Quests: A Bait and Switch

Grymalkyn dragged Kiki off to Bastok Sunday morning so they could try the relatively new A Bait and Switch quest.

Salim wanted us to get rid of a friar who's been poking around in the Temple of the Godess in the Metalworks. When we went to investigate, we ran into Luto Mewrilah and her shape-shifting Tarutaru partner-in-crime. They were trying to get their hands on Salim's reportedly hidden, ill-gotten treasure, and asked for our help. There's a trap set in the altar to protect it, and can be deactivated by pressing three switches in the Metalworks in the proper sequence.

Luto offers you an item to help distract the guards hovering near the switches, and to get the Key Ring Belt we were after, we chose the Lucky Charm. We then talked to several NPCs to determine the switch sequence, which ended up having 8 steps. We activated the switches in the proper order, each time needing to distract the guards first. We would either have Luto taunt them and run away, have the Taru shape-shift into a guard and have him "relieve" the real guard, or we would use the lucky charm and some Jedi mind trick to get the head guard to go look elsewhere.

Grymalkyn didn't have any troubles, but Kiki's sequence didn't seem to work and she failed repeatedly on reaching the 7th step (have to start over from the first switch when you miss one). So she reset the quest and started over, and had no trouble that time. They both were rewarded with a Key Ring Belt from Salim for getting the friar to leave. Fortunately he didn't realize we'd helped Luto make off with his loot.

The belt is actually a really nice belt for a THF, having +1 Steal on it. It also has +1 DEX, making it the best belt for a THF from level 20 to level 30. Other rewards from the quest include silent oil, prism powder, hermes quencher, hi-potion, or hi-ether, based on the item you choose from Luto. There's also a mystery item, but no one knows how to get that option available. The quest is repeatable once each week after the conquest tally, but it's a bit annoying, so I'm not sure how much we'll be repeating it.