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.

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.

Clue 3

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 Bejeweled-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.

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 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.

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 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.

Clue 6

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

At coordinates (66, 36) in Val'sharah, an interactable tumour was discovered. Activating the tumour causes the following message to appear:

Al'ksh syq iir awan? Iilth sythn aqev... aqev... aqev...

Translated from Shath'yar:

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

Additionally, using the tumour commences a minigame, with a number of randomly-generated points and line segments between the points. 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 points that connect the lines can be dragged around, moving the lines with them.

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.

Clue 7

The community is currently trying to determine where the sixth Inconspicuous Note leads.