The Map to Door Island

This is one of the articles that was submitted to the Secrets of Tibia 3 contest and won the 1st place. It was written by Acolyte Tempest

The Map to Door Island

In the Explorer Diary contest, I submitted a teaser about the 999 island, now here’s the full article!

The 999 door is second only to the Serpentine Tower in terms of Tibia’s legendary mysteries. 

Yet this was different from every other Tibia mystery, because there was a guarantee that eventually someone would be able to get behind that door.

I remember the hype as players began to get close to level 999. What crazy awesome things could be behind that door?

And then…. disappointment as the most anticipated mystery (except for the Serpentine Tower) in all of Tibia seemingly just led to… nothing.

It was very curious, as there was even an official Tibia contest asking people what they thought would be behind the door. CIP seriously hyped it up.

Does it make sense for it to all lead to nothing? I certainly don’t think so. Let’s see if we can dig a little deeper.

The Island itself has almost zero ingame lore. Even its NPCs have no identified names. They are simply referred to more directly as ‘Relaxed Bartender’ or ‘Player Level 1001’.

They also respond strangely, when you say ‘hi’ they briefly answer, but terminate the conversation

And if you wait around, they say local chat text

We learn something very important from them: There IS a reward and they have done something to earn it.

And since CIP made the very unusual and deliberate choice to name them ‘Player Level XXX’, this seems to indicate that we, as players, would be eligible for this reward too.

The Red-haired Demon hunter NPC says:

23:58:11 Player Level 999: I reached level 999 and all I got was ... Wait, what anyway?

This indicates that the fulfillment criteria IS in fact just reaching level 999. However she hasn’t been shown the rewards yet, because she is not at the front of the line.

The atmosphere on the island is tense, every single one of them expresses some degree of frustration

The other level 999 NPC is unable to make his decision on what reward to take, and is thus holding up the line. He says:

00:06:03 Player Level 999: Should I take this one or that one? I really don't know …

00:06:33 Player Level 999: Quiet there in the back! I feel pressurised!

So the question doesn’t seem to be ‘Is there a reward?’ but instead is ‘How do we calm everyone down, so they can make their choices?’

Yet no one seems to have been able to figure this out. The player Meadek has an excellent post about this problem here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/TibiaMMO/comments/qd49tb/999_door_the_possible_solution/

Of particular note, he points out the item ‘Banana Chocolate Shake’. When using this item, you get this status message:

00:11:00 You don't really know what this did to you, but suddenly you feel very happy.

It certainly seems logical that convincing people on the island to drink one of these would help solve their problems, yet it’s been a roadblock for years.

However a recent clue popped up in an interview with Lionet:

Him adding ‘He made a map, however’ is about as close of confirmation that CIP has ever given that there is more to this island. It would be a completely unnecessary and cruel phrase otherwise.

But it doesn’t tell us much about a map. Since we already know where the island is, this map isn’t likely to simply be about locations. Instead, it’s probably about how to find out how to make these NPCs happy.

So the first question is: Where is this map?

Well, I have a main theory.

This clue is referencing the classic novel ‘Treasure Island’, a story about questing for hidden pirate treasure on an island. There are MANY references to this book in Tibia, so these were a good place to start.

As pirates are the main feature, I went to Nargor. I found several interesting things there, however a book caught my eye:

https://tibia.fandom.com/wiki/The_Legend_of_the_Swimming_Isle_(Book)

The book is just a title, no text. But I realized on the 999 Island, the main unusual thing you could do is swim. It then hit me that we don’t actually have a real name for the 999 Island. It’s called Schrodinger's Island on Tibiawiki, but that’s not its official name. In-fact, if you look up the NPCs in-game, their location says ‘Secret Place’. It’s deliberately not named.

This ended up being a clue, but not in the way that I thought.

While looking at old articles on Tibia.com, I noticed something on the side of my screen:

It’s a screenshot of a character…. Swimming. Huh, let’s click it.

Oh, it’s actually 4 characters having a party on the beach and swimming. Immediately I noticed some strange things. Several items here can be purchased from the ‘Relaxed Bartender’ NPC. For example, the Pineapple can ONLY be purchased by ‘Relaxed Bartender’ and ‘Ariella’, a pirate npc. While that could be a coincidence, let’s look deeper at this:

1. The name of this screenshot is ‘Tibia_screenshot_27’. The number 27 is 9+9+9. There are 39 screenshots, meaning that the odds of this being the ‘9+9+9’ by coincidence is 2.56%. 
2. When visiting Tibia.com, the same screenshot is shown for several days to all players, and then rotates. Can you guess what screenshot was shown September 9th at 9am (Which is 9/9/9am)? That’s right, it was this one. Another 1/39 chance. Hmmmm.
3. The screenshot is the ONLY screenshot out of all other https://www.tibia.com/abouttibia/?subtopic=screenshots ones that shows the character names.  Many players noticed that the main featured character ‘Arwifor’ unscrambles to ‘Warifor’ which is phonetically ‘Variphor’.
4. But in the full screenshot, we see another character named ‘Ordis Lahor’. By unscrambling it with the same rules, we get ‘Doorr Islah’ or ‘Door Island’ which is exactly what the 999 Island is. I believe this is done to beat auto-unscramblers, and they gave us the much more obvious ‘Variphor’ unscramble to demonstrate the rules.

However, what’s even more fascinating is that by using the wayback internet archive, we can see more of this screenshot:

There are SO many more details here.

First, the general vibe is the OPPOSITE of the 999 island. These guys are happy to be partying with their friends, as we can see in chat.

We see a ton of numbers, and items listed in the screenshot. Just for fun, let's add them up:

We get 681 from the items, and 314 from the strangely odd player levels. That equals EXACTLY 999.

There’s no way that’s an accident. The odds against that would be insane.

Because of all of these ‘coincidences’ put together, I suspect this screenshot is the ‘map’ to the 999 Island.

So what exactly is this map telling us? That’s certainly harder to determine. The items in the actual screenshot seem to give a path to follow.

Some, and their quantity, are easily determinable. Others are ambiguous:

If I had to guess, I would suspect that it begins with the Model Ship. When the first player reached 999, the Model Ship only came from one source in all of Tibia: The end of the Meriana section of the Shattered Isle quest:

https://tibia.fandom.com/wiki/The_Shattered_Isles_Quest#Ray's_Mission_4:_Proof_of_Death

This would suggest that Meriana is the first step on the map. So what’s the second step?

The Rum Flask seems to be next. Is there a reference to rum on Meriana?

Why yes, there is. 

And right next to the rum flask is a Pineapple. Ariella (and the Relaxed Bartender) are the ONLY NPCs that sell Pineapples. It’s a pretty clear reference to her.

In her bar, we see Starfish and Shells, which are exactly the same few decorations the 999 island has.

In the rear of her bar, we find 4 books. And of course, the very first one is this:

I think we’re on the right track.

Here are the other 3 books:

And I had a feeling I knew this answer before I even checked, but if you add up all the characters in all 4 books, you get 108 characters. Which is an average of 27 characters per book. 27, which is 9+9+9…

 But here’s where the trail runs cold. I believe we need SOMETHING on Meriana to progress to the next stage. Perhaps we need Ariella to give us something, perhaps there’s something else on the island itself.

The Green Perch is potentially the next clue

Maybe there’s something on Meriana that would relate to that? There’s certainly something unique with a green fish body… Well, half a green fish body:

I’m fairly confident that Meriana has a very important role to play, and needs some serious study.

Before I close, one last bonus element of evidence for this. when the new 20 Years a Cook quest came out, Knightmare had this to say:

We get sent to Meriana during that quest, which indicates that it might be more important than it seems 

While we haven’t quite cracked this yet, I’m confident that we can help this indecisive and frustrated player calm down. Because once he chooses his reward, then it will be our turn ?

Sources:

https://tibia.fandom.com/wiki/20_Years_a_Cook_Quest/Spoiler

https://www.reddit.com/r/TibiaMMO/comments/qd49tb/999_door_the_possible_solution/

https://tibiasecrets.com/article.php?id=137