A 9,999,999 gold painting in World of Warcraft: Midnight sent secret finders on a hunt for the ultimate discount and one thrifty player finally figured it out

When World of Warcraft: Midnight players saw an NPC with an expensive painting for sale, they took it as a challenge. Blizzard developers love to sneak in secrets for people to try to solve and a 9,999,999 gold painting—the maximum amount of gold a single character can even have—was a clear tease for anyone who has seen their tricks before.

Cravitz Lorent, the "shady art dealer" in Midnight's Murder Row dungeon, says the price is fixed "unless you can convince fate otherwise" when you ask him why that particular painting costs so much. This, as you might expect from this being a news story meant to convey things that have happened, was just the clue that WoW player and secret-finder Christa (via Wowhead) needed to figure out the solution to the puzzle.

In the same dungeon there exists a fortune teller named Soothsayer Sargle. He graciously gives out bad fortunes every day, like "Yes, it was all your fault," and "Avoid all gnomes." Each one is added 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.

When she spoke to Cravitz Lorent again, the painting had miraculously dropped down to only 999 gold—which is still quite expensive for what is probably not even an original, if you ask me. But a discount is a discount, and housing-obsessed players will do anything to collect every piece of decor in the game, no matter the obstacle.

Christa bought her fortunes on the auction house to save time, but you can try your luck by speaking to Cravitz Lorent on all your characters each day to collect all 13. A commenter on the Wowhead page for the painting added that you can also bring a friend and simply trade the fortunes over to grant them the price drop.

One thing remains a mystery though: I know plenty of WoW players who sit on mountains of gold and I wonder how many of them just bought the painting for full price. Christa says she knows of one person who "actually did pay the gold cap for it," which doesn't surprise me given how many people play WoW purely to make as much cash as they can. As far as secrets in WoW go, however, this one is rather simple, so anyone who just dropped almost 10 million gold is probably wishing they could get a refund.