LotS/Riddle Master Item Hunt

The Riddle Master is a mysterious figure who challenges the community to crack his (or her) riddles in order to obtain the components used to craft certain lab experiments. The playerbase does not know who creates the Item Hunts or whether they are the work of a single person or are the product of several 5th Planet developers. Riddle-solving is a community affair. Multiple players post theories and possible solutions to the 5PG forums. The first person on each platform to complete the Item Hunt by crafting the new experiment item is memorialized with a future in-game item.

The majority of riddles appear on the components of the Experiment item, usually encrypted. The examples in this section will illustrate the riddle-solving process using the riddles from Advanced Deathmechanics 2 which is part of the Omega Deathmachine lab experiment. There are three steps in the riddle-solving process.

• First, the text of the riddle must be decrypted. The pictures associated with the coded riddles are often clues which aid in solving the riddles, and occasionally provide decryption keys. The decryption process ends when the encrypted text is rendered into readable English.

Template:Example Encrypted text from Advanced Deathmechanics 2: "Ydtw wvpzox mmu esa'gl s zfdsriufd clu svwze'u mdky mxuyz iow yvtd ry nta merpeq. Dyz nrg'n ia ziyi azhk urhhlk xe wktpfn ypg pnwt uuy'bt ywtvnlhkyp whsai azl losyxlea gvujuv ffv? Vhm'm epgvz lplo ro odls ajk xu vll ayf ldef dkrpocn... Oof celen fdk jgkvjpkf drr ir Ogpghajv'j tyq? Bh rqrp, ou fgb upx'w fczz!"

In order to decrypt the text, players needed two pieces of information: (1) the picture associated with Advanced Deathmechanics 2 was a distorted picture of Lucia the Cobra; and (2) that the text was encrypted using a Vigenère cipher with 'Lucia the Cobra as the key.

Translation: "Some people say you're a sociopath who doesn't care about the rest of the galaxy. Why don't we test that theory by seeing how much you've remembered about the universe around you? Let's start with an easy one to get the ball rolling... Who built the favorite toy of Salastro's son? In full, if you don't mind!" Template:Example/end

• Second, would-be puzzle-solvers must navigate any intermediate steps in the puzzles. Many of the riddles are complex -- each crafting component may involve several intermediate riddles, and may include email, links to special pages created by the developers for the Item Hunts, or even a device capable of reading QR codes. This process ends when the playerbase discovers the final riddle in the sequence which tells the players what to do in game. This step is optional, as some Experiment components, particularly those from earlier Item Hunts, will not require any intermediate steps.

Template:Example Based on the text of Advanced Deathmechanics 1, the players learned that the riddles assocaited Template:Example/end

• Finally, the final riddle of each component is also a collection of riddles, which obliquely references the steps a player must take in-game in order to obtain that Experiment component.

Once the riddle is deciphered