[PUZZLE] Someone kidnapped our friend! - SOLUTION POSTED

Someone kidnapped our friend! He's been behaving strangely lately, changed his avatar and
nickname - for now we don't know who did it, but we believe that his new profile picture surely hold some kind of clue. We call upon you SteamGifts! Solve this mystery and you will surely get a reward from grateful victim!

The only clue we have for now is his original avatar from
before he was kidnapped.

Time to solve this mystery is a little over a week!

Hints may or may not appear in the future. Answer to most of your questions can be found here.

Sharing anything regarding the puzzle will be reported to support!

Puzzle Solution:

So I was kidnapped and it lead to multi-stage puzzle ;) The start was the hardest part, but almost every stage of a puzzle could be solved using my Puzzle guide.

At the beggining you've been just given my original avatar. To find out it was me who was kidnapped you should remember it from various previous puzzles and/or forum topic, or use your browser cache to find this image in older stored versions. But as I am a nice guy and promised hints - I started commenting on the topic - at first with invisible bumps and later on with normal comments. I even admitted that I was the one behind the puzzle and the one kidnapped :> So you have your starting point :>

The first step was going to my steam profile (look at Other Places to looking for links). There were two things to do: Reverse image search for my new Avatar would give you the name of an Anime this character is from, which is Azumanga Daioh. The second thing to notice was that I given a link to my MyAnimeList Profile right under a BlackList :>

Going to MyAnimeList Profile and later to Anime List you should search for Anime from my avatar - Azumanga Daioh. You can notice, that one of the tags seems weird. According to my guide again, you should use it as code for ITH puzzle (look at Code hidden in letters part of a guide), leading you here.

In this stage, you were given ciphered note in form of an image. You could either write it down, or use any kind of reading software to export it into text file :> Using Encryption of a guide you could easily see that it was encrypted using BASE64. Using xlate or any other software you could decipher it into following note:

Sorry friend, but our enemies knew about our meeting. I couldn't risk it! Please meet me in different place! For safety let's meet somewhere more public. Go to this coordinates [51.414846,19.678016] and meet me in big shop there.

Using Google Maps with given coordinates you should go to Street View and look around. As you can see that the name of the mentioned big shop is Kaufland. It was also the answet to ITH Question. Answering gave you this link.

In this stage you were given description and image of a wallet and was asked what organization kidnapped zelghadis. Viewing the image and deleting ".jpg" would lead you to image page with description (see More obscure ways of hiding a text from guide). The description says:

Upon closer examination you find this symbol hidden under leather: http://i.imgur.com/XGI0rEj.jpg.

Ofc it was NERV who kidnapped zelghadis, because they were angry about him stealing and modifying their logo! When correct answer were given you were given a hidden link (check guide again) next to a dot :> Link leads here.

In this stage you were given basically nothing. But a hint was that a previous link was hidden and word hidden in description as well. If you checked the source of a question you'd see a hidden link to this GA. In it's description there was a hidden link to this forum topic. In OP there was a hidden link to this comment - you should use SG+ to navigate there, but as well you could easily search topic for comment posted by me ;) In comment there was a last hidden link http://17812.ru/. So the code to the gate was 17812 :> When you entered right code, you'd get this message:

You must now navigate yourself through enemy hearquaters! Start Here and then follow by the clues.

So now you had to follow GA chain using given clues (see GA modification in guide).

a quantity measured with respect to an apsis, usually the periapsis when googled gives you Anomaly. You should go to Anomaly: Warzone Earth GA.

If you wanna bribe me you better put the money into some fancy envelope! leads to Sleeping Dogs: The Red Envelope Pack GA.

Bobofatt has his banhammer - I have a fancy hammer of my own as well! leads to Darksiders II - Fletcher's Crow Hammer GA. There are many hammers in my GAs, so you should check for one with strange description ;p Also it was a hint to franchise you could win a game from :>

This game in now owned by everyone of you, yet I managed to make a GA of it back in a days :> obviously leads to Dota 2 GA.

After this "small" journey you were given description:

You infiltrated NERV HQ, you hacked into their database using inside terminal - you must now find the name of the culptit that is a mastermind behind this whole kidnapping! But the firewall catches up to you pretty quickly - you just manage to capture a single picture.

ITH Clicky

Using image modification tools you could find the name of the actual kidnapper (see Text hidden in picture in guide). It was hidden here. The kidnapper was thejadefalcon. When you give correct answer you'd get a link to next part.

In this stage you were given an actual puzzle jigsaw :> When put together youd get a QR code (see QR Codes and Barcodes part of a guide). When decoded it would give you a password "EA still sucks!" and you'd get a link to a FINAL STAGE.

This stage was a simple lore quiz from WH40k ;) All answers were googleable ;)

A1. Machine Spirit

A2. Servitor

A3. Vaul

A4. Titan

A5. Tyranid

A6. The Golden Throne

A7. Fenris

A8. 12

A9. 13th Company

A10. Lion El Johnson

When answered all questions you were given a link to GIVEAWAY

Thank you all participants and BIG CONGRATULATIONS to three people who managed to solve it :>