Elder Scrolls Antiquities System

Hey Friends! I am obsessing over a system in The Elder Scrolls Online called Antiquities, in part because I have a number of “Leads” that I have collected through doing content in the game that have expiration dates associated with them and I am afraid of missing out on something very cool. I had no real clue how this system worked, but watched several videos last night and as a result I am going to share that information with you. Nothing I am about to say is revolutionary if you already have a firm grasp on the system, but since I knew nothing I thought maybe also some of you could benefit from the knowledge. At a high level Antiquities is a system that allows you to find items out in the world, some of which will be worth money and others will be furnishings, mounts and in a few cases pieces of exceptionally high end gear. For those of you how have played World of Warcraft, this system is a lot like a more interactive version of Archeology.

Let’s start with the basics however. In order to interact with the Antiquities systems you are going to need to have access to the Greymoor expansion and more specifically you will need to travel to the City of Solitude in Western Skyrim. If you own the expansion the base Wayshrine just outside of town should be open to you. Rather than drag this out with three screenshots I created the triptych above to aid with this conversation. First you are looking for a building with an icon that looks like an Eye with Two Shovels crossed behind it. This is the Antiquities symbol and the door shown in the middle should be marked The Antiquarian Circle when you go to enter it. Specifically you are looking for Verita Numida who will give you the starting quest. This will walk you through a quick tutorial and give you your Antiquarian Eye.

Now you should have a tab in your quest log that is also marked with the Antiquities symbol where you store all of your “scryable” content. Every zone is going to have a green item that is immediately scryable and these generally sell for 250 gold when you eventually find them so not an awful source of pocket money. From there you will get additional “Leads” which should begin unlocking Blue and Purple variants in that same zone. Additionally while doing content in the world you have a chance of getting other leads as drops. For example if you look I have one called Ritemaster’s Slate that is purple in quality and flagged as advanced and requiring Antiquarian Insight rank 3 and states that it expires in 29 days and 19 hours. Essentially it is that last part that is leading me to dig into this system now, because up returning to the game I have been collecting leads…. some of which seemingly fairly rare and I don’t want them to go to waste.

Above I mentioned that the purple lead required Antiquarian’s Insight at rank 3, and that I did not have access to that yet. Like so many things in Elder Scrolls Online, this system is governed by a skill line or more specifically two different skill lines that appear under the World section. Much like opening lockboxes and chests increases your Legerdemain skill…. scrying and excavating leads levels your Scrying and Excavation skill lines. In order to unlock these fully with both skills at level 10, it would require a total of 31 skill points. However apparently once you reach rank 7 in both, you have access to attempt every lead in the game.

The first step is to scry the object using your Antiquarian’s Eye which is accessed by double clicking on a lead in your quest log. This brings up a grid like the one above… except mine shows an example of what it looks like when everything has been solved. Essentially there are different symbols on the board and you start at the needle protruding at the bottom and try and connect your dots until you touch all six stars. Later skills in the scrying line apparently allow you to swap symbols so that more connect allowing you to solve the puzzle in fewer picks. Ultimately you are given a fixed number of turns and you are attempting to connect as many stars as you can within that limit.

If you manage to connect all six stars within the move limit you get a single area highlighted on the map. If you only connect 4 or 5 then you will get multiple areas highlighted in blue. Each area will either be the final treasure or allow you to dig up another item that represents the “star”. You can apparently level from 1-7 in Artaeum pretty easily and that is effectively the defacto zone given how small it is and how relatively safe to run around freely. The next step involves going to the blue highlighted area and trying to find the dig pile. If you have ever done a treasure map, the dig pile is going to look very similar.

You can bind your Antiquarian’s Eye to a quick slot and when you are within the region outlined on your map in blue, it will render a blueish comet on screen. The “tail” of the comet will be pointing in the direction of the dig pile. Then when you find the pile it will have all manner of blue sparkles radiating from it. Especially in a small zone like Artaeum, the dig spots are going to tend to be the same handful over and over so once you get used to where they are located you can probably find them without using the quickslot item.

Once you open a dig it starts the excavation stage of the process. From here you have a handful of tools at your disposal. Initially it will be the scrying eye and your brush, but eventually you can unlock additional tools that will show up on the right hand side of the screen. The scrying eye pings the ground and gives you an impression of how close to the treasure you are. Orange if you are far away but going in the right direction, yellow if you are getting close and green if you are on top of the item. Once you find a green square you can begin brushing away the soil and revealing the treasure. You are given a “time” bar at the top of the screen and each action you take removes time from it. Your goal is to uncover the item as fast as possible so that you can spend the rest of your time digging for bonus treasure.

That friends is Antiquities in the shortest version I can supply. I am sure there are some finer points that I missed so feel free to include those in the comments. I am in the middle of leveling and right now my pattern seems to be to do a green lead which will unlock a blue lead… which allows me to gain a decent chunk of experience but then requires me to cycle back around to greens again alternating back and forth. From what I understand it is pretty reasonable to level from one to five quickly within Artaeum before needing to branch out into other zones. Each zone has a single purple lead that you can do once, and the idea being to hop around to all of the smaller zones knocking those out. At seven then you would need to focus mostly on legendary quality leads that you pick up from the world. At least that is my plan moving forward. Now time to run around a lot and dig a lot.