It took a week and a half (I think, a long time at any rate) but I'm finally caught up. I never never never NEVER want to do those codes again. I didn't find them difficult, exactly, just extremely tedious to solve. Must've gone through half a notepad writing down all the combinations I'd tried for each message.
Once I was able to start decoding the 3-mod+O messages, I did every single one listed, over many days, and STILL didn't get the correct message. After saying many bad words that can't be repeated on this forum, I went through the last few 3-mod-no-O messages that I'd left untranslated. Turned out one of them
was a +O message, but I'd skipped over it because there was no O character in the subject line. Translated it relatively fast, did a happy dance, moved on.
Got through all the mazes in under an hour, I was that happy to be on the next step. For the last couple of mazes, sometimes I would intentionally move back and forth on the same two squares until a guard came within striking distance. Then I'd take him out and keep going.
Those of you getting Commander Garoo, he's a DoN challenger. Most likely not related to this plot...if we did wind up fighting him, it'd probably be a souped-up, different version. I hope we do get to battle at some point; though I also hope there's time to train Drilax back up to decent fighting shape. But since the Lab Ray decimated his Level and Defense...I got a long way to go.
(By the way, anybody know which scratchcards have a possibility of raising level?)