Pingu’s puzzle has been solved, and with it, many riches were made and shared. More importantly, his Last Chapter book has been recovered- an ode to his many friends and his love for the server. It did make me tear up.
The Solution
The first hint is decoded via base64, giving coordinates. These coordinates lead to a maze, on the mighty dug out chunks. After traversing, you come to the centre room, which contains two signs with 322662 and 84 on them. Also throughout the maze are a fence and 2 rails, giving the hint of using a ‘rail fence’ cipher with 2 rails. Doing this will give you coordinates to a floating island in an ocean: titled ‘Lost in Thought’.
In the main room, there are many signs… but don’t spend too long perusing them, they’re a red herring! Instead, eat some chaurus fruit until you come into a room with a Ross head labelled ‘smort birb’ and two signs encoded in base64. Deciphering these will give you a message:
‘Look for the Nordic hut at the edge of the world’
A sign around the side of the island will tell you ‘NEGATIVE Z’ in morse code.
Now, a lengthy journey: Scour the Negative Z border for a Nordic hut. Once you find the dinky house, you have entered the ‘Love is Fatal’ challenge. Here, you will find 2 sets of codes on 2 different flowers. Adding both together and renaming a flower to the code will activate a hopper minecart found in the maze and open a piston door found through a soul sand passage elsewhere in the maze (we didn’t cheat on this bit… did we?)
Now, you find two paths. One leads to a tunnel with signs with Morse Code. This Morse code gives you coordinates. These coordinates will bring you to the Hidden Valley, a massive waste of time with a sudoku puzzle that has over 600 solutions.
Luckily enough for me, everyone gave up after finding out the sudoku was a scam! I continued on, and Pingu had placed extra hints for us stucklings: ‘2 keys makes a dilemma’, ‘the other will lead to prosperity’.
Remember the flowers from earlier? Now the other set comes into play, and using it on a very hard-to-find dirt block will open up a tunnel to a series of doors. Make your way through the puzzling doors (and suffer the dead ends) until you find a dropper, that drops a salmon named something illegible. Putting it through base64 will give you a message: ’ Connected even beyond this world’. Not relevant to the puzzle, but perhaps comforting to those who were lucky enough to call themselves Pingu’s friend.
The two paths from earlier? The other lead to a hall adorned with Pingu’s face. Dropping the salmon on the hopper block gives you his Last Chapter book.
Dropping the book (don’t worry, I got copies) onto a hopper in the centre room opens up the final chamber. Dropping a salmon into the last gate gives you Pingu’s fortune: his armory, treasures, gold and shells (and the original Final Chapter book- lucky me!)
One of my projects for S4 is that I’d love to make a library: a place to show off all the heads, discs, myths, quests and notable books of the server. Pingu will get his own section, showcasing his armor, his final chapter book, and maybe (once the library is built) a message from the friends mentioned in his final book.
Thank you, Pingu: I am now rich and I feel smarter than ever (with your many many hints). The server will miss you dearly, and I am excited for the day you drop back in to say hello.
During the process of solving the puzzles I died and lost my tools + weapons, so I think it may have been fate that yours were passed onto me. Thanks!