Spoiler Honestly I'm not sure how I got the Third Purpose achievement. I've completed the game, by setting the dates forward to get the right moon phases. After doing the final level I noticed it still had a ? so I went back in to have a look for secrets. In that level, on the wall is a plaque stating the Third Purpose, to prolong one's life for a century. As my spider jumped past it the achievement unlocked. That's all I know regarding how I got it and I still have the ? on that level so there's still something there to find.
Whoa, have you guys been, like, going to work and feeding yourselves and stuff? How did you figure out the keys to the Vigenere Ciphers? Those took us forever.
I live in a hole in the ground and eat squirrels. ...I can't defend the qoesco stuff so much. That's a lot of Googling. Would you like some squirrel?
It's interesting that in the mid 19th Century (up until WW2, really) Vinegere ciphers were thought to be nearly unbreakable, and now a web app can crack one and without much ciphertext as input. We solved all these the hard way, which requires understanding the situation a bit better, but it pays off. It makes it all the more compelling that the Voynich Manuscript still hasn't been decrypted, but still responds to numerical analysis with hints of natural language. Short version - https://vimeo.com/77557912 Long version - https://vimeo.com/77560060
I know a computer doing the decryption isn't as fun, but I am just so into your game that I feel compelled to use everything I can to dig as deep as I can. I never would have thought a game about a spider would lead to all this! Also, I'm working and eating. And sleeping. Promise.
It's not my place to tell you what to do with all this stuff. My friend / neighbor / video game celebrity Brandon Boyer actually cracked Spoiler DIAMOND and VITALITY using techniques that a crossword puzzle enthusiast would, based just on the excerpt in Uniform Teachings, which I thought was super cool. I also liked that you guys recognized Spoiler the works of St. Germain before you even started researching the Knights of the Buried Chambers. A friend of mine broke Spoiler the Gold Key by noticing patterns in the text and making an assumption about what a specific word was and back-solving the cipher key! The whole thing has so many ins and outs, especially after I plugged stuff into the game itself, that it enables countless ways to approach and solve it.
I think the "most haunted tower" is probably this one: http://www.innbrattleboro.com/retreat-tower/ Also did you notice what the title of that page is? The titles sometimes contain hints.
Has anyone completed the last level, Spoiler The Well, completely? As in, got ticks on it? Mine still has ? and I've been all over it. Spoiler The only hidden area I could find is in the crates on the left. Are we missing something there?
Spoiler I still have two question marks after finishing the game. It's so much hassle just accessing the area that I can't be bothered any more. They should at least allow access to the final area on the map once the game is completed.
Ok, I'm on to something new: Spoiler On one of the recent qoesco pages there's a pattern of text at the bottom: 5 3 4 P M N N O E 1 E M 7 A R 5 I O S E T E E R R 2 6 U C E 5 3 4 G N N N 4 E D H 5 3 O P N N N 6 E D L A T S P O S L V T E L P 5 S P O S L E T Y Y H M C 1 3 I E R B R T P E L L D E S N C S R E N B I R C S E One of the guides to the code on the uniform teaching site says to read text in a triangle pattern. Well taking the biggest triangle in there gives us: CRYPTOGRAM5646VERNESCRIBNERS Divide the number by 3 and separate the words and we have: CRYPTOGRAM 1882 VERNE SCRIBNERS A quick google search shows us this is referring to a book, The Cryptogram, by Jules Verne, published in 1882 by Scribner's Sons. A photo of the book looks interesting, with some code on the front cover but that's as far as I've got at the moment.
