Guide to Xenoarchaeology
The field of Xenoarchaeology is, in short, the discovery and proper excavation of artifacts and fossils from a bygone era.
Preparations
Required
- Immense patience.
- Excavation suit, for safe access to space.
- Depth Analysis Scanner, for observing the amount of stone to dig away when excavating.
- Toolpick set, for actual excavating.
- Hand pickaxe, for rough excavating, when there's too much rock.
- Pickaxe/Jackhammer/Plasma cutter/Drill, for digging tunnels towards interesting rocks within a sane time.
- Optical Meson Scanners, for spotting any ores nearby.
- Suspension Field Generator, for extracting rocks of interest from dig-sites.
- Wrench, to bolt the field generator to the asteroid.
Optional
- Mining satchel, for storing rocks, before putting them in an ore box.
- Ore box, for collecting ores.
- Tape measure.
First thing you want to do is suit up and grab all the required supplies in the list. Consider taking the optional items with you for your own convenience, they'll make life easier for you. 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, as 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.
Locating Digsites
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
| Tool | Excavation Depth |
|---|---|
| Brush | 1 cm |
| 1/6 Red | 2 cm |
| 1/3 Orange | 4 cm |
| 1/2 Yellow | 6 cm |
| 2/3 Green | 8 cm |
| 5/6 Blue | 10 cm |
| 1/1 Purple | 12 cm |
| Hand pickaxe | 30 cm |
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.
Hand Picks
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? Use your depth-analyzer again and look at the "Anomaly Material" section. Here is a list if the correct field usage for the type of Anomaly Material.
Suspension Field Generator Settings
- 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 composites.
- Phosphorus: Metamorphic/Sedimentary rock composites.
- Plasma: Anomalous materials.
Once you have the right field selected, turn it on. Now get out your depth-analyzer again and check the "Clearance above Anomaly Depth" section. Use the right excavation picks to dig away the clearance, and... 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. Just rescan it to see the new depth and repeat the process. (Just keep in mind what you've excavated already for your calculations.)
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
So 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 Xenoarchaeologists are hardly ever seen: the stuff discovered is literally worthless junk 9/10 times.
First off, each site is unique and can be one of several types, and each digsite type has unique items. The types, from left-to-right as most common to least common, are:
| Forest/Garden/Animal | Home | Technical/Scientific | Temple/Religious | War/Battlegrounds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|
|
|
|
A note on excavated items
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 blades: Fully functional and full damage (30); you'll shake if you wield it.
- Katana/Claymores: 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 stones: Fully functional.
- Sleepy pens: You have no way of knowing if it's a regular pen or sleepy pen. Although keep in mind, this is NOT the paralysis pen that the 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 Xenoarchaeology, and why no one keeps at it for long.
Caution
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; Xenoarchaeology is bugged and the machines used for them are broken.
Never-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 found something very rare. Some Xenoarchaeologists recommend just using the 2cm pick to slowly crack it open; while others will chance it with the analyzer.
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 Xenoarchaeology, 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.
For more information about what Alien Artifacts do check this page out Alien Artifacts.
Locating
To find these rare artifacts you will only need four tools although it is best to take your normal excavation tools as well, The four necessary tools are:
- The Alden Saraspova Counter, this is used to find your artifact.
- The Depth Analysis Scanner, for finding the exact location.
- The Pickaxe, for reaching the artifact.
- The smaller Hand Pickaxe, for excavating the artifact.
Once you have all of these you head outside and use your Alden Saraspova counter. It will first check the background radiation. When you use it again it should detect the nearest artifact and give a distance, your objective here is obviously to get this distance as small as possible.
Start by walking around and using your counter at difrent places to get an idea of the direction you should take. Dig in your chosen direction and try to get the distance below 5 meters, you will probably need to change direction quite often. This is where things get interesting as the artifact is probably very close, use your depth analasis scanner to see if a tile contains the artifact you are looking for, if it hums, dig the tile away and move on. If it pings, you have found your goal.
Now that you have finally found the piece of wall, your artifact is hidden under, so it's time to excavate it. Usually these tiles are also filled with one or more strange rocks so if you want to, you can excavate those too; although it isn't necessary. To go straight to digging up your artifact, use your hand pickaxe to dig all the rocks away. Eventually you should find rocky debris. Next, use your hand pickaxe again to carefully remove those too.
Your artifact will appear from below the rubble. Open your champagne bottle and rejoice with your probably non-existant Xenoarchaeology colleagues! These artifacts can do many things and you should experiment on how to use them, some work straight away while others need to be activated. Luckily, the research outpost has a large amount of items used for testing these special items.