Something is amiss in the outpost....

[pinkgothic]

It said it would update hourly so Ive left the page open all night waiting for it to finish or whatever and the progress bar has barely moved.

The progress bar that updates hourly is a global progress bar with the entire community's progress. You can ignore it! It's just for the overall event information. When the community progress bar hits 100%, presumably we've found a cure for the Fade. :)

I can't see any clues as to what i'm supposed to be inputting for the letter values from anything on the page. And it says I only get 10 chances. So I don't dare touch anything.

You have ten chances per sample, so go ahead and try a few things! ^_^ Be bold. When you use up samples you'll be able to collect new ones, too, so "wasting" a few trying things out isn't a problem. schenanigans posted a basic guide to what the clues you get in response to your input actually mean on the first page of this thread and there are two help threads with strategy information: thread one and thread two.

See if those help you out? :)