Dark Secret Found in Isle of Dread

[Iymurra]

This may have been asked already, has anyone noticed that in P2 one of the 4 Kopru illusions had a 'red' aura? Not sure if there were any unique mechanics to trigger this. I was running around in normal while the raid was off doing raid things and I ended up killing the Water Weirds (while trying to die, kept saving on the traps). I noticed that one of the Kopru champions had a red aura around its head and it looked like the aura transferred between Kopru with every illusory copy swap as on one of the sets the red aura and the mark were together (horizon walker mark) and on another they were separated.

[karatemack]

The answer to the Dull Dagger question was locked behind 2 raids (VoD to get the dagger and MoD to upgrade it), yet we figured that one out. The enthusiasm of the community to figure it out was amazing. Not so much this one, now.

We need some help.

I mean, I didn't realize it was raid locked until the day I figured it out.

But yeah, a couple hints would be nice. Even if they are "hotter", "colder" type comments.

[Magnus_Arcanis]

So to recap for those overwhelmed by the document. Apologies, I'll try and clean it up some when I get a chance. For now, I wanted to get something on the forums here to let folks know the current status of what has been my favorite DDO content of all time. I might be stuck right now, but holy smokes has this journey been amazing.

What we know for 100% certain

• We know there are 4 optionals total in the raid.
• We only know how to complete 2 of them.

What we think we know for 100% certain

• That there is an alternate ending to the raid in which we free the ghost flame from the pact with Vecna.
• One of the optionals (dubbed the Dark Secrets Puzzle) is use the /say command to say the answers to the dark secrets puzzle while standing on the 5 platforms.

What we think is likely true

• If we complete all 4 optionals, we'll get a 2nd end chest.
• The 2nd end chest might have exclusive dino crafting materials.

What we don't know

• What the 4th optional is
• What to say for the dark secrets
• When to say the secrets (has to be done before killing death's teeth, but that's all we know)
• If the empty brackets (<>) in the title area for each major npc in part 3 means anything.
• If the kopru symbols (the 12 special symbols, conveying 4 different messages) means anything
• Does it matter if skulls in the Path's optional has glowing eyes or not (which ones are lit change each time you die, and is unique to each person per death)

What clues we have

• Ghost Flame Notes - there are certain things the ghost flame can't or wont' say. Alluding to those being the secrets
• Dark secret lines - voice lines found through quests and the raid. They largely give info on the 5 companions (Death's Teeth and the 4 burning skeletons). Quite certain these will play into a solution somewhere, but how and in how many ways remains to be seen.
• Kopru Symbols -

The Trouble we're currently having

Dark Secrets Puzzle

• /say needs to be exact with its spaces and punctuation and there are some signs that point to perhaps some of the secrets are phrases, not just a single word.
  
• We lack direction on how to figure out exactly what to say. I thought I had a good direction this last weekend when I thought I had a 5th Kopru message and then using those as a decoder to get what we needed, but its likely the 5th message is not a unique message, so we still only have 4. Tried decoding anyway, but so far haven't found the right line(s) to decode against or the right decoding method.
  
• We're still operating under the assumption that we need 5 secrets. (there's evidence to suggest that we need 5 though). However nothing else comes in 5's except for the number of dark secret sets that we have and its not obvious on how to put those two things together to figure out anything.
  
• There is some signs to suggest dark secrets cannot be said whenever and can only be done after all of the conditions have been met. Which, could mean the unknown optional. Could mean that we need to do the previous optionals differently. Could mean that we need something in addition to standing in the right place at the right time. We've tested quite a few theories along that path, but when you start going down this rabbit hole... we need a clue or a more blunt clue to point us to what that other thing is. (or more people testing)
  
• If another thing is needed, such as a certain character option or item (we're hoping this isn't it)... what makes this hard is that we're guessing a word/phrase, where it needs to be said, when it needs to be said, and with what thing it needs to be said with. Getting all those guesses to line up at once requires an army or an extreme level of luck. To combat that, an anchor or two (especially what we need to be said or the other thing) would let significantly boost our chance of brute forcing the other parts. This is of course, assumes that this is meant to be another 'stumble upon' style puzzle (I don't think it is fwiw) similar to finding the 8 shrines for the nebula fragment, or the dull dagger > covenant quests.

Unknown Optional

• We're largely shooting in the dark here.
• Best guess, it'll be obvious after saying the secrets
• Could be that there are two /say based optionals. A 4 for dark secrets for the party and then a 1 for death's teeth. (this has since become my working theory post this past weekend)

That's the short version of where we're at.

If you still believe that there isn't anything to find in the raid or that there isn't an alternate ending... you're just wrong haha. Stop by the stream and I'll happily go over the mountain of evidence that proves you're wrong if you need some personal convincing.

[Firebreed]

Thanks for the update! Hopefully we can get a hint sometime in the near future.

[Silverleafeon]

I believe the next update or soon thereafter will contain the finale of Codex Pages with a revisit by Venca?
Perhaps this will shed some new light on the puzzle?

[Oliphant]

Wondering about that optional (apparently useless) rune above the big gate at the very start. Did I miss reference to it in the guide?

[Arkat]

It appears to me the second chest mechanic may not actually be working atm.

So- attempting to unravel the mystery of the second chest in Skeletons in the Closet has been a ton of fun... but most of the players who are actively collaborating on this have hit the wall. Mind you, this is after thousands of hours of testing (across all the folks testing) and multiple theories ranging from "plausible" to "should be featured on an episode of Coast to Coast AM".

Can you please offer us some sort of hint? Are we on the right track? Is there even a second chest/alternate ending (or is this all something the players have made up)?

As to avoid risking the wrath of Vecna god of secrets, we would prefer not to speak of these secrets in any detail here. However in game hints may begin to appear in the Isle of Dread as early as U57.

[Magnus_Arcanis]

It appears to me the second chest mechanic may not actually be working atm.

I've been assured that the mechanic is working currently at the moment.

In game hints to be added later is great as we're stuck on the extra condition(s) required to say the secrets.

There's a ton of ideas we can try... too many actually. The ones surfacing as the most likely so far haven't been panning out.

However, we notice something new/a little different almost each session, so the hunt will continue.

[Fivetigers33]

I've been assured that the mechanic is working currently at the moment.

Doesn't this happen a few times per year, when the devs tell us that something is "fixed" but it isn't really? Considering we don't know what needs to be done to complete the optionals, there's no way for us to verify if it's working or not. The raid itself was bugged, then was hotfixed, then it still didn't work (https://forums.ddo.com/forums/showth...he-Closet-Raid). I'm very skeptical of source: 'trust me bro' coming from SSG.

In game hints to be added later is great as we're stuck on the extra condition(s) required to say the secrets.

Torc cleverly danced around confirming if the optional is currently completable. He could have easily said 'yes it's completable'. He could show a screenshot of the raid ending with 2 chests. He could show a snip of the XP report showing 'Find all of the secrets of Firemouth Mountain' completed. Or he could try to save a little face and give a deflecting answer with a teaser for the next update.

There's a ton of ideas we can try... too many actually. The ones surfacing as the most likely so far haven't been panning out.

This could be part of the problem as well. The clues were possibly too vague, so there's no practical way of figuring out what needs to be done. If we are supposed to /say Cookie Monster on all 4 platforms then drop Death's Teeth and /say Big Bird on the middle platform, no one will ever figure that out. Virtually all logical possible solutions have been tried at this point. And I'm not saying that just because I can't figure it out. It's been months and nobody has figured it out.

If you look at all the other raids that let players earn a 2nd raid chest through completing optionals, they are all extremely straight forward. And even if they aren't super obvious from the start, they would have been uncovered naturally through repeated completions of the raid over time.

Lord of Blades - As soon as you drop the Lord of Blades once, the optional pops up.
Master Artificer - The optional pops up automatically half way through the raid every time.
Dryad - The optional objectives don't appear on screen, but enemies and minibosses appear that coincide with DM text/voice.
Hunt - The optionals are an obvious chat option in part of the main quest objective.

Now I get that IoD and Vecna are tied to secrets, so maybe SSG wanted to make this one a little special compared to the others. Giving SSG the benefit of the doubt and assuming the optional can be completed right now, they obviously went off the deep end with their plan.

However, we notice something new/a little different almost each session, so the hunt will continue.

Good luck! Keep us posted.

[Mindos]

Is there a whisper emote?

[Magnus_Arcanis]

Thanks!

Towards SSG making this second chest a bit more special this time around... IMO, I'm certain that is correct and I love it.

As for the raid working, I don't buy into the raid isn't working just cause we haven't figured it out yet or cause we don't have proof. For a few reasons, beyond any dev claiming otherwise.

The big one being that, narratively, it makes sense that we should be doing something with Lindal's spirit/soul.

1.You can even see that, unlike the other skeletons when defeated that open up their path that leads to their spirit that is being kept on this plane, remain green the whole time until they fade away. DT when defeated right now, turns purple and is sent to the Void before he fades away.

2. Lindal didn't enter the pact the same way everyone else did. Wasn't cursed in the same way. All we're doing is disrupting the curse, on DT and GF long enough to claim victory. They're just sent to the void to be used later. While the other 4 tormented souls aren't sent back to the void, instead we're freeing them when we walk the paths of the dead.

As for SSG making this a bit more special this time around... IMO, I'm certain that is correct and I love it.

Where things are now... we have a few unsolved mysteries (in no particular order)

1. The Kopru Symbol Translations. Hell, they could even contain the step we're missing, but I'm not smart enough to figure it out.
2. The missing titles. Each of the 4 and ghost flame has <> under their name. Not sure how intentional that is.
3. There are a few GF notes that point towards things that she can't or won't say. Do these have a higher purpose? In fact, figuring out what those are thematically makes more sense than the literal dark secrets we know.
4. How to unlock Lindal's soul.

Which the key to figuring them out and/or inputting the correct answers currently evades us.

I think the big issue is that we spent most of time figuring out the secrets unaware of the additional condition. So when the obvious didn't work we started chasing other answers. Came up with some decent options that looked good and when they didn't work... we began over thinking everything.

So now we have a million ideas and we're unfocused. Last few weeks I've been trying really hard to refocus. Step back from square one, and now believe there is a special condition (free lindal's soul).

Now the special condition could be a million things in order to spawn the next optional.

1. Specific way to go about the raid/known optional.
2. Say additional things we don't have the answers to yet
3. Requires specific class option(s)
4. Requires specific item(s)
5. Some or all of the above.

I'm trying to keep to 1 as much as possible. 2 maybe, if we figure something out. 3 & 4... doesn't really make sense to do as raid mechanic. I know people are going to scream dull dagger here... but that was an item quest, not a base raid mechanic. Like, it'd be weird if the optional only appears after a palemaster walks the path of the dead (which I haven't tried personally). 5... might need more than one hint if its 5.

Regardless to whatever the answer is... I'm certain it'll seem obvious after its solved.

[Sediel]

2. The missing titles. Each of the 4 and ghost flame has <> under their name. Not sure how intentional that is.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

I've been thinking about a solution to your dark secret document <>.
This is the name of the set item that appears throughout the IOD.

Items from the wilderness are explicitly referred to as 'The Dread Isle's Curse'.

What if you tried /say the set item names according to the class according to the documentation you put together.

<Devotion of the Firemouth> -LindaL (Class Guess = Fighter)

<Dread Stalker> -Gorth (Class Guess = Rogue)

<Defender of Tanaroa> -Alaric (Class Guess = Cleric)

<Deacon of the Auricular Sacrarium> - Kelas (Class Guess = Wizard)

<Echoes of the Walking Ancestors> -Osfield (Class = Bard)

[Oliphant]

Feeling stuck but came up with this for the benefit of Mr. Kite... where we're at

https://rave.dj/2YeUZ-0CCZO8wA

[Matuse]

It only took them 18 months of assuring us that the mithril key in Toxic Treatment was working properly before they fixed it so that it actually did work.

[Fivetigers33]

Where things are now... we have a few unsolved mysteries (in no particular order)

1. The Kopru Symbol Translations. Hell, they could even contain the step we're missing, but I'm not smart enough to figure it out.
2. The missing titles. Each of the 4 and ghost flame has <> under their name. Not sure how intentional that is.
3. There are a few GF notes that point towards things that she can't or won't say. Do these have a higher purpose? In fact, figuring out what those are thematically makes more sense than the literal dark secrets we know.
4. How to unlock Lindal's soul.

1. If the answer is tied to the Kopru Symbols, my hat's off to the devs. I'd bet nearly everything that these aren't involved. SSG would have truly gone above and beyond if this is the case.

2. Now this one actually carries some weight. The blank <> under the skele's names does seem intentional. Dr. Lifestone's journal says "though their accents and titles seem strange to me" would lead one to believe their titles aren't standard things like bard or wizard.

3. This option is where I think the answer most likely will be tied to. The Ghost Flame's journal says "Names are secrets, thus I have so far avoided speaking his true name." After you complete the part 3 optional Walk the Path of the Dead, the Ghost Flame says "Nothing is more dangerous than a secret. I learned that a long time ago. So, I ask you - what secrets do you know?” She is literally asking us to tell her a secret, and according to her notes, names are secrets. So she wants us to tell her a secret name. All of the platforms in part 3 of the raid have the Shroud of Secrets debuff which reads "Only secrets can be spoke here."

So it would seem that once instructed to do so by the Ghost Flame, players would need to tell her what secret names we know, since names are secrets, and the platform debuff would suggest they either need to be spoken on the platform, or even if you are on the platform they can still be spoken.

This is a massive amount of evidence supporting players needing to /say a particular name on each or all of the platforms. Whether intentional or not, this is clearly where the available evidence/clues point.

I think the big issue is that we spent most of time figuring out the secrets unaware of the additional condition. So when the obvious didn't work we started chasing other answers. Came up with some decent options that looked good and when they didn't work... we began over thinking everything.

So now we have a million ideas and we're unfocused.

On the note of over thinking things, in the raid you only get the Dark Secret text if you kill all of the dark secrets before they explode. If the text is only available when specific conditions are met, and the conditions may not always happen in random raid completions. When you take that in conjunction with trying to solve a puzzle, it would lead you to believe that the text has significance.

Assuming you need all 4 of the groups of dark secret text to solve the mystery, we can look at what each group of secret text has in common. 2 things immediately pop out.
1. We are given the name of one of the skeletons. Not that we didn't previously know their name, but names are secrets as we established earlier.
2. We are given the order that each skeleton joined the party. Order is a recurring theme which would suggest that order will play a role in solving the mystery.
3. Then to a lesser degree, each group of text tells a little bit about each skeleton which could be tied to their missing titles <>.

This all feeds into the popular belief that we need to /say the name and title of the party members in the correct order, probably on their corresponding platforms. This is just a bit more specific version of the theory above regarding the Ghost Flame asking us to tell her what secrets we know.

Last few weeks I've been trying really hard to refocus. Step back from square one, and now believe there is a special condition (free lindal's soul). Now the special condition could be a million things in order to spawn the next optional.

1. Specific way to go about the raid/known optional.

I'm trying to keep to 1 as much as possible.

Relating to freeing Lindal's soul, Lindal has his own set of Dark Secret text sprinkled throughout the Isle of Dread. His secrets do state his name and give hints to his title, but they do not mention what order he joined the party. I'm not sure if that last bit is significant or not, or if it takes away from the significance of the party member order from the raid dark secrets.

We know that killing/dropping Death's Teeth in different locations has different effects. Killing him on most of the map results in the Ghost Flame reviving him. Killing Death's Teeth on the platform with his elven skeleton progresses the raid in the only known way at present. Maybe dropping him in another location would yield different results, like somewhere out in the lava that most players wouldn't try (under the giant skull on the wall)?

I've also been in groups that have tried to drop him and the Ghost Flame at the same time, since this is a common raid boss tactic in other DDO raids, but my group was unable to get the timing down.

One of the dark secrets in the raid says "Yet only when lindal spoke my name did the flame in my heart burn." This would suggest that if we can somehow get Death's Teeth to "say" Yarrow's name, something will happen. We've tried having Death's Teeth hit the Ghost Flame with all of his attacks, but that didn't lead anywhere.

Regardless to whatever the answer is... I'm certain it'll seem obvious after its solved.

I'm actually super curious about this myself. Once the answer is known, in retrospect, how obvious will it be using only pre U57 information.

[ZER0DIVISION]

I've been following this thread closely, and I just wanted to say thanks for all the hard work. Since it seems we've hit a bit of a dead end, I figured I'd toss out some thoughts/ideas that stick out to me.

For starters, I'm increasingly doubtful that the kopru symbols mean anything. I figure that if there was something to decipher, there would probably be some pretty apparent clues or tools to assist that process. That would be pretty cool though, and the symbols/hieroglyphs do stand out quite a bit.

Conversely, I think the dark secrets in both the raid and the IoD quests play some part. They can't just be there for flavor/lore, especially when some of them are pretty dang well hidden.

I think in order to break the pact, we must first understand what exactly the pact was, and why. Magnus raises a good point that Lindal was actually not a part of this pact, at least not willingly, since Lifestone's journal implies he was escaping before he ended up being killed by Death's Teeth. He's now 'bound to his killers bones'. Some journals/dialogue seem to hint that Yarrow loved Lindal to some degree, though maybe Lindal did not reciprocate. Other bits imply that she was only after him for power, a 'means to an end'. Probably because he was royalty? And when Ghost Flame refers to not being able to talk about 'us' it's difficult to tell if she's referring to her and Lindal, or her and Vecna, or maybe the entire adventuring party in the pact. From our perspective, it certainly looks like she condemned the rest of her party to eternal torment for great power.

Another interesting tidbit is we've already seen Vecna betrayed before, in the Feywild. Scath and the corrupted unicorns were provided by Vecna as a gift to Hyrsam, and they straight up betrayed him. Vecna was withholding the location of 'the door', and how to open it, until he got the codex page. But the unicorns betrayed Vecna and just told Hyrsam everything about the door, which is how The Dryad and the Demigod raid came to be. The dialogue implies that all that happened was that Hyrsam tempted them with a better deal/offer than what they were getting from Vecna. It still seems kinda odd though, since Vecna seems to be able to exert a great deal of control over what people can say or do when they were bound to him. Why were the unicorns even able to betray him so easily? Maybe it's just a plot hole.

Last little bit that is probably meaningless is that in the raid Ghost Flame says 'die while you still can'. And our first optional in the last part does require you to be dead. Maybe something that requires the entire party to be dead?

Dunno, it's hard to tell what's there for flavor and what actually has meaning. It's difficult to know if the solution to this puzzle is localized to just IoD, or whether we should be looking in other places. I was at least hoping that the dev response would've told us what avenues we were wasting our time on.

[Magnus_Arcanis]

For starters, I'm increasingly doubtful that the kopru symbols mean anything. I figure that if there was something to decipher, there would probably be some pretty apparent clues or tools to assist that process. That would be pretty cool though, and the symbols/hieroglyphs do stand out quite a bit.

While the symbols may still be a red herring, I just wanted to point out that we did get a tool to assist with that process. We're given a vertical list of each of the possible symbols. Chart can be found in the Kopru section of the Clues category.

How we're supposed to use that list with the unique messages is obviously still lost on me, but still. Hell of a red herring if it ends up being one.

1. We have the list
2. They clearly look like a message on some of the primary panels
3. The symbols are completely unique to Kopru ruins.
4. Look hand made
5. Are very district from the more common hieroglyphics found throughout the expansion.
6. Plus you have potential hint from the line "showed me the symbols" to consider

It just feels too deliberate to ignore. Really has that secret decoder vibe to it ya know?

[ZER0DIVISION]

While the symbols may still be a red herring, I just wanted to point out that we did get a tool to assist with that process. We're given a vertical list of each of the possible symbols. Chart can be found in the Kopru section of the Clues category.

How we're supposed to use that list with the unique messages is obviously still lost on me, but still. Hell of a red herring if it ends up being one.

1. We have the list
2. They clearly look like a message on some of the primary panels
3. The symbols are completely unique to Kopru ruins.
4. Look hand made
5. Are very district from the more common hieroglyphics found throughout the expansion.
6. Plus you have potential hint from the line "showed me the symbols" to consider

It just feels too deliberate to ignore. Really has that secret decoder vibe to it ya know?

Oh I totally get it, the symbols really stick out and look deliberately made to be legible. I guess this also begs the question, if there's something to decipher: What would the kopru know that could be threatening to Vecna? Since it's carved into the various ruins, I would assume it predates the fall of the Kopru. Would they even know anything about Ghost Flame or the adventuring party? I don't think there's much of a timeline given, though it is implied that Ghost Flame is very much immortal and been around for a very long time.

[Magnus_Arcanis]

Oh I totally get it, the symbols really stick out and look deliberately made to be legible. I guess this also begs the question, if there's something to decipher: What would the kopru know that could be threatening to Vecna? Since it's carved into the various ruins, I would assume it predates the fall of the Kopru. Would they even know anything about Ghost Flame or the adventuring party? I don't think there's much of a timeline given, though it is implied that Ghost Flame is very much immortal and been around for a very long time.

Actually, the Ghost Flame hasn't be around all that long. A little over 100 years.

Vecna's solution to the Kopru's wining about their labor problem was born from making the pact with the Ghost Flame. Which put the curse on the island to create the Walking Ancestors and then was used to massacre Tanaora (which happened that 100 years ago).

As for the symbols. They wouldn't directly relate to Ghost Flame, or even Vecna necessarily as the ruins should predate even his arrival. However, it could detail the ability to move between realities. Assuming the Void is its own reality... that'd could be worth something. Which is something they've been able to do even before Vecna came along.

Though the symbols having a hand scream Vecna related clue so maybe the ruins we see where from the 'attempt to rebuild' era? Tough to say.

Kind of a reach, but it could fit.

[Xoham]

Here are three observations, I'm not sure if they're new or not; but in case they help anyone make progress.

1. Giant rune above door at start of raid: I was just in part 1 for a long time, activated it at the start, and it didn't go off the entire time (whereas the four hidden runes at the start do time-out).
2. Vecna secret skulls: I hadn't really paid attention to this before; but when you successfully say a Vecna name anagram in part 1, the skull eyes light up. I'm pretty convinced that the skull eyes being lit/unlit in the final chamber are part of the puzzle.
3. Kopru symbols: perhaps we have our transliterated indexing wrong and the Kopru are 0-up rather than 1-up programmers (it's a rather boring hypothesis, that five of the symbols are just the Kopru numerals 1-5):
   
   • Our transliterated '1' (the skull/mushroom?): ? ('0'?);
   • Our transliterated '2' (the eye of Vecna?) is 1 shaded circle, so perhaps '1';
   • Our transliterated '3' (the eyes) is 2 circles/eyes next to each other, so perhaps '2';
   • Our transliterated '4' (the triple-tail Kopru / volcano) has 3 lines/tails, so perhaps is '3';
   • Our transliterated '5' (photon-photon scattering?) has 4 lines/photons, so perhaps '4';
   • Our transliterated '6' (the hand of Vecna?) has 5 fingers, so perhaps '5';
   • After that we have the eye/hand (which would be 1/5) in square/circle; I have no good ideas; and then of course the 'void' and '/'.