look at the links for the following giveaways in this section:

http://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/Vmc1j/Grand-Theft-Auto-Vice-City
http://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/Y33c2/warframe
http://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/HHQRj/greyfox-RPG
http://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/ctH3J/9-Clues-The-Secret-of-Serpent-Creek
http://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/ZU2tY/FEAR

The name of the giveaways didn’t fit the actual games. Taking the first letter of the game names from the links, you got the string “Gwg9F”, which led to http://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/Gwg9F/

6. Obnoxious trolls

Through the last few puzzles and as you reached this point, the descriptions occasionally had references to the lyrics from Rick Astley’s song woven into the description in some way. It became blatant in this last puzzle hopefully what was happening and should have clued people into the song.

The last giveaway had the following link at the end: http://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/LSHQ2/wpp9WpaH The last 8 characters were a code for the ith puzzle: http://www.itstoohard.com/puzzle/wpp9WpaH The answer was “rickrolled” or “rick rolled” and the solution gave you the code for the next giveaway: 5AM0Q.

7. Hiding in plain sight

The links to the following giveaways were:

http://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/fcA2C/zombie-killtime
http://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/ZBFB5/ROCKETBIRDS-HARDBOILED-CHICKEN
http://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/A8jpC/CARGO-COMMANDER
http://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/WHNia/0rbitalis
http://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/5AM0Q/DAVID

Starting with the first giveaway (david) and taking the first character of the giveaway name you got the following string: DzRC0, which led to the last part of the easy section.

This actually was a troll GA intended to temporarily slow people down from finding the true end. It said you were completed, but it was five sentences and had unusual capitalization at the start of each sentence. This hopefully clued people in, as we’ve already been dealing with the magic number of 5 characters in the last few puzzles. If the first characters of each were taken and strung together, it led to the next GA, which while also a troll GA, just asked you to do the same thing again. Upon reaching that final set of real prizes you were issued a password that you needed to keep for an unspecified reason.

Easy branch ends here.

8. Maze Madness

Every stop in here has a code encrypted in HEX. This code, at almost all stops, decodes to variants of “Nope”, except for 3.

http://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/jCQNX/runaway-a-twist-of-fate 37 20 36 62
http://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/PwajX/damnation-city-of-death 20 34 63 20
http://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/apR5W/survivor-squad 35 35 20 36

The image in the first stop of Maze Madness also gives this clue on hovering over it.

35,32,20,,,,,,,,,,,,,_.

The above codes will fit in these blanks, but first you need to find the order. Here is where the Riddle of the Sphinx comes in. It asks
“What has 4 legs in the morning, 2 in the afternoon, and 3 in the evening?” The answer is of course, man (crawls when born, walks during its prime, and uses a stick when towards the end of its lifespan). But the times mentioned are significant here. On ordering according to morning, afternoon and evening (4th, 2nd and 3rd stop from the 1st), you get

35 32 20 35 35 20 36 37 20 36 62 20 34 63 20

Double decoding via HEX gives you the next URL (RUgkL). Hint to this was given in the first stop.

Have a go at it, but do so knowing you won’t return.
Enter at your own peril.
Xenial folk are hard to come by these days anyway.

9. What's this?

To solve the ith (http://www.itstoohard.com/puzzle/fapFEr6K) you had to move forward and look at the attached pics. The full picture was http://i.imgur.com/EoSngf0.gif From left to right there are 2 characters going down (down down), 2 characters going up (up up), one character going left (left), one character going right (right), one character going left (left), one character going right (right), 2 characters moving in a shape of “B” and 2 characters moving in a shape of “A”. The answer was “konami code” (up up down down left right left right B A).
The math puzzle was a dead end. The solution was 2.72 (euler’s number, a mathematical constant written as “e”, rounded to 2 decimals)

10. Escape Pod

Just before the Escape Pod: http://i.imgur.com/lH9Tp8W.gif was a little detour with a pair of giveaways. The characters movements hinted to morse code: the jump was a dot, the movement was a line, each character indicated a letter or a number. Reading from left to right the code was “.-. -.. ..--- - ..-.”, i.e. “RD2TF”. Later on, at the beginning of “beauty of sight”, the first pic had “the other one was xxnXX” as it’s sg title, which indicated the letters’ case for this one: “rd2TF”.
Each picture in the Escape Pod had a string as it’s sg title.

gucetgyqn
ood
uayic
jwf
jkkt
bvf
azmbbmt
nqc

Each string was a word backwards coded with caesarian shift, the first one had to be shifted by 24, the second one by 23 and so on. That gave you

“esacrewol lla qwuey era deen uoy srettel eht”

This is “the letters you need are yeuwq all lowercase” reversed. “yeuwq” was the code of the next giveaway.

Then you had to do an ith puzzle http://www.itstoohard.com/puzzle/dRZzbmcF The answer was 297.
Explanation:
If there are two people left, the second to last gets kicked and the last one takes everything. If there are three people left, the one proposing can take everything, since the fourth doesn't want to be kicked and will vote for it. 300-0-0, one vote needed. With four people left, the third one will never agree, the fourth and the fifth will agree only if they get at least one coin (since they are evil and like kicking people). 298-0-1-1, two votes needed. With five people, the second will not agree unless given 299 coins, the third will agree for one, the fourth or the fifth for two or more. 297-0-1-0-2 or 297-0-1-2-0, two votes needed.

11. Train facts

This puzzle was made up of facts about trains. The final link in the train led you to an ITH, which requested the Password given to you by completing the easy side of the train. Upon doing so, you were provided with another url: http://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/Zdkk8/

This led to the final GA which upon viewing the source revealed a 7 character code, which was needed to access an imgur link. In the tradition of SG hidden information, though perhaps not as hard as some in the past, the image as an inception billboard picture, and hidden in it, was the code to the ITH necessary to leave this section.

This puzzle was extremely specialized knowledge, that required the puzzler to take the information and connect the question, hints and answer format to fill in the necessary gaps. Food and Conversation was the first hint which stated that the two were related somehow. There were hints on how you should answer, and the format for the answer was provided. Further, the ordering of the answer was provided as well in the hint of the letter U.

There was a type of food provided which was unique to each language. For example, Ratatouille was French in origin. Linked with conversation should have led the puzzler to the French language. The question given was a list of the french vowel inventory with some replaced by question marks. The vowels for french could be looked up on wikipedia and their IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) representations could be found. The ordering when brought back to the letter U signified that the order was from top left down to the middle and up to the top right. There were a total of four language vowel inventories to answer correctly with the simplest being Italian and no vowels being provided for you in the format.

Upon completion of the ITH you were provided with another URL that led to The Beauty of SIght.

12. The beauty of sight

Each picture in this section led to another small detour with a pair of giveaways. Each character in the picture indicated a black dot in braille, the absence of a character meant a white dot (http://www.todayifoundout.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/braille-alphabet.jpg). For example http://i.imgur.com/QKTJKuQ.gif is:

black white
white black
black white

which is an “o”
The final string was “oRqww”.
There was no puzzle to reach “The end times”.

13. The end times

This section started with “Colors FTW” ith: http://www.itstoohard.com/puzzle/2gUSNOJm
Clicking on the pic led you to another giveaways, which, in turn, led to “I love colors” ith http://www.itstoohard.com/puzzle/9TRP4Zae Both iths were solved in a similar way.
It was probably easier to solve the second one first.
In the second ith the first frame is the only one that matters for the solution, while the other 2 were added to make the colors easier to distinguish for people who might have a certain type of color blindness. Each dot is composed of 3 parts. The 2 exterior rings are primary colors in the RYB color system (red, yellow, blue), while the color at the center is a secondary color. If the color at the center matched the mix of the 2 exterior colors (blue+yellow=green, yellow+red=orange, blue+red=magenta) the combination was right, else it was wrong. The dots with the right combinations were ones, while those with the wrong combinations were zeroes.

01100001
01100110
01100010

Decoded from binary it formed the password “afb”.
The first puzzle was solved in a similar way: the first 2 frames of each dot were primary colors, while the 3rd frame held secondary colors. Instead of being ones and zeroes though, the right combination formed a black dot, while the wrong one a white dot. Decoded from braille it gave “fZDQ6”, which led to http://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/fZDQ6/legend-of-grimrock-2 This giveaway had attached to the desctiption this pic http://i.imgur.com/wzWLdSn.gif which had “And the password is…” as it’s sg title. By reverse searching the pic you should have gotten to this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StTqXEQ2l-Y (or something similar). The password for the ith was “everything is awesome” (with up to 4 exclamation marks).

Hope you guys enjoyed the ride. We will see you again soon...

View attached image.