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Burns

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Posts posted by Burns

  4. Christmas Riddles!

    in Contests, Quests and Adventures

    Posted · Edited by Burns

    You are very cordially invited to the riddle party!

     

    I'll prepare 20(ish) riddles for the party, maybe add some easy ones ad-hoc, and you're all invited to solve them, and then present your own if you feel like!

     

    The party starts at 21:00(ish) on 19th of december (which is next saturday). Feel free to start without me if i don't make it on time :))

     

    I've got no rewards planned, which means that we're doing this just for fun and games, but i'd still be delighted to find some riddle-friends :)

    Also, since it's christmas and all, i might hand out goodies if somebody solves a lot ;)

     

    See you there! :D

     

    Edit: By there, i mean GoE.

  6. The Writing on the Wall

    in Contests, Quests and Adventures

    Posted

    Well, it's still a cipher quest, and i posted the solution a day after dst finished it, that leaves plenty of room for runner ups imo :P

     

    Some quests can work for everyone on their own time, like the build your own drachorn thing. This right here has a solution, once anyone other than me knows how to win i can't safely say who solved it by themselves and who copied. This doesn't allow for much room between the first correct solution and the end of it.

     

    Maybe the next one will have a more permanent character again.

  7. The Writing on the Wall

    in Contests, Quests and Adventures

    Posted

    Spoiler contains the solution, if you want to riddle for yourself, don't open it yet :)

    [spoiler]

    Step one:
    The first BIG war of Team Brit was WW I, and they largely used a cipher from the 1850s called 'Playfair', the first recorded digraph substitution. It was considered extremely safe for its time, because it doesn't just exchange letters, but take two letters at once and encodes the duo, which takes it from 25 variations to 25 x 25 variations. You can make it extra hard, which i did, of course, by adding a passphrase, in this case BURNS. To make it less obvious, i took out every second space so the digraph part wouldn't be too obvious (there are not too many symetric digraph ciphers you can actually solve with pen and paper).
     
    The text i encrpyted that way was:
    THEA NCIE NTTE XTWA SSOL VEDB YTHE SONO FJEA NOFS AINT POUR CAIN WHOW ROTE DOWN THES OLUT IONU NDER NEAT HTHE SCRI PTUR EINH ONOR OFOU RFIR STMA STER.
     
    Step two:
    Following the instructions from above, you'll get to the Viginere cipher, as Blaise de Viginere was born in the little french village mentioned. Vigenere is a fairly simple encryption, but was considered very safe at the time as well, because it allows for a passphrase, too. When a sufficiently long passphrase is used for Viginere, it becomes nigh impossible to crack it without modern crypto tools. The phrase here was SMARTALEKRJ. Upon solving, you'd get this text:
    TO READ THE MESSAGE TAKE WORDS FROM THE ADVENTURE LOG AND THE ANNOUNCEMENTS FIRST ONE WORD FROM AL THEN TWO FROM ANN AND SO ON
     
    Step three:
    You read out the roman numerals and find the 6th word in the 2nd page of AL, then the 4th in the 9th announcement, and so on.
    In the end, you get:

    Go to the center of everything and speak the magic words: I think Burns is awesome! Take a picture and send it to Burns by Forum PM.

    [/spoiler]
     
    Which is what dst did yesterday evening.
     
    Congrats dst, and to all who didn't read the spoiler yet, happy questing :D

  9. The Writing on the Wall

    in Contests, Quests and Adventures

    Posted

    I've recently heard of carvings that have been found in one of the tunnels of the Lair. It seems that they point towards a secret way to obtain a Drachorn Charm, if the instructions are followed closely.

     

    I don't have time to check this out myself just yet, but maybe if someone would, that person might be able to get it done before me, and maybe get a Charm for their efforts... and i'd dislike that.

     

    I've ordered the Tiny Men to not let anybody near those carvings, unless they go directly to the tunnel on the far left and ask for access to the 'Drachorn Carvings'. So, make sure you don't accidentally do that.

     

    <Also, i didn't have time triple check everything i made today. If something's fishy and ends up as nonsense, even when you're fairly sure to have the cipher right, send me a note and i'll check again.>

     

    Happy questiing!

  10. Shadow of the Colossus

    in Contests, Quests and Adventures

    Posted

    That's a nice analysis, but you didn't go into the story that lies beneath it.

    Think about it as a murder scene: You've analysed the crime scene, found the bullet holes and blood splatters, got some dna samples... But you didn't (yet) get into the story the scene is telling you. You need all the evidence you found to back up the story, but if you don't have a story to them, they are just meaningless bits of information.

  14. Shadow of the Colossus

    in Contests, Quests and Adventures

    Posted

    Sorry for the long absence, and make no mistake, it continues :(

     

    That being out of the way, i've recently started to check in again more regularly, and found myself stuck on a very specific part of my personal researches. And since i'm generally a nice guy and stuff, i'll give you folks a chance to participate. This is going to be a public 'research project' with rewards, including some drach charms!

     

    I know you're not reading the interesting part before i spit out how you get a reward anyway, so here it goes: I'll give out shiny rewards merely based on my personal likings. You can improve your chances by adding interesting parts to this project or by giving reasons why someone else is likely wrong, and others can improve your chances by giving a thumbs-up to your posts, but i won't give too much thought about your ratings. The main part is participating and showing off that you can draw conclusions and connections in an MD way.

     

     

    Now, here's the fun bit:

    You folks surely know about the Aramory. Some of you might also know about War Hold. In my opinion, those two locations are proof for a fairly clear bit of history. What story might that be, and more importantly, can you provide evidence that supports your version of events?

     

    You might want to read up on "the cube", the connections between the lands, and the history of golemus and loreroot before you start discussing. Also, while there is no 'wrong' theory in MD, you might want to have a convincing opinion before posting, lest you wish to be scolded by a bunch of research cracks. Yeah, we still have those.

     

     

    Also, last but not least, i encourage everyone to participate in the research efforts, but i'll only bestow rewards on players with less than 1000 active days. Bring it on, upcoming research elite!

  18. Build your own Drachorn

    in Contests, Quests and Adventures

    Posted · Edited by Burns

    Sorry, i almost missed that one :))

     

    We'll need a third picture, and I'd like to see the legs a bit, too, but i think this qualifies for a reward :)

     

    E: After discussion in chat and some more consideration, i'll consider this a valid entry, because it's an interesting variation of the other, more origami based paper drachorns, and i like the background setting.

     

    Reminder: We generally want THREE pictures, because you're supposed to show some different angles of your creation. A picture of the process is good, but try to get at least 2 good ones of the finished product as well!

     

    The reward choices are 1 WP, 2 WP codes (which you can use for quest rewards, but not for yourself) or a drachorn egg.

  20. LHO rule

    in Work in progress

    Posted

    We would both probably replace him with Burns but burns is inactive to the same level of grido. So we would lose the regularity of Grido applying the same "gridoness" to the situation (possibly giving us less fair decisions due to the change) and gain nothing.


    Unfortunately that's very true, my job takes a lot more time off the day than i thought...

    If i find a fix to be active on a daily basis again, i'll let you know :(

  22. Fourth Step: The Quest!

    in Quest Archive

    Posted

    I'm aware that this is the hardest part of having access to ingame rewards, but i must admit that i'm slightly disappointed that i didn't get any responses at all. Guess i'll have to keep doing stuff when i have some time to spare, and when i don't, there probably won't be any lair rewards.

  24. Recruiting from 'unlockable' places

    in General Forum

    Posted

    Not recruiting during death makes sense, but you can also make an argument that it would make sense thematically, even more so at the Necro graveyard :))

     

    About the general thing, though, it's a pretty nice feature to have places locked, but the recruitment open. If you tie teleports to selected roles, like the kings and gravekeepers for Necro and island-keepers for MB, you open up the option to give out creatures to people without the requirement of trading them, and you can have them actually use the recruit-requirements, too, which would be bypassed if the creature is taken and traded.

    It adds value to the roles connected to them, and can be used as teaser, too: Think of an MP4 invited to the angien shrine and maybe seeing a full grown angien in action, that should give them plenty incentive to do some grinding to get to the big boys. It's a completely different feeling than just giving it out by trade.

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