WoW: Midnight has a painting that costs 9,999,999 gold – but players figured out how to buy it for 999
When World of Warcraft: Midnight players spotted an NPC selling a painting for 9,999,999 gold – the absolute maximum a single character can hold – it was pretty clear Blizzard had hidden a puzzle in plain sight. The developers have a long history of sneaking secrets into the game, and a price tag that obvious was basically a written invitation.
Cravitz Lorent, the "shady art dealer" tucked inside the Murder Row dungeon, tells players the price is fixed "unless you can convince fate otherwise" when asked why the painting costs so much. That one line was all secret-finder Christa (via Wowhead) needed to start pulling on the right thread.
Also in the same dungeon is a fortune teller called Soothsayer Sargle, who hands out grim little predictions every day – things like "Yes, it was all your fault" and "Avoid all gnomes." Each fortune goes straight to your inventory and can be traded to other players.
"I figured what if I had all these fortunes in my bag already," Christa says in a video explaining her thought process.
The hunch paid off. When Christa returned to Cravitz Lorent with all the fortunes in her bag, the price dropped to 999 gold. Still not exactly cheap, especially for what may or may not be an original, but for players obsessed with housing and decorating every corner of their space, a 10,000x discount is hard to pass up.
Christa grabbed the fortunes off the auction house to speed things up, but the free route works too – visit Soothsayer Sargle daily across multiple characters to collect all 13. Other players have since confirmed that trading the fortunes to a friend will trigger the discount for them as well.
One thing does linger: how many gold-hoarding players just paid full price without bothering to investigate? According to Christa, at least one person "actually did pay the gold cap for it."
Given how many WoW players treat the economy as the entire game, it's not that shocking. But the secret itself was fairly straightforward, and whoever dropped nearly 10 million gold on that painting is probably not feeling great about it right now.
