Quest: The Master of a Million Faces

No. You cannot get access to the Forest encampment before killing Maligaro.

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narnz wrote:

I don't want to do the Maligaro quest before I do the map quest... I have 3 parts of a map, but need to find a fourth piece in order to open the way to the Den.
I'm going a bit nuts as my character and my playing isn't strong enough to beat Maligaro yet, and would like to do the quest called 'Master of a Million Faces' without having to do the Maligaro fight yet.
Is this even possible???

I'm not sure how you have 3 parts of a map unless you mean 3 sacrifice fragments? In which case not only can you not use those until you've finished the story, you also really don't want to go in there yet anyway and they have nothing to do with Maligaros quest.

Also, how do you know if you can beat Maligaro or not if you haven't gone into the map device?

To be honest, I usually find Greust about the same difficulty as Maligaro anyway, so it's not going to make much of a difference since if you can't do one, you probably can't do the other either.

Open a coffin in The Crypt, and venture downstairs and you shall find a Map there.

Just doing this quest now... no indication that you have to do anything in the Crypt. Have the word 'Crypt' in the quest description... problem solved.