How to progress after Lead seal

[Slippery Williams]

I turned the difficulty up after the bronze seal so I could earn more shards to unlock the lead one and I just beat the lead one. It looks like it takes 20 seals now and since I have more time to get to it am I supposed to meander around a bit more to earn enough seals or bee line on a harder difficulty?

Also I'm having a lot of trouble getting the third type of unlock resource (artifacts?). I heard I should start heading to the ? on the map screen to earn more, so shoul I work my way to silver roaming the map grabbing ? events to earn more artefacts to unlock my skill tree?

[mostly willing]

you could try to stay at your current difficulty, just doing more negative world map mods and picking Obsidian Box (one of the rewards for clearing a negative modifier) to get fragments. it also happens to be the solution to your second issue. you can do negative world map modifiers to get artifacts.
if you don't want to do negative modifiers you can just play at a higher difficulty

[arjensmit79]

Yes to get the resources for the unlocks, you seek out the question marks on the map. They will reward you with either the machinery or the artifacts. You will need lots of both, so it wont hurt to try and play every game on a location touching one of those map modifiers.

There should be enough time so you don't need to beeline straight for the silver seal. There are always 2 of them on the map. So look at the amount of years you have to get there. Estimate how many games you can play in that time. (you can round up since you get to start a new game even with only 1 year on the clock remaining) Plan a route towards the seal, visiting as many of the question marks on the road.

In one of the central paths on the unlock tree is one that gives extended vision on the world map. Beelining for this will help a lot as you can settle further away and be more effictive in choosing to settle next to the modifiers you like.

[Stübi Senpai]

Depending on the spawn what you can do is head towards a cluster of question marks to start collecting shards, and then use one of the royal resupplies as the "Increased embarkation range" to pivot towards the seal you want to do.

It's worth pointing out, you're not in a hurry, if you'd rather just spend a cycle or two just for unlocks you can do that on your current difficulty just fine. I did both seals on viceroy difficulty, unaware that you're allowed to go lower on the seals, and it was honestly way rougher than it needed to be.

[Slippery Williams]

Thanks for the answers

[WingedKagouti]

Originally posted by Stübi Senpai:

I did both seals on viceroy difficulty, unaware that you're allowed to go lower on the seals, and it was honestly way rougher than it needed to be.

It's worth noting that you only need to go for the difficulty dictated by the seal when you try the seal. If you can gather enough shards by taking on negative modifiers on a lower difficulty, that may very well be worth it.

[Ignosius]

Originally posted by WingedKagouti:

It's worth noting that you only need to go for the difficulty dictated by the seal when you try the seal. If you can gather enough shards by taking on negative modifiers on a lower difficulty, that may very well be worth it.

That said, the seals are harder than normal maps, so you should probably be sure that you're comfortable on that difficulty before attempting it.