Notorious Marks, or Hunts, are an excellent way to get rare materials in Final Fantasy 16 (FF16), and one material you may want to get is the Grimalkin Hide.
While it’s not hard to get, it can be used to craft one of the best and most notable weapons in mythology and Final Fantasy. Here’s everything you need to know about getting and using the Grimalkin Hide.
How to get Grimalkin Hide in Final Fantasy 16, explained
The Grimalkin Hide is dropped after defeating the C-rank Notorious Mark, Grimalkin. However, you can’t unlock this Notorious Mark on the Hunt Board until you’ve started the main campaign quest, Out of the Shadows.
How to find and defeat Grimalkin for the Grimalkin Hide in Final Fantasy 16
Once you’ve started the quest, you’ll find Grimalkin South of The Sickle in The Dhalmekian Republic. And the closest waypoint is The Dalimil Inn. Although you could teleport to The Jaw waypoint, I would avoid it unless you’d also like to encounter a tough A-rank Notorious Mark.
To defeat Grimalkin, you must first take out its pack, which is very easy to do, and it’s just like killing mobs you encounter on your travels.
When you do fight Grimalkin, the only mechanic you need to be wary of is when it pounces at you, but this is easy to dodge—even for me, and I’m terrible at dodging. Otherwise, this is one of the easiest marks to cross off your list.
As soon as you’ve killed Grimalkin, you’ll be rewarded with the Grimalkin Hide, and you can craft one of the most famous weapons in mythology: Excalibur.
How to craft Excalibur using the Grimalkin Hide in Final Fantasy 16
Like all the best weapons, you must meet a few requirements before you can begin crafting at the Blacksmith. With the Grimalkin Hide in your inventory, that’s one down, and Wyrrite can be purchased from Charon’s Toll.
You will also need Scarletite, which can be obtained from Dozmare, the Griffin, Fastitocalon, Ten of Clubs, or Holy Trumpitour—all of which are Notorious Marks. Or you can get one through the Hot Water quest.
And the final ingredient, Bomb Ember, can be obtained by completing the quest, Weird Science. This quest is a bit of a mystery, but you get it from your Missives after you’ve completed the third quest of Letting off Steam, a subquest of the main campaign quest, Out of the Shadows. To get the Bomb Ember, you’ll defeat the Bomb King, a Notorious Mark that only appears in this quest, and the one that drops the Bomb Ember.
The last requirement is to complete the second Blacksmith’s Blues quest, which you’ll also obtain from your Missives as you work through the Out of the Shadows main quest. As a reward for your troubles, you’ll get the blueprint for Excalibur.
As soon as you’ve completed those steps, you can visit the Blacksmith and craft Excalibur. We’ve included all the requirements, the recipe, and Excalibur’s stats in the table below.
| Weapon name | Requirements | Recipe | Excalibur’s Stats |
|---|---|---|---|
| Excalibur | Blacksmith’s Blues quest two Weird Science quest Notorious Marks, Dozmare, Fastitocalon, Ten of Clubs, or Holy Trumpitour Notorious Mark Grimalkin | 300 Wyrrite One Grimalkin Hide One Bomb Ember One Scarletite | 268 Attack Damage and 268 Stagger Damage |
As soon as I got the blueprint for Excalibur, I immediately dropped every other quest just to be able to craft it because I love mythology. The fact there are various nods to it in Final Fantasy 16, like the weapon Ragnarok and Odin, whose Dominant is Barnabas Tharmr, just makes the whole thing even better too I think.
Related: All Final Fantasy 16 (FF16) Dominants
With the Grimalkin Hide being the easiest material to find and get, using it and other rare materials to craft Excalibur is worth the time and effort.
