During an Abba Caving event 2 months ago I decided to convert the walls of a secluded lava bubble cave to diamonds. I will be posting clues throughout the week, which starts today. I'm not exactly sure how thick I made the walls but it's certainly a cuboid. There is 604 diamond ore to be mined. So, happy hunting!
So far we know it's in a cave not connected to anything else, and I don't see any recognizable structures around. I'll be waiting "patiently" for the next clue.
I'm excited! Very Happy Thanks for getting the hunt together, Comic. I've been anxious to see the diamond cave
I remember seeing this on irc! This might be enough to get me playing on the server again...
Unicorn: Have you also seen what we have coming up on the Cemetech Minecraft 1.9 server? Hopefully both will excite you for some fun building, projects, and minigames.

comic: Clues clues clues!
There has been so much discussion about this on Skype and on the server that I'm witnessing from IRC logs. All of it is amazing. All the research that is going into the FIRST clue. Not going to spoil it myself but if anyone wants to bring over their thoughts to the forum, they certainly can.

So, here's clue two!

A bunch of people are feverishly searching the map, to no avail so far. The hunt is on!
Well, this may be the final clue for a while. I think with everything I've shared so far (including this post), someone may find it!


The diamonds lie under an eden*,
Set forth by the Laughing one.

Under sands of three,
Do the spoils sweeten.

Though you must be wise,
For the devil is free.


Stay in front of Him,
Run away as far as you can.

His eyes may be hinting,
So follow them on a whim.

He hasn't a care,
So don't go missing.

*Actually viewable from space!
Lest people get too frustrated with the silence, CharlesSprinkle and I found the spot where the first snowy screenshot was taken last night, no longer covered in fire or buttons. We both searched around unsuccessfully for a bit, and after playing with the orthogonal view a bit, I found a candidate location. Much trekking turned up a snowy mountaintop matching the screenshot! We also found the Eden last night, but didn't know what to do with it. We're not really sure where to go from here, though.

Good luck, all. Smile
The Hunt Is Not Over Yet!

The treasure has been found by KermM and I, but the hunt is still on!
KermM and I have claimed 400 of the possible 604 diamond ores, leaving up to 204 ores up for grabs by the next player(s) who manage to find it. Great game and best wishes to the next lucky adventurer(s)!

My first sighting of the pool:


I dropped a little decoration in the middle for whoever finds it next
Congrats on finding it, guys. Smile Maybe I'll have better luck figuring things out on the next hunt. Smile
Congrats guys! I'll post the solution at the end of the week, to give other users an opportunity to enjoy the hunt for the remainder. If you guys go back and collect the rest, let me know and I'll post it sooner!
tifreak8x: You should really search for the remainder! There's still about 80,000 denarii worth of diamonds left to find there. Smile
comicIDIOT wrote:
Congrats guys! I'll post the solution at the end of the week, to give other users an opportunity to enjoy the hunt for the remainder. If you guys go back and collect the rest, let me know and I'll post it sooner!


Sooooo I lied. So... I can't promise everyone will play nice/fair after I post this so for those who are sstill enjoying the hunt -- which I think is 1 person -- I'm sorry.

SPOLIERS BELOW

CLUE ONE
So, I started this hunt off giving a rough location. This is where the most research went in. ElementaVis did some digging in logs and found the day where I first brought up the cave. But, I say during an "Abba caving event 2 months ago." We had two abba caving events within a week in November, and I think everyone focused on the wrong Abba caving because the date I mentioned the cave aligned perfectly with the latter Abba despite that event taking place on a specially generated world, when they should have focused on the earlier one. The former event took place in the Northern part of the map. Somewhat to the West as well. I would have been very surprised if anyone remembered roughly where that event took place.

CLUE TWO
This is where I started getting a bit more clever. I also used the guise of an edit -- changing "roughly 300 diamonds" or whatever I wrote to the exact number of 604 in the top post -- to host the first clues picture on my website. While this wasn't exactly notable for the hunt, it likely would have thrown some people for a loop had they discovered it. Because... Clue 2 is hosted on my website as well.

If someone would have quoted my post they would have seen this:

Code:
[quote="comicIDIOT"]There has been so much discussion about this on Skype and on the server that I'm witnessing from IRC logs. All of it is amazing. All the research that is going into the [b]FIRST[/b] clue. Not going to spoil it myself but if anyone wants to bring over their thoughts to the forum, they certainly can.

So, here's clue two!

[img]http://comicidiot.com/cemetech/mc/1.7/8*0K.png[/img][/quote]


What's with the weird file name? Turns out, it has something to do with the picture. It's not easy to show how cold somewhere is in Minecraft because it's not like you can craft a furry set of armor. So, I lit a fire and put on armor. I also removed all trace of the fire when I was done, which in hindsight I shouldn't have done. Oh well. But, why the filename? If anyone knows science, or rather temperatures, "K" stands for Kelvin and Zero Kelvin is absolute zero. Nothing can get colder than 0K. So... You multiply 8 by 0? Kind of.

It would obviously result in 0. So, try other units. 0K in Fahrenheit is -459,67. The answer there is -3,677.36. Under Celsius it's -273.15, or -2,185.2. But, that still doesn't really mean anything. So, it's a number. So, I encrypted a message in the screenshot. I forget what online service I used but it turns out other web sites couldn't decrypt messages made by the others. But the message read something like "This is your rough X & Y coord." Now we go to the Dynmap like so many of you did.

Find -3,677. Nope, map doesn't go that far out. But -2,185 is inside the world border and coincides nicely with a snow biome. A lot of you did it the hard way *cough cough not like my way was any easier* and spent hours walking around to the snow biomes looking for either the traces of my fire or the landscape in the screen shot. Again, I apologize, I should have left the fire pit.

CLUE THREE
I made these clues up pretty much the day I posted each of them. Again, messages in the image names. But no encoded message because of the prior issue in CLUE TWO. Quoting this post would reveal these image names:


Code:
http://comicidiot.com/cemetech/mc/1.7/IMG_2150.jpg
http://comicidiot.com/cemetech/mc/1.7/IMG_2023.jpg


Turn those numbers negative and you've got a coordinate within the ballpark area of the prior clue. But what does it lead to? Where's the Z/Height coord? There wasn't one. I just wanted you to go to those coords wherever they may take you on the surface.

But, let's also talk about that poem. It's true Kerm and ElementaVis found the eden with Clue 2 but they weren't sure what to do. With clue three, they tried digging down below the pond. Nothing. All the way to bed rock, save for a few caves but none of them led them anywhere. But, the sands of three? Turns out, on the right side of the picture here along the pond are 3 sand blocks. Dig down at those to reach a cave entrance with signs signifying this is the right cave.

Here, there are two ways you can go. Walking one way, you don't see anything and reach a dead end but when walking back it's possible to catch a glimpse of some lava at the bottom of a ravine. Where the second photo was taken. Turns out my head was pointed at some exposed diamond ore that I didn't plant but decided to leave. Kerm & Elementa had a lot of trouble deciphering what that meant. They dug all the way to the world border from them and from the rough place where I was "floating" and my eyes looking to stage-right. Or at least the dug close to the border. You can see the entrance to a long shaft here in the bottom left where the Andesite is, instead they should have "ran away as far as they could" back into the darkness of the ravine then dug left. Anyways, they also spent a great deal of time looking at the bottom of the lava pool for secret entrances or any other clues. Note the diamond ore bubble in that screen shot Wink

All in all, it was a good hunt. I'm bummed there weren't more participants but hopefully we'll have a more active server under 1.9 to try this again. Also, regarding the hard clues. I wasn't just going to give easy clues to over 600 diamond ore. Oh, regarding those coordinates in the last two images. Yes, if you dug straight down from that point you would have breached the top and center of the bubble Smile
  
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