(03-07-2021, 04:01 AM)BendyDemon Wrote: (03-07-2021, 03:55 AM)Mondschatten Wrote: Fiddling around with this on paper and none of the words make any sense using the instructions on the code page... I must be missing something or not making the correct connection with the key.
....Code page?
I can't go backwards in the quest to get hints so this will be..tricky.
I meant the last page that gives you the coded sentence. Sorry for the confusion!
(03-06-2021, 11:10 PM)Kiwiana Wrote: It's not showing up for me, probably because I never finished the Shady Caverns (and won't ever, since I cannot solve that puzzle lol) ? Since that quest has been out for a while now, we have just added possibility to pay 300 gold to skip that puzzle.
It's explained in the page before you can type in your solution:
you write the key word, then you write the rest of the alphabet behind it, leving out the letters you've already used in your key word. You can either start at the place of the alphabet were the key word left off (CAROLMNP...) or start from the beginning of the alphabet (CAROLBDEF...). Then you write the normal alphabet below the scrambled one. The letters in the coded message are the ones in the scrambled alphabet.
I was stuck on the puzzle too. It's explained how to crack it in the Discord channel, but if you aren't part of that I'll do my best to summarize. If you don't wanna see an explanation of the puzzle, DONT READ anything within the horizontal lines below. I'm not giving the answer, though, this is just to help out the people stuck on the input page who don't remember a word of what was said before we got there (like me, lol).
The coding used in-game is a basic form of Shift Cyphering. That means that the alphabet is "shifted" so different letters are used for the same word (ex. if you had a shift of 1 letter, "B" would be written to represent the letter "A", "C" would represent the letter "B", and so forth.). This encrypts the message so that only people who know what the shift is can decode it. For example, lets use the 1 letter shift again. You want to encrypt the message "Hello". You shift each letter one time (H now equals I, E equals F, L equals M, O equals P) so "HELLO" now spells "IFMMP". You tell your friend to decrypt it with the key that you shifted each letter one to the right. They work backwards ("So I would equal...H?") and decode the message.
The branch of shift cyphering used in game is a Keyword Shift Cypher, which means that a keyword is placed at the beginning of the alphabet that subsequently shifts the rest of the letters.
To give an example, lets say I wanted to create a shift cypher with the keyword "GHOST", encrypting the message "Corteo is awesome". For reference, before any change is made, the alphabet looks like this:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
The letters G, H, O, S, and T would (in that order) be placed at the beginning of the alphabet (G = A, H = B, O = C, S = D, T = E). The alphabet with this shift now looks something like this:
G H O S T U V W X Y Z A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
(edit: This isn't formatting right but basically I'm trying to visually show how the code G would equal A, B would equal H, and so forth. it works in the below one which is all that matters lol)
However, there's a small problem. Some letters are in the alphabet twice! If these stayed in, it would be extremely hard to decrypt the message as one letter has potentially two equivalents. To fix this, we just take out the duplicate letters that AREN'T the newly inserted code in front. Ex. the G, H, O, S, and T repeating after the key are gone. The new alphabet now looks like this:
G H O S T U V W X Y Z A B C D E F I J K L M N P Q R
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Now it's time to encrypt the message! We're going to encrypt the message from earlier ("Corteo is awesome"). Referencing the key above, the message now reads "ODIKTD XD GNTJDBT".
To decrypt (as we have to do in this quest) we just have to find the key, construct the new alphabet, and work backwards to find out what it says. We already figured out the keyword is CAROL, which is the hardest part. However, there's one more obstacle that the quest throws at us; we don't know where the alphabet begins AFTER Carol. In the example above I decided to pick up right where the last letter of my key word left off (the "T" in GHOST was followed by "U"), but it could theoretically begin anywhere. However, the game presents us with only two options to save us time. It either begins like how I demonstrated (picking up right after the "L" in CAROL with M) or where the alphabet begins normally (the "L" in CAROL is followed by a B, C, D, and so forth). It's our job to figure out which one it is and decode the message.
I hope that helped!! If you have any questions just ask :) Good luck and happy deciphering!
(03-07-2021, 01:25 PM)Corteo Wrote: (03-06-2021, 11:10 PM)Kiwiana Wrote: It's not showing up for me, probably because I never finished the Shady Caverns (and won't ever, since I cannot solve that puzzle lol) ? Since that quest has been out for a while now, we have just added possibility to pay 300 gold to skip that puzzle.
That is awesome, thanks so much!!! Something seems to be wrong though, I clicked and nothing happened, checked if I the new quest shows up anyway, but it didn't, so I tried again and again and now I am down to 202 gold from like 2300 gold ... HELP XD
(03-06-2021, 11:10 PM)Kiwiana Wrote: It's not showing up for me, probably because I never finished the Shady Caverns (and won't ever, since I cannot solve that puzzle lol) ? same here, I do not have the time and patience for that sliding puzzle thing
(03-08-2021, 12:11 AM)Kiwiana Wrote: (03-07-2021, 01:25 PM)Corteo Wrote: (03-06-2021, 11:10 PM)Kiwiana Wrote: It's not showing up for me, probably because I never finished the Shady Caverns (and won't ever, since I cannot solve that puzzle lol) ? Since that quest has been out for a while now, we have just added possibility to pay 300 gold to skip that puzzle.
That is awesome, thanks so much!!! Something seems to be wrong though, I clicked and nothing happened, checked if I the new quest shows up anyway, but it didn't, so I tried again and again and now I am down to 202 gold from like 2300 gold ... HELP XD
You might want to put this problem in the Bugs forum so that it can be seen and addressed.
Val
Lab | Scroll | Dragons
She/Her | Pacific Time Zone (UTC−07:00)
Author | Artist
03-08-2021, 12:09 PM
(This post was last modified: 03-08-2021, 12:10 PM by Foxypuff.)
I can't figure it out despite the explanation so I guess I'll have to wait a while until it's possible to skip it. Too technical for me.
(03-08-2021, 12:09 PM)Foxypuff Wrote: I can't figure it out despite the explanation so I guess I'll have to wait a while until it's possible to skip it. Too technical for me.
I am in the same boat; puzzles like this are just...confusing for me SO..I guess I'll have to pass on this quest too.
It completely takes the fun out of it but technically it is possible to just search for a substitution cypher decoder and enter the text to get a result. This kind of encryption is super simple so brute forcing it is quite possible, regardless of what the quest tells you (I mean...we could hardly give people something that is actually hard to decode for obvious reasons).
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