Tier 3 Solved. An Update On The Finals Easter Egg Puzzle
Tier three of level two of the finals ARG Easter egg puzzle kicked off on November 17 when tiers 2 ABC and 2 DEF were solved and we were presented with these two question marks, one seemingly made of gold and the other eggshell in line with previous gold and egg-related passwords we'd had we knew Latin and numbers replacing letters and mirrors were all solid previous Clues and just 6 days later we came up with the password oo Orum which is a combination of oo a Latin word for egg and Orum the Latin word for gold GG easy bring on level, three, 126 days to solve a puzzle where all of the pieces you needed were given to you guys at the beginning.
How it actually went.
I want someone banned. I want it now that I've had it; that's, twice, someone cook me some eggs.
How tier 3 of level 2 was solved
At 126 days into tier three of level two of the finals, the ARG Easter egg puzzle took us a lot longer to solve than anyone would have expected, and when I say we, the actual password was solved by Discord member Lunen, no, but as a group, the Easter egg hunters always know it's a group effort to solve these puzzles.
126 days to come up with the password breaks our previous tide records of 96 days for tiers 1D and 1E by a full month, and honestly, you could tell we were 4 months into the tier in the Easter egg channel of the finals. I just get more confused. The Mastermind Behind these puzzles and back co-founder, their chief content officer and executive producer for the finals, Rob Brunon, cryptically replied, Now it's actually not that hard.
Hamlet equals Ofilia, equals five truths. There are five things that have been true through this entire level; combine them, and you have the password. So what were the five truths? Well, if you've watched my previous Easter egg puzzle article, you might recall that Gold and IG have been the subjects of multiple passwords each when tier 2 AB.
C, and D were solved; their past words were modifications. Of the words gold and egg, solving those tiers gave us these two question mark images made of gold and, presumably, eggshell. The comment What is a gold egg? was also confirmed as being important by Rob with this customary eye emoji confirmation.
So gold and eggs were the first two truths. We also had some recurring modifiers of the passwords and clues that were Latin, such as Tier 1 F's password being Vitalis, which is the Latin word for egio, and also the use of Roman numerals and several password numbers replacing letters, such as the and Vitalis being replaced with a three and mirrors.
This was a harder one because the clues for mirrors were more subtle, usually such as little reflections of light appearing in the images we received throughout the puzzle and also the three in Vitalis, being a mirror of a capital E. There were some additional clues throughout Tier 3 as well. On December 7th, the finals launched, including patch notes for 1.2.0.
And in those, the letters o l n g e d were written in bold, and these could be rearranged to form the words golden egg. To be fair, the change from gold to golden threw us a bit on the gold egg path for the password and definitely made resolving the password harder. I'm still not sure why the clue was golden rather than gold.
A little over a month later, on January 21st, we saw our first new art image in nearly 3 months with this image of the Sleek outfit. The Easter egg hunters discovered hidden QR code fragments in the footer. Once the QR code was reassembled, it was used to reveal the hidden URL of the finals official website, {49}.
Why didn't anyone find me? Am I not important? This page was a new image named vvv, which was of the game's Iggy mascot. Namatama, who had previously been used as the subject of supplementary During the Easter egg hunt. Namatama was holding a golden mirror and wearing a gold crown. The numbers 157, 1943, were hidden on the mirror, referencing the birth date of astrophysicist Joselyn Bal Bernell along with the fragmented signature of German artist Paul CLE.
Paul CLE had a painting called AB OO. AB oo is Latin four from the egg. Peers of numbers were also found in each corner of the image: top left: 555999, top right: 444 888, bottom left: 666 44 4, and bottom right: 4444. These were decoded using what's known as a T9 or keypad cipher, where the numbers correspond to letters on a phone's keypad; in this instance, Lio.
XVI, or Ligo 17 in 2017. The ligo gravitational wave Observatory detected gravitational waves from merging neutron stars, an astronomical catastrophic process that is thought to result in the formation of many heavy elements, including gold. Joselyn Bell Bernell and Lego also have something in common: the Nobel Prize in physics, and the winner of the Nobel Prize in physics is awarded with a gold medal.
So we had multiple clues reaffirming eggs and gold as key parts of the password, and really, the time between January 21 and March 22 when the password was solved was divided into two main activities in the Easter egg channel of the finals. Discord is trying to resolve the words gold and ear into a password using Latin number and letter replacement and mirroring.
And secondly, exploring new paths that might lead to a password that is linked to those things. For instance, for a while, we thought that the James Webb Space Telescope might be a key to the password because it has mirrors coated in gold that kind of looked like an egg in the rocket when it was ready for launch and it hatched in space, with space being another common path we'd seen in many of the previous tiers, and we considered that to be one of the five truths for a while anyhow on March 22nd, 2024.
Hunter Lunen No entered the password oo Orum with the O's and oo changed to zeros and completed level two after 126.
A new image and what's next?
Days of trying to solve the puzzle, so the password included gold and egg and Latin with the O's and oo replaced by zeros and the order of gold and egg swapped to match the mirroring of the words, and the result of entering the correct password was this image of Namatama floating in what looks like the upper atmosphere or even space wearing a great Helm nights helmet just like the one we saw in the launch trailer for the game, so what's next?
Well, the great news is that now things finally move from the out-of-game realm to the in-game realm when we solve Tier 3, as Rob Runeson wrote in the Discord, so the next level is a little bit more tricky. You'll have to solve three individual Easter eggs in the game to activate the web page; they are all linked in an obvious way, and the clue is where to find them on the map already.
