Salt in the Wound

Salt in the Wound is an intermediate members quest that was first announced in Behind the Scenes - July 2011 update, and was released on 5 July 2011. It is the last quest in the Sea Slug quest series. The quest involves the final battle with Mother Mallum, the Queen of the Sea Slugs, and involves several characters from the previous quests in the series such as Ezekial Lovecraft and Kennith, as well as new ones such as Eva, Sir Tiffy Cashien's niece.

This quest was the second to involve Dungeoneering as a requirement and as a feature, the first one being A Clockwork Syringe. Its involvement in the quest has to do with an ingredient for a serum, which can disrupt the Sea Slugs' mind control, being contained within Daemonheim.

Walkthrough
Note: This whole quest can be completed without your character fighting anything but this makes the quest much more difficult. You will not lose any items if you die during the dungeon or citadel parts of this quest, as this will only restart the current floor.

Starting off
Begin by talking to Kennith. Kennith can be found on the far east side of the Daemonheim Peninsula standing near Sonje and the Fremennik shipmaster. He will be an adult now, having grown up with Bailey on the Fishing Platform and also having learned powerful spells, up to Fire surge. He will say that he is glad to have found you, after having had contact with Sir Tiffy Cashien. He will want to talk in private and teleport a small distance away. Go west, up the stairs and Kennith will be waiting there. Talk to him and he will teleport two other helpers in, the fisherman partner from Kennith's Concerns, Ezekial (who is completely unaware of the mission), and Sir Tiffy's niece, Eva.

Introduce yourself and talk to Eva again, agree to start the mission. Ezekial will throw one of his rubium bombs at the wall, which will open up. The party will enter the dungeon. A humorous cutscene takes place, in which Elfinlocks slays a Soulgazer and gets a hexhunter bow as a drop, only for the wall near her to be blown open, destroying the bow and killing her, resulting in Ezekial becoming skulled. Qutiedoll and 1337sp34kr will approach looking surprised. They run through the hole, planning to sell their gatestone on the Grand Exchange.

Daemonheim Dungeon
Once in the dungeon you need to find a blue key. The blue key will unlock the puzzle room. You will be required to fight some NPCs to get to the key room. If you have a low combat level, you may want to bring some food.

The Puzzle Room
You will enter the room with a Caustic gazer standing in front of a familiar dungeoneering puzzle. Choose a hero (preferably the one with the most health). Your character will distract the Caustic gazer while the chosen hero must cross the gaps to the other side without coming within one square of the Guardian Sphere.

One way to solve the puzzle is:
 * Jump south across the first gap
 * Jump west twice
 * Jump south
 * Jump north
 * Jump east three times
 * Jump south two times and the puzzle is completed.

Inspect the Seeker of Truth and return across the gap (regroup does not work). One way to get back across is to simply have the Guardian Sphere capture the character chosen. (This will hit for 500 life points) If the character dies, just reenter the dungeon and talk to Kennith to teleport. After completing the puzzle Kennith will ask if you are ready to be teleported to the Fishing Platform. Say I'm ready and teleport to the fishing platform.

Fishing Platform
The Fishing Platform is located due east of Witchaven. To reach the Fishing Platform, if you didn't take the offer of being teleported when asked in the quest, talk to Jeb who can be found in the northern part of Witchaven. He will row you out to the fishing platform.

Once you reach the platform talk with Kennith and he will tell you that you need some ingredients for an anti-mind control serum. He says you will need some blood, given freely. To get the blood you simply punch Bailey and then respond, "So you don't feel pain?". Then say, "No pain? Prove it." Bailey will then take a shard of glass and cut his arm to prove that he no longer feels pain. He will give you the Blood-stained glass as proof of this.

Kennith also tells you that you need a live specimen for the potion. To get a sea slug, head east to the fishing spot. Lure the fishing spot (don't try to take the slug, as this will damage you for 30 life points) and go back to Kennith, the slug will follow you.

Kennith will daze and telegrab the slug for you. A dazed sea slug will appear in your inventory. You will need a free inventory slot for the slug. Talk to him and he will say that you have all of the ingredients and give you the Seeker gland. Pick up the pestle and mortar in the room (a pestle and mortar from the toolbelt will work as well) and use any piece of the potion to make the anti-mind control serum. Talk to Kennith to prompt your team to move to the cave entrance.

Go west to the cave. Enter the cave by talking to the Slug thralls and ask, "Why can't we come in?". Then "I'm not a stranger", "I seek enlightenment in the joining", and finally, "I wish to hear the...". The guards will let you enter the Slug Citadel.

Slug Citadel
The Slug Citadel consists of a series of rooms. You will need to make your way, with your party of adventurers, through the rooms by solving puzzles. The rooms have a varying number of Risen Knights, some of which will need to be killed and some of which can be avoided. The members of your party will be healed to full health automatically when you move on to the next room. Unfortunately your character is not healed so you will need to bring some food. The exception to this is if one of your party dies before the room is completed, in that case, all members will be healed (including yourself) and you will only need to restart that room.

Note: If you log off you will find yourself outside on Witchaven near Jeb but all completed rooms will remain completed, and killed Risen Knights will stay dead except the ones the village people conjure. You will have to walk yourself and your characters through all completed rooms to return to the last room you were in before you logged out.

Your characters will follow you automatically wherever you go and if they are attacked they will fight to the end unless you move them or regroup.

To make a character stay in or go to a specific point simply click on the character and click where you want them to go. The same principle applies to using them to knock out witchaven guardians/killing Risen Knights or pulling levers.

Always make sure that you click the character again to return control to your player or you will find your character running aimlessly around the screen. Alternatively, you can click control straight from one character to another, but practise this first as this action will be needed when in the 4th citadel room which is the most difficult.

It doesn't matter which characters you use, but they are named in the guide to allow you to keep track of them.

You may sometimes have trouble getting the characters to pull the levers; you may order them to do so only for them to simply stand there. Positioning the characters directly in front of the lever before clicking on it will solve this problem.

First Room
This room has a number of gates blocking your way to the exit. There are levers which can be pulled to open the gates. The levers need to be opened in a particular order so you can progress. If you are spotted by Witchaven villager, you will be frozen for a few seconds and a Risen Knight is summoned and attacks you.

Second Room
This room is similar to the first room in that a number of levers have to be pulled in a certain order to open gates for your character to progress to the exit.

Third Room
Killing all the Risen Knights will make the room easier. The easiest way is to simply do this yourself, as you are likely much more powerful than your companions. You can rest while the others are defeating the Risen Knights if you need to raise your hit points.

Fourth Room
In this room your character releases various waves of Risen Knights while trying to open the exit. The Risen Knights have to be killed in order to proceed. Unfortunately, your character is stuck and cannot fight. You have to use the other members of your adventurer's party to kill the knights.

Use your character to search the strange device; your character will become unplayable and Risen Knights will begin to appear one at a time. The knights are not usually aggressive so take time to plan. Once the first wave of three knights are dead your character will investigate the second hole. Two knights will appear at a time for a total of six knights in the second wave.

Once the second wave is dead a third wave will appear and two to three knights will appear at a time for a total of 9 knights in the third wave. Continue on into the last room.

Note: If a party member dies, you will have to restart the room.

Strategy: Make sure you take advantage of the combat triangle or this battle will be difficult. The hero that you send into battle first will take the most damage, so keep the lower health ones as backup.

It is best to use the 'select all' command to attack the Risen Knights and then pulling back Eva to behind the pillar as the knights will continue take damage from Kennith and Ezekiel. When more than one Risen knight appears, target Mage first, then Melee and Finally the Range knight.

Alternatively send the player who corresponds to the opposite in the combat triangle to attack first, then use a secondary player (Kennith is most useful) to double up on the attack. Ezekial can be useful here even with the number of Melee knights here. He can be used to tank hits due to his high life points. He may also be used to lure the knights behind the pillar so that they cannot damage your party.

You cannot heal your characters in this room and once they die, you have to restart the room. Once the fight is over, there is no need to heal your party for they will be back to full health upon entering the last room.

NOTE: It is possible for the players to become stuck in this room. After a couple of waves of risen knights, the game may fail to spawn more, rendering the player unable to continue. Currently it seems the only way to bypass this (if it does occur) is to log out and restart the dungeon. (Note that the player only has to run through the already completed floors.)

Mother Mallum
This is the last room and is the climax of the quest. Once the cutscene is complete,

You can talk freely with any of the three characters/adventurers before leaving the cave of the Slug Citadel. Questions that once had a response of "We have a mission to do," will be answered by the characters. Note that not all of the information given by the characters pertains to the quest itself. They will talk about themselves or their relations with the other adventurers in the party. Talk to Lucy, the choice will not have any effect on the outcome. Leave the citadel using the cave exit (the same one you entered with).

Congratulations, quest complete!

Rewards

 * 2 quest points
 * 100 more bound ammunition/runes in Daemonheim (raising the total to 225)
 * 100 more bound ammunition/runes in Daemonheim (raising the total to 225)
 * 100 more bound ammunition/runes in Daemonheim (raising the total to 225)
 * 100 more bound ammunition/runes in Daemonheim (raising the total to 225)
 * 100 more bound ammunition/runes in Daemonheim (raising the total to 225)
 * 100 more bound ammunition/runes in Daemonheim (raising the total to 225)

Music Unlocked

 * Slug Poison

Required for Completing
Completion of Salt in the Wound is required for the following:
 * Daemonheim Tasks:
 * Hard: "Stacked"

Cultural references

 * At the beginning of the quest when Eva tells Ezekial to go, he uses the NATO phonetic alphabet terms "Foxtrot", "Tango" and "Whiskey", their first letters spelling the slang term "FTW" which means "for the win".
 * When you enter the room at the start with the Caustic Gazer, Eva will say "This isn't the creature we are looking for!". This is yet another reference from Star Wars, where the actual famed line is "These are not the droids you are looking for".
 * When you punch Bailey, he will say "This one does not feel any pain". This could be a reference to the Unsullied soldiers from George R.R. Martin's a Song of Ice and Fire book series. The Unsullied talks the same way (This one ...) and are trained not to feel any pain.
 * When trying to make the Anti-Mind Control Serum, if you do not have all the ingredients and try to make the potion, a message will appear saying: "You do not have all the required ingredients: blood, freely given; a live slug; and a live seeker gland." This could possibly be taken from the revival potion to bring back Voldemort in  as the ingredients included "Blood of the enemy, forcibly taken" (Harry's Blood) a body for him to be reborn in (in HP "Bone of the father, unknowingly given" (in this case the live slug) and a part of one's body (Wormtail's hand, or in this case, the seeker gland).
 * When convincing the two thralls to allow you to access the citadel, there is an option to say "I AM YOUR FATHER!", this is also a reference from Star Wars.
 * When trying to move to another room without your entire party with you, text pops up showing "You must gather your party before venturing forth." This is likely a reference to the popular Dungeons and Dragons games, like Baldur's Gate, that display the same text when you try to travel without your entire party.
 * Before you enter the Slug Citadel the two thralls ask what Kennith is doing. He then tells them that he is not there and that he is not important, and they ignore him. Also, when facing the queen, he tells Brother Maledict to open the door and he does so. These are references to Jedi mind tricks from Star Wars.
 * When talking to Kennith after the mother is dead about teaching others his magic, he will ask the player to imagine a box, and then think outside of it by getting past the fourth wall. This is a reference to thinking outside the box and breaking the fourth wall, which is, traditionally, the "wall" between the performers and the audience.

Controversy
When the quest released, it had a large handful of massive flaws and plot holes. Starting with the previous quest line being completely ignored, to the forced inclusion of Dungeoneering, large amounts of humour in a quest line that was previously very dark, and then ending on an anticlimax involving a conveniently placed pillar falling on the boss. This quest was perceived to be a massive disappointment as it did not live up anywhere close to the potential the previous quest had set up.

Trivia

 * On the day of the release, the spoilers read "The spoilers are currently oozing with slug goo. Come back tomorrow once we've laid out the slug pellets."
 * The quest was criticised by many due to its anticlimactic ending where Mother Mallum is squashed by a pillar. After the quest's release, jokes about pillars falling and crushing various things ran rampant throughout the forums. During Thok Your Block Off, Bone Face says "That's ridiculous! Who ever heard of a boss being killed with a pillar?" in reply to Thok's threatening to use a pillar to kill him, which is a reference to the quest.
 * The quest contains various plotholes, inconsistencies and deus ex machina that garnered it criticism from questers, such as Captain Marlin's omission from the quest, the seemingly random dead stalker, most NPCs' acting out of character or the plot set up in The Slug Menace simply being ignored.