Classic Games Revisited
Dark Sun: Shattered Lands Walkthrough
17. Red Sands Plateau
You’ll arrive at 1. Talk to the Sage roaming around 2. He can give you useless information about all the magical items you may be carrying. At the end of the conversation, you can ask him to wait here or leave. Keeping him around means that you can return to him to ask him for useless information about any new magical items you will find later.
17.1. Red Sands Plateau Obelisk
Once the dialogue ends, the sage drops a Wand of Metal Detection and the gem for the Red Sands obelisk. The wand will be useful in a later quest. The obelisk is nearby at 3. Activate it by inserting the gem.
17.2. Notaku
Wandering around 4 is Notaku. He has the ranike pith that Garyn wants. If you came here before going to Teaquetzl, or if you didn’t take the quest from Garyn, Notaku would give you the same quest here when you speak to him.
Ask him for the ranike pith, and as the conversation unfolds, ask him if that is all you can do for him. He will want sand howler eyes and fire eel tongues. If you agree to get them for him, from now on Sand Howlers and Fire Eels will tend to spawn more often, and whenever you kill them they will drop these items. You can keep turning in those items to Notaku for ceramics. 100cp per tongue, and 50cp per eye, but you get a pair of eyes from each sand howler and only one tongue from a fire eel.
Note, the first time you try to turn in these spell components to Notaku, the game will behave as though the transaction was a success, but the exchange will not have been made. This is a bug. Speak to him a second time and offer him the items again. Future transactions will happen in one go.
Use Llod’s Rod to teleport to Teaquetzl. Every time you enter the village, the guard will make some rude comment. Ignore him and tell Father Garyn at 4 that you’ve got the ranike pith. He’ll want you to take the pith’s extract to Linara in Gedron, but first we have to get the extract itself. Drop the pith on the large red flask next to the western wall and it will be transformed into Pith Extract. We will be holding on to this for a very long time before we can give it to Linara.
If you want to try to spawn sand howlers and/or fire eels, walk back to the Red Sands Plateau, otherwise teleport to it. Notaku will give you 500cp for delivering the pith, and each party member will get 1,000xp. He will ask you if you are ready for a more dangerous mission and will want you to find a Terror Bloom for a client. Agree to find it, then again ask him if that is all you can do for him. This time he will want the wings of a Tyrian butterfly (and will still accept the other spell components if and when you bring those).
17.3. Master of Mastyrials
Demothi at 5 has trained a mastyrial. After a little bit of dialogue, you will have the option to buy the mastyrial, Alita, in exchange for a Bag o’ Salt. If you agree to the exchange, six Dune Reapers will spawn at a little distance and start walking towards you. Alita will help with the fight, but buff up before buying her. If you rush the dune reapers, you may end up leaving Alita too far behind to help! If you survive, they are each worth 4,000xp. So for 1,800cp and possibly a little pain, we can get 24,000xp divided among all party members. With careful positioning, backstabs will really shine here, especially as hitting from opposite Alita (after she hits) also qualifies as a backstab.
Alita will follow you around until you try to leave the map, then she will ‘run off’. Actually she returns to Demothi. The official cluebook says that a Thri-kreen party leader will be able to hear Demothi blowing a whistle to call Alita back and can use that information to confront him about his cheating ways, but that has never worked for me. I just like to exit, return, and murder them both for trying to rip us off. Demothi’s dead body will have the Bag o’ Salt, but it is of no value any more.
Whether you choose to kill Demothi or not, proceed to the Wagon Train at 6 for our next mini adventure.