Success! Ivory Blades is in the books, as is the tiger guild. Hoo-rah!
In case anyone was unsure, meeting Shelaste does save over reboots, so
run it whenever you're bored and have no exp on til you find her, then
level up at your leisure.

Dink calls for a dicing.
Jeskko rolls: 82.
Dink rolls: 49.
El rolls: 44.
Lurkku rolls: 41.
Shadowwar rolls: 39.
Angu rolls: 28.
Whogmag rolls: 3.
Seed rolls: 2.

With the help of that party, we managed the mobs with only minor
incident. Dink led the last bit (Fester's exp size is deceiving, he is
a pain!). Got it done though, and it is a party quest so take some
people with that need the quest. We had 3 lvl 48's by chance or fate, so
knocked out the quest for 3 of us at once. It took about 3 hours, but
we could have shaved some time off had I not went the wrong direction
once finding the end of the maze the first time. That was a fun (read: 
NOT FUN AT ALL) 20 minute mistake. A nun is useful for the last mob, a
druid is useful for fields because several use entrapment and AMF.

Besides the pain in the rear maze (clairvoyance and couple hundred low
coins recommended), the quest isn't too bad, aside from the pressure of
not being able to scout it out beforehand and figure out roughly what to
do. Few members had done it before so had some hints, but I did have five
people sending me tells plus party channel and I was trying to read
descriptions and make sure I didn't wipe the party.. gets a bit stressed.

Anyways, very hard is a good description for the quest. If you're going
to attempt it, take along plenty of firepower and at least one big solid
tank. Be prepared to be patient, some parts of it like the maze just take
a while to get through.

Thanks again to everybody who helped. Now looking forward to a few easier
quests. =>