13 Archetypes: Alchemist

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  • Don't give up ... You can hit me on the telegram to check if you are on the right path

  • stuck at 3 for too long.

    I keep getting 12 instead of 13. Re-do couple of times still getting the same. What went wrong?

  • starwortstarwort ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited February 2020

    Although @NineBerry says it would be a disaster, I've tried this and although there is undoubtedly more noise in the picture I can still get a readable result with JPEG and ImageMagick (I've still no idea what the online tool is). A couple of characters in the keyword are obscured - even with the original image (and G.I.M.P) I had to Google the correct spelling, but this will easily give the right answer.

    Edit: there are two different ways of doing this. One of them mostly works with JPG, the other... really doesn't. The online tool (found it now) uses this second method.

    Post edited by starwort on
  • Give me a break!

  • oscarc1oscarc1 ✭✭✭✭✭
  • guardLKguardLK ✭✭✭
    edited February 2020

    I was able to finish this last night, but I still don’t understand the angry/ugly robots reference. Would someone message me on telegram to explain that to me so I can add it to my arsenal for later puzzles? Thanks!


    edit: thanks to everyone who reached out. There are a few different tools out there that people have used to varying degrees. If one doesn’t work for you, try the next.

    Post edited by guardLK on
  • 0X00FF000X00FF00 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Biggest stumbling blocks for each stage:

    1. Even if you manage to guess what you're supposed to do, nothing even hints at where you should start. Gee, they're just throwing you right into the middle of this challenge! At least they told us "12" this time, the only point in the puzzle where we are given the luxury of key length to get to the next stage.
    2. If you can even find a list containing all these symbols, and somehow deduce the intended "correct" names for each, nothing suggests how we're supposed to use them. Not even a hint of a hint on the puzzle page! You're just left staring at them all until you've been frustrated to the nth degree.
    3. How on earth can you decide which ordering makes the most sense? This one got me hot under the collar. Had to sleep on this one for a while, making sure to set an alarm. When it went off, somehow I finally just hit the right idea, for how to continue.
    4. This one needs you to look at every little bit of the picture. Even the smallest detail that you would otherwise overlook turned out to be everything. But yet again, no real hints or clues from the puzzlemaker.

    Extremely frustrating overall. At no stage is an "decoding" method given or even suggested, we're left floundering in the dark grasping at any and all straws, hoping something will stick. I guess Niantic's puzzlemakers are under the impression that "longer and more intricate" makes for a better challenge?

  • TommyGun96TommyGun96 ✭✭✭
    edited February 2020

    Don't overthink. I was also getting 12 even 14 with a too logical way of separating it. Make sure you identified the method to decode based on the hints, then read the instructions or examples on what data format is expected and make sure you separate the segments that exact same the way. If you are still stuck feel free to ping me on Telegram (same name).

  • Passcode entered! 😃

  • I also found my self stuck on #3 for a long time with the same problem you had. I had ordered the metals in a number of different ways and found one logical way to break the string into groups. That method gave me 12 groups for every way I ordered the metals. There was a second logical way I was trying to use to break up the string. That one gave me way too many groups for all but one way of ordering the metals. In that case, I also got 12. After checking it one too many times, I discovered that I made a small mistake and it actually made 13 groups.

    So, keep at it -- but maybe take a break if you have not. I took a break to post here, got some encouragement, and checked over the most promising result once more and found my mistake.

    Good luck!

  • If you can even find a list containing all these symbols, and somehow deduce the intended "correct" names for each, nothing suggests how we're supposed to use them. Not even a hint of a hint on the puzzle page! You're just left staring at them all until you've been frustrated to the nth degree.


    So frustrated with these symbols at this point.

  • 0X00FF000X00FF00 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Seven symbols, each in groupings repeated 1-5 times per. Only two symbols are repeated a different number of times each time.

  • Okay I know there are tons of hints here on step three and I get the background hint of ordering the metals. I got the start 1456... but have no idea how to group these to get a start of c h? I also can’t find thirteen groupings unless I use two specific numbers as spaces. Am I overlooking something really obvious and easy.

  • Well...that was a puzzle...

    There are more than enough hints here to get it done...some hints I didnt fully understand...too many forehead slaps.

  • NineBerryNineBerry ✭✭✭✭✭

    Maybe plot a graph from the numbers you have. That might show 13 groups visually.

  • Also, write the stuff out by hand if you're using tools otherwise. Or have someone around to explain your method to. It is not that it's better to do this, but doing it by hand can expose glaring holes in your process.

  • TyphoonJimTyphoonJim ✭✭✭
    edited February 2020

    This is where "data sense" comes in: I have 7 symbols only, and they seem to come out in a certain order. Is there anything that is encoded in that way? For instance, if I saw a 10 digit number that had parentheses around the first three digits and a dash between the next 3 and the last 4, and had to get text out of it, the first thing that would come to mind is a telephone keypad and how there are letters on them. This is a lot like that. After all, numbers can make something else *do* something, right?

  • having solved this a day ago, I still wonder how something can be spotted in g.i.m.p. even with knowledge on that to look for I could not make it visible.

    perhaps.. those who know, can so a walk-through for g.i.m.p in a https://cryptobin.co/ ? (with the passcode as key.)

    also, seeing the image-magik method would be interesting.

  • LasloooLaslooo ✭✭
    edited February 2020

    That was INSANE hard.

    Again, people who were able to get through all 4 stages without much of a hint are decoding geniuses...

    The first stage was a little bit hard... needed to work the hexagon and be familiar with glyphs.

    The second stage wasn't too bad... just needed to figure out what the numbers referred to.

    However, the third stage too me forever. Only with the metal hint was I able to see that I could break it into 53 strings. And then after that, trying to order the metals took forever (there are a lot of ways/websites to order those metals... planets and periodically are not the ways). But once ordered, it still takes a lot of fiddling with the online decoder for these 7 metal segments to finally get it to work.

    And the fourth... omg! there is NO way. I mean NO WAY I would have gotten it... if it weren't for the ugly robot hint (and of course the word that means hiding messages in images). If it weren't for that website, I wouldn't have been able to get that last step. ugh.

  • Edit I finally got step three with someone’s hint from earlier. Think about 7 “segments”. If you have the order correct it will work out.

  • TyphoonJimTyphoonJim ✭✭✭
    edited February 2020

    in the future one of the deadest giveaways for such a thing involving an image is that the image seems unnecessarily huge (although this could have been done without it)

    re: step 2; there is an authoritative way to find out what these things are without having to squint at a million olde timey diagrams and it involves the fact that you are allowed to copy and paste from the pdf

    re: step 3; if you are getting garbage from some online decoder, stop using it, look up the rules for the thing you are doing and diagram it on a piece of paper. this will work when foibles of certain decoders will mess you up because you dont know what they expect to see

    Post edited by TyphoonJim on
  • i couldnt get the list to render on my desktop, but as soon as i fired it up on my phone, it rendered every symbol without issue. Try looking on your phone, they all render

  • there are online tools that work for this. you can add a number/letter at a time until what you are looking at no longer makes sense. There is no specific character that represents a break, but i can say there wont be any repeats in each of the 13 groups. i did this step in excel, nothing fancy, just filling cells in with black until i could read what was written. Sometimes low tech clicks with me in a way high tech doesnt.

  • as always my dudes and dudettes, hit me up on telegram if you need help. I will absolute give a little hint here and there to help you move forward in these challenges.

  • I do alot of my decoding on paper, because half the time I can't get the online decoders to work.

    For step 2 I looked up an index of unicode block groups and found one that pertained to this challenge. On my pc, google could only recognise 2 of the symbols. The last symbol was incorrect, but typing what I had into google showed what it should be.

    For step 3, once you have the correct numbers, it is a matter of pattern recognition. Are there any patterns that repeat?

    I ended up decoding this on paper too, just looked up an index of which decoders the (previously mentioned) decoding site uses and because of the clues here, I recognised which one was needed.

    Step 4 was just a bit of research on how to do this and the name if it. Then finding an online decoder to do the job. The first 3 I found wouldn't work but then I found the ugly robot one.

    Thanks for the clues. 😊

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