A short while after the completion of the Second Trial of AQL, you’ll be asked to locate the Third Trial of AQL. Unlike the first two, however, this one is a little different.
As with The Second Trial of AQL, it doesn’t give you a waypoint like the first one did. Instead, you’ll need to solve a riddle and study a clue from your journal.
To start, go to your Journey tab and click on The Third Trial of AQL. Hit "View Trial Location" to bring up a painted mural and a short clue:
"Para-west of the great hammer of Mirzabah... a table of stone for God's feast... turn para-north from its bounty and seek the cave of the purple eye"
Third Trial of AQL Location
You’ll find it in Western Vermillius Gap, which is the other northern zone above Hagga Basin. Once again, it's close to a shipwreck, this time, The Wreck of the Pallas. From here, we need to head southwest, being careful not to attract the worm on the way down. You can see in the images below that the Wreck of the Pallas is the blue object on the top left of the image. The best idea is to use the large rock that separates the two zones and approach it from the southeast.
Be aware that there are a large number of drumsand locations here, with many covering huge areas, so pay attention to dark red patches of sand and avoid them at all costs. Both ways of getting to this rock formation will see you cross a fairly large portion of the desert.
As with previous AQL trials, you'll need to find the cave entrance and clear out a few enemies. With any luck, someone else has been here already. For context, on our playthrough, we actually stumbled upon this quest by mistake, and weren't aware we had even done it at the time.
And there's a reason for that, you see the third AQL spice station has been damaged, and isn't actually here.
Head to the altar and interact with the transmitter to get some flavour text and continue to progress the Trials of the AQL. We can now head towards the Fourth Trial of the AQL as we move towards the end of this early game main story mission.
