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Tibia's most mysterious boss of all times - Samael
Article by Mogh
Thirsty for mysteries? If so, it is good that you came here. Today, we have a secret that has been waiting to be revealed for over 10 years. The joint teams of Tibiasecrets and Tibiabosses present you a new, unknown boss.
Observant players have surely noticed that with the introduction of Party Finder to the game client a mysterious name of the Boss has appeared. We are talking about Samael of course.
The name itself at first glance cannot tell us much. Using generally available knowledge we know that the name comes from the Hebrew language and means Angel of Death. Different incarnations of Samael occur in culture and religion. With only this information it is difficult to locate the boss in the game. That's why we decided to do extensive research on this boss. I think that the results of our research will surprise even the pickiest players. Ready? Then fasten your seatbelts and here we go.
4 months ago, our friend Makadamia sent us some information about the bosses in the party finder. After analysing the names of the bosses, we immediately started looking for possible clues about Samael.
A quick check of the boss kills statistics on guildstats.eu proved that he hasn’t been killed in at least the last 6 years. Things were getting more and more mysterious, so we went further with our investigation.
Thanks to Tibia Fandom, we were able to determine that the dat extension files in the game client contain very interesting information. We found out that this specific file uses the Protobuf data serialization method which was crucial. We won't go into technical details, but by decoding the staticdata.dat file we got quite a list of monsters and bosses along with their ID numbers (don't punish us for being curious Cipsoft, it's just a text file). We quickly noticed that the vast majority of monsters in the list appear in the order they were added to the game. Bingo. We found out when Samael was added to the game!
Samael was added over the course of updates 8.4 and 8.5, so we started our search in Yalahar and the missions available in both updates. Our search for the boss location found its end at a certain frog...
Eclesius is a bit of a weird sorcerer, so we weren't surprised that the Demon in his basement is our mysterious Boss. What's interesting we have the possibility to make tasks for Eclesius. One of the tasks is to secure the cell before releasing the demon and calming him down. As it turns out during the task we can hear Samael's screams and lamentations of terrified NPC Prisoner from Thais prison.
Now you know that NPC Prisoner is not crazy but really has something to worry about. Another puzzle solved.
Notice that Samael's shouts appear in this elongated cell and in different places. This indicates that the Boss is probably located a floor below in some small room. Maybe it's the Boss Room? Okay, but how to get to Samael? Well, here comes the problem. We have tried a number of different actions. None of them has worked so far. We're not going to list them all here, but the ingredient mixing machine looks interesting...
...and using a broom in the basement.
Of course, we also had many conversations with NPCs...
Our investigation eventually came to a standstill. At this point we asked ourselves the question:
"Is it even possible to get to Samael, and is it possible to fight him? Or is he merely 'decoration'?"
I think that the evidence which we are about to present will convince all unbelievers as to the "existence" of Samael and the possibility of fighting him.
The first piece of evidence is the Party Finder. Would creators of the game put there a Boss which can't be found in the game? It's doubtful.
The second clue is a bonfire amulet which so far no one has gotten. Take a look at the screenshot below.
The above image is from the teaser for update 8.5. Would the developers be presenting a "new in-game item" that you can't get?
Another clue may be an article that appeared on the official Tibia website on Nov 01, 2008, a few days before the first announcement of Yalahar (8.4). In the article we read:
„Finally, I asked the question that has been nagging at me for a long time: Are there any undiscovered or unsolved quests? Chayenne told me that they usually try not to leave players in the dark for too long and that you get the majority of quests from NPCs who also provide you with some useful hints. Nevertheless, there are some quests which are not explicitly mentioned somewhere and which do not show up in the questlog even if you have already found a hint. And guess what? The content team really enjoys implementing such quests and watching us looking for hints. Such quests often involve many riddles, like the Paradox Tower quest. Unfortunately, they often get spoiled quickly and you can find all the necessary information in the net. Therefore, the quest reward is often not as high as in other quests.
Who knows, maybe our dear quest designers will implement new hidden quests in the future or continue open end quests. I guess I have to start roaming around again, looking for quests, exploring the vast lands of Tibia... being an adventurer is more than just a life style, it's a state of mind. Where is my walking stick?"
Maybe the creators with this article wanted to tell us that in the upcoming updates we can expect the so-called hidden quests?
And now we come to what is probably the most interesting. Our team tried to discover what connection frogs may have with Samael and how the developers came up with the idea for this boss. It often happens that game designers take some inspiration from pop culture. The fact that the name "Samael" appears in pop culture gave us hope to find a suitable prototype for the boss. We tried to find out what movies or books were popular at the time Yalahar was created. One movie really caught our attention. It was Hellboy, a movie based on a comic book. Many of you have probably watched it and remember a demonic monster named Sammael. It looks like this:
Interestingly, the film Sammael does not appear in the comic book but was modelled, among others, based on the Frog Monsters from the comic book (Screenshot below)
Coincidence you would say. Sammael is just a random monster in this film and it has nothing to do in Tibia? Hell no. Look at another character from Hellboy’s universe – Koschei the Deathless. 🙂
https://hellboy.fandom.com/wiki/Koshchei_(character)
Another clear allusion. All Tibians know that name.
Now we know Someone in Cipsoft was apparently a huge fan of the series if 2 bosses from this universe made their way into Tibia. Who would have thought…?
Demon, Samael, Frogs... Big of those coincidences. However, the demons in Tibia don't look like Frog Monster or the movie Sammael. Does this mean that this is a dead-end to our quest? Nothing could be further from the truth. The tibia fandom at this link has graphics of unknown purpose. One of these graphics caught our eye. It depicts an unknown monster and as we found out was introduced in update 8.4 or 8.5. The monster looks like the image below.
What do you think? 🙂
Okay, but maybe it's just decoration and Sammael can only be seen in a frame somewhere, like some of the bosses on the Isle of Merriment, and fighting him is not possible? Take a look at the graphic below.
The developers wouldn't have added the body of a boss if it wasn't possible to defeat him!!! Yes, it's still a theory that this is our boss, but it all fits just too well!
Now everyone is probably wondering how to get to Samael and be the first player to face him. Unfortunately, we do not know how to get to him at the moment. We are hoping that someone of you will finish the job and then share your experience with the gaming community. It is possible that Samael is a part of some bigger quest. Let's not forget that in update 8.4 and 8.5 there were other interesting mysteries such as:
- Bearded Woman
- An Inaccessible Room in Beregar
- An unreachable room in Kazordoon
- The Blood Skull, an extremely difficult item to obtain, whose use is still unknown.
And this is only a part of the mysteries related to the above-mentioned updates. We strongly encourage you to investigate them. Maybe you will be the first player to find it and kill Samael? I think that after today's article, there's no need to break your brain on 469 or Serpentine Tower. The new, unknown boss Samael is at hand...
At the same time, Hunter of Dragoes did his investigation on Samael. The links below lead to the information he has found.
https://www.tibiaqa.com/23929/who-is-samael-and-where-can-we-find-it-a-twelve-year-old-mystery
https://www.reddit.com/r/TibiaMMO/comments/lfjosj/samael_a_12yearold_mystery_solved/
Special thanks to Nohus, admin of https://tibia.space/ for providing the full list of bosses initially to Makadamia.
First of all, congratulations on your article especially all the research done about the boss name and the presence of creatures with similar names in pop culture! Also, thanks for the credits given to TibiaWiki, that's very honest of you!
Please, allow me to join your research and reply a few points of the article:
Notice that Samael's shouts appear in this elongated cell and in different places. This indicates that the Boss is probably located a floor below in some small room.
I also thought about this possibility, but if you pay attention, all sounds are aligned to the right side of the game window. Besides that, you can hear its sounds from two other places and, then, determine it is located to the east of the second set of bars of the cellar, on the same floor the screenshots were taken. Moreover, when you are on an underground floor, you can only "hear" player and monsters screams from the same floor as you are.
The first piece of evidence is the Party Finder. Would creators of the game put there a Boss which can't be found in the game? It's doubtful.
Actually, yes. I checked one of the first versions of Party Finder's boss list while we were still on test server and I reported 6 unreachable/unkillable bosses such as Kitty (which obviously was never intended to be killed). This suggests the devs just added all bosses to the Party Finder without checking if it would make sense for all of them to be there.
The above image is from the teaser for update 8.5. Would the developers be presenting a "new in-game item" that you can't get?
Actually, yes, they could do it. You can see a Yalahari Figurine on the fourth teaser for Update 8.4, but it became an obtainable item only 8.5 years later with Update 11.40.
The developers wouldn't have added the body of a boss if it wasn't possible to defeat him!!! Yes, it's still a theory that this is our boss, but it all fits just too well!
Again, yes, the devs could do such a thing. For example, Librarian is an imortal creatures which has a corpse.
Regarding the unused tortoise outfit (and corpse) sprites, they were added sometime between updates 8.2 and 8.4, while Samael was added on 8.5. The corpses are named "dead tortoise". And, before someone asks, there is no unknown creature named just "tortoise". A previous research of mine brought me to believe if the unknown tortoise exists (or ever existed) its ID would have to be between 466 and 482. You revealed Samael's ID is 537, so it couldn't be the tortoise... unless the devs added the outfit and corpse a few updates before adding the actual monster (and didn't renamed the corpse). Although I don't recall they ever doing such thing, it is technically possible, just not probable.
Regards,
Hunter of Dragoes
TibiaWiki admin
Good job with the research, guys! As Hunter said we also noticed Samael and looked into it a while ago. I don't have much to add to his post other than my personal opinion: I don't think Samael can be reached and killed. CipSoft loves to leave loose ends on quests all over the game, always leaving players to imagine what would follow. They do this a lot at the same time they don't like to explain in detail even content that is right there in the game. For example, even though the related quest lines seem to be finished there's a lot about Galthen we don't know about.
I've asked Cip members during Test Servers to show us how Samael looks but, needless to say, they didn't do it. If I had to guess, I would say it looks like something really silly and weak. Eclesius doesn't sound very smart and the actual strong demons of Tibia that have been locked up somehow were not restrained by simple steel bars.
Indeed, interesting.
I remember the time I found these sprites (of the unknown monster) in 2016, while I was contributing on TibiaRoyal and had an access to the sprites database, I even asked about it on Tibiopedia, here:
https://tibiopedia.pl/forum/t/19575,A-co-to#p388329 (it's in polish only)
Unfortunately nobody knew what's this.
A lot of monsters have their corpses as an object (or decoration). We could assume that the same situation is here, but worth to emphasize, that corpses (objects), which exist in game are often avaliable only in selected stages, for example only in it's 1st and 3rd stage. The unknown creature has three stages of decomposition, like every living creature.
Thank you very much Hunter and Lee. First of all, I want to emphasize that we appreciate your research a lot. It's clearly seen that each of us took another path and they somehow complement each other. We did not intend to "race" with you, but publishing our text, for example, a few days later could have caused false accusations of plagiarism.
I also thought about this possibility, but if you pay attention, all sounds are aligned to the right side of the game window. Besides that, you can hear its sounds from two other places and, then, determine it is located to the east of the second set of bars of the cellar, on the same floor the screenshots were taken. Moreover, when you are on an underground floor, you can only "hear" player and monsters screams from the same floor as you are.
That's a very good point. We didn't check it that thoroughly.
Actually, yes. I checked one of the first versions of Party Finder's boss list while we were still on test server and I reported 6 unreachable/unkillable bosses such as Kitty (which obviously was never intended to be killed). This suggests the devs just added all bosses to the Party Finder without checking if it would make sense for all of them to be there.
*
Actually, yes, they could do it. You can see a Yalahari Figurine on the fourth teaser for Update 8.4, but it became an obtainable item only 8.5 years later with Update 11.40.
*
Again, yes, the devs could do such a thing. For example, Librarian is an imortal creatures which has a corpse.
These questions were more rhetorical so that the player could see a whole set of circumstances to realize that the boss could theoretically be reachable by the community.
Regarding the unused tortoise outfit (and corpse) sprites, they were added sometime between updates 8.2 and 8.4, while Samael was added on 8.5. The corpses are named "dead tortoise". And, before someone asks, there is no unknown creature named just "tortoise". A previous research of mine brought me to believe if the unknown tortoise exists (or ever existed) its ID would have to be between 466 and 482. You revealed Samael's ID is 537, so it couldn't be the tortoise... unless the devs added the outfit and corpse a few updates before adding the actual monster (and didn't renamed the corpse). Although I don't recall they ever doing such thing, it is technically possible, just not probable.
According to our source, the unused sprite could have been added before, but its ID is just before the worker golem and mutated rat and this is unlikely to be a coincidence. The corpse's ID, on the other hand, is next to crystal columns which are in Eclesius' house. Moreover, outfit's ID and monster's ID shouldn't be considered as one and do not coincide. Some bosses and monsters share the same outfit, so these ID differences are expected. We suspect that even if the outfit was added earlier (we don't deny that it's possible), it was somehow adopted to update 8.4.
I already answered you on the subreddit, but I'll answer here, too.
the unused sprite could have been added before, but its ID is just before the worker golem and mutated rat
Regarding the turtle outfit, yes, it is just before 8.4 creatures including the ones you mentioned and vampire bride, but they are also just after 8.2 creatures like grim reaper and earth elemental. That's where my 8.2-8.4 theory came from. And, if we look at the creature's race IDs, we could infer - but not be certain that - the tortoise's race ID should be in the "gap" between 465 (grim reaper) and 483 (vampire bride). Given the corpses' IDs, which I'll discuss below, I'm inclined to believe the turtle outfit was indeed added on 8.4.
The corpse's ID, on the other hand, is next to crystal columns which are in Eclesius' house
That's right. However, those crystals are also found in Yalahar's Factory Quarter. A few IDs later, we find the rusty items which were added on 8.4, and the preceding objects are the rewards from In Service of Yalahar.
In other words, the corpses are found among 8.4 objects. Given that it is just one major update before The Scatterbrained Sorcerer Quest and Samael, and that the devs usually began working on an update before launching the previous update, the unknown turtle could indeed be related to 8.5 content such as Samael. It is indeed a plausible theory. Good job!
Hey! Look at this!
Uploaded files:
Frog Princess?
Uploaded files:
Maybe it is related to the task in some way?
Uploaded files:
@nydano
The keyword here is actually "frog" and we were aware of it, yet it's interesting.
The Frog Prince, however, seems not to be a girl, but it might be very possible that he is a part of that mystery. It's a very strange boss.