World of Warcraft players go back to work on a year-old mystery after one of them accidentally unlocks the 10th orb in a puzzle hidden in the new Midnight expansion

The last time I tried to solve a secret puzzle in World of Warcraft, it took me several hours and a few guide videos to figure it out. Things have escalated quite a bit since then because apparently Blizzard is making puzzles that span multiple expansions now.

About a year ago, players figured out how to obtain a motorcycle mount hidden underneath an old raid dungeon. Blizzard practically dangled the Felcycle in front of WoW's legion of secret finders by parking it in the middle of a clock with 12 pedestals. By collecting the right items and using them in the right spots around Azeroth, they found out how to fill those pedestals with glowing orbs. On the 9th orb, they got the mount.

I'm oversimplifying something that took an entire Discord nearly a month to solve. You can read about how each step was figured out in a guide on Wowhead. Blizzard even published a lengthy post-mortem on designing the treasure hunt, which is where you'll find a section at the end titled "What comes next?"

"Perhaps more will come in a future update," the post teased. Secret finders were already skeptical about the fact that it only took finding 9 out of 12 orbs to solve, so the post basically confirmed that there was still work left to be done in the future.

That future is now in the newly released Midnight expansion, where players just figured out how to light up the 10th orb, confirming that there is indeed more left to this puzzle. Where it leads is completely unknown, but we're talking about an obscure puzzle made for the true secret sickos—they'll solve it just for the love of the game.

Players found the solution while trying to solve an entirely separate puzzle that has to do with joining a secret cabal known as the Mind-Seekers. A specific fish in the Waking Shores drops an item called the Bubblefilled Flounder, and it can only be looted after you've died and entered spirit form. Feeding it to Hek the Hungry Hornswog nearby will cause him to drop a Duck Egg. That egg can be placed in a nest to get another item, and when you bring it to an invisible NPC, they hand over the Oddsight Focus. It wasn't until someone noticed that obtaining the item lit up the 10th orb back at the Felcycle clock that everyone realized they were working on the wrong puzzle.

Currently, the secret finders are stumped on what to do next. All they know is that using the Oddsight Focus gives players the "Gift of the Oddsight" buff for three hours and displays two numbers. Those numbers change every week, which could be Blizzard's way of communicating that you only need two to solve it. Even though this particular puzzle required waiting for the next expansion, it seems rare for it to time-gate things like this. It's more likely that it wants to prevent people from brute-forcing it by making the solution unique per week.

The community in the Secret Finding Discord are doing their best to decipher the numbers and maybe even find a clue about what this is all for. They've already got the mount. What will be the reward for the second part? The thrill of finding all the breadcrumbs Blizzard left behind? Surely there's something cool hidden behind this weird clock and you know they're not going to stop searching until they get their hands on it.