The Complete Antiquities Guide
- What are Antiquities
- How do I unlock the Antiquities Guild
- Scrying
- Scrying Abilities
- Excavating
- Excavating Tools
- Soil Layers – How deep are you?
- Leveling
- Power Leveling Scrying and Excavating
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What Are Antiquities?
Antiquities are items buried in the ground that can be valuable, useful, or beautiful! Items include:
- Individual treasures that can be sold for up to 100,000 gold to an NPC
- Furniture for your home
- Face and body markings
- Fragments that can be combined to create an amazing mount
- Mythic Gear and more!
How do I unlock Antiquities?
Step 1 of 3
Start by going to the small wooden outlook post overlooking the Dragonbone Bridge in Western Skyrim and read the quest starter.
Step 2 of 3
After accepting the quest, you will need to travel north-east to the town of Solitude and talk with Verita Numida.
Step 3 of 3
Verita Numida will have you grab the Antiquarian’s Eye from the nearby bench and eventually head downstairs to talk with another individual before stepping out the back door to perform your first excavation!
Do the quick scry puzzle, it will lead you out back. Get into the blue area on the map and use your Antiquarian’s Eye while standing still. A white orb will appear next to your character indicating the direction of your buried artifact.
How to open your Antiquities Log
You can find your list of leads by opening your Journal (“J” on PC) and then choosing the Antiquities tab.
Open your Quick Slot menu (press “I” to open your Inventory and then “Q” to open your quick-wheel on PC) and drag the Antiquarian’s Eye on to your quick-wheel and use it when you are at your excavation site.
Congratulations! You are now an antiquarian.
Scrying
Scrying is a mini-game where you start in the bottom center and, using a limited number of moves, try to form a connection to 6 glowing hexagons located around the Scry. You will unlock abilities to use on the scry as the difficulty increases. These puzzles will start off simple and eventually get much more difficult. Don’t worry, as you level up scrying, you get passives to aid you!
If you connect all 6 Hexagons successfully it will narrow the dig site down to a single location on the map. For each hexagon missed it will ad a possible dig location to the map.
Successful Scry
Since we connected all key points we only have one place to check.
Failed Scry : (
Here we failed to connect 3 critical hexagons, therefore we have 3 additional places to check.
As you see, you don’t lose anything if you fail the Scry, other than the time it takes to search the additional locations. So don’t stress! You won’t miss out on anything!
Scrying Abilities
Coalescence
Unites a cluster of facets in the Antiquarian’s Eye, converting the symbols to match that of the central facet.
New Effect:
The ability’s range increases by one facet, creating a snowflake-like pattern.
Consumes 1 Magicka Charge
Dilation
Claim all facets of the selected type that touch your area of control, as well as matching facets directly adjacent.
New Effect:
Dilation now claims ALL contiguous facets of the same type.
Consumes 1 Magicka Charge
Farsight
Claim a line of facets, stretching out from your area of control
New Effect:
Range increased from 4 facets to 6.
Consumes 1 Magicka Charge
Excavating
Excavating is pretty simple. First, you will move to the center of the area the Scry identified. Once there, use the Antiquarian’s Eye that you slotted on your quick-wheel to reveal which direction the treasure is buried in.
Step 1: Travel to Area
Step 2: Use the Eye
Step 3: Find Treasure
Step 4: Use Augur
Step 5: Dig using the following Excavating tools!
Excavating Tools
Here is a quick overview of the excavating tools and how to use them.
Augur
This is basically your metal-detector. It tells you if you are far or close to the MAIN treasure only. It does not detect the bonus treasures.
New Effect:
The effect depth and accuracy of Augur are both enhanced.
Hand Brush
Removes one layer on one square. Use this to generate Intuition. Intuition is the resource required to use the Trowel and Heavy Shovel.
Description
Removes a single layer of soil or rock while excavating. Also generates Intuition, allowing for more advanced digging techniques.
New Effect:
Intuition meter doubles in size.
Trowel
This works just like the Hand Brush, except it will remove 3 layers. (large rocks, small rocks, and soil)
Description
Removes a deep but narrow portion of soil and rock while excavating.
New Effect:
Use Trowel to safely detonate fissures and trigger soil and rock-clearing chain reactions.
Heavy Shovel
Removes an entire layer of large rocks, small rocks, and dirt in a 3×3 grid.
Description
Removes a full layer of dirt and rock within a large area
The shovel only affects a single contiguous height of dirt and rocks.
New Effect:
Heavy Shovel has a chance to consume zero intuition when used.
Damaging the Antiquity
It is possible to dig TOO deep and damage your antiquity, so it is important to know how many layers are between you and your beautiful treasure! The treasure sits in the bottom layer!
Make sure not to use the Trowel or the Heavy Shovel once you get too close!
All Soil Layers – Where are you?
Here is a reference in case you forget how many layers until your treasure! You expose the treasure at the bottom by removing the Level 1 dirt.
Leveling
How do I level Antiquities?
Each time you finish a full cycle of of both Scrying and Excavating an item, you will gain XP in BOTH skill lines. How much experience you gain depends on the quality of the item, as shown in the following chart:
Experience Required
| Level | Exp Req |
|---|---|
| 1-2 | 8 |
| 2-3 | 12 |
| 3-4 | 30 |
| 4-5 | 40 |
| 5-6 | 60 |
| 6-7 | 85 |
| 7-8 | 115 |
| 8-9 | 150 |
| 9-10 | 200 |
| Total | 700 |
Experience Earned
| Quality | Exp Earned | Scrying Level Required |
|---|---|---|
| Green (fine) | 1 | 1 |
| Blue (superior) | 3 | 3 |
| Purple (epic) | 5 | 5 |
| Gold (legendary) | 10 | 7 |
| Red (mythic) | ? | 10 |
Antiquities Power Leveling Strategy
Skill Points
You will need 27 Skill Points to max out the Scrying and Excavating skill lines.
Levels 1 through 5
For these Levels, we will travel to Artaeum due to its small size and churn through artifacts in rapid succession.
Level 5
Every new zone you do will give you 3 free leads allowing you to dig up one green, blue and purple artifact through normal Scrying and Excavation means giving you an easy 9 XP per skill line for each zone complete.
34 Zones at 9 exp each = 306 exp
Levels through 10
At this point, you can return to Artaeum for its efficiency due to its small size and grind out the remaining levels.
Contributors
Thank you Inkling for the leveling strategy!