Fun Scavenger Hunt

Scavenger Hunt

A scavenger hunt game in the website.

Greetings, dear tourist. Can you complete this challenge to find the secret page hidden in this website?

We have left clues scattered all over the place. It will be your task to find them and solve for the URL that will lead you to the secret page.

Here are some starting clues to get you started:

Redundancy is bad. Only the first one gets to stay.
Jackdaws are the code and wizards are the original text.
The keys you need to find are not found.
Puzzles spell out a puzzle.
Clues are often hidden in plain sight.
You don't need to look through the website source code to crack it.
The first clue is "the greatest friends to hang out with." You will need to find the page this refers to. On that page, there will be a puzzle piece, and another clue that leads to the next page. There are 7 pieces in total.
The final answer is in lowercase, and different words should be separated by slashes. For example, if your answer is "Hello World," you should go to https://tofutush.github.io/The-Iron-Ragdoll/hello/world/ (or https://tofutush.neocities.org/hello/world/, if you're on Neocities.).

……

Still stuck? Here are some hints. The clue hints tell you where to find the clues, and the puzzle hints tell you how to solve the puzzle using the clues!

Clue hints

Hint 1

Places that clues will not be are pages that are auto-generated, like the characters, the comic pages, the tag pages, and the sitemap. They're typically generated from data and do not have a corresponding file in the source: for example, there is no sparky.liquid or sparky.md file on my computer — 11ty merely made a sparky/index.html out of my data. You can safely ignore them. (The next hint spoils the first clue.)

Hint 2

Find another word for "friends to hang out with." It's one word. (The next hint spoils the second clue.)

It's "company." Now, what's the greatest company?

Hint 3

Lotus is the symbol of Fanton. (The next hint spoils the third clue.)

Just look through all of Fanton's pages. There aren't that many.

Hint 4

"Archer" refers to "Arch-something." "Seven-point star" is the symbol of Westavia. (The next hint spoils the fourth clue.)

What in Westavia deals with Arch-people?

Hint 5

Find the page that I personally think is the longest, yet its code isn't very long. (The next hint spoils the fifth clue.)

It's the timeline.

Hint 6

Who is a 3rd generation immigrant? He also went back to the country his grandparents came from. (The next hint spoils the sixth clue.)

It's Pumpkin.

Hint 7

What would you call character connections? (The next hint spoils the seventh and last clue.)

"Relationships."

Hint 8

I was lying about one of the places in hint 1. One of those pages do contain a clue, which is the final clue you need.

The sitemap. It's made from sitemap.liquid.

Puzzle hints

Hint 1

I assume you have found all seven clues. If not, you should probably find them first!

The clues come in order, starting from "greatest friends to hang out with."

You should have this: mabj dp hlav tc ubiic kdipj sllr

Hint 2

You should look in the old changelog for the substitution key. There are two parts to it.

They're hidden in 404 links.

Just Ctrl+F for 404.

Hint 3

Now you should have two sentences: one about jackdaws, and one about wizards. Change these sentences into substitutable keys. You can refer to starting clue #1.

Remove all occurrences of a letter except the first.

Hint 4

Now just plug the code string in! Refer to starting clue #2, but really if your unencrypted string doesn't make sense then it means you're doing it the wrong way.

The unencrypted string is "what is john le carre first book." Google that.

Hint 5

Google finished? Plug the book title back into the substitution key and bam! Refer to starting clue #8 and enter the URL!

You've come this far. I trust you can do it now.