As a follow up to the original Quai Quest ARG, the Quai team is excited to share the walkthrough of Quai Quest 2: A Strange Delivery that had a reward of 15,000 Mainnet Quai tokens.
Similar to the first Quai Quest, Quai Quest 2 was an alternate reality game where players interact with each other and their online environment to solve puzzles.
Quai Quest 2 officially began at 11am CST on September 9th, 2022 with the beginning of the puzzle sent in the dedicated #quai-quest chat in the Quai Discord server. The game was open to all.
Within 30 minutes of the Quest’s beginning, players were able to decode the cipher at the top of the page:
“Reviledae sihtum egassemum yltceridis dna ylnois to iauqis noitanit.
Iauqis noitanus at g liamis todit mocis.”
This cipher was identified as false Latin, which simply reverses the plaintext and adds an erroneous Latin ending. By reversing this process, the first clue was revealed:
“Deliver this message directly and only to quai nation.
Quai nation at g mail dot com.”
Upon emailing the message to [email protected], participants received the next step of the request as a response:
The provided link directed participants to the Quai Library, a Google Drive folder with a variety of documents. As directed by the quest, players were now attempting to decrypt the remainder of the original letter.
Within the Spartan Handbook in the library, participants found a graphic that could be used to decrypt the second cipher in the original letter. The second cipher utilized a combination of the letters P, R, and Z, along with numbers up to 18.
Using their knowledge of Quai Network’s Prime, Region, and Zone chains, players realized that the “PRZ” cipher could be decrypted by identifying the letter associated with each block in the network.
Upon finding the method of decrypting the second cypher buried in the library, players were able to extract the plaintext:
“QN-
RUMORS OF A LARGE, UNOWNED STASH OF QUAI TOKENS NEARBY. INFORMATION RETRIEVED BY COUNT G. SCOUTING REQUIRED — URGENT.
SPARTANS STANDING BY YPAPANTI OBSERVING ACTIVITY. IF FINAL DESTINATION IS IDENTIFIED, SPARTANS CAN INTERCEPT RETRIEVED TOKENS EN-ROUTE.
INTERCEPTED COMMUNICATIONS IN ORIGINAL FORM:
“DPVAVCCP BUG GQTKA FRAXBUL EDVK. ALVRQFCH COL WDHK TWLLQU LNYRKG. CTBPP VRKKWZ CNL SLWWUN ZX AJE TJNKV RF XNNKOV UOUGH.”
PROVIDE INFORMATION TO QUAI DOT TYPEFORM DOT COM SLASH SPARTANCOMMS.”
Upon this decryption, the race to identify the final destination of the enemy was on. With the only hints referencing “Ypapanti” and “Count G,” players were stumped at this point of the quest for many hours.
Eventually, players discovered another hint buried in the Quai Library: the seemingly useless “9049 PROFILE” actually seemed to reference a real miner (Spartan) in the Quai Discord, who’s username aligned with the limited information provided in the profile.
By reaching out to this Spartan, participants were met with a one-word response: Gronsveld.
The Gronsveld Cipher is a variant of the Vigenere Cipher attributed to Count Gronsveld, providing new meaning to the profile of “Count G.”
Gronsveld Ciphers, similar to Vigenere Ciphers, utilize a shared key used to encrypt and decrypt messages. Even knowing that the encrypted enemy communications were a Gronsveld Cipher, questers still had to identify the key in order to decipher the message.
At this point, players were left with only the knowledge that the final cipher was a Gronsveld Cipher, and that “Ypapanti” had to fit into the equation somewhere. With no further information to be found in the library, players were left to their own devices.
Eventually, participants realized that Ypapanti Cave in Paxos, Greece was the mostly likely location referenced by the letter. Due to Quai Network’s Region nomenclature (Cyprus, Paxos, Hydra) it was too much of a coincidence that a small island like Paxos had a location by the name Ypapanti.
Now that Ypapanti had been identified, it had to be scouted. By visiting Ypapanti Cave on Google Maps, questers were scouring the area for anything that resembled the Gronsveld shared key.
Eventually, something worked: the license number of the boat outside of Ypapanti Cave.
By using the key “306972081732,” participants in the quest were finally able to decrypt the final cipher: the enemy communications.
“DPVAVCCP BUG GQTKA FRAXBUL EDVK. ALVRQFCH COL WDHK TWLLQU LNYRKG. CTBPP VRKKWZ CNL SLWWUN ZX AJE TJNKV RF XNNKOV UOUGH.”
“APPROACH AND ENTER YPAPANTI CAVE. RETRIEVE ALL QUAI TOKENS INSIDE. CLAIM TOKENS AND RETURN TO THE CASTLE OF REGION THREE.”
From this point, players returned to the Typeform they uncovered from decrypting the PRZ cipher. Knowing the final answer must be “the castle of region three,” questers identified castles on the island of Hydra (Idra), Greece.
By submitting the final answer, Kavos Castle, participants were able to complete the quest. The first winner claimed 15,000 Mainnet Quai tokens, immediately choosing to split it amongst other participants they worked with. Subsequent winners were awarded the limited “Cipher Slayer” role in the Quai Discord.
The initial winners of the quest took approximately 9 hours to complete their journey. The final winner to claim the Cipher Slayer role completed the quest approximately 48 hours after the release.
Keep an eye out for more Quai Quests in the future.
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