A Canticle for Barathrum
Argyve wishes to make contact with the legendary enclave of Tinkerers known as the Barathrumites with a compound at Grit Gate. The enclave is comprised of Urshiib, mutated bear creatures that are known to keep to themselves. Getting there won't be easy, but we have a 
droid scrambler to aid against their defense systems. Live and drink, stranger.
Recommended
| Level | Abilities | Stats |
|---|---|---|
| 10 |  Acrobatics,  Meal Preparation and  Harvestry or Rank 3  Flaming Ray /  Freezing Ray,  Menacing Stare,  Berate | 6  AV or 14  DV |
The Grit Gate Compound
Our one goal is to get to Grit Gate, which means it doesn't matter how we do it, we just need to get there. Getting to the Grit Gate map tile is fairly tame, just make sure you don't navigate through a jungle tile since getting lost there is much more dangerous than getting lost in the flower fields.
There are exactly 2 enemies that are of any concern to us: 
slugsnouts and the 
novice of the Sightless Way. For slugsnouts we have (hopefully) the raw stats to handle by this point, but that doesn't mean we should just let them wail on us. Use those positioning tricks to get them into melee with you instead of you approaching them, and if necessary move up the stairs to draw them in.
The novice of the Sightless Way is a bit more dangerous; they have perfect accuracy and very few ways of stopping their attack. While there are a few solutions, the main ones most characters will be able to use is damage reflection and simply killing the novice. Seeker novices are extremely weak, and usually a one-shot from any character at this point in the game. The problem is getting to them safely, which is why damage reflection is preferable. If we have both Meal Preparation and Harvestry skills, we can reliably get a form of damage reflection by going to the Six Day Stilt, 
Harvesting some spine fruit, and cooking with spine jam for damage reflection. If we just have Meal Preparation, we can still just buy spine jam from the merchants, but free is always better right? We can grab Harvestry for 50 rep from either 
Mehmet or 
Irudad in Joppa, and if you can't afford Meal Preparation (or don't want to), you can get it for 100 rep from Mayor 
Nuntu in Kyakukya.
When cooking with spine jam, we can either get 
Quills or damage reflection (the quantity doesn't matter). If we get Quills, we can cook another meal for another attempt. Alternatively, if you have a couple of ranks in either Freezing Ray or Flaming Ray, you can just save your use of it for when a novice rolls around and one-shot them. The 10-tile range on these abilities should be more than enough to reach the novice, or be close to it. Menacing Stare and Berate can also break 
Sunder Mind if you have them or are willing to spend the skill points. If you shirk on the damage reflection and have no other option for a novice of the Sightless Way and killing them is not possible, your goal then becomes to endure as little damage as you can getting back to the stairs. Sunder Mind lasts for 10 turns, so if you're further than that away (even through 
Sprint), then you're better off trying to kill it. Don't forget that going down unexplored stairs for a single turn is preferable to having your head explode, so don't ignore that option if you're pushed to it. Finally, no matter what, do not heal with witchwood bark. If you get confused, you will just die since being confused lowers your mental armor.
Grit Gate is an otherwise fairly safe dungeon, with the 
waydroids on your side the other enemies should not pose much of a challenge.
Pay to Win
This is how most people decide to approach the quest, but we can do better. These early quests always have some stinky cheese around them, and this quest is no exception. 
Mafeo, the merchant at Grit Gate, will always sell a 
Grit Gate recoiler. This, curiously enough, is not unique to him. In fact, any Tier 2 merchant will always sell 2 Grit Gate recoilers. If you get lucky enough to find a 
dromad trader that uses the Tier 2 merchant table, they will always have a 
recoiler for us. We can find them most commonly in the desert canyons, but salt dune and flower field traders can potentially be Tier 2 as well. However, this is a bit too much RNG and grinding for my taste still, is there a better solution? Luckily for us, yes there is.
Back in the salt marshes, there is a single center zone that spawns an 
oddly-hued glowpad. This is actually a merchant that will sell a variety of items at random tiers. Conveniently for us, it will also always sell a Grit Gate recoiler and a 
Joppa recoiler. Since we should already have a Joppa recoiler at this point, we can figure out what item is the Grit Gate recoiler by purchasing the blue named "small stone" artifact.
It will be an expensive purchase, but don't sell the 
mechanical wings if you have them! If you have extras or have the 
Wings mutation, of course, go ahead, but you'll still want those flappers soon. Additionally, if you know 2 merchant secrets or 1 merchant and have the 
Tactful skill, you can water ritual and share the secrets with the oddly-hued glowpad to get the 
Snake Oiler skill, which will help the price.
Finding the oddly-hued glowpad uses the same technique as finding the 
flattened remains, in fact I usually search for both at the same time. The oddly-hued glowpad tends to spawn in zones with lots of obscuring terrain, just to really spit in your face. However, we can spit back because while the game will not notify you that you've found it, if you hit backspace it will be a landmark you can go to. Therefore, if you're not sure if you've found it or not, just hit backspace before going to another tile to check.
Once we have our recoiler, slot a cell into that bad boy and teleport straight to the finish line. Instead of trudging back through the dungeon to get out, just recoil back to Joppa with your other recoiler.