Tier Overview
On September 5th, 2022 Embark Studios made a post with the following messageː New concept art..ǃ.ǃǃǃǃ Using a binary to text translator, assuming the periods are 0s and the ǃs are 1s, revealed that it means /. Upon futher examination of the image, Slash it was found that there are binary strings on the upper right, and lower right of the image. DEVON was the text on the upper right, and CROSSING was the text on the lower right. With these two pieces of information in hand, it was discovered that going to www.reachthefinals.com/devoncrossing would lead to a curious page with a giant red X on it.
On September 8th, a new image was posted to the announcements channel on the Offical Discord named Statues_001 it contained small figurines of the Light, Medium, and Heavy Builds. Examining the image revealed a series of numbers 49 53, 54 52, 48 50, 49 53. When these are cross referenced with an ASCII table it gives the date 1564/02/15. This is Galileo Galilei's birthdate, but there was no confirmation that it was connected yet.
On September 9th, another image was posted to the announcements channel, named Happystatues_002 This time it was small Nama Tama figures of the Light, Medium, and Heavy Builds. Once again examining the image lead to another set of numbers 56 54 48 49 when referenced with an ASCII table it gives us 8601, given the fact we didn't know if the date from the previous image was supposed to be a date being told indirectly it was ISO-8601, a standard code for date formatting, confirmed it was a date, and the Galileo connection. Going to www.reachthefinals.com/galileo would also lead to a page with a giant red X on it.
On September 13th, an image named BarrelsBarrelsBarrels was posted to the announcements channel, and on Embark's social media account. It contained a scene of a character in military gear, and a Shinobi vaulting over them with a few barrels behind them. Closer examination of the image would reveal two potential cluesː On one of the barrels the string 002f, Unicode for / was found, and on the character with military gear, on his back he was carrying a can of OSPUZE OG Beans; although, this clue was overlooked at the time.
On September 15th, a new image named friend_you_need was posted in the Easter Eggs channel. The image contained a Nama Tama, holding a can of OSPUZE OG BEANS. A can of beans, titled OCB, Original Can of Beans was the first item put in a geocache by Dave Ulmer, the inventor of Geocaching. Going to www.reachthefinals.com/ocb would result in the third and final page with a red X on it.
Solving
On September 16th, 2022. Hunter Duh found the correct answer for the level. https://www.reachthefinals.com/geocache A new image awaited the hunters there. Nama Tama saying Level One Completed! You Are Awesome.! In total this level took 11 days to complete.
Summary
- Devon Crossing relates to William Crossing of Devon. Which can be traced back to the origins of a hobby called Letterboxing in Dartmoor, Devon. The hobby is referred to as the original geocaching, but with compasses and maps.
- Dusty gave a message which included Shell-lock Holmes’s. One of first books written by Arthur Conan Doyle was The Hound of the Baskervilles, which takes place mostly in Dartmoor, Devon, and whose main character is Sherlock Holmes.
- Galileo is the name of a European Satellite System. GPS devices are used for geocaching and they require satellites to function.
- O.C.B stands for Original Can of Beans. A can of beans was the first item placed in the original stash by the inventor of geocaching.
Images
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Slash -
Statues_001 -
Happystatues_002 -
BarrelsBarrelsBarrels -
friend_you_need -
Awesome.!
Credits
Solver - Duh
Documentation - Giriko, Flex4d, RockhoundBlack
Various Contributions - ATAEGGYU, Darnoux, Dwarf, Madalin, Mike Eggmantraut, Oli, Sparky, Swa
Further Reading
RockhoundBlack's Video: THE FINALS: The 'Geocache' Easter Egg!
Flex4d's Document