Lucid Nightmare

Lucid Nightmare
Completed on 2017-09-02
Lucid Nightmare is a secret mount hidden in World of Warcraft.
Type	[[List_of_Investigations#Official|Official]]
Creator	Blizzard Entertainment
Discovered	2017-08-30
Completed	2017-09-02

Main Page > List of Investigations > Lucid Nightmare

The Lucid Nightmare was a puzzle trail hidden inside the massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft, made by Blizzard Entertainment. The end goal of the puzzle trail was to unlock a mysterious mount, which is called Lucid Nightmare.

All steps must be followed in order, as the subsequent items and locations are either unavailable or uninteractable otherwise.

The primary solving hub for this puzzle is the WoW General Secret Finding Discord.

First Note

The Inconspicuous Note at coordinates (50.8, 54.1) in Curiosities and Moore, Dalaran

On August 30, 2017, an Inconspicuous Note was discovered in Curiosities and Moore, Dalaran (Broken Isles). After being activated, the note reads:

It begins in the 2104059.
With a most pleasing sign.
(These letters will not always rhyme.)

The seven numbers in the first line are an anagram for a date: 2009-4-15. This date was the release date of Ulduar, another in-game region.

Accordingly, the next clue was found in Ulduar.

You must activate this note to proceed.

Second Note

The lever that activates the light grid at coordinates (45.70, 12.01)

After heading to Ulduar and killing Flame Leviathan, a "dusty lever" can be found on a pile of scrap in the room containing the XT-002 Deconstructor boss. When activated, a 20 by 20 grid of lights appears on the floor of the room. Each light can be individually toggled by the player.

The lights must be toggled into a pleasing sign as described by the first Inconspicuous Note. This sign is a pixelated appromixation of the sigil of Mimiron, the creator of both the Leviathan and Deconstructor bosses. Once the pattern is completed, another Inconspicuous Note appears in the center of the room, as shown below:

• 

  The initial 20x20 light grid

• 

  The correct pattern of illuminated lights

The Inconspicuous Note that spawns in the middle of the room reads as follows:

1000 years imprisoned.
Surely it weighs on the mind.

The note was interpreted as a hint towards the Vault of C'Thun, in the Temple of Ahn'Quiraj, which had been sealed 1000 years ago in the game's canon.

You must activate this note to proceed.

Third Note

The Mind Larva found in the Temple of Ahn'Quiraj, at coordinates (43.01, 63.97)

Deep within the Temple of Ahn'Quiraj (AQ40), there is a side path beyond the entrance of the final boss's chamber. At the top of the staircase there, a Mind Larva can be found on an altar. Activating the Mind Larva will begin a Jewelcraft-style minigame on an 8 by 8 grid floating in front of the player character's face.

In this genre of game, symbols can be swapped with their horizontal or vertical neighbors, and if that swap forms a row or column of at least 3 identical symbols, the matched symbols are removed from the grid. Symbols above the empty space fall down into it, which may cause further matches and removals, and any remaining space at the top of the grid is filled with newly generated random symbols.

• 

  The Bejeweled grid

• 

  The circles underneath each grid column, speculated to related to a win condition

The exact win conditions of the minigame have not conclusively been determined, but players will eventually meet them through continued play. Common theories involve lights that appear on the floor beneath each column if a tentacle symbol in the bottom 3 rows of that column, as well as matching a line of five identical symbols in one move. However, counterexamples exist for each, and the win condition may be no more than a hidden score tracker.

If you're having trouble with this step, just keep playing the minigame; you will spawn the third note eventually.

The third Inconspicuous Note reads:

Deeper than deep.
Awaits your seat.

The note was interpreted as a hint towards Deepholm.

You must activate this note to proceed.

Fourth Note

A cave in the north-east corner of Deepholm's lower reaches contains a "dark fissure" that is only visible to players who have completed the previous step. Clicking it will alert the player that there is no exit before allowing you to enter. Inside is a single stone chair, or seat, as described in the previous Inconspicuous Note. There is a skull upon its seat, and a "dingy plaque" on its back.

• 

  The cave in Deepholm, coordinates (58.3, 25.6)

• 

  The fissure in the Crumbling Depths, coordinates (63.8, 22.5)

• 

  Dingy Plaque on the back of the chair in the fissure

The Dingy Plaque's text is different in every localization. In English, it reads as follows:

<The plaque is old and barely legible. You can only make out fragments of each line of text.>
Supremacy?
Get…
Shirk…
… eke...

Racksum Greep, who can be found in Ratchet at coordinates (69, 70)

Considering these words and fragments as an anagram led to the partial discovery of the phrase the key is along with the letters ACEEGKMPUSRR. Comparison to the German translation revealed that subtracting the equivalent phrase Der Schlüssel ist from that language's text left the same set of letters, suggesting that anagramming was the correct approach.

On the second day of puzzle solving, the full anagram was discovered to be RACKSUM GREEP IS THE KEY. Racksum Greep is a goblin NPC in Ratchet, who can be found at coordinates (69,70) in the Northern Barrens. The anagram was validated in all other languages, despite the varying localizations of the ciphertext and differences in the NPC's name.

Racksum Greep is wearing a specific mask necessary for further progress, the craftable Shadoweave Mask. While the pattern for that mask was removed in a prior expansion, as of patch 7.3, the pattern now drops from any Dark Iron Dwarves in Searing Gorge. Upon returning to the dark fissure in Deepholm with the Mask equipped, the skull on the chair will be interactable. (The other items worn by Greep have no effect, and the prior removal of the pattern may have been a hint as to its special relevance.)

Note: The skull will not be interactable if you are already in a group or phased to another server! Transmog and lookalike items do not work either.

Using the skull causes a large purple explosion, and spawns the fourth Inconspicuous Note at the foot of the chair, which reads:

Where the shaded delegate may appear.

The shaded delegate is a reference to a rare spawn called the Dark Iron Ambassador, who may appear in Gnomeregan.

You must activate this note to proceed.

Fifth Note

The levers in Gnomeregan

After interacting with the fourth Inconspicuous Note, a set of 10 levers becomes interactable in Gnomeregan, at coordinates (37, 55), on the Launch Bay floor of the dungeon map, between the Launch Bay and Engineering Labs. Each lever has a console attached, which displays a number from 1 to 9; toggling the lever up or down increments or decrements the number on console.

Near the levers is a plaque with a set of encoded "instructions" that vary along with the client's locale. Most locales have a ciphertext that contains mostly 5, 8, or 24 digit-long "words" in binary. However, in the zhTW locale, the text instead contains digits on the range [1,5] rather than binary.

In English, the binary text reads:

01110111 00100 10010110 10101
11110111 01100 01111111 01000
011010111001011010010110 10111101
11001 00111111 10010 01001001
10000 011010010110100111010110
01011011 11110 11110001 11111
11100000 00010 11111111 01000
10110111 10101 01111111 00001
10101110 11111 00110000 01000
101101010010101110010110
 
180
 
+1111111111

The binary refers to 3 battle pet abilities: Falling Murloc, Mighty Charge, and Eye Beam, which deal 684, 560, and 1110 damage respectively. Concatenating these numbers yields:

6845601110

The next line of the instructions, 180, is a clue to reverse this number:

0111065486

The final line of the instructions, +1111111111, indicates that a 1 should be added to each digit:

1222176597

Setting the consoles to 1222176597 causes the fifth Inconspicuous Note to spawn, which reads as follows:

Games and toys are left behind.
When you awaken screaming.

This was interpreted as a clue towards Val'Sharah.

You must activate this note to proceed.

Sixth Note

The "untangling" minigame, found at coordinates (66, 36) of Val'sharah

At coordinates (66, 36) in Val'sharah, an interactable Nightmare Tumour was discovered. Activating the Tumour causes a synapse-like organism bearing the name of the Old God Il'gynoth to appear, and say:

Il'gynoth says: AL'KSH SYQ IIR AWAN? IILTH SYTHN AQEV.

Translated from Shath'yar, the language of Il'gynoth:

Is this real or an illusion? You are going mad.

Additionally, using the Tumour commences a minigame reminiscent of Blingtron's Circuit Design Tutorial. The minigame begins with a number of randomly-generated points, along with line segments between the points. The points that connect the lines can be dragged around, moving the line segments with them. If a line segment intersects with another line segment, then both line segments will turn red; otherwise, a line segment that does not interact with any other line segments will be blue.

The objective of this minigame is to turn all of the line segments blue, by "untangling" all the lines and vertices. Here is an example solution:

Once all the lines have turned blue, the sixth Inconspicuous Note appears in front of the tumour:

What you seek is buried within.

This was determined to lead towards the Valley of Emperors in Kun-Lai Summit.

You must activate this note to proceed.

Seventh Note

The ashes found at coordinates (53, 49) of Kun-Lai Summit

The seventh inconspicuous note, found after solving the maze

At coordinates (53, 49) of Kun-Lai Summit, an urn of ashes was discovered at the base of a Mogu statue. Interacting with the urn yields an option to consume the ashes. Selecting this option brings up a prompt:

WARNING: You are about to consume the ashes of an evil sorcerer.  There is no way to tell what will happen.  Are you VERY sure you want to do this?

A blue rune on a table in Endless Halls

Clicking "Accept" teleports the player to a square room in Endless Halls, containing a altar and 4 doorways. Some of the room's exits may be blocked by rubble. Exiting the room will bring the player to an identical room, with different exits blocked off by rubble. This is a randomly-generated maze puzzle, and the maze loops at its borders. To navigate the maze, it is highly recommended that you draw a map to keep track of your progress.

The central altar of each room is surrounded by torches, which may be lit in a variety of different colors, or not lit at all. Interacting with a lit torch yields a colored orb corresponding to the color of the torch's flame - red, yellow, green, blue, or purple.

Additionally, 5 of the rooms in the maze have different-colored runes on the altars. Placing a colored orb at the rune of the corresponding color consumes the orb. The goal of this maze is to place a correspondingly-colored orb at all 5 colored runes. Exiting the room after placing an orb at all 5 runes takes the player to a final room, where the seventh Inconspicuous Note is lying on an altar:

The way is now open.
To the greatest secret never told.
A fitting end to your journey.

The note was a hint towards the Forgotten Crypt, a well-known and partially completed area next to Karazhan. The Crypt has existed from the game's earliest releases, but was never completed or opened, although it has been previously explored via exploits.

You must activate this note to proceed.

Lucid Nightmare

Looting the mount in the Forgotten Crypts

After activating the seventh Inconspicuous Note, the entire Forgotten Crypt below Karazhan is permanently opened for the player character, at coordinates (37, 75) in Deadwind Pass. One chamber deep within contains a large mount of bones. There is a box on top of the pile of bones; opening it sets off a fireworks sound effect and yields the Lucid Nightmare mount.

The Lucid Nightmare mount, in-game

Short(ish) summary

For players more interested in the mount than the explanations and history of its discovery, follow these steps:

The necessary pattern for the second step, in Ulduar.

• Find and read the Inconspicuous Scroll on the upper level of Curiosities and Moore, across from the fishing fountain in Dalaran (Broken Shore)
• Travel to Ulduar, and click the Dusty Lever on the far left scrap pile in XT-002 Deconstructor's room. Click the lights to form the pattern on the right, then read the scroll that appears in the center.
• Travel to the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj (AQ40). Go past C'Thun's room, click the Mind Larva on the altar, and play the Bejeweled game until you win. Read the scroll on the altar.
• Purchase or craft a Shadoweave Mask, then travel to the Crumbling Depths in northeast Deepholm. Equip the Mask, then locate the Dark Fissure in the main chamber, just past the circling gyreworm. Drop into the Fissure, then click the skull on the chair in the center of the chamber. Read the scroll.
• Enter Gnomeregan, and locate the "Instructions" plaque and ten consoles on the north side of the Launch Bay. By repeatedly "talking" to the consoles, enter the number 1222176597. Read the scroll that appears.
• Travel to the northeast edge of Shala'nir, in Val'sharah. Inside a house there, click on the Nightmare Tumour and complete its minigame. (Untangle the lines by clicking dots to swap them.) Read the scroll that appears.
• Travel to the Tomb of Secrets in Kun-Lai Summit and click the Urn on the pedestal. Solve the maze by acquiring the colored Orb debuffs and using them to dissipate the matching runes. Note that the maze has an unusual and shifting geometry and mapping it is not a complete solution. When you have cleared all of the runes, you will be teleported to a room containing the final scroll. Read it.
• Travel to Karazhan in Deadwind Pass. The previously barricaded Crypt behind the graveyard there is now open to you. In the most remote room of the Crypt, on a pile of bones, you will find the chest containing the Lucid Nightmare.