First puzzle - 1 day left. Main prize: Tales of Symphonia

And finally solved it! :)

With the remaining time closing in on the 3-hour mark, this thread feels rather... Quiet. Bump

Bump for all solved near the end!

Just above 2 hours till the end. Chour practically gave you the answer to the group part, will we end up with only 5 solvers?

I think I'm out of time to solve it.
Maybe another hint like total number of characters after the GAs ended.

Bump for solved!

never mind it's ended so how about a solution for dumb people like me

Solution for those interested:

The whole solution to the group part consists of only 5 basic steps:

1. sort letters per line(this can be done later) - hints about the alphabet Alfa & Omega obviously meant from A to H
2. count them - Srtk suggested using the letter occurrence frequency in his post summing up the progress 5 days ago
3. form a matrix filling the blanks with 0s(Yukulele's post about the dimensions + 3rd hint)
4. transpose(Once again Yukulele suggested base 10, I even replied that he's getting warmer, but that it was not the exact step. It also leads to step 5)
5. decode octal(xlate) - the only step left when using Chour's post

This gives an url to Imgur with a QR code

The QR code leads to an ITH with 10 questions
I'll post the solution to the ITH in an hour or so so that anybody interested can attempt to solve it on their own

ITH solution
ITH