This past Saturday was the Newbie Treasure Hunt. Participation was fairly light, but on the positive side all of the participants made out pretty well.

The first part of the event had me sending an Eve mail to the participants identifying the starting system. I had them stage 3 jumps away so they got there pretty quick. The next step was to scan down my ship. There was a bit of confusion because 1) there were several ships in the system, 2) I was 16AU from any celestial object. So in local, I gave some additional instructions on where to find me. Pretty quickly, combat probes starting showing up on my dscan and after a couple more minutes, the first pilot arrived.

After that if flowed pretty quickly, although one pilot didn’t have secure containers on his overview and thus could not see them in space. We got that corrected and soon all of them but one had come and gone. As a bonus for the first pilot to find me, I dropped a can with T2 rig BPC’s worth about 15-20M ISK. But I forgot to abandon the container! The first 2 pilots to find me were in Astero’s. They probably made the wise decision to not flag themselves by taking the loot. Possibly they thought it was a trap. All the rest of the pilots seemed to assume the can had already been looted. However, the last pilot to find me noticed the loot and helped himself. He was immediately flagged yellow (and I realized my mistake). He then grabbed his bookmark and headed out. I checked the killboards and didn’t see him getting killed, but I tipped him 50M ISK for his bravery and to alleviate my conscience.

The winner notified me about 1 hour after the start of the race that he had finished it and won the Astero. He had a small bit of difficulty in claiming his prize due to EVE not recognizing the BPC in the contract, but we straightened it out quickly.

The winner was Eadwig ofHelmsby. He actually managed to be the first player to both of the two treasure locations (about 10 jumps apart). He walked away with an Astero, Sisters Core Probe Scanner, and some Sisters Core Probes. He also picked up an Astero BPC, but he was gracious enough to share that with the second place player.

The last player (assuming he didn’t die) probably made out 3rd place in loot with the BPC’s and the 50M tip. I think the lowest any player got was about 10-15M isk total. Everyone seemed to have a pretty good time.

In retrospect, I would have done a few things differently. First, I way overdid security at the start of the race. Sending out pilot specific containers with password pairs was a lot of work and definitely overkill. Also, if I want to run a big event (and I probably don’t), I need to reach out to established corps to help me promote it. Here’s the funny thing – veteran EVE players came out of the woodwork to donate prizes. However, when I tried to promote it in Tas Exile’s newbie NPC corporation and local in a couple of newbie areas, I was immediately (and loudly) suspected to be a scammer!!! I suppose EVE’s reputation works against it here.

Also, the puzzles were way too hard for the time period. In fact, I am pretty sure the puzzle cans are still out there with about 20M worth of loot in them. Care to take a crack at them? Leave an answer in the comments.

All passwords are 7 characters:

The math one: “141592 xxxxxxx 9323846” (First answered by Anonymous)

The religious/biblical one: “TLIMSISNW HMMTLDIGP xxxxxxx” (First answered by Archeal Azzamean )

The literary/poetic one: “ATIGDNG xxxxxxx TOTISDNW DRANRBTF” (First answered by MassiveFocusedInaction)

The musical one: “xxAGCB xxAGDC xxx^ECBA FFECDC” (First answered by Yooch Forelli)

Anyway, thanks to all who participated and helped me promote it. Special thanks to Katia Sae (of “To Boldly Go“) who donated an Astero and to Mynxee (of “Outlaw Insouciant“) who made a generous ISK donation.