Finding Wilburia
On May 6th 2020, the city of Wilburia was found by AntHand and egnaorky’s clan, the Caudices. Its discovery has remained one of SimPVP’s biggest mysteries, with much speculation over how the Caudices came upon it, and sparking the mythical “Caudices exploit”.
I am writing this page to put the mystery to rest. Do note that I, Burger_Malone, had no hand in finding Wilburia, but I independently discovered how it was found after a month or so of sporadic research into my own discoveries.
Initial discovery
On December 19th 2020, I stumbled across a vast, very strange chain of dozens of portals. They spanned many millions of blocks, and led only to tiny underground bunkers with signs labelling player-owner animals.
At the time, I had no idea of the significance of the pets - it was just an absurd discovery. The coordinates of each portal did not seem significant at the time, either.
I revealed my findings to people whose expertise I trusted, including AntHand. The next day, while I had logged off for the night, the portals and the contents of the rooms were all destroyed.
It took a little over a month to fully understand what I had discovered. As it turned out, I had found the process behind Wilburia's discovery.
The exploit
Wilburia was found by exploiting a glitch in tamed animal AI - pets would always face their owner, regardless of distance. By following the pet’s faced direction, you would eventually arrive at the owner’s location.
If you have two pets, you can pretty precisely triangulate and narrow down the location, as illustrated below:
Specifically, the Caudices used dogs belonging to ostrich1414. These dogs were acquired from AntHand, egnaorky, and ostrich1414’s old base, Yittrium.
To put my illustrated example in context, I plotted Yittrium, Wilburia, and the portals where ostrich1414’s dogs were stored on a graph:
As you can see, Wilburia lies directly in between, on a diagonal axis, the location of two dogs belonging to ostrich1414 (or more likely, the same dog teleported via a portal). It was a simple task of flying from one portal to the other, and stumbling across Wilburia at some point in the middle.
Further, all portals containing ostrich1414’s dogs were connected to a small hub named “Wilbur Hub”:
The exploit was seemingly fixed just 18 days after Wilburia was found: https://github.com/C4K3/Portals/commit/4d4a94b48c6bc1df3e56e6eedb7569eeea3608d2. AntHand assured the admins that this patched his basefinding method.
Other bases “found” by Caudices
As mentioned earlier, this network of portals contained pets belonging to more players than just ostrich1414, meaning they were tracking numerous other bases.
MBI Crater
Below is a screenshot of a former MBI base, griefed last year by the Caudices. It was also found under mysterious circumstances; the owners blame the Caudices exploit.
Among its residents included TonTheKidRS, whose pet was also being tracked within the same portal network:
Again, I’ve plotted on a graph the coordinates of the MBI base, and nearby portal rooms where pets were being stored.
Unknown
I had discovered dozens of portals. I have been able to link most of them to either Wilburia or the above MBI base. However, I do not recognise the coordinates of other portals, such as the two, both at the same Z-coordinate, shown below.
Considering the other discoveries, it seems likely that a base discovered by the Caudices lies in between these two portals. If you had a base a few hundred thousand on the Z-axis which was discovered by the Caudices, let me know and I’ll update this section.
Three Words
It is all but confirmed that the recent Three Words find was done using the same exploit. The base was otherwise impossible to find, and the pet basefinding exploit was patched once again just three days after: https://github.com/C4K3/Misc/commit/4437cf25736a76e96043b4659cfbe022002fd88d.
However, I was unable to find any pets belonging to either Three Words resident.
Was I being tracked?
Rest assured, the exploit has since been patched, and it is unlikely that AntHand will be allowed to circumvent the patch a second time. However, if you’re curious, below is a list of everyone the Caudices had been tracking within this network:
- ostrich1414
- MoWobbler
- TonTheKidRS
- Bren4020
- an unknown resident of Triterrus
Note that I may not have discovered all portals related to this exploit, so it is possible others were being tracked. As mentioned, the portal chain was completely destroyed the day after I revealed my findings to AntHand, so I am unable to investigate further.
The legality of the method is still being debated. If you would like to find bases cleanly and legally, read my guide on Holistic Basehunting.
Update: Others being tracked
On March 23rd 2020, AntHand asked everyone in the Scalopine Discord server to provide "at least 2 wolves", ostensibly to "construct several wolf bombs" at the base. In hindsight, it is obvious that he intended to use the wolves to track his basemates to their other existing or future bases.
If you based at Scalopine and provided AntHand with wolves, your base is very likely compromised. This might include:
- cheesy_chips22
- iPyxis
- SassSFR
- OskarSFR
- Unkn0wnSFR
- saluutSFR
- MoWobbler
In the past, AntHand has made similar attempts to acquire tamed animals or turtles from his teammates. In general, if you have based or teamed with AntHand and have tamed pets, it is possible your base was tracked. However, due to recent changes to the rules, AntHand cannot legally use information obtained from this exploit to attack more bases.