Artifact Spot
| Artifact Spot | |
|---|---|
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| Type | Mechanic |
An Artifact Spot is the little knot of wriggling worms that shows up on bare ground overnight, and striking it with a Hoe always gives something. No other tool touches one, so the whole cost is a single swing and a step off the path. What comes out is decided by the map the spot stands on, which is why the walk to town and the walk to the beach pay in different goods. Artifact spots are the main supply of the museum's artifacts and of the Lost Books that fill the library shelves, and Winter brings enough of them to make a daily circuit of the valley worth the time. Clay, Stone and the odd lump of ore make up the ordinary haul, with rarer things layered on top of it.
Overview
A Hoe is the only tool that opens a spot. A Pickaxe or an Axe swung at the worms does nothing at all. The dig also tills the tile underneath. Away from the farm that tilled square goes back to plain soil overnight, but on the farm it stays tilled until the season turns, and striking it with an Axe or a Pickaxe restores it at once. The item inside is settled for the day before the farmer arrives, so loading the save again and digging the same spot gives the same thing.
Spots appear overnight on every outdoor map in the valley, Ginger Island included, and the rate swings wildly from place to place. Cindersap Forest and the Bus Stop produce roughly one every ten days, while the Calico Desert produces about one a day. Outside Winter they only form on tillable soil, the yellow and brown squares a Hoe can work. Winter changes both rules: the rate climbs across the board, and spots start forming on grass-type tiles as well, which opens up far more of each map. Those grass spots are all swept away when Winter ends, so the window closes with the season.
Leftover spots crowd out new ones. Two spots standing in an area overnight stop that area from growing any more, and on the farm a single one is enough to block the next. Winter relaxes the cap to five, which is the other half of why Winter digging is so productive. Any spot has roughly a fifteen in a hundred chance of vanishing in the night, so one left alone usually keeps for several days while quietly changing what it holds. Spawning runs twice on the first day of a season and three times over on a Sunday, and the Beach gets a flurry of its own in the middle of Summer. Spots never form behind buildings, bushes or permanent trees, nor on a tile holding an object, nor on tilled ground, so paving a field or filling it with machines slowly thins the supply.
The contents are drawn from an ordered list rather than a single lottery. A Lost Book comes first, and every map away from the farm carries a steady chance of one. Artifacts follow, drawn from a list the map decides, which is why a particular relic has a handful of places worth digging rather than all of them. In Winter the pair of buried vegetables comes next, Winter Root and Snow Yam, and that pair alone turns a cold circuit into a food run. Spring adds a small chance of Rice Shoots away from the Desert and the Beach. Once Gunther's bone order is accepted, bone fragments join the list, and during Mr. Qi's crop errand so do Qi Beans.
Below the rarities sits a list of plain resources, and this is where the place matters most. The Backwoods and the Mountain give Coal in real quantity, and the farm gives it too. Pelican Town, the Railroad and the Bus Stop lean towards Copper Ore. The Beach is the one place that gives Gold Ore. The farm turns up Mixed Seeds. Stone is possible anywhere, and Clay sits last on the list, which makes it the commonest result of all. That single fact is reason enough to dig everything in Winter, because Clay is what Deluxe Retaining Soil and Garden Pots eat. From the first Summer onwards a Warp Totem for the farm, the mountains or the beach can appear in place of the Clay.
Several extras are rolled separately, on top of whatever the main list produced. A Mystery Box or two becomes possible once the aeroplane cutscene has played, and the better the day's luck the better the chance. A Golden Animal Cracker becomes possible once Farming Mastery is claimed. One of the five skill books can turn up, each with the same slim chance as the others. A random cosmetic oddity rounds the set out. During the Desert Festival, every spot in the desert also coughs up a handful of Calico Eggs, which makes the festival grounds the best digging of the year.
Ginger Island runs its own system of three separate draws, so one island spot can pay three times over. The first draw offers Taro Tubers, an Artifact Trove or a Golden Coconut. The second is the same set of extras found on the mainland. The third works down an island list: Fossilized Ribs in the south, Snake Skulls and Snake Vertebrae in the west once the cave is open, bone fragments at the dig site once the bridge is repaired, then Mahogany Seeds, Wild Bait and finally an Omni Geode, which is a guaranteed floor. An island spot therefore never comes up empty.
Three tools bend the odds. A Hoe carrying the Archaeologist enchantment from the Forge doubles the chance of an artifact, although it leaves the Lost Book chance alone. The Generous enchantment gives many of the possible items a chance of coming out doubled. The Tracker profession, taken in Foraging, draws small yellow arrows at the edge of the screen pointing at any spot that is off camera, which turns a sweep of a big map into a straight walk. Best of all is the Treasure Totem, whose recipe comes with Foraging Mastery and whose cost is Hardwood, Mystic Syrup and Moss. Used on diggable ground outdoors, it plants a ring of up to sixteen spots around the farmer, and any tile in the ring that is already occupied simply stays empty. A totem set off at the island dig site with a Generous Hoe in hand is one of the best paid minutes in the game.
Notes
Carrying a Magnifying Glass adds an unseen Secret Note to the list, and a plain Stone takes its place when every note has already been read. Once the last Lost Book is on the shelf, that step of the list quietly becomes Mixed Seeds instead, so the dig keeps paying.
Villagers and farm animals walk straight over a spot without disturbing it, so one left standing beside a path is safe until the farmer gets to it. Claiming Farming Mastery shifts the day's result for every spot, which is worth knowing for anyone who checks the same spots each morning.
Many players simply call them worms, after the brown stems poking out of the soil, and an episode of Livin' Off The Land describes them in exactly those terms.
All Mechanics
Every entry in this group, with its key details.
