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- Feb 13, 2005
I'm just wondering how people found out how to actually begin this quest line. It seems like people had to de-code some type of message that was found on bungie.net.
Obviously spoilers ahead.
I'm not going to get specific with times or usernames because my memory is piss poor, but here goes.
Owl Sector/"SIM" : A couple of days ago (or more), people noticed that the owlsector.bungie.net website had a new line of text at the top that was also a link. "5552585355". Those numbers were also found in the URL linked by Bungie to the "world's first" raid winners for RoI. Clicking the link lead to https://www.bungie.net/en/net/sim. That website showed us a SIVA symbol, and spat our a bunch of information. A node (5 symbols), an "information forwarding protocol", a "processing key", a "processing initialization vector", a wall of garbled text, and the lines "Node sensors have detected unprocessed information [Rijndael-AES-CBC]" and "Local resources insufficient to process data. Increase resources by combining processing keys with 7 other nodes, per Forwarding Protocol.".
The "raid tier" data collection/analyzing : So after organizing some people to start brainstorming, it became clear that this was intended to be a "crowdsourced" ARG. We were going to have to use a lot of other people's data. After a lot of iteration/attempts at different things, one user finally realized the correct method of chaining together "nodes" (it involves working backwards from your forwarding protocol to find the previous "node" edit : you apply all subsequent forwarding protocols to the same node), a couple of other users put together some forms to allow people to submit massive amounts of data to spreadsheets, and a couple of other users started writing scripts. One user got a lucky break before we had found the correct methods, and realized that by chaining together 8 self-referencing nodes, he could decrypt the garbled text into the HEX code of an image file (he noticed the JPG header!). Finally a script came to life that would chain together nodes in the spreadsheet and use their keys/initialization vectors to decrypt the garbled wall of text into the HEX code of an image file. This left us with 900+ small JPG files. This took the longest amount of time. People were spitballing, going back and forth on how it works, etc., for hours on end, all night.
The jigsaw puzzle (that actually became very easy) : So here's a picture of some of the pieces compiled : . It's hard to tell because it's shrunk, but each little tile has symbols around it. After a lot of spitballing/trial and error, we discovered that any given tile "A" will have the same 4 combinations of symbols facing it by the 4 tiles surrounding it. We then guessed that those symbols are the node that the tile their facing was originally decrypted from. This made piecing the puzzle together pretty easy by hand after a couple users edited some code, so we started at it. We eventually got a few big chunks that looked like this : . And we logically concluded it was the cylinder room, and another user doctored up a previous map to show the positions . Also, eventually a script was written to compile the images cleanly, which lead to this .
What the image means/The monitors : So, the image was obviously the cylinder room with the big pyramid. After stepping on the shown cylinders (the ones "filled in"), a loud noise occured, and some users quickly found that the monitors in the previous "server farm" room could be activated. When activated they would flash some binary. At this point, Datto and co. tweeted/logged on Twitch, having already figured out the monitors and gave the information out to viewers. As it turns out, one monitor (the one with SIVA on the wall behind it) is the "column" monitor, and you need to translate the binary into a decimal digit (ex: 0010 -> 2), and the other monitor is a "row" monitor. These correspond to positions in the cylinder room, and it's pretty much just a game. First time you activate both monitors, someone has to jump on the correct cylinder in the "0" sector in the room, then the monitor flashes to a new number, and someone needs to jump on the correct cylinder in the "1" sector. After doing 4 jumps, the pyramid opens, and you get an Exotic Engram, the Emblem, and access to the last monitor.
The last monitors/The quest : This is the last monitor to access the final chest. The chest contains a quest item to start the exotic pulse rifle quest. Unsure if anyone's finished it, but it seems like straight forward farming/doin' stuff.
Tada! The end!
TL;DR : A lot of data collecting/brainstorming/analyzing that lead to some very smart people making some great scripts, eventually giving us a map of a room in the raid which allowed us to access the final monitor, unlocking the final chest, which contained the quest for the exotic Pulse Rifle.
I'm not going to get specific with times or usernames because my memory is piss poor, but here goes.
Owl Sector/"SIM" : A couple of days ago (or more), people noticed that the owlsector.bungie.net website had a new line of text at the top that was also a link. "5552585355". Those numbers were also found in the URL linked by Bungie to the "world's first" raid winners for RoI. Clicking the link lead to https://www.bungie.net/en/net/sim. That website showed us a SIVA symbol, and spat our a bunch of information. A node (5 symbols), an "information forwarding protocol", a "processing key", a "processing initialization vector", a wall of garbled text, and the lines "Node sensors have detected unprocessed information [Rijndael-AES-CBC]" and "Local resources insufficient to process data. Increase resources by combining processing keys with 7 other nodes, per Forwarding Protocol.".
The "raid tier" data collection/analyzing : So after organizing some people to start brainstorming, it became clear that this was intended to be a "crowdsourced" ARG. We were going to have to use a lot of other people's data. After a lot of iteration/attempts at different things, one user finally realized the correct method of chaining together "nodes" (it involves working backwards from your forwarding protocol to find the previous "node" edit : you apply all subsequent forwarding protocols to the same node), a couple of other users put together some forms to allow people to submit massive amounts of data to spreadsheets, and a couple of other users started writing scripts. One user got a lucky break before we had found the correct methods, and realized that by chaining together 8 self-referencing nodes, he could decrypt the garbled text into the HEX code of an image file (he noticed the JPG header!). Finally a script came to life that would chain together nodes in the spreadsheet and use their keys/initialization vectors to decrypt the garbled wall of text into the HEX code of an image file. This left us with 900+ small JPG files. This took the longest amount of time. People were spitballing, going back and forth on how it works, etc., for hours on end, all night.
The jigsaw puzzle (that actually became very easy) : So here's a picture of some of the pieces compiled : . It's hard to tell because it's shrunk, but each little tile has symbols around it. After a lot of spitballing/trial and error, we discovered that any given tile "A" will have the same 4 combinations of symbols facing it by the 4 tiles surrounding it. We then guessed that those symbols are the node that the tile their facing was originally decrypted from. This made piecing the puzzle together pretty easy by hand after a couple users edited some code, so we started at it. We eventually got a few big chunks that looked like this : . And we logically concluded it was the cylinder room, and another user doctored up a previous map to show the positions . Also, eventually a script was written to compile the images cleanly, which lead to this .
What the image means/The monitors : So, the image was obviously the cylinder room with the big pyramid. After stepping on the shown cylinders (the ones "filled in"), a loud noise occured, and some users quickly found that the monitors in the previous "server farm" room could be activated. When activated they would flash some binary. At this point, Datto and co. tweeted/logged on Twitch, having already figured out the monitors and gave the information out to viewers. As it turns out, one monitor (the one with SIVA on the wall behind it) is the "column" monitor, and you need to translate the binary into a decimal digit (ex: 0010 -> 2), and the other monitor is a "row" monitor. These correspond to positions in the cylinder room, and it's pretty much just a game. First time you activate both monitors, someone has to jump on the correct cylinder in the "0" sector in the room, then the monitor flashes to a new number, and someone needs to jump on the correct cylinder in the "1" sector. After doing 4 jumps, the pyramid opens, and you get an Exotic Engram, the Emblem, and access to the last monitor.
The last monitors/The quest : This is the last monitor to access the final chest. The chest contains a quest item to start the exotic pulse rifle quest. Unsure if anyone's finished it, but it seems like straight forward farming/doin' stuff.
Tada! The end!
TL;DR : A lot of data collecting/brainstorming/analyzing that lead to some very smart people making some great scripts, eventually giving us a map of a room in the raid which allowed us to access the final monitor, unlocking the final chest, which contained the quest for the exotic Pulse Rifle.
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yo we had a team of like six and the captain laid us out within 15 seconds I think 
