13 Archetypes: Patron

13

Comments

  • There are a few where I'm fairly confident I've got the right letters, and a few more where I've only got a best guess.

    The one I'm least confident of is Alchemist. There was one unusual pair of letters in the solving process, and they could be in either order. Without giving too much away... should they be a pair of letters that I also obtained from an earlier archetype?

  • NineBerryNineBerry ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited March 2020

    While looking for the special bits and pieces from the previous challenges, don't forget to also look at the image for this challenge closely.

  • starwortstarwort ✭✭✭✭✭

    As one of those who made it a point to save the extra bits from each challenge (starting with #5 I think - at that point I revisited the earlier challenges to collect them) I am paradoxically surprised both by how many people got there before me and by the people who are now saying they didn't save them and will have to go back and redo those challenges.

    I would say that apart from the very first one (Dreamer), the Alchemist was the only one where it wasn't blindingly obvious provided you were looking for it, and that one I guessed (correctly, it turns out) from having the same method as a previous challenge.

    The Catalyst was the trickiest one to decode the extra bit (there were a couple of possible methods and only one with the correct answer), and the Skeptic presented a minor problem because ordering for the extra bit wasn't made clear. Neither of these problems proved fatal to decoding today's passcode.

  • starwortstarwort ✭✭✭✭✭

    I think you are on the wrong track - there's no ambiguity with the ordering for Alchemist and all the contributions from the 12 archetypes are distinct.

  • LightseagreenLightseagreen ✭✭✭✭

    yeah right, the catalyst needs a few steps back to be able to see it 😅

  • localgeeklocalgeek ✭✭
    edited March 2020

    Take notes on the second pass through each of them, I had a lot of fun doing writeups of how I solved each of the puzzles, I initially wrote them as tutorials to help others learning to decode so left out important information gained from steps (I wrote them so they could solve themselves so my notes were more in the line of clues), so I ended up redoing them all and writing better notes to look back on myself and it was pretty enjoyable

  • Nr2Nr2 ✭✭

    Thanks a lot for 13 nice weeks !!

    Thanks to everyone who helped with hints.


    Hope there will be more puzzles like this.

    Keep them coming !!!!!

  • RedAgent14RedAgent14 ✭✭
    edited March 2020

    I have 9 of the "extra bits" so far (the ones I'm missing are Trickster, Alchemist, and Catalyst), and of the ones I'm missing, the only one I have an idea of where the "extra bits" are is Catalyst (but I don't know if I'm going to need all of the extra bits or just the first half). Is there anyone who I can message to make sure that the 9 extra bits I have are correct (and potentially provide a hint for the other 3)?

  • DrHydrosaurDrHydrosaur ✭✭✭✭

    i will say that once you realize what you need to do to get the “extra bits”, this is probably the most reverse engineer-able puzzle of the bunch.

    You certainly don’t need all the bits because a partial solve will give you strong hints to help find the rest - especially if you get good at applying the cipher method to figure out the key.

  • katracho37katracho37 ✭✭
    edited March 2020

    Now that Monday will be the joy of talking to people from various countries on ingress , this is a game without border

  • Thanks! I couldn't see that without squinting when looking on a laptop. It was a bit easier to spot once I switched to a big, bright, monitor.

  • KasetohuKasetohu ✭✭✭

    Hey, thanks! I was really hoping to get the first place in at least one of the puzzles as I couldn't really compete for a place in the overall leaderboard because of my schedule. :) Congratulations to you too for a very consistent run of quick solves!

  • I think I also get the same pair as yours for Alchemist. It's the same as that from another archetype, which is obtained from two consecutive letters from the passcode.


    Right now my second half of the decoded is promising (a valid word and 13ar), but the first half is not.

    Not so sure for Trickster, Omniscient, and Alchemist. I thought I got Skeptic correct but not so sure any more.

  • You have the same letters I did for Alchemist, but I was wrong. The right ones don't turn up till later.

  • Finally finished this last night it helped that I still had some of my notes but I wish I would have keep much more detailed notes of each solve. This one was only hard because it required things from each challenge. It feels good to be done good luck everyone!

  • Right.... There are only 45,984,153,600 possible combinations to try (12! * 4! * 4 = number of permutations of 'extra bits' * number of permutations for the key 'parts' * possible combinations of key/cipher). I hate these "throw a decoder at the wall and see what sticks" type of puzzles; I even can't get the final 'ar' this time.

  • ToxoplasmollyToxoplasmolly ✭✭✭✭✭

    You might reasonably assume that there is a method to the madness; considering all 12! possible permutations is, indeed, a bit much. Perhaps take another look at the original puzzle/image.

  • KasetohuKasetohu ✭✭✭
    edited March 2020

    Removed: apparently moderation causes delayed double posts for some reason. :)

    Post edited by Kasetohu on
  • Yeah, I was a bit sarcastic. Still, there are lots of variations possible (horizontal, vertical, left to right, right to left, up, down). Of course, as happened every single time I post in this forum, 10 minutes later I got my first clue more or less by accident. From there I had to work backwards to get the full passcode.

    Anyway, 13 media redeemed but next time I think I'll pass on the decoding challenges.

  • Thanks for doing this. I didn't figure out the "extra information" from catalyst. Just brute-forced it for Patron. Now it seems completely obvious! Doh!

  • gonna have a post for the "wrong answers only" thread i tell ya huwat

  • Finally redeemed my frequent flyer points as well.

    Figured out the order by bruteforcing 13ar and then realized how obvious the hint is.

  • MalNivekMalNivek ✭✭
    edited March 2020

    I was busy working for the whole day and finally I have time to resume here. Surprisingly there is not much discussion here. I wonder if there is anyone still stuck here?

    Here is my progress, hopefully I could trigger some discussions :P

    For the first 7 challenges, I believe I have got the extra bits correct. Except for Skeptic, where I use the same method as the sub-puzzles to get the extra bits, but the first letter seems wrong (if I guessed the keyword correctly).

    For the others, I am going to re-visit Omniscient, Alchemist and Trickster. Tried a few rounds previously but still no luck.

    Edit: crossing out Omniscient.

    Edit 2: crossing out Skeptic, Alchemist

    Edit 3: Finished. Thank you for all your hints and tips.

    Post edited by MalNivek on
  • Well I'm still stuck. I understand the concept of this challenge, but I'm not sure if my "extra bits" are correct, or what order to put them in. So I could have the right extra bits and the wrong order, or I could have the wrong extra bits and the right order, or most likely some combination of the two.

    I've tried a bunch of combinations, the closest I've seen to a 13AR is one that ended with THAR. But the rest of it didn't seem very useful.

  • MalNivekMalNivek ✭✭
    edited March 2020

    The suffix is correct, it is the same convention as in a previous challenge. Using the same rule you can guess the two letter before that.

    (unless I was wrong, as I have yet to solve the whole thing)


    Edit: And I actually get the two letters before THAR using the extra bits.

  • Yeah, I didn't want to give too much away. I can convince myself I have the 13AR, which means I probably do have the right order. But that's it. There's no keyword or any other phonetic numbers I can pull out of what's in front of it. I think I have too many extra bits incorrect. I'm not confident on Dreamer or Explorer at all. And unless Alchemist pulled the same trick as Omniscient, I could be wrong there.

  • MalNivekMalNivek ✭✭
    edited March 2020

    I now strongly believe that Omniscient is the same as Alchemist.

    I am only missing the extra bit for Trickster now.


    Edit: Got it... revisiting Trickster reminds me that something was discarded. Now I can sleep well.

  • LightseagreenLightseagreen ✭✭✭✭

    You can find out Trickster, why you used to do something to solve it

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