Destiny 2's Rasputin Chamber Puzzle alternate reality game (ARG) was discovered back in 2018, and one part of it stumped players so much they had to brute force the solution, solving the puzzle in just a few days but without fully understanding all the pieces. That is, until last week.
The puzzle was introduced in Destiny 2's Warmind expansion and required players to find a series of ciphers that could be used to decode a message. There were six ciphers in all, but the third one that related to a series of diamond clues in the bunker was never quite figured out. Instead, players simply performed cipher analysis to reverse-engineer the phrase after finding the rest of the clues. They were then able to decode the special message resulting in a set of coordinates leading players to a real-world cache hidden out in the woods containing a spear and Warmind coins.
As IGN spotted last Friday, players Javano and Bachmanetti finally pieced together the “MECHANIZED” cipher in the correct way. Players have speculated for a long time that the diamond clues for the cipher might be connected to a weapon, and Javano already had a hunch that weapon had to be Sleeper Simulant, the popular exotic fusion rifle added in Warmind. It didn’t take Javano and Bachmanetti long to realize that the Simulant reticle is a perfect match for the diamond shape.
“Wait, I have an idea,” wrote Bachmanetti over chat. “Someone has to have tried it.” They loaded into the game and two minutes later reported back. “Solved it,” they wrote. “I am not fucking kidding either.”
Sleeper Simulant’s reticle, in addition to being a diamond shape, has a series of dashes on the left and right. When the player looks down its sights at the Clovis Bay warning sign, those dashes end up underlining a series of letters that go on to form the cipher phrase “MECHANIZED.”
While the treasure it ultimately led to is long gone, getting to correctly solve a piece of one of Destiny 2's most complicated puzzles years after the fact has to feel like its own special sort of reward.