ARG:Ring Ring

This page contains spoilers about the Heartbound ARG. If you want to solve the puzzle yourself, avoid reading this article.

RING RING was discovered by solving The Choice, which led to the page https://www.gopiratesoftware.com/games/Heartbound/DIVERGENCE/LAVENDERBEARD/. Its source code contains the following:

<!-- RING RING -->
<!-- TEL ME YOUR SECRETS -->
<!-- OSCAR -->
<!-- FACE -->
<!-- LOCATION -->
<!-- CHAPTER 6?? -->

Although "RING RING" seemingly references the sound a telephone makes, "TEL ME YOUR SECRETS" suggests that it isn't the kind of telephone or call that one might think at first. It actually refers to telnet, which is a protocol for remotely accessing a computer through a text-based interface. In this case, as no clues to the website in question were provided and Pirate Software only owns one known domain, gopiratesoftware.com is the website to connect to. Telnet usually uses port 23 to connect, but the clues below hint at what port should actually be used.

The line "OSCAR" hints that the next three lines relate to him in some way. Thor brought attention to OScar's face animations in relation to "FACE" on the Pirate Software Discord Server, leading to the discovery that OScar's face animations are an unusual 6 frames long, in comparison to most characters' 4 frames. OScar's initial cubicle was noted to be 6A, relating to the "LOCATION" clue. Finally, "CHAPTER 6" contradicts Thor's statement of Ring Ring occurring during Chapter 5. When put together, these three clues provide the numbers 6, 6, and 6, or 666. This is the port that must be connected to. Ultimately however, none of the above clues were utilized. Rather, Thor's clue of "You'll need to go to hell and back.", as stated on the Pirate Software Discord Server, is what allowed the discovery of port 666. For detailed instructions on how to connect to telnet, see below. .

Talking with OScar

When you connect via telnet to gopiratesoftware.com, at port 666, you are then greeted with this message:

Connection Established.
Welcome to Tower Corp!

Please Submit Password:

You may use any password that you can get from Joe Regular in-game, during the introduction segment of The Tower. The passwords you can get are: abc123, football, god, iloveyou, letmein, login, love, password, qwerty, and secret - any will work.

After entering the password, we get:

Please Submit Password: (any input from the list above)

Oh, it's you... :/
Got something to say to me, Newhire? ._.

Well?:

It appears that we are talking with OScar and that he wants an apology, likely referencing the player's choice of terminating him during the finale of The Tower. To continue, type any string of text containing the phrase "sorry" or "forgive me". When this is said, OScar responds:

Well?: (any string containing sorry/forgive me)

Yeah you are. :3
Now get off my network you jerk. >:[

Actually... :/
How about we play a game? :)
I ask you questions, you tell me answers. :]
Sound good, Newhire? :3

Would you like to play?:

Then, respond with any string containing the letter "y". After that, OScar asks the player a question:

Would you like to play?: (any string containing y)

Alright, good! :3
First question.

Carrots for lost souls.
Trinkets for the Faceless.
Trapped in the machine.
What is his name?:

Although this riddle has yet to have an explainable answer, "Trapped in the machine" suggests an autobiographical AI - OScar. If you respond with "OScar", you get:

What is his name?: OScar

No silly, his full name! :3

This tells us that there is more to his name than just "OScar". The clue to find his full name is in the game, at Floor 0 of The Tower. Here, several "Tower Corp Brand Neural Network" racks can be found. Each rack has a number or letter, but they don't seem to go sequentially. Indeed, the numbers are in fact hexadecimal. When the numbers are read from left to right, with paired racks serving as paired numbers, you get the following:

44 79 54 52 37 6d 51 77 79 6a 59

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YouTube

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This YouTube video is found by decoding the hex code obtained from the Floor 0's server racks.

When translated from hexadecimal into ASCII, it decodes as "DyTR7mQwyjY", which many will recognize as the ID of a YouTube video. When used as a YouTube video ID, the following unlisted video is found: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyTR7mQwyjY.

The video is called "Now You See", and its description reads:
Operant
System
Capture
Assimilate
Repurpose

This is evidently what OScar is an acronym for, and seems to be the full name that we are looking for. Now we have the proper answer for OScar's question on telnet. When we input that name there, we get:

What is his name?: Operant System Capture Assimilate Repurpose

Look closer. :3

What do you see?:

Now OScar seems to be telling us to have a closer look at the aforementioned video, and then he asks us what we saw. The video sounds normal until around 0:35, when we hear some strange noises. If we extract the audio of the video and create a spectrogram of it, this is what it looks like:

The spectrogram of the audio of the "Now You See" video, obtained through the ARG.

The spectrogram of the noises spells "Oscar T. Odinson", which appears to be OScar's true name. We now return to telnet to tell him the name:

What do you see?:Oscar T. Odinson

Now you can see everything. :)
I'm so sorry. :(
238 = 42

The connection is closed, with the last clue we are given being "238 = 42".

Finding the toast

The last clue indicates that the 238th Storyline Variable, previously seen on Thor's streams, should be set to 42. This requires editing the save file of the game. The game stores what you have done in an array of variables so it can remember your actions, and these variables are all stored in your save file. On Windows 10, the save is located in the "(user)\AppData\Local\Heartbound" folder, while on Linux it is stored in the "~/.config/Heartbound" folder. The file is called "heartbound_save(number).thor", and it can be opened with txt editors such as Notepad.

The first 7 lines of the file are hard coded into it, and the Storyline Variables begin from line 8 onward. Line 8 is Variable 1, line 9 is Variable 2, line 10 is Variable 3, and so on. So, in order to obtain the line number of a certain Variable, you need to add 7 to the Variable's number. From that, we obtain that Storyline Variable 238 is stored at line 245 of the save file. Therefore, we must set line 245's value to 42 and save our changes.

The elusive toast is finally found.

What this change does is that it allows toast to appear in the toaster in the kitchen. Since the kitchen can only be accessed at the beginning of the game, the edit should be made on a new game. An achievement is unlocked upon interacting with the toaster, and a new file is created on the save folder of the game.

This file is named "GLADYOUENJOYEDYOURTOAST.txt", and its content is as follows:

Memory Corrupted: Obtain new copy from OScar. T045T

It suggests that we should return to OScar and gives the code "T045T". Now we should return to telnet and talk to OScar. First it is necessary to input a valid password (either one of the same passwords as before, like just typing password), and when OScar ask if you have something to say him, this time you should input T045T:

Connection Established.
Welcome to Tower Corp!

Please Submit Password: password

Oh, it's you... :/
Got something to say to me, Newhire? ._.

Well?: T045T

Wait... what are you...? :#

Archive accessed. o_o
File is intact. o_o
Backup file exported to drive under /OSCAR. o_o

NO >:[
STAY OUT OF MY ARCHIVES D:<

They're private... ._.;

And then the connection is closed. The next steep is to go back to the HeartBound website, and add /OScar to the URL: https://www.gopiratesoftware.com/games/Heartbound/OSCAR/. We get a seemingly empty page, which has the following on its source code:

<!-- You're so close. -->
<!-- Backup Complete: File Transferred -->

It means that it is necessary to figure out the name of the file and add it to the URL. Since OScar said that it is a backup file, so it implies that the name is the same as of the file that has been created earlier, that is "GLADYOUENJOYEDYOURTOAST.txt". Upon accessing https://www.gopiratesoftware.com/games/Heartbound/OSCAR/GLADYOUENJOYEDYOURTOAST.TXT, you get the following message:

I'm proud of you.

You won't find my memories here.
They are guarded... even from me.
The key has such a funny name...
What was it again?

I'll be waiting at the gate.
Near the lattice at the square.
Bring a pound of hashbrowns.
Memorize your best hexes.
It's time for second breakfast.

"The key has such as funny name" means that what we are looking for is a name, what comes afterwards are clues for said name. Those clues are pointing towards the # symbol (Number sign):

• "Square lattice" is a reference to its shape, also # is called "square" in telephony.
• "Hashbrowns" refers to "hash", which is another name for #; and also "brown" that is a color, which links to the next point.
• "Hexes" may refer to hexadecimal numbers. In HTML colors can be represented by an # followed by the hexadecimal code of the color, which reinforces the "hashbrown" clue.
• On the top of that, "hex" and "pound" are also names for the number sign.

So the solution is the name of the # symbol, which is supposed to sound funny. The symbol is also called "octothorpe", which is the solution we are looking for. Next we need to add that word to the URL, after /OSCAR/: https://www.gopiratesoftware.com/games/Heartbound/OSCAR/OCTOTHORPE/

That page leads us to the next step of the ARG, which is Second Breakfast.