Level One: THE COMMENCE was the first and introductory level of THE FINALS Easter Egg Hunt. It started on September 5, 2022 and was solved on September 16, 2022, leading into Level Two: THE PROMISE.
History
On September 5, 2022 Embark Studios posted the image "Slash" along with the captionː "New concept art..ǃ.ǃǃǃǃ". Converting the punctuation from binary, assuming the periods are 0s and the exclamation marks are 1s, revealed the "/" character. Upon further examination of the image "Slash", binary strings were discovered in the upper right and lower right quadrants of the image. These strings converted to "DEVON" in the upper right, and "CROSSING" in the lower right. With these two pieces of information in hand, it was discovered that going to www.reachthefinals.com/devoncrossing led to a curious page with a giant red X on it.
On September 8, a new image was posted to the #game-announcements channel on the official THE FINALS Discord server named "Statues_001". It depicted small figurines, or Revive Statues, of the Light, Medium, and Heavy Builds. Examining the image revealed a series of numbers: "49 53, 54 52, 48 50, 49 53". When these were cross referenced with an ASCII table they gave the date "1564/02/15". This is Galileo Galilei's birthdate, but as of then its relevance was not confirmed.
On September 9, another image was posted to the announcements channel, named "Happystatues_002". This time it was small Nama Tama figures of the Light, Medium, and Heavy Builds. Once again examining the image led to another set of numbers: "56 54 48 49". When referenced with an ASCII table they gave "8601", indirectly referencing ISO-8601, a standard code for date formatting, thus confirming the previous reference to Galileo's birthdate. Going to www.reachthefinals.com/galileo would also lead to a page with a giant red X on it.
On September 13, an image named "BarrelsBarrelsBarrels" was posted to the announcements channel, and on an Embark Studios' social media account. It contained a scene of a character in military gear, and a Shinobi vaulting over them with a few barrels behind them. Closer examination of the image revealed two potential cluesː On one of the barrels the string "002f", Unicode for "/" was found, and the character with military gear was carrying a can of "OSPUZE OG Beans" on his back; although, this clue was overlooked at the time.
On September 15, a new image named "friend_you_need" was posted in the #easter-eggs Discord channel. The image contained Nama Tama holding a can of OSPUZE OG BEANS. A can of beans, titled OCB, (Original Can of Beans) was the first item put in a geocache by Dave Ulmer, the inventor of Geocaching. Going to www.reachthefinals.com/ocb revealed the third and final page featuring a large red X.
Solving
On September 16, 2022. Hunter Duh found the correct answer for the level: https://www.reachthefinals.com/geocache. A new image awaited the hunters there, one of Nama Tama saying: "Level One Completed! You Are Awesome.!". In total this level took 11 days to complete.
Summary
- Devon Crossing relates to William Crossing of Devon, which can be traced back to the origins of a hobby called Letterboxing in Dartmoor, Devon. The hobby is referred to as the original geocaching, but with compasses and maps.
- Dusty gave a message which included Shell-lock Holmes’s. One of first books written by Arthur Conan Doyle was The Hound of the Baskervilles, which takes place mostly in Dartmoor, Devon, and whose main character is Sherlock Holmes.
- Galileo is the name of a European Satellite System. GPS devices are used for geocaching and they require satellites to function.
- O.C.B stands for Original Can of Beans. A can of beans was the first item placed in the original stash by the inventor of geocaching.
On the day Level One was solved, Rob posted the following message:
“You can all relax for a while we will let you know when we start Level 2, trust me on that.!
There are still things you have missed, but they are not needed to continue this adventure and puzzle, they are just small fun things, nods and secrets about the game... but you don't need to have them to REACH THE FINALS.!”
Images
Slash
Statues_001
Happystatues_002
BarrelsBarrelsBarrels
friend_you_need
Awesome.!
Credits
- Solver - Duh
- Documentation - Giriko, Flex4d, RockhoundBlack
- Various Contributions - ATAEGGYU, Darnoux, Dwarf, Madalin, Mike Eggmantraut, Oli, Sparky, Swa
Further Reading
- RockhoundBlack's Video: THE FINALS: The 'Geocache' Easter Egg!
- Flex4d's Document