Elaborate, long-winded World of Warcraft secret is a Waist of Time
Belt up.
The World of Warcraft is a big game packed with Easter eggs and secrets for its legion of players to fuss over - and with the recent release of expansion Battle for Azeroth, players are getting stuck in to secret hunting once again.
The latest discovery is of a legendary belt called Waist of Time - its name evidence developer Blizzard is having a bit of fun with its community right now.
Users on the WOW Secret Finding Discord followed up on the recent discovery of a super cute demonic pet goat called Baa'l (which involved finding loads of hard to spot pebbles) and found clues - a lot of clues - that eventually led to another secret item called Waist of Time.
As explained on Wowhead.com, to get the Waist of Time you need to have Baa'l captured as a battle pet. With it, you can interact with some 20 objects dotted throughout the game, each with an ominous quote.
These 20 objects are very small and placed in innocuous parts of the world, but of course World of Warcraft secret hunters found all of them.
Once you've interacted with these 20 objects, you can interact with a note penned by a skeleton called Grimmy found in the Arathi Highlands. Grimmy's note sends you after a tailor to obtain some gear pieces.
Equip all four pieces and you can read another note, which is a poem that acts as a set of clues for what to do next. It turns out you have to find more equipment pieces, equip the lot, then, players worked out, taunt Grimmy's enemies by slapping, waving, cheering and dancing with various NPCs in the game.
Once you've done all of that, you can interact with Grimmy again, who wants ingredients for his favourite recipe. You have to then go back out into the world and get 144 stacks of the Rotten Potato debuff. 144 stacks.
Once you've done all that, Grimmy gives you the Waist of Time cosmetic belt (any class can wear it), which is found in a chest on top of his house. The video below, from YouTuber Mmrrggll runs through the entire ordeal.
What's particularly impressive about the secret hunting that's gone into this is that players not only worked out what to do at each stage, but actually found the items required to trigger follow-up stages of the quest.
Datamining (the Waist of Time item had been datamined ahead of the Battle for Azeroth launch) has helped as it gives secret hunters something to shoot for, but in addition, players look for new items added to the game with patches. It helps there are loads of players all searching for this stuff all at the same time, too.
Super, owner of the Secret Finding Discord, took to r/wow to answer questions, and explained how some 30,000 players piled into the Discord as the community was trying to solve the mystery.
"The starting point for this secret (conspicuous note) was not actually added into the game until a few days ago," Super said. "We did not know this however! So the community was looking for something that didn't exist. And when that happens, people get desperate and search everything and everywhere."
That's that, you'd think, for this particular World of Warcraft secret, but players suspect there may be even more to it. There are other undiscovered items spotted through datamining for secret hunters to fuss over - but hopefully the next reward isn't just a waste of time.