Hello, TheSun. As someone who has 100% completed Sunless Sea, I'm a big fan. I've made a small fortune smuggl- I mean legally selling Sunlight on the underground market in a perfectly legitimate business venture.

I am very intrigued by this discussion, and I don't want to discourage it at all. I really wish this puzzle was worthy of its own discussion, but I just don't think it is. It really only hinges on one thing, and you'll either recognize it or you won't. Same with the "reward". You'll either be familiar with it and (hopefully) appreciate it, or have no idea what it means. This is very much a "cat out of the bag" situation. Once the information is out there, the mystery falls apart, which is why I'm being so cryptic about it.

Now, if you want to have a real discussion about this dungeon, which I completely encourage, may I suggest a player's guide, lists of all the Secrets and Power Gems, detailed explanations about specific puzzles, or opinions about certain aspects of the dungeon, such as what might be new and interesting or boring and overdone.

I also just released a Rebalance Update, so there's a whole layer of discussion to be had there. Thank you all for playing and joining the conversation, and feel free to discuss your Yirk Castle thoughts and theories.

Hello! I hope that someday the mystery will be unveiled :D

I decoded Yirk Castle.

While I was exploring I noticed 2 different floor textures.

Exploring further I started to track the less frequent tile (so not the one you started on) but you could track either one as long as you are consistent.

I found 3 rooms and 2-3 large open areas. I continued to track the floor tiles

Those 3 rooms caught my eye. Something about there being 3 of them, with their locations, and their floor patterns.

First big spoiler below. The previous line was the big hint.

Is that a QR Code?

You should be able to guess which floor tile is which by the layout of the 3 rooms.

You should be able to know whether water counts based on the small QR square containing water.

The plants are walls to you so they count the same as the other walls.

Final spoiler below. The QR code decoded is:

Youtube Video: dQw4w9WgXcQ

That is the truth, but I wonder how many people will believe me.

impressive.

Ok, your methods are correct, but the link is incorrect. I may have to go over the exact details again, but the original code went where I intended. It is a YouTube video, but I have no idea what that link and channel are about. There is room for error both from my source to the dungeon, and from the dungeon to your answer. The nature of the code does have error correction, but only so much.

Ok, nevermind. MrEmilio, your URL formatting is incorrect. That channel seems like it's specifically designed to intercept people who made the exact mistake you did.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=

How to put spoiler here?

Hi, could you give me a hint about where the altar of creating the essence of balance is located. I don't need a solution, just a location, otherwise I've already searched through everything and haven't found it. Logically, I thought it was in the Werewood forest, because the location of each altar correlates with the runes of spells, but I searched everything there and found nothing.

Secrets 63/64, treasures 14/15. I suspect the recent secret is connected with the opening of the altar of balance, but I do not understand where. I really liked the mod.

Or is it located in Yirk Castle and I need to find a way to get there? But then I don't have a single clue how to do it.

Balance = Center (not in Yirk Castle) Accessing the balance altar bears some resemblance to accessing the balance altar of the original Gimrock 2. Finding the balance forge or Yirk Castle does not count as a secret, so your missing secret is somewhere else.

How to transform the YIRK map into a QR? My snartphone does not detect the map as a QR.

On steam spoiler tags are formatted as <spoiler></spoiler> but using "[" instead of "<". See formatting help.

How did I transform the map?
I first identified which tiles in the map should be a black dot and which should be a white dot. Then I used Paint to create the image (1 pixel per tile)
There are two different floor tiles. One should be black and the other should be white in the final image. Walls, including those plants, should be black pixels in the final image. Water is one of the colors, which one?
Finally I had to try 2 different online decoders since the first one I tried failed.

Great job! Flayershutz