Mystery of the lost keys - the beginning
Black and white, light and dark, doors and keys…
While it is not possible for a regular player to provide a complete answer to this question, I would be more than happy to shed some more light on the topic which I’ve been interested in since 2005.
What we can quite safely assume is that in the old Tibia (7.4 and older), probably most of the doors had a key – some of them were available for all players, some for the special ones (e.g., mappers) and some were not available at all, yet existed in the game itself.
There are many keys which are forgotten for so long, that you won’t find them on Tibia Wiki, nor any official fansite. This may lead to the conclusion that many doors have never been openable/had a key, but that’s not true.
Let me provide some unique examples of such keys:
Key 0025 – unlocks Sam’s storeroom
Key 0027 – opens the locked room on the 1st floor of the Rain Castle. Imagine, if someone somehow obtained this key in the past, he could get the free Royal Helmet every server save!
Key 0030 – access to an inaccessible part of the building, next to the room with Chester Kahs
Key 3015 – unlocks mysterious tower placed deep in Hellgate, guarded by a giant spider. Additionally, I found probably the only screenshot on the web proving that the magic wall was added later. Surely, initially, there had to be a way to get inside. Otherwise, what would be the additional protection for?
Keys 3803 and 3804 – open the corridor leading inside Colossus (I’ve been there in 2013 when Knightmare opened it for us, on the test server) and various inaccessible parts of Kazoordoon. According to sources, these keys were in the hand of players at least up to 2004. Roguer and Empirer – mappers of Kazordoon from Hiberna were said to have them, but one was lost due to death and the other deleted by Cipsoft in 2005. It remains unknown who looted the key from Roguer’s body and if it’s still possessed by anyone nowadays.
Keys 4902 and 4903 – allow to access the small room with old spell scroll (Thais trolls). These keys had to be accessible like 20-22 years ago, as it was an active quest and players learned spells from such scrolls.
As mentioned before, many of the lost keys were in the hands of mappers – players who assisted Cipsoft with creating specific areas. It often happened that they later kept all the keys they have helped to create. Moreover, back in the days, all houses had to be opened and closed using a key. It would be difficult for Cipsoft to manage the handling of keys to all house owners, so it was mappers who took the responsibility for this task.
One of them was Lostboy, who designed the Fibula and almost all the buildings there, such as Red Rose guildhall. I’ve found another unique part of history on the web – his handwritten list of keys – it’s from 1999 and it’s partially written in German.
As you can see in the photo below, there is a key 3920 described as “Dungeoneingang” which can be translated to “dungeon entrance”. This key is not mentioned on any fansite.
Nowadays, as mappers are no longer needed, many of the keys are not useful anymore. Though, maybe it’s still possible to somehow get them. There was also the famous 0000 master key, but that topic would require a separate, long article.
If you find that subject interesting, we will publish a greatly extended version of this answer on TibiaSecrets in the upcoming months.
@jad selley, to answer your question. When it comes to Mainland, probably most of the doors await a hero to match the right key.
Sources:
• My own knowledge gained throughout the years,
• Dialogues with old players from Antica and Trimera
• https://portaltibia.com.br/73497-2/
• https://tibia.fandom.com/wiki/Talk:Keys
• Very old, unofficial tibian fansites, which mostly cannot be found anymore through regular search engines