A new Guide to Antiquities joins our Alchemy Guide enhanced with a new method to discover all (including new) Alchemical Reagents' Traits and other updates since the launch of Greymoor! I've included a summary here, but more information is available on Sunshine Daydream's website...


Greymoor introduces another way to play the game: the hunt for Antiquities! Two new world skill lines, Scrying & Excavation, provide the methodology of the hunt after a tutorial quest acquired from Verita Numida in Solitude (Western Greymoor) which provides the Antiquarian Eye tool.

To find an Antiquity beyond the starter green item available in each zone supporting the new system (most zones) one needs a Lead. Leads can be found anywhere while doing nearly any activity in Tamriel. Once you acquire a lead, you can follow it by going to the appropriate zone and opening your Quest Journal to the Antiquities tab. Leads expire after 30 days, but can be reacquired.

If interested, you can learn more about each discovered item's history through the Codex. Some items are just treasure to sell to a NPC, but you can also find crafting motif chapters and furnishings!

SCRYING:

Scrying the location of the dig site becomes more successful with more nodes under your control within the game puzzle. The more nodes you connect to your area of control the fewer false dig sites show on your map.

Starting from the crystal at the bottom of the puzzle, connect matching symbols to reach the puzzle nodes. This starting crystal shrinks as you play and will warn you when you have 3 or fewer turns remaining.


Scrying skills such as Coalescence, Dilation, or Farsight makes this process take fewer turns but require Magicka Charges which are gained by expanding your area of control in the mini-game. Below is an image before and after using the Coalescence skill to make the anticipated match cover a much broader area, connecting from a player-controlled node to an uncontrolled node in one move.


The 3 crystals atop the Scry screen show how many Magicka Charges power the Coalescence skill (on the left), Dilation skill (in the center), and Farsight skill (on the right). Each use of these skills requires a Magicka Charge.


EXCAVATION:

After identifying potential dig sites through Scrying, travel to within the boundary of a dig site on your map then use the Antiquarian Eye from a Quick Slot to lead you in the direction of the dig site which sparkles a bit as shown below.


After finding an excavation mound within the dig site area, you're ready for the 2nd puzzle mini-game. The first step is to identify which portion of the excavation site is most likely to reveal the Antiquity. Using the Augur tool within the excavation site shows how close the Antiquity is. A green square shows that the Antiquity is directly beneath this area while yellow, orange, and red borders identify sections further from the buried item.

See the small plumes of smoke in the screencap above? Those are fissures. To not damage the antiquity, uncover it with the brush while avoiding any explosive fissures (fissures first appear with purple Antiquity items).

The trowel & shovel uncover more area, but their use risks damage to the item if they are used in too close a proximity to the Antiquity's location and depth. These tools are also severely limited since each use requires Intuition gained by using the brush. The image below shows how much Intuition each tool has available.


A fake timer above the name of the item you're excavating located atop your screen shows how many moves you have left; this is not actually a timed feature, but is limited by the actions taken during excavation, each of which reduces the time shown on the timer.


Uncovering a false dig site may yield nothing as the mound simply vanishes or may yield some small treasure although not the Antiquity itself. If you fail to successfully excavate an Antiquity at its true site, you will be pointed to another excavation within the same dig site where that type of Antiquity can be found.

FEEDBACK TO THE DEVELOPERS: @ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_GinaBruno

1. I wish the Quest Journal showed how many days left before Leads expire. It can quickly become overwhelming to try to keep track of which Leads are more urgent to pursue than others!
2. It would be nice if Scrying showed how many turns were left at all times instead of only when 3 or fewer turns remain.
3. Making it clearer that the Excavation process is limited by the amount of excavation done rather than a timer would be beneficial.