Hunt for the Secret Ending (Sp0173r$, s̸͖̘̫̀o̸̜͕͐ ̵̳̥̙̮̎͐̎͝m̵̱̖̗̊a̵̢͍̭̠̽n̴̡̏ẏ̸̪̒ ) |FOUND|

[MrInvizible]

So... What's up with Endervale? That's weird? And Carla's Computer? What about Wizarro and the Locket? So many puzzle pieces, do they even fit together?

So... I'd like to point out what I and the community seems to have put together so far, and maybe we can put together the rest. SPOILERS AHEAD

1. The Entervale command leads you to a strange world (Endervale, let's call it, since it is referenced as that).
2. Carla's computer is accessible in SoL. Using it Duplicates your items!
3. Carla's computer is accessible from Endervale.
4. By using Carla's computer in Endervale, you can potentially duplicate the Book of Vallamir up to 9 times.
5. You can use the book of Vallamir on Lazarus O.o and he loses all ability to fight.
6. (Rocketflex) Using Endervale, you can complete the tutorial without killing Moji, and the game reacts to this change.

Additionally:

1. You can use fishing to get The Locket
2. Wizarro reacts to The Locket if you bring it to him.
3. After doing so, he mentions a Cipher, and if you bring it to him, he will translate The Locket to you
4. He mentions that he had a Cipher awhile ago, but he lost it
5. Wizarro only appears in 2 other games: Combat Arena X and Waste World

That's all I've got. Other than the 5 ways to break the game and get the Error Achievements. Doing all 5 of those has not created any unique behavior or endings in the game as far as I can tell. It seems that there are some things that we have yet to figure out. Either that or I'm just an idiot and someone already has. So... anyone have any thoughts?

[I]

Originally posted by VP madpew:

Daniel said it's hard to find as people were finding things so fast he made that part really hard.

O_o That couldn’t be a reason, because why would we keep searching after knowing that? And what means «so fast»? How speed of finding secrets by some people matters to the secrets themselves? What matters is only those secrets’ purposes in the game, as I think.

And the main question is: where are the proofs?

[madpew]

The proof is an email I got from Daniel Mullins. I'll cite the relevant part here:

Ah yes, the cipher puzzle. Everything needed to solve it is in The Hex.
But it's very hard to find. At first people were finding things way
faster than I expected so I tried to ramp things up a bit. But I think
for that part of the cipher I might have overdone it. I might throw a
clue in the next patch :P

We'll keep searching because we wanna solve it.

[PolynomialTim]

Read this thread before, had a quick thought and wanted to check: has anyone tried maxing out the bugged ankhs counter? It'd be trivial to do with a script (even easier if there's an editable value in a file somewhere).

[MrInvizible]

Originally posted by VP madpew:

The proof is an email I got from Daniel Mullins. I'll cite the relevant part here:

Ah yes, the cipher puzzle. Everything needed to solve it is in The Hex.
But it's very hard to find. At first people were finding things way
faster than I expected so I tried to ramp things up a bit. But I think
for that part of the cipher I might have overdone it. I might throw a
clue in the next patch :P

We'll keep searching because we wanna solve it.

See my original post of: "I had to lower the difficulty of that puzzle like 10 times before the average player could solve it. But great job! You win :D"

[jacksonmills]

I think we are kind of losing a little bit of focus here.

I think most of the substitutions will be direct and probably locatable in the game. Most of the clues we have found so far are all more or less "????" = "FILL".

I think the cipher will be a mix of "leet" and regular characters, just like regular "leet" speak. It will probably make sense when read, but I don't think all characters are leetspeak. It will probably be just complicated enough to not guess, but not too complex to read and say "ahhhhh".

I just think we need to find more clues. Right now the scroll , licensing agreement, and gum wrapper have led us to the clues we have so far; there are probably other ones in the game that help us fill out the middle segment and the start of the first one. The ones we have found out so far have been related to bugging out Carla's computer, but maybe there are other bugs/out of bounds areas that will trigger other events (or doing something out of order, I've long wondered what the skull hologram signifies, or if it's just to scare you).

Also it's possible to edit character positions in the save file; maybe another clue has to do with mucking around there.

[jacksonmills]

I just tried editing a few characters to Catarina's position on the second floor balcony, she disappears if there's nothing for her to say, it seems.

[Aumires]

I finally understood what the whole cipher deal was and I also decided to apply it. For anyone not getting it and willing to join the whole amulet mystery:

1. Wizarro needs to be saved in Waste World's ALEINS! section in the optional encounter to the south of the intersection. He will appear in the development area in Lazarus' arc in "The Plan Collapses" towards the left side just before the 1st decompressed goblin. Compress yourself, go back a bit and go down on the vertical wall in a secret path.

2. The Amulet itself needs to be found and is divided in two parts: The 1st in Secret of Legendaria's cut feature fishing island. The 2nd in the development area's right side, down and right near the solitary slime. Taking it to Wizarro will mention that there's a message of "promise" or "commitment" between "Creators" but he needs a cipher. He says he had one but he dropped it. So...

3. The Cipher isn't actually something you... use in-game. You "find" the cipher by reading with attention in Waste World as Rusty gets injected with the "controller" from the aliens before The Boss Rush (selecting ALEINS! and beating the radioactive city's mission) all those downloading messages. You can take your time though by just waiting in Rocky's "perk" selection. You will notice that a line reads cipher.cipher ? and, well, that's the cipher Wizarro dropped. But, we can't use it just like that, so we got to make it from scratch.

Now it is when things get weird, because you have to do this OUTSIDE the game. You need to go to the directory "SteamLibrary/steamapps/common/The Hex/SaveData". Here it is your savefile "SaveData.hexsave". What you need to do now is to make a new plain text file. And then you change its name and extension to "cipher.cipher". There you go, you have now the cipher, now you talk to Wizarro again and... he just talks a tons of weird letters, which means it is an encypted message. After all, the cipher needs to have something to translate. Or, to be fair, lets just call it a password.

Now, for the password... all of this is made from following one condition:

You have to use Carla's PC that clones items in Secrets of Legendaria before finding any about this. Also, mind you that when closing the game, you will need to do it again next time you play just think of it as "activating a mode". Now, for what we have found:

A. The base of the password is, again, in Secrets of Legendaria. Get the "Message in a Bottle" that talks about "fantasy island". If you cloned items, it will display a different thing divided in three lines. Well, for some reason, it doesn't work like this. You need to write it in cipher.cipher as a line. If you don't want to see it for yourself, what you need to write is:

S@XXXX@R177A|XXXXXXXXX|@XXXX$XXX$$@d051

B. The rest of the password that has been found are two pieces of it:

> One of them is in the Chewing Gum in Waste World. Previous corruption and exiting to the Main Screen select a Waste World chapter and go to a shop: "@LGIN$" is mentioned there.

> The other one that has been found is in Walk. Previous corruption and selecting going in the Walk, get to the contract between Lionel and Gamefuna. There a line will read "$DVL$$"

At first I thought it was degarbling purely all while people talked about a password, but it seems we have to find what is in the X gaps and as logical as the 1st one could be just "Sarsaparilla" the l33t characters seem to form part of the code itself. Right now, the updated code is:

S@XXXX@R177A|XXXXXXXXX|@LGIN$DVL$$@d051

Of course, this still gives out a ton of garbage, but also a lot of squared ones from Wizarro, which have increased over time, so something must be going right.

All in all, what might be necessary to do is to delve into the game more and, always using Carla's cloning PC first, go back to a chapter and... look at places.

Perhaps we are just missing two more pieces.

PD: Thanks Steam for maintenance without warning. Glad I always copy posts beforehand.

[Aumires]

Ok, I was able to find something, hopefully it helps. Proceeded as usual with corruption, checking with Rusty's Gum that it was checked on and then went for Lazarus' final chapter. I reached the battle royale game and decided to do some exploring. The game asks for you to go diagonal, up to the right. So I decided to go the other ways.

First, I went all the way down left. Nothing.

Second, I went all the way up to the left. There, the Endervale sword is lying! When picking it up, you can charge it up and do a fast, killing dash. And just nearby... a black shadow enemy with a rifle attacks, possibly the Doppleganger Miniboss back? He's called "xoxoChefUser2922" though. But the interesting part here is that, when killed, his dropped box...

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1564551391

Has something written in it! Closing in the letters say:

FPPalcon
Kick!==
Backstage
Pass

I know that FPP is the category of ???'s character. But... kicking? And I don't know what it means with a Backstage Pass.

Finally, going dashing madly with the sword I went really really fast top right and down right on the map. There were some containers there with a bag or chamber that you could pick up but... it just made the screen shine, perhaps a recovery? Didn't take a pic. Afterwards I explored with FPP everywhere but there was no change anywhere, neither with dialogs before entering Walk.

On a sidenote, do the people that know how to translate those runes done it with the ones on the cabin with the computer? There are also two lines that the computer and ??? get in the middle, I recorded and took a pic of both, if you need them (or well, a let's play of the game made by anyone will show them)

[Duchock]

Well that is certainly something. I checked all around that area before, but might not have 'activated' with carla's computer. Will investigate...

Regarding runes, check a discussion thread called "Symbols". It has most of the game's runes translated. So far, nothing really solid in terms of leads from them - just fun easter eggs. There are also runes on the table in the final scene, which someone translated (but I think that's in a different thread).

Edit: can confirm sword/dude appears without activating carla's computer in a play session. Guess I wasn't thorough enough!

Daniel has referred to Bryce's down+b move as a "falcon kick" in patch notes before, so that connection is pretty clear to me, and is essentially used to get off screen (aka backstage?). But prefacing it with FPP is what bothers me. We learn of the move's existence in Walk, but... that doesn't seem entirely sound like good justification. And the only literal stage I can think of is at the finale of Walk (if you ignore the slightly more obvious meaning of stage = level and/or that's what you call fighting game locations double meaning)

[MrInvizible]

Originally posted by $Duchock:

Well that is certainly something. I checked all around that area before, but might not have 'activated' with carla's computer. Will investigate...

Regarding runes, check a discussion thread called "Symbols". It has most of the game's runes translated. So far, nothing really solid in terms of leads from them - just fun easter eggs. There are also runes on the table in the final scene, which someone translated (but I think that's in a different thread).

Edit: can confirm sword/dude appears without activating carla's computer in a play session. Guess I wasn't thorough enough!

Daniel has referred to Bryce's down+b move as a "falcon kick" in patch notes before, so that connection is pretty clear to me, and is essentially used to get off screen (aka backstage?). But prefacing it with FPP is what bothers me. We learn of the move's existence in Walk, but... that doesn't seem entirely sound like good justification.

Is there any chance the Down B Command is useable in The Walk? Somewhere we can get backstage or through a boundary?

[madpew]

That's an interesting find. Maybe it's a hint to the Down+B note in Walk to find out about the falcon kick? Or maybe it's trying to tell us something different. AFAIK you can't use the keys during the walk-fighter sections but will try again today. Also anyone tried going back to SWK after using Carlas Computer?

[sired22]

well i "think" the runes used are from the hobbit. hex_wall_scrawling.tex.dds, the runes in the upper right using the hobbit rune key = hisfatherpureevil = "His father pure evil" (in small below it) "my next game is called toll beware the Otherworlder".

if you rant to see the image with runes translated search imgur for thehex

[madpew]

Just noticed there's a weird cloud in the first SWK (right at the start the 2nd one). Normally you can jump up through the clouds, but this one is blocking the way up. Might there be something hidden or is this just a bug? Also anyone found a purpose of the below the mountain area? It's always empty for me.

[CoolHacka]

There is the Hex_wall
FPP Shed Uncovered [ibb.co]

Left side:
-Generator room floorplan
-Sarsaparilla
-A Beeper perhaps?
-Gameworks Barracks

Middle:
-Player Blessing
-The Hex
-The Artifact
-Ritual Table

Right side:
-His father pure evil
-My next game is called TOLL
-Beware the otherworlder
-ENTERVALE
-I wish i was more like the Ubermencsch
-I wish my fears didnt have such a putrid stench
-Panda panda panda panda panda panda circus circus

I don't know what to do with that information, so just wanna share with you guys.

[I]

Originally posted by VP madpew:

We'll keep searching because we wanna solve it.

That’s for sure. I just hope that it wasn’t a spontaneous decision to make things harder: it seems to me that nothing in this game was made spontaneously; everything has its own meaning, and that’s one of the reasons why I like this game.