Chapter 4: Stonemasons Outpost, the Wind Tunnel Mines and Malkomud

Checklist

Stonemasons Outpost

1. The villagers are Molekin, and you arrive at a bad moment. The scenes introduce Malkomud, a wizard trying to wake the Sleeper, most likely the huge dragon you can see on the world map. The party is volunteered to help, and then you’re free to look around.
2. The lift to the south doesn’t work yet. Just north of it is the inn, which costs nothing.
3. North (a little east) of the inn is the merchant. Besides a new staff, he sells relics: cheap optional helpers you can switch on and off from the menu at any time.

4. Climb the ladder behind the inn and enter the left-hand house for a chest with the Ancient Molekin Cloak.
5. The hidden room in the west:
   1. Find the house on the west side whose owner can’t open his jammed door.
   2. North of it is a well with a breakable floor. Jump onto it until it gives way; it may take a few tries.
   3. Below are four mushroom patches. Shimmy along the wall into the back room for Teal Amber Ore and a Shiny Pearl, then pull the lever there.
6. The Molekin painter lives in the east part of town; you’ll have a reason to visit after the mines.
7. When you’re done, go to the north end of town and drop into the hole there.

Wind Tunnel Mines: the first room

1. You land next to the village Elder, and a short conversation follows.
2. To the right is a save point. Jump across to the door beside it: it’s a break room where you can rest and shop.

3. Take the ladder up. Antbruisers and Drillbats wait on top. Drillbats drill into you several times in a row; if they finish a charge they burrow and then hit the whole party from below.
4. Climb to the northwest corner for a picnic basket with Egg x3.
5. Getting past the first wall:
   1. Press the switch and follow the path it opens, climbing up and going left.
   2. Step onto the platform there: it slides part of the wall away.
   3. Drop down, press the switch once more and shimmy across to the right.
6. Head upwards as soon as you can (mushrooms on the way) to a chest with the Green Leaf, an accessory worth +15 HP.
7. Drop down, collect the mushrooms and continue right into a large room with a fight. Afterwards, the northeast corner has a picnic basket with Dairy x3; climb the ladder and edge south along the thin ledges to a chest with Teal Amber Ore.

Wind Tunnel Mines: the first Bushtroo

1. Take the upper doorway (the lower one leads nowhere useful) to a big ledge. Heal, then jump down to fight a Bushtroo and its bats.

2. With the fight won, hop up to where the Bushtroo stood. A gust blows you out, the Elder is freed and rides back up. Jump into the hole he leaves.
3. Clear the group waiting on the left of this lower room; a partly concealed chest nearby holds a Rainbow Conch.

4. Climb the ladder and cross the rope. The path goes outside, right and up into another cave; there are potatoes to the left. Keep climbing towards the right.
5. You reach a campfire: rest and save. Then drop down and climb north to a giant chest with the Mistral Bracelet. From now on you can fire gusts of wind to shove the platforms and crystals you’ve been passing.

The Salamander and the Mines Key

1. Go outside and try the bracelet on the platform, pushing it left. Doing so releases a Salamander.

2. Head west. A short crystal puzzle leads back to the exit; it’s easiest if you first blow the crystal up and then right.
3. Near the exit, blow a crystal column aside to reach a chest with the Mines Key.
4. Outside, push the column to the right so you can continue. Climb the ladder for a berry bush, jump back down and take the lower path first: a fight, a chest with Teal Amber Ore, and tomato and yellow bell pepper plants.
5. Back up on the upper path, jump across and down. Heal, pick the two lettuce plants and enter the big cave.

Wind Tunnel Mines: the turbines

1. Another Bushtroo waits inside, this time with more helpers. Kill them quickly and break every charge you can.
2. Jump up to its spot afterwards and the wind throws you out again, bringing power back to part of the room.
3. Moving the crystal:
   1. A turbine is now free. Climb to it and blow wind into it: the crystal on the raised floor comes down.
   2. Back on the floor, shove the crystal into the left-hand slot, which ferries it across to the room’s western half.
   3. Blow it into the next slot and use it to reach the doorway above.
4. Go left past the emerald wall, climb up to some mushrooms, drop down and keep left. Climb again for more mushrooms and an easy fight; the picnic basket beside it has a Mushroom Soup.
5. Head right into one more large cave with a third Bushtroo and three minions. Thin them out and keep your combo for healing. Jump into the wind tunnel when they’re gone.
6. A turbine above you is now reachable. Blow it to drop a ladder, which takes you back to the area where the mines began.

The locked door and the Trader’s Signet

1. With the Mines Key, climb the northeast ladder and go back to the big open room with the ledges, where chest 2 was. The locked door to the north opens now.

2. Follow the lower block down and push it along the path once more so it becomes a step. Climb it to the chest with the Trader’s Signet, a key item for a merchant you’ll meet later.

The west wing

1. Return to the mine entrance and push the column there to the south to open the left half of the mines. Another crystal puzzle waits.

2. A solid crystal appears. Climb it and blow wind into the turbine.

Boss: Malkomud and the Salamander

1. After the scenes, you face the Salamander from before together with Malkomud, a magician who throws sharpened ore and swings his shovel like a sword.

2. Weaknesses: moon hits the Salamander hard, while Malkomud takes extra damage from sun.
3. Keep at least one set of boost orbs ready for breaking charges, and build the combo gauge so it’s there for a group heal. Patch up single injuries with skills or items.
4. Once they’ve taken enough damage, Malkomud climbs onto the Salamander and they fight as one. In this form they mostly hit everyone at once, so let several of those pile up and fix them with one group heal, and spend the rest of your turns attacking.
5. After the fight it turns out Malkomud is just a kid the village has pushed away. The party talks him round, and he promises to stop filling the tunnels with monsters.

Stonemasons Outpost revisited

1. Back in the village, you hear about the Port Town of Brisk, the next goal. Before leaving there are a few things to do.

2. In the painter’s house, blow the crystal aside for a chest with a Rainbow Conch.
3. The Molekin woman who wants a bath (southeast of the village):
   1. Go to the doorway in the northwest that you reach by dropping down to it.
   2. Inside, go all the way down and blow wind at the turbine.
   3. The door nearby opens and the well fills with water. Talk to her again for another Rainbow Conch.
4. Talk to the Molekin by the village entrance: he clears the rocks on the way to the fishing lake and the moor outside town.
5. The bracelet also opens Moorlands chest 6 (Chapter 3). Use the southwest entrance by the lake, go north into the water cave and out on its left, then left past the lake and up to a green crystal. Blow it up, right and up again so it becomes a platform, and climb to the chest with a Rainbow Conch.

6. Leave the village on the big lift to the south. After the talk on the way down, head for the Coral Cascades: Chapter 5.