Weirdwire Conduit... Eureka!

Make your way to the Rust Wells to collect 200 feet of wire for Argyve. Live and drink, stranger.

To the Wells

I'm skipping the artifact fetch quests, you can handle getting two artifacts on your own I believe in you.

Weirdwire Conduit involves you making your way to the rust wells, which are 3 unique map tiles to the east of Joppa, right before the closest mountain range. Your objective is to collect 200 feet of wire for Argyve. It may come as a surprise to you that you actually don't have to collect all 200 feet at a single rust well; in fact, it may be impossible depending on how unlucky you get. It's worth it to check out the surface of each rust well and see how much wire you can get. You might get lucky and not have to go down any of them.

For those of us unlucky souls, we will have to travel down the well. Before we do, we need to pick a well to go down since as mentioned we have 3 to choose from. You should look in the middle, as you can actually see what is at the very bottom. At the center of every rust well, there is a single enemy that is stronger than the rest, as well as 100ft of wire and (usually) a chest/good piece of loot.

In this screenshot, we can see all of these as promised. In your case, it's more likely that all of the loot will be directly in the center, so make sure to search under the chest if there is one for the wire. Our strong enemy is a slumberling; which is handy because it won't bother us unless provoked. Be sure to check this ahead of time; if you get something particularly nasty like a slugsnout, you may want to just choose a different well. Keep in mind that you don't have to go down to the bottom, you can go to a different rust well after the first 2 strata.

The enemies you find here will be well within your capabilities at the recommended levels, especially if you don't go all the way down to the bottom. Don't underestimate the strong enemy at the bottom though; even at the recommended levels, it can still kill you if you lack experience with combat!

Every Flight Begins with a Fall

At this point, you may be curious why the recommended ability is flight here. That's because the best strategy to complete this quest is to not go to the rust wells first. Instead, we're going to comb the salt marsh.

In a single center zone of the salt marsh, there are flattened remains. These are the remnants of Argyve's unfortunate prior apprentice. Luckily for us, they have exactly the equipment we need as long as we use them a little more intelligently than our flattened fellow here. On the corpse are a set of broken mechanical wings, 50-150 feet of wire, some good equipment, and potentially an artifact or two. In order to find these, pick a salt marsh tile, hop into it and explore the zone you get dropped into. If you find a ruin, village, or lair, you can safely go back to the world map; the flattened remains will never be there. While the path you take doesn't matter, here's one of the more efficient search patterns I use:

If you get unlucky enough that you don't find it after each of those tiles, don't forget about the 3 northern tiles not outlined, as it can be there uncommonly. You won't miss the remains, since you get a popup as soon as it comes into view, just be sure to auto-explore every tile until you find it. Return to Argyve and you can get those flappers fixed and identified for 8 drams of water total.

Making our way back to the rust wells, we can now reach the bottom quickly and, more importantly, leave just as safely and quickly. Depending on how much wire we retrieved, we may need to go to 2 wells but this strategy is very safe. Equip our mechanical wings, and instead of going down the stairs, we're just going to walk over the edge.

Don't fly at this point, there's no need and we can fall, which as Argyve's former apprentice demonstrated for us is not comfortable. Walking over the edge will only drop us 1 stratum at a time, which deals no damage. By doing this, we can go right to the bottom taking no damage. From here, we loot the wire (and the chest if there is one and you can) and fly out. While flying out, make sure you always have ground beneath you, like in gif.

This ensures that in the unlikely event that you do fall, you only fall 1 stratum and don't take any damage. Repeat for however many wells you need to go down, and if you have the Wings mutation, enjoy not having to search for mechanical wings and just go right here at your earliest convenience.