Don't TLDR me! First off, let me tell you my horrific back story prior to collecting all museum artifacts. I needed 3 items around year 6 to complete my museum collection. Palm Fossil, Chipped Amphora and the Prehistoric Tibia. I tried relentlessly until around year 11 ish and gave up. I'm now on year 16. I read so many forums about methods so believe me when I say I have tried EVERYTHING. It was driving me nuts to the point where I started hating the game because of my OCD. To make matters worse, I have two collections, one in my home and the museum so I always found duplicate items. The first, I would place in my home and then I’d donate the dupe. So the fact that I wasn’t able to even find a single trace of these items let alone 2 each was disheartening. As for every other artifact, I have at least 20 of each item, some up to 80 in my dupe artifact chest. I know luck doesn’t play a role and the game decides what’s under the worms at the save point in the previous day. That being said, my last attempts have been to start the day immediately getting worms and if they don’t produce what I need, quit/relaunch the game and play the day normally without getting those worms so the next day-save, it’ll either re-populate with a different item or it’ll disappear entirely. (15% chance of disappearing). I tried this for 2 in game years and nothing. No trace. It’s almost as if the game was “stuck” and only gave me a select 10 artifacts all the time. Plus clay and seeds of course, because we need plenty of those, right? Enter last night around 10pm. I found a new method and it made sense to me because it went along with my “purging the game” thoughts after so many failed attempts. And guess what? IT WORKED. In 3 weeks in-game time I found 2 Chipped Amphora, 1 Prehistoric Tibia and 1 Palm Fossil. Not only that, the game was producing artifacts I hadn’t even seen/collected since around year 6. ALL CREDIT goes to this fella by the name of “Kohmei” that I found on a Steam forum which I’ve posted the link to below: https://steamcommunity.com/app/413150/discussions/0/385429254937033528/ Now, I took their instruction and made a few changes because there are some little things I added to make it easier. Again, I know luck has nothing to do with it, but do it anyway! If I said by licking my hand and smelling it afterwards that it got me all artifacts, would you do it too? I BET YOU WOULD…because I would too. Get to Fall 28. PRIOR to this day, it’s very important that some things are already taken care of. 1. I waited until Fall 27 to clear out ALL debris from the entire world and cut down trees. This allows for maximum worm production because they will pop up in places you have never seen during this process. And having no trees just makes it easier when worms decide to popup right behind where a tree “would be” if you hadn’t cut it down. (If you have nothing to do on Fall 28, you can do this as well but for me, I did it on Fall 27. NOTE: Your farm isn't included in all of this so please don't go hacking down 10 year old trees that produce iridium fruit. 2. Make 28 of each of these items: - A luck food. (I specifically used Pumpkin Soup. Just needs Pumpkin and Milk). - Rain totems. 3. Make a chest and place it next to your bed. I slapped mine in my bedroom near the door so I could at least get out of bed fine. 4. Mental awareness! This will wreck your farm stats if you’re a rancher. I had 5 hearts on all animals which is about 72 animals so that’s a lot of work I’ll need to catch up on but…ALL ARTIFACTS is worth it. Once all of the above is ready to go and it’s Fall 28, go ahead and go to sleep to make it Winter 1. When you wake up, quit the game and make a BACKUP SAVE FILE. If you’re on a PS4, just upload your game save to your Online Storage. This is if for some reason you don’t get absolutely anything, which I highly doubt, you can restart the game save at Winter 1 and go again. This is how you’ll spend your winter: Winter 1: Wake up, get out of bed. Eat luck food. Use Rain Totem. Go to bed. Winter 2: Wake up, get out of bed. Eat luck food. Use Rain Totem. Go to bed. Winter 3: Wake up, get out of bed. Eat luck food. Use Rain Totem. Go to bed. Winter 4: Wake up, get out of bed. Eat luck food. Use Rain Totem. FARM FOR WORMS! This is repeated every 3 days and the 4th day is worm hunting. During the worm hunting process, it’s very important to also clear ALL forage items you find as well. Everything you see, pick it up. If you start not having room, just trash it but they have to be off the ground by the time you go to bed again. So by the end of each worm hunt, there should be no worms and no forage items in the entire world. (Those of you with trackers might have items you can’t see but that’s fine as long as you get everything you can reach). IMPORTANT: You must hit the desert as well each day so map your worm hunt so you hit the bus stop no later than 5pm because Pam will leave to get wasted. This is how I run: - Check farm area first to clear out worms. - Run down towards Marnie's and proceed to check secret forest and all of Cindersap. - Proceed to town past Leah’s towards Jodi’s and Haley’s. - Check beach and entire town area. This includes near and above Clint's and Joja Mart. - Proceed to the big open area around the park and the community center but don’t go up to Robin’s yet. - Then go back towards the bus stop taking the road near the Pharmacy. - Hit the Desert. - Go through your farm and take the north route up and over to Robin’s. Be sure and check all around the mountain lake as well as the Quarry. - Lastly, hit the railroad. Once your worm hunt is complete, go home and dump your inventory into the chest you made near your bed and go to sleep. Again, the days will be like this: Winter 5: Wake up, get out of bed. Eat luck food. Use Rain Totem. Go to bed. Winter 6: Wake up, get out of bed. Eat luck food. Use Rain Totem. Go to bed. Winter 7: Wake up, get out of bed. Eat luck food. Use Rain Totem. Go to bed. Winter 8: Wake up, get out of bed. Eat luck food. Use Rain Totem. FARM FOR WORMS! NOTE: On Winter 8 you'll notice that the rain totem didn't work as it'll be sunny. That's because there's that ice event party thing-a-ma-bob so just avoid going down to Marnie's area for two hours and it'll disappear. I think it's from 9am - 11am but if you go during that time it'll wipe your whole day afterwards. I usually just run the worm hunt backwards and hit everything else including the desert first before going to Marnie's area and Cindersap. It’s every forth day in Winter that you hunt worms which gives you 7 tries total. Last day being on the 28th. When I was doing it, there were so many worms it was incredible and I was finding artifacts I hadn’t seen since year 6. I “feel” like all of the rain and picking up all forage items helped purge the game/worm spots somehow, but of course, I don’t know for sure. All I can say is, the fact that the game was giving me items I hadn’t seen is a huge sign that something was working. I found the Chipped Amphora and Tibia in the same day and the Palm Fossil on Winter 28. Another note, that if you DO find what you need, say on Winter 12 or something you’ll need to create a new backup save. So when you go to sleep the night you find something, just quit the game when you wake up so it saves what happened yesterday and re-save/overwrite your previous game save backup. Then re-launch the game and proceed! This entire process took about an hour and a half so it wasn’t that bad. It flew by because it was actually FUN. Plus it was cool to have it raining during winter lol. I’ll be going again next winter because I still need my dupes for the Tibia and Palm. If anyone has tried this and failed miserably still, I’d be interested to know because this method had results for me that were like night and day compared to everything else I tried. I just wanted to post this because I know how BEYOND FRUSTRATING it is and this post by Kohmei has saved my game and mental state! I truly hope it helps anyone else out that needs it. EDIT: Forgot to add the most important requirement! Santa hat...
UPDATE: Fast forwarded to Fall 28 to try and go for my dupe collection but didn't get them this time. However, I STILL got all of the following in the 7 days of worm hunting: 3 rusty spurs 3 rusty spoons 1 glass shard 2 prehistoric handaxe 3 arrowheads 1 ancient drum 1 chicken statue 2 golden relics 1 golden mask 1 prehistoric rib 2 prehistoric tools 1 dried starfish 1 prehistoric scapula 2 ancient dolls Restarting from my backup save in a few days to try again, going on vacation WAHOO!!!!!
Okay back from vacation and was able to run it one more time to get everything I needed for my dupe collection. Just wanted to update everyone. Love this method!!!
I know this is way late, but thanks for this post. I tried it, and while it was half successful, it was still better than what I had been dealing with. HONESTLY, I feel like the level of rarity depicted in percentages on the wiki has no bearing. I have played several files of this game, and always find that last 2-4 artifacts to be almost impossible to get, regardless of how rare they are. I don't know how programming works and stuff like that, but I can't help but feel the setup is really, really bad. Especially since artifacts are location specific. For something so hard, I don't think the rare artifacts should be location specific. I was missing the skeletal hand and golden mask. Your method got me 3 of the masks. Prior to reading this post, I spent an entire 2 seasons of going to the desert DAILY, and still never got the mask (even though it's supposed to be 4%). In Kohmei's method, I don't know how large of parts the (1) rain, (2) luck, and (3) winter specific conditions factor into finding artifacts, but it's such a grueling task with hardly any return I don't know if I want to continue trying in other seasons as well. Unfortunately the skeletal hand still evaded me this winter. Maybe next year.... It's just really discouraging.
I'm super happy this was able to help you, at least a little. I had completely forgotten about this post! Just keep at it! But only do it when you feel the hunger for grinding. I used to do this while being frustrated and it makes it THAT MUCH MORE FRUSTRATING when you fail. On a side note, these days when I see worms on the ground (I'm @ year 48), I chuckle to myself and still dig them up. After completing everything, I did stay away from them for a while like the plague.
Thanks for the reply! I admit I posted that after feeling exasperated with my bad luck, hehe. But the whole point of enjoying Stardew Valley is to play to no final end, if you will, and complete achievements along the way. I will just focus on living on the farm and saving up money for the gold clock, and when winter comes around again, I'll give it another try! After all, your guide got me the golden mask ;-) Got to love this game. Never gets old. And thanks to you, I found an informative post on how getting artifacts work in the game and it makes much more sense now. Thanks!
I’m going to try this. The only artifacts I need are the prehistoric tibia and the palm fossil which only appear in the train area and cindersap forest, respectively. I’m at the middle of summer at the moment, so it will take a bit, but I will let you know how it works out.
Yes please keep me posted! I hope this ends up working out for you! Sorry I wasn't able to get to this sooner.
i've completed the museum in my first year ...i think....i'm not sure...the way i did it...you go in the winter, more worms...after that you dig up those worms, see if you find anything that you like, in an area that you know it spawns that certain item...if youi don't have worms in that area, move to the next day, until you get worms in that area...if you do have worms, you reset the day, move to the next day and check them (they should have different item)...repeat the process until you get what you need
Interesting idea. Worms are so rare for me in the train station area that checking the same patches more than once is very attractive. I think I’ll combine this with the OP’s and have an even better chance!
Alright, sorry it took me awhile. I’ve been distracted with other games for awhile, but tonight I finally did it! I kind of screwed up the beginning. I cleared the entire world on Fall 28, but I forgot to eat my pumpkin soup and use the totem (fail). However, I may have been distracted because I actually found the Tibia on that day, so that only left the Palm Fossil which spawns in Wintersap. On Winter 1 I cleared again and used a soup and totem. I ate soup and used totems 3 days in a row and then went out. I found a decent number of worms, but all the artifacts were the most common ones- arrow heads, chicken statues, funny dolls, that kind of stuff. I cleared the world again and went to bed. After using a few more soup and totems, I checked again on Winter 7. I just went straight to Wintersap and found only 2 worm spots. I checked them, found nothing, and reset the game. I took a totem and soup, went to Winter 9, and checked again. Now there were 3 worm spots, but still no Palm Fossil. I cleared the whole world and tried again. On Winter 11, I had great succcess! Sort of. I found 2 Tibias in the train area. Which would have been great if I hadn’t already gotten it on Fall 28. Now I was starting to get worried. I was running low on totems and didn’t have resources to make more. I cleared everything one last time. Then I started checking Wintersap every day. If there were worms, I dug them up and checked. When I didn’t find the fossil, I reset the day. Then I would go back out and clear everything EXCEPT the worm spots in Wintersap. Then I would proceed to the next day. Using this method, I was able to check, reset, and preserve the worm spotS. I eventually got up to about 7 worms spawning in Wintersap. Finally, on Winter 22, I found the fossil. I’m very happy to complete my collection, but man what a pain. Overall, I think this method does result in more than the usual number of worms, and using the check and reset can help with targeted searches. Would I have found the fossil eventually anyway? Probably. But using these methods allowed me to search and find in a single sitting. My overall artifact finds were very similar to what OP reported back in October 2017. All props to chatwincakes and kidkid123. They are legit.
I can sure relate to the frustration that would lead one to take this burn-the-whole-world-down approach to collecting artifacts. I've been playing this game since the beginning. I had just spent an entire year looking everywhere for a bone flute (unsuccessfully) when I decided to do a little data collection on my past efforts. I have played 4 different games and have played for a total of 16 "years." In those 16 years I have found two bone flutes - but both of those were in the second game. The Stardew wiki says I had a 0.5% chance of finding one in town and a 1% chance of finding one in the mountains or forest, as well as a chance of one popping up in a treasure chest. It seemed just hysterically wrong that three of my "personalities" could never find even one, despite racing everywhere, keeping my eyes peeled, and ignoring my other responsibilities. As it happens, the following "spring" I found one. It was right out in the open, where trees never grow and debris never collects, near where you can catch "The Legend" fish. It just appeared right in front of me. I might as well have never wasted all that time looking for it, right? All I wanted was that one extra stardrop, dangit. I also found that in the previous games, I had never found 3 of the fossils. In my current game, I've repeatedly found all of them. I take this as a lesson in probability - if it is this hard to find the bone flute with better than a 1-in-100 chance of finding it, imagine how fruitless it would be to "try" to win the lottery by buying a whole bunch of lottery tickets! I have notoriously bad luck in general, which may explain why going to the Skull Cavern on a lucky day, eating a lucky food buff, and having the Special Charm still aren't enough to find me a single hole to jump down. I seem just as likely to have good luck on a really bad-luck day. Now that I have all the stardrops coming to me, I wonder why I cared so much. I still die in the Skull Cavern under swarms of serpents. My energy levels are great, but even as a Defender my HP can't withstand the extreme levels of danger that have been built into the newer versions of the game. I suspect that going to the Skull Cavern is now just an exercise in frustration without access to the gaming devices that CA is now building it for.
