Golden Path Challenge

The Golden Path Challenge is an and competition that serves as part of the build up to the release of Menaphos, released on 25 April 2017 alongside the Menaphos trailer and website.

Completing the entirety of the challenge results in a server-wide announcement:

Starting the challenge
On 18 May 2017, a newspost was published regarding the challenge and a hint:

The first letters of all of the words in this hint results in the word 'cinematic', referring to the Menaphos cinematic trailer released a month before. 14 seconds into the video, corrupted forms of Het, Scabaras, Apmeken and Crondis are shown, along with text in the Menaphite language. The translated text reads "bit.ly/gotogoldenpath", which is a shortened link leading to a hidden page on the RuneScape website.

The website contains more text written in the Menaphite language, with versions in English, German, French and Brazilian Portuguese. When translated to English, the text reads:

Viewing the source code for the page reveals text which is a clue for the sundial that was located north of Menaphos. Since the release of Menaphos on 5 June 2017, the sundial is located in the grand library in the Imperial district of Menaphos.

Interacting with the sundial allows players to rotate the gnomon to point to letters in Menaphite script. Throughout the challenge, the sundial is used to enter specific words that will allow entry into the associated competition.

Admiral Wadud
The link to an Instagram page was also found in the source code of the same page. The account's posts were made over the week of 24 April 2017. Each post contains a screenshot of a character or location, and a small text riddle.

The first letters of each of these characters and locations spells W-A-D-U-D, revealing the name to be Admiral Wadud. To complete this part of the challenge, enter into the sundial.

Hero Batal
On 9 May 2017, the same date indicated by the game message from the last step, the first Road to Menaphos livestream took place. Throughout the livestream, various plush toys are visible on the table in front of the Jagex Moderators, including a cat. In the second half of the stream, the cat gains a sticker of a YouTube logo on its chest.

Three days later, the third episode in the official Road to Menaphos series on RuneScape's YouTube channel was uploaded. At around 2:25 in that video, a cat meowing can be heard. The image on the video during that time was of a corrupted thrall, which can also be seen as a promotional image on the microsite for Menaphos. At the bottom of the image were red and yellow distorted characters and symbols.

If the image was opened with a text editor, it displays ASCII art resembling the Reddit logo and several words of text, including 'HERO_BATAL'. A Reddit user with the same name was found who has a number of comments on various threads. These comments include three instances of the message "I am the code". To complete this part of the challenge, enter into the sundial.

Vizier Ehsan
After taking the first letter of each word before the punctuation marks in the last message (friend, outcast, risk-taker, underdog, memorandum, shadow), it spells out F-O-R-U-M-S, which indicated that the next clue would be posted on the RuneScape Forums.

On 15 May 2017, a thread for that week's update was posted on the forums. In the same thread, a post by a Jagex Moderator called Vizier E was posted. The message posted was in Arabic, اتبع لي إذا كنت تستطيع, which translates to "Follow me if you can." The account also posted in the forums for other languages. The next day, the same forum user posted again in another thread with the following message:

This text is a using the keyword "TUMEKEN". When decrypted, it says:

During the Road to Menaphos stream on the same day, various concept art was shown. In one image, there are faint Menaphite script characters at the top and bottom which translate to "Keep looking". In the same image, the characters ("UM") can be seen on all four corners. This can be read as "Keep looking [in the] forums".

It was discovered that the first post in the forum thread that the Vizier E account posted in, by Mod Kalaya, had been edited by the vizier. When comparing the forum post to the near identical news post, it is seen that the bottom of the post is different.

During the week, a chatbot was found that uses the name of 'Grand Vizier E'. The bot contains responses that are triggered by certain words and phrases. Upon sending messages with certain keywords, clues are given:

The clues result in the letters H, S, A, and N (appearing twice in the word 'nothing' and once in the word 'everything). To complete this part of the challenge, enter into the sundial.

Commander Akhomet
On 21 May 2017, a promotional video for Menaphos was released by Jagex. During the video, a lot of concept art can be seen for around half a second each. There are Menaphite characters on the art that read "The Golden City of Menaphos", apart from one that read "The Golden Path of Menaphos", which displays the four faction leaders. In the art, the second person's sword has characters on it that read "CMNDR_A", and directly underneath it on her leg is the Twitter logo.

Throughout the week of 22 May 2017, a Twitter account named 'Commander__A' posted concept art for Menaphos with various hints. The capitalised letters in the second tweet from the account spell out "IMAFAKE".

On 25 May 2017, a second Twitter account named 'CMNDR_A' posted the first concept art that 'Commander__A' posted. However, this version had Menaphite characters hidden on the left side of the artwork that read "I am the real deal".

On 26 May 2017, the second account posted two additional altered artworks with the first having the Eye of Horus over a walkway, the symbol for Menaphos inside a canal and a black creature inside the pyramid in the upper levels concept art. The following clue was the original Menaphos concept art with a hidden message in the road that read "Foll me" and the Menaphite character "J" with Spades added next to the adventurer pointing towards Jack of Spades.

Later on 26 May, the Jack of Spades microsite for Menaphos was released and the header video file was visibly corrupted. If the WEBM was opened with a hex editor (or notepad), it displays ASCII art resembling snake charming with the message: "Your hunger for the Golden Path, its hunger fails to abate. May 30th is your next port of call, don't be late."

Prizes

 * Magic carpet pet
 * The golden version of the pet is rewarded to players that entered the first two names into the sundial before 21 May 2017.
 * Three people will be chosen at random to win an all-expenses paid trips to RuneFest 2017 or lifetime standard membership subscriptions for them and a friend.
 * Two will be chosen from a draw of players who have completed the challenge before 6 June 2017
 * One will be chosen from a draw of players who have completed the challenge before 12 June.

Trivia

 * The letters W-A-D-U-D were guessed by a player on 26 April 2017 after they tried different combinations of Egyptian and Arabic names using only the first three letters that were confirmed at the time.
 * The letters E-H-S-A-N were guessed by a player on 15 May 2017 after trying different Arabic names that began with the letter 'E'.