Reported to be Merimo's, beside the Abyssal Cipher. His words are cargo — Rugs, Hay, Cheese, Camel Bells — and your copy's word decides.
Short answer
One creator guide puts the Lost Cipher with Merimo, the caravan keeper who is also Pip's giant goat, alongside the Abyssal Cipher. "Lost" is in no vocabulary, so this is a report with nothing behind it but the card. If your copy prints a cargo word — Rugs, Caravan, Hay, Cheese, Camel Bells or Salt Block — the report and the official rule agree. Otherwise the word wins.
How you get it
From the loot table during a run — locked chests, purple-marked enemies and unidentified items. No launch-mail copy of this cipher has been announced.
The bonus is matched on the word your cipher carries, not on which cipher it is — so the right NPC differs between two players holding the same one. Type what is printed on yours.
Try
Where are the words?
Open the cipher in camp or in your bag. It prints two clue words. 47 words are mapped across the seven camp NPCs below, and handing a cipher to the wrong one still pays the base result — the only thing at stake is the bonus.
A grade describes sourcing, not truth. An unverified row is not one we think is wrong — it is one nobody has stood behind.
OfficialEvery cipher has one NPC who "truly knows how to decipher its secrets" and pays a bonus for it.
Bellring Games, Golden Cipher event page, read 2026-08-07. A general rule, not a quirk of one cipher.
UnverifiedThe Lost Cipher pays its bonus with Merimo, alongside the Abyssal Cipher.
Desorden (2026-08-09) prints both on Merimo's card. One creator compiling community reports, flagged as unconfirmed by the creator himself, with no clue-word overlap to corroborate it.
CorroboratedLevel 5 gates the Decipher option, all seven camp NPCs offer it, and the cipher is consumed on use.
allthings.how (2026-08-02) and NerdsChalk (2026-08-03), independently.
UnverifiedEvery reward percentage circulating for this item.
No table has been published for it. The four-decimal figures in circulation are the Golden Cipher's, from the Gylden Rush event page.
§01
What supports this pairing, and what does not
Merimo's desk is the one that exposed the whole misunderstanding this subject is built on. NerdsChalk concluded on 3 August that no NPC bonus applies to the Abyssal Cipher — a conclusion drawn from hunting for a type-level rule that does not exist, when the actual rule matches on the word. The creator card later put both the Abyssal and Lost Ciphers on Merimo. So the pairing is reported, the earlier "no bonus" claim is wrong for an instructive reason, and neither of those facts makes the Lost row corroborated.
Merimo runs the caravan: Rugs, Caravan, Hay, Cheese, Camel Bells and Salt Block — cargo words, not combat ones.
The Abyssal Cipher is reported to the same desk and has a page of its own.
"Lost" is not a clue word anywhere, so nothing corroborates this pairing mechanically.
§02
The word on your copy is the address
This is the cipher where the point is easiest to see, because the query that proves players are reading words off their items — "abyssal cipher hay cheese" — belongs to this desk. People are typing cargo words into search engines while holding the item. That is the lookup that works. Do the same with yours before you deliver, because the cipher is consumed on acceptance.
The decoder takes both words in any order; "hay and cheese" resolves as readily as "hay".
Level 5 unlocks Decipher on all seven camp NPCs.
A wrong delivery still pays the base amount; only the bonus is lost.
§03
No reward table exists for it
Nothing has been published about what a Lost Cipher pays. The odds circulating under cipher headings are the Golden Cipher's, and press sources describe the correct-match bonus only as a high chance of Epic rarity.
§04
Where they come from, and keeping yours
Ciphers are part of the ordinary loot table, so one lost is eventually replaced — but it is also part of your killer's payout if it is in the wrong bag when you die.
Locked chests, which are the most reliable placed source.
Marked enemies — the ones carrying a purple brand — and the containers they guard.
Unidentified items: every one of them has a chance to resolve into a cipher.
Citations
Every source, with its date
Including the one this page disagrees with. A claim you decline to repeat still has to be attributed, or the reader cannot check your reasoning.
The only source that pairs named ciphers to NPCs, reading each NPC's card off screen. The creator states plainly that not everything in it is confirmed and asks viewers to report corrections, so every pairing it establishes is graded reported, never official.
Official — that every cipher has one NPC who "truly knows how to decipher its secrets" and pays a bonus for it, and that the match is made per cipher rather than being cosmetic.
The level-5 gate, the seven camp NPCs who offer Decipher, and that the cipher is consumed on use.
Lost Cipher FAQ
One creator guide reports Merimo, the caravan keeper. It is a single unconfirmed source, so read the word on your copy — if it is Rugs, Caravan, Hay, Cheese, Camel Bells or Salt Block, Merimo is right under Bellring's own rule rather than merely by report.
