The Second Gate

Although I have not been very successful at my attempts to beat The Stacks, I did notice that the leaderboard features all of the photos taken of players who have completed the challenge. As I was looking through the images, my curiosity got the best of me and I ended up decifering the QR code to reveal the URL for the second challenge. I verified the URL by using a whois search and saw that it was in fact registered to Ernest Cline. I then used my intuition to guess the URL for the third challenge, and also found it to be registered to Cline as well. Although these URLs are registered to him, I'll still have to wait until the next release dates to see if these are the ones used for the remaining challenges. At this point, I'm counting myself out of the contest, mainly because I don't think I possess the skill and patience to beat each of the challenges, but also because I feel undiserving of the reward for jumping the gun and using the QR code that I did not personally obtain.

You can do it...just keep trying. Make a map of the game...it helps.

I think I found the third gate location as well. Oddly enough, I found it when trying to guess the URL for the first gate, which I found by examining the source code for the third gate page.

DealerForTheCIA wrote:I think I found the third gate location as well. Oddly enough, I found it when trying to guess the URL for the first gate, which I found by examining the source code for the third gate page.

I am pretty sure I know exactly what your talking about. I found "something" while just doing random-ish searches after finding the QR code for the first gate.

Ok, so I'm now sure I have the next website for the third gate...AND I'm confident in knowing where one of the two next games will be held online.

I have included links to password encoded ZIP files. For verification after that fact.

In each of these ZIP file is a simple text file with basic info and also an image file of verification as well.

I will release the passwords no matter if I am wrong or right.

I hope you guys are all have as much fun as I am right now. I feel like a really geeky, less punchy, version of Batman. LOL.

https://docs.google.com/folder/d/0B5nRLLwN4FbcNzlhR2Zrc3RTMjA/edit

Holy digital prophecies Batman!

Either way, only six and a half hours to go before the second gate opens. Can't wait to see that's in it!

Well the gate opened and I was right on the game...not yet sure about the third gate.

Password for file 2 is *Rocketfish5&

Anyone else having problems getting the sign up page to load? Want to make sure it's not just me. I assume there's a lot of people trying to get in just now.

Yeah...I've been staking this page out for days, trying to get into the beta, but its been broken the whole time.

You're not alone.

There is a work around, but I'm not telling.

Found it. Thanks for mentioning it.

The game won't load for me? Gets to the 'Recruiting Helpers' loading bit and just stays on there?! Anyone else had this problem? Any ways around it?

The game is SUPER BUGGY. This is frustration. Maybe it is actually a test of persistence.

Right now I've had a lot of problems trying to stay logged in. I did a ping test and found the back end is hosted by Amazon (their web services). I suspect it's the same area that crippled Netflix earlier. Go figure...gotta love technology .

I hope that the final challenge is more in the vein of the first. I noticed one guy beat the second gate a few hours after it opened. Closer examination of his screen shows that he clearly dumped a bunch of real $$ so he could blow through it quick. Which is fair enough, I'm not complaining about him doing it. As infuriating as the bugs can be, I continue to grind my way to the full list of items playing for free. I just hope that the final challenge will rely on skill only and not give an edge to anyone that dumps money into it.

I'm close, but another forum has already posted at least 4 people beating the gate.

I was researching again and found the third gate, although I still have yet to beat the second one. Hopefully it should be today though.

The second gate is sooo frustrating. I'm a purist and doing it without dumping cash into it. It takes so long to get things done if you're not really lucky

Still grinding away. I'm not too worried about time right now since the next gate won't open until the first of August, but it is indeed frustrating as all hell. I've cleared out whole stores only to find NOTHING I'm looking for. Then it becomes a question of waiting until the game will let me do anything again. I wouldn't mind nearly as much if it let you look at items without expending energy, but then it would remove a large part of the incentive to buy anything. Just hope the third gate is less grindy and more puzzley.

Okay, I don't think I'm doing this thing in the most expedient way. I figure if I keep at it the way I'm going then I won't have the damn thing finished in time for the third gate. If anyone would be so kind as to point me in the right direction (hey even Aech sent Parzival the box are for Zork right?) I would be eternally grateful. If not, I'd also understand because in the end I guess it's every gunter for himself. Anyway....

If you're talking about the second gate, there's really not much to it save grind. If you feel it's going to slow, you could always drop some money to speed up your play. $2 isn't much, and it's not like it's cheating. Otherwise it's just a question of keeping an eye out for items you need. My only advice is to keep an eye out for items you may need in later quests while you're working on the one at hand. It's mostly luck and tenacity from there.

Got four of the lunch boxes from the list. Put them in a display case. NOTHING HAPPENED!


*****edit******

Never mind......figured it out

Out of curiosity, what was the problem?

The display case has to hold exactly four items.