Guide to Xenoarcheology

[Fox McCloud]

 

What is Xenoarcheology?

Xenoarch, is, in short, the discovery and proper excavation of artifacts and fossils from a bygone era.

 

What tools are required for Xenoarch

-Immense patience

-Space suit

-Depth Analyzer/Scanner

-Toolpick set

-Hand pickaxe

-Pickaxe/Jackhammer/Plasma cutter/drill

-Optical Mesons

-Field Generator

-Wrench

 

Strongly recommended:

-Mining satchel

-Ore Box

-Tape Measure

 

 

First thing you want to do is suit up and grab all the required supplies in the list---consider taking the others with you for your own convenience; they'll make life easier for---the Tape Measure in particular will prevent you from making mistakes if you don't have the greatest memory or have a temporary lapse in concentration. After you've gathered your supplies, you want to head on out to the asteroid itself; be sure to double or even triple check that you have all your goods; no other job class requires such a ridiculous plethora of items to accomplish so little--it's easy to forget just one tool and have to go back inside the station to get it.

 

Finding a Digsite

The actual process of finding a potential digsite is easy; just use your depth analyzer to scan any rock tiles; if it hums, then move on; if it pings, you're in business. Keep your eyes peeled for those brown rocks with white cracks in them; those tiles will always have something inside of them.

 

 

Excavation

This is the process that will rot away the minds of most Xenoarcheologists, as its tedious, math based, and requires exact precision.

 

Once you find a tile that pings, you'll want to take note on your depth analyzer just the very tile you're looking at (the most recent scan will be at the bottom). Here it will list the Anomaly depth, clearance depth, along with the type of find it is (potassium, iron, mercury, etc). The formulate for getting out the potential artifact is this: Substract the clearance depth from the anomaly depth; this number is the exact amount you want to mine out of the rock. How do you mine out that much, you say? Why with your handpick and pick set of course.

 

The hand pick and others are listed below, along with how much they clear:

Brush: 1 cm

1/6 Red: 2m

1/3 Orange: 4cm

1/2 Yellow: 6m

2/3 Green: 8cm

5/6 Blue: 10cm

1/1 Purple: 12cm

Hand Pickaxe: 30cm

 

First off, chuck the brush; all increments are always measured in 2, so 1 is being overly sensitive. So, you take out the proper picks or combination and being picking away...for example, if the anomaly depth was 60 and the clearance was 20, then you'd need to dig a total of 40: you could dig with 1/1 3 times, then once with 1/3...4 times with 5/6...the choice doesn't really matter; just pick precisely down to 40cm. If you forget how much you've excavated, this is where your tape measure comes in handy; it will tell you how much you've cleared so far.

 

Once you're down to this level, place the generator right up against the rock wall (with the circular disks facing it). Next, bolt it to the ground with the wrench. Swipe your ID to authenticate yourself, then open the menu up. What field do you want to select? It depends, upon what the field generator says---use this as reference:

 

Carbon - Trace organic cells

Potassium - Long exposure particles

Hydrogen - Trace water particles.

Nitrogen - Crystalline structures.

Mercury - Metallic derivatives

Iron - Metallic composites

Chlorine - Metamorphic/igneous rock composite.

Phosphorus - Metamorphic/sedimentary rock composite.

Plasma - Anomalous materials

 

Once you have the right field selected; turn it on, then get out your 1/6 (2cm) pick and excavate once more. Tada! A strange rock or potential artifact is now yours. If you follow this methodology, you will never destroy a strange rock. Now, turn off the generator.

 

From here, there may be 1 or 2 more potential artifacts in that tile (or there may only be 1). Just rescan it to see the new depth and repeat the process (just keep in mind what you've excavated already for your calculations).

 

 

Cracking Open Your Finds

Now that you've got a stash of strange rocks, it's time to see what's in them. Fortunately, as time consuming as excavating the rocks is, cracking them open is rather easy. Simple pull out a welder, turn it on, and use it on the Strange Rock. Tada, you got your item. On the rare case that sparks fly off the rock when this happens, try some acid on it instead.

 

Congratulations, you've now learned how to become a proficient Xenoarcheologist.

 

The Loot

 

Just what can you find at digsites? Is it exciting? Is it great? It has to be awesome to be so boring and painstakingly slow, right? RIGHT? Well....here's another reason why even veteran Xenoarchs are hardly ever seen; the stuff discover is literally worthless junk 9/10 times.

 

First off, each site is unique and can be one of several types--each digsite type has unique items. The types, in order from most common to least common are:

 

Forest/Garden

Animal-related

Home

Technical/scientific

Temple/religious

War/battlegrounds

 

Just what's within each of these sites listed here is what you can find, from most common to least common:

 

Forest: Plant, shell, fossil or beartrap

Animal: Fossil, shell, plant, beartrap

House: Bowl, urn (fancy looking 50 unit beaker), knife, Statuette (decorative), instrument (decorative), pen (can be regular or sleepy pen), lighter, box (can deconstruct for cardboard), coin, shards, rods, or metal

Technical: Metal, gas tank (can be filled with a random gas), teleporter beacon, random tool, shard, metal rods, handcuffs, beartraps

Temple: Cult robes, urn (fancy looking 50 unit beaker), bowl, knife, crystal, Cult Blade, soul stone, handcuffs, bear traps, katana, claymore, shard, metal rods, metal

War: Gun, knife, laser, katana, claymore, cult robes, cult blade, handcuffs, bear trap, tool

 

Ok, as you can see, the vast vast majority of this stuff is not that great. It's either decorative, or just an existing SS13 item with a unique description. There's a few standouts, however, that I'll explain:

 

Cult Blade--Fully functional and full damage (30); you'll shake if you wield it

Katanta/Claymore: Utter crap; despite claiming to be real, both are replica in nature and deal pitiful amounts of damage; might as well robust someone in the head with a toolbox--damage is only 10.

Soul Stone: Never found one, can only assume its fully functional

Sleepy Pen: You have no way of knowing if it's a regular pen or sleepy pen, as far as I know. Keep in mind this is NOT the paralysis pen that Syndicates use; this is just a pen with a lot of Chloral Hydrate in it.

Bear Traps: You arm them, someone steps on them and it greatly reduces their movement speed; cannot be removed without assistance.

Guns: Basically it's just a revolver with a unique reskin --usually doesn't have bullets; downside is there's only a 33% chance that it can be loaded with current tech bullets. There's also a 33% chance it could come with its own RANDOM number of bullets

Lasers: can be a practice laser gun, full laser gun, X-Ray laser gun (!), or Captain's laser gun (listed in order of most likely to least likely to find). Downside here is there's a 5% chance that laser gun will explode when used and a 10% chance it has an unchargeable cell. Additionally, a 15% chance of having a cell with a random amount of energy--elsewise, you'll have to charge it.

 

So...really, the only interesting finds are a cult blade, soul stone shard, and guns which have a high failure rate. Worst of all is its all down to luck where digsites are at and luck on what items will be contained within that digsite. This is why no one gives a damn about Xenoarch and why no one keeps at it for long.

 

 

A Special Word on Super Rare Artifacts

 

Once in a while you may mine a tile or improperly excavate it and be temporarily blinded, then hear a keening/thunder/etc type sound. What does this mean? It means you destroyed one of the most rare artifacts a Xenoarch could hope for. How can you go about mining these consistently? Well, you can't; Xenoarch is bugged and the machines used for them are broken.

 

None-the-less, when you excavate a tile, there's a chance you may find some "Rocky Debris". This is easy to miss as it looks like a bunch of regular rocks glued together. That said, if you find one, be sure to use your depth scanner on it; if hums, just destroy it....that said, if the depth scanner pings when you use it on rocky debris? Take a deep breath and calm yourself; you have something super rare. Some Xenoarchs recommend just using the 2cm pick to slowly crack it open; others will chance it with the analyzer. Personally? I've never Rocky Debris with something inside it yet.

 

Those Super Rare Items

 

Just what are these super rare items? Well...it's a surprise. Sometimes it's a rare object; other times it's an "Alien Artifact". I'll leave the rare artifacts a surprise, for now, but I will briefly discuss the "Alien Artifacts".

 

Alien Artifacts

These are weird relics that possess odd powers; it can take on any number of shapes, but they all do the same thing--when activated, they'll produce an effect. This is why there's all those odd tools in Xenoarch; to test how to activate them. Once you pin down what it does and how to activate it, you may want to extract its energy and put it in an anomaly battery and use it for your own purposes. Be very careful with these artifacts; very few of the effects they produce are beneficial.

 

And there you have it...a lengthy guide for a lengthy process. I can only hope that, one day, Xenoarch is fixed, and not some SSD-inducing job with almost zero results or benefits.

 

[cian2066]

i told myself i wouldnt bother making this thread, nice job doing it and you have some patience indeed

[KittyRIP]

 

Thanks for this!

 

Will help if I ever decide to try out Xenoarch... its on my list of jobs to learn...its right at the end but its definatly there...

 

[ZomgPonies]

Xenoarch updated, guide needs an update also.

[Eldrin-Kanthos]

I have tried to start Xenoarch today, noticed the guide seems dated.

[Midaychi]

 

---

Note: There have been updates and changes since this was written. Reconstitutions are actually useful now, alden saraspova counters are no longer useless hunks of junk, anomaly harvesters and analyzers have been fixed up and altered a little, some new large and small artifacts have been added, and some existing artifacts changed.

I am however too lazy to update this and the main body of this post stands.. so... happy hunting!

---

I'd like to add that:

 

1. Reconstruction of fauna fossils sort of works, but I think it always results in a random telescience monster that insta agros you. I've only managed to make those blue omnivorous things, and it takes a herculean effort to get enough fauna fossils for a single one in a round. Flora fossil reconstructor is broken due to a typo and/or an unimplemented plant fossil feature.

 

2. You should rock core a tile that you dig, so you know the age of the artifacts in it and what radiation it may or may not be emitting. That said, nobody really ever cares about artifact dates on paradise station, so this really only has the purpose of determining if you have something you can actually harvest energy from using the anomaly batteries. (Considering there's only four anomaly batteries, and they each have a random and very specific emittance that they can harvest from, your chances of actually managing this are pretty fucking slim to none.)

 

3. Has no guide to the radiocarbons, but they're pretty easy to operate after you fuck it up a few times. Keep the wavelengths matched, make sure to fill it with coolant before scanning, coolant is tungsten oxygen and water, also make sure to keep the seal integrity with nanopaste. Don't want contamination. The amount of coolant you need almost seems linked to the RPM of the centrifuge, but not quite. Best to start at 1 unit a second, increase it when the heat goes up till it starts going down, and occasionally experimentally lower cooling rate to save on coolant. Also don't forget to wear an excavation suit or anomaly suit. The scanners *do* put off radiation, and you'd look kind of dumb laying there gasping for air after you mutated your limbs off scanning a rock sliver.

 

4. You can stick a fauna fossil that looks like a bone onto a fauna fossil that looks like a skull or a skull with horns to start a skeleton. Then stick more fauna fossils that look like bones on it until it says it's complete. Then use a pen on it and name it the chicken-gobbler-erectus or something.

 

5. *Always* steal a pair of latex gloves from the anomaly suits area. Do not go excavating for large artifacts without them.

 

6. Super ninja ancient xenoarcheologist trick: When you reach the artifact's radius and have the field generator on, instead of just using a red pick.. read how far the radius is and use that exact size of pick on it. So if the radius is 8, use an 8 pick on it. 12, use a 12. Etc. You'll dig the artifact out directly and will never get strange rocks.

 

7. Some artifacts you can dig up will either hum or repeat what they hear around them in some form. This includes bowls and alien skeletons and whatever else. Best use for these are putting them near open intercoms and hiding in a closet nearby, using them to confuse the fuck out of the AI.

Also, some of the artifacts can be deconstructed. Especially some of the guns or the sleepypens.

Addendum: Some objects have uses. Like knives, tools, I've even found a telebeacon disguised as a useless object.

 

8. Large artifacts can hide under any tile. Sometimes they're the only thing in a tile (usually only hidden tiles) but most of the ones I've found are buried under normal artifacts at the very bottom. When you scan a tile and see that 0 dissonance 0 center unknown radiation thing, drop everything and grab your coring device and core the tile, then grab your hand pick (Note: the 30cm one). Then just wail at it till something falls out. You don't need the stabilizer or anything to get large artifacts out. Scan the rock sliver later to find if you got the lucky one that matches a battery (you can check by sticking batteries in the energy harvesters and checking their designation)

 

There are a number of large artifacts you can find. There's the preset ones: Gigadrill, hoverpod, autocloner, replicator, crystal, construct shell, ninja crate, cult pylons, the wishgranter, and supermatter/super matter shards.

There's also the randomized ones, which are just unknown artifacts.

The anomaly scanner will often give you incomplete or false information on the full secrets of unknown artifacts, but I'm not sure if this was intended or if its because it's Caelcode. Always make sure to check all the vectors for additional activations or effects, especially if the scanner doesn't say anything about a secondary subsystem. I've had an artifact that slowly healed burns to those around it turn out to be an artifact that severely damaged people if they touched it with bare hands.

Also on paradise, some unknown artifacts that require energetic interaction with surface (Stun baton active, multitool, etc. Note: Energetic interaction has a few variations. Stun baton/multitool etc are only one type of energetic interaction.) can't be activated because the use code is broken. Works fine on baystation though.

 

Gigadrill: activate it by touching it. Push it against a wall, watch it slowly dig at slug speeds. Walk away disinterested.

 

Hoverpod: A ripley-speed engineering pod with no mount points and a weird sprite/sound with some stupid custom movement code. Dump in robotics.

 

Autocloner: A device that automatically syphons power from the nearest apc and slowly generates a mob on its own. It can't actually be used for cloning people. It only produces one mob, and it does it forever, but very slowly.

33% of the time, stuff it in a locked room and bolt it because it's spawning space bears or something, the rest of the time: run a pet factory.

 

Replicator: Use it to see the panel, and press a button. If you pressed the right one, it slams shut and eventually produces a random-ish item. Then I'm not 100% sure if it just has a long cooldown, or if there's code to delete designs from it if you press the wrong one. The one thing I do know is that I usually find one of these near round end, print out a wrench or a table part, and then frustrate at it clunking at me.

 

Crystals: Giant paperweights. They don't do anything besides look pretty and get in the way. NOTE! Some unknown artifacts masquerade as large crystals, so make sure to scan it first.

 

Construct shell: Does exactly what the cult version does, because it *is* the cult version. Dig out a soul stone shard too, nab a willing assistant, stuff it in and make an artificer. Construct your own non-cult round mini cult, or construct your own cult to fight off the existing cult.

 

Ninja crate: It's a crate containing a ninja book and the full ninja equipment. Self explanatory: Read it, put it on, get murdered by the HOS instantly while trying to RP a NT ninja.

 

Cult Pylons: The only large artifact that you can't move. I'll be honest; I don't play antag in cult rounds and I generally avoid being culted, so I have no idea what you can do with these. I'm sure someone does.

 

Wishgranter: Never found one of these, but supposedly it makes you superhuman or something. I remember back on tg when it was first introduced as a hidden room find. I think it used to antag you and do some other things too. They removed it/nerfed it a day later caus' some miner kept finding it and abusing it to annihilate rounds.

 

Supermatter/super matter shards: Exactly what it sounds like. Refer to an engineer to not get annihilated.

 

Unknown artifacts: these are artifacts that usually have a random of a set of sprites, and have one or two activation methods. The first activation method always works, and the second activation method usually activates a subsystem (Secondary effect) instead of the primary system (primary effect), but also usually only has a 25% chance of activating per exposure to the activation method.

 

I have also noticed that the act of digging out an unknown artifact sometimes activates one of their systems, primary or secondary, despite not being exposed to an activation method. Not sure if there's a way to prevent this or promote this or anything, just seems to happen randomly.

 

Methods of activating unknown artifacts: (WARNING: wear the full anomaly suit. Including the hood and latex gloves and science goggles. The excavation suit is only partial protection to artifacts.)

1. Exposure to one of any of the atmospheric elements. Only need one, and in high concentration. (use the isolation rooms for this)

2. Heating the air around the artifact, or cooling it. Usually need extreme temperatures.

3. Shooting it with that handy dandy emitter there in the anomaly lab, or a laser gun, etc.

4. Shooting it with bullets

5. Touching it with your ungloved hands (Reason for having latex gloves)

6. Using a multitool/active stun baton/ various other electric methods on it (Currently broken)

7. Using a welding tool or a lighter on it

8. Smacking it with a heavy object (Hand pickaxe works well.. for some reason. :V)

9. Having a cyborg touch it with no module active

10. Splashing it with water

11. Splashing it with acid

12. Splashing it with toxins

13. splashing it with plasma or thermite

 

-- Be sure to have a captive awake assistant monkey nearby strapped down for testing effects, and remember: If you're wearing the full anomaly suit, you probably won't be affected by the artifact activation.

 

There are many effects that the unknown artifacts can have, and you should try and find them all!

They're usually either: To toucher, a pulse burst effect to an area, or a small aura around the artifact (usually right next to)

 

They're also usually either helpful, or a harmful variant of that helpful thing, or a completely harmful thing with no inverse variant. There's also a few misc effects, and I'll spoil two: One freezes the air around it and the other is a force field.

 

Extra notes: Unknown artifacts won't always visually activate when their effect is triggered. This is especially true of secondary subystems. However, most (but not all) of the effects will give messages to entities not wearing anomaly gear and being affected. The upside is that you can take your gear off and try and get a message for a hint at what the effect is, (or cyborg, if is a synth affecting effect). The downside is that you need to expose yourself to a potentially harmful effect to get the message.

 

Mining cyborgs have most of the tools required for excavation; just grab a stabilizer and go at it. Main disadvantages currently: No measuring tape or coring device, so you have to keep track of depth and hope no human excavation scientist flips a lid at no rock slivers. Also, no ability to carry or store items you find, so expect to be leaving crap everywhere unless you find something interesting enough to drag back or have human assistance.

 

Finally, plastic bags are the most robust belt-slot carrying item for excavation. They make the excavation belt not worth using.

 

Edited June 21, 2014 by Guest

[Midaychi]

 

Addition: After further playing I've discovered that the anomaly batteries actually adapt to whatever wavelength you expose them to.

If you get your large artifact fully activated, primary and secondary, it should allow you to charge any of the four batteries on it instead of saying interference.

.. The problem is that they don't seem to do anything in the power utilizer things. I have no idea what to do with the batteries, but they definitely can be charged!

 

I have also discovered that physical or energetic interaction with surface *can* but doesn't always involve chemicals.

 

[Qinetix]

You have to get them prepared beforehand with some fukken minigame I don't quite understand involving core samples or something.

[Midaychi]

You know it's a great mechanic when you have access to the source code, and still don't know wtf is going on.

[Midaychi]

 

Fun new information:

Don't need some silly rock stuff for batteries. Just need the artifact effect that you want to suck out be active when you harvest. On-touch stuff and stuff that's not sustained is a little tricky to get, but you gotta spam and hope the harvester picks it up.

 

Good news!: Someone fixed the alden saraspova counter!

Bad news!: Pretty much every digsite has a radiation, large artifact or not, and the same person also made digsites absurdly common and jam-packed with artifacts. Yay?

 

[Qinetix]

 

Fun new information:

 

Good news!: Someone fixed the alden saraspova counter!

 

 

 

[Midaychi]

 

Changes from my big post:

 

1. Alden saraspova counters work now, kinda. They update whenever it 'clicks', so its slightly counter intuitive readings, and the distance is purposely randomized within a small degree so you'll get wildly different readings sometimes.

Find a reading, get close to it, figure out what hidden or not hidden, and dig it out with a hand pickaxe (or the normal way if you care about the small artifacts in it)

 

2. Due to #1, finding large artifacts has become very easy. Due to RNG, despite unknown artifacts having a spawn weight of 1000 and supermatter/shards having a spawn weight of only 5, people have still been finding them.

You should be fine in an anomaly or excavation suit from all the effects except heating the area up. Just don't walk into it or you'll get disintegrated. MAJOR PROBLEM, though, which has existed even before the latest changes... it's just nobody really found these so often before. They will go critical if not quickly put into containment. Refer to supermatter containment or call an admin to avoid ending the round AS SOON AS YOU FIND ONE.

 

3. Fossil reconstitution don't work. Well it do, but it won't accept valid fossils, so it mechanically doesn't.

 

4. Anomaly battery harvesting has been fixed up and improved! It works properly and intuitively now. Don't even need to know the radiation. Just stick any anomaly battery, input artifact in the scanner port, and harvest dat radiation.

 

Just make sure only the effect you want to harvest is active. It'll say there's interference if there's both active sometimes and you have to shut one down. Unfortunately, most effects that are instantaneous will drain the power utilizer's charge at incredulous rates (going from 300 to -15,000 at the blink of an eye) even if you max out the duration and interval. The only effects that work drain 100 charge at max duration/interval per interval active (and sometimes even more for some bizarre reason). The only one I've really gotten to work properly with the handheld utilizer is force field. On a side note; you can actually bug forcefield into existing permanently with the handheld by turning it on and then quickly shutting it down, even if the handheld is out of charge. It'll leave the forcefield there but it won't move with you. Draining the power from a harvester works as intended though, it seems. Unfortunately they're immobile!

 

5. There have been changes to some large artifacts, and some new ones added. Apparently you can get some neat but rare artifacts now involving vampires? I haven't found any, but I have found the replicators.

Apparently, the replicators and the autocloner were changed up. Not sure how the autocloner works now, but I know the replicator is interesting?

All of the buttons make something now, and it requires a material to work with. Unfortunately, ANYTHING you put in works as a material (Leading to frustratingly feeding it my hand pickaxe). It mostly produces various things around the station; I've seen one make rollerbeds, bone setters, empty comms headsets, empty crates, cleaner grenades, all sorts of things. It's pretty neat because you can feed it pieces of paper and get useful objects, made out of paper! Paper roller beds!

 

Unfortunately there's also a small chance for the buttons to print telecoms monsters disguised as objects. Killer closets and metal crates, to name a few. One time got a viscerator made of paper. INTENSE PAPERCUTTING ACTION.