Lucid Nightmare

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

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.

Clue 1

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.

Clue 2

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.

Toggling these lights into a specific pattern (the pleasing sign mentioned in the first Inconspicuous Note) creates another Inconspicuous Note 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.

Clue 3

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

After heading to the Temple of Ahn'Quiraj (AQ40), at the end of the dungeon, in a side path adjacent to the entrance of the final boss's chamber, a Mind Larva can be found on an altar. Activating the Mind Larva will begin a Bejeweled-style minigame on an 8 by 8 grid. Symbols can be swapped with adjacent ones, and matching 3 or more identical symbols in a row or column causes them to disappear. At the bottom of each grid column, there is a small circle, as shown below:

• 

  The Bejeweled grid

• 

  The circles underneath each grid column

The objective of the Bejeweled game is to light up all 8 circles. A column's circle can be lit up by getting a tentacle symbol in the bottom 3 rows of that column, as shown above. Once all 8 circles are lit, the minigame concludes, and a third Inconspicuous Note appears on the altar:

Deeper than deep.
Awaits your seat.

The note was interpreted as a hint towards Deepholm.

You must activate this note to proceed.

Clue 4

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 third 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 an unknown phrase. Comparison to the German translation revealed that the equivalent "Der Schlüssel ist" could be subtracted to leave the same set of letters in both languages.

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

Racksum Greep is wearing a specific mask - the craftable Shadoweave Mask. Equipping this mask causes the skull on the chair in Deepholm to become interactable. 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.

Note: The skull will not be interactable if you are already in a group or phased to another server!

Using the skull causes a large purple explosion, and spawns the fourth Inconspicuous Note, 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 a shaded area in Gnomeregan. You must interact with the fourth note to continue the puzzle chain!

Clue 5

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 bottom level, between the Launch Bay and Engineering Labs. (On the Launch Bay floor of the dungeon map.) 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 "instructions", coded in binary, that vary along with the client's locale. All "words" within the ciphertext appear to be either 5, 8, or 24 digits long regardless of locale.

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
111000000 00010 11111111 01000
10110111 10101 01111111 00001
10101110 11111 00110000 01000
101101010010101110010110
 
180
 
+1111111111

For reference, is what the binary ciphertext looks like in several other languages:

The community is currently trying to decode these instructions.