"Acquire and deliver 11 alien artifacts" mission -- nearly impossible?

[2wit]

I took a 1.3 mil mission which required I deliver 11 alien artifacts. I accepted the mission near the beginning of the campaign and by the time the campaign was ending, still only had 6 of 11: 2 from mining, 2 from dropped cargo, 2 from purchase.

During the final sections of the campaign some ships drop alien artifacts, but the mission list is cleared (and I had abandoned the mission by that point anyway).

So what's the deal? Are some missions 'unwinnable' on purpose?

[ImHelping]

It's technically possible. It's just not worth the time and effort.

There is no penalty for dropping missions. Just drop it and sell off your artifacts at a station that buys them for better than average.

Now, a simmilar mission IS worth it at times. Most missions that want you to find protean shards/Grell stuff (Not Alien artifacts) will spawn quest markers with Grell ships, and some of those grell ships will be carrying them. Check the flavor text to see if it's one of those.

You know, in case you haven't gotten a shiny Blackgate full of all MK6 guns and still want to now that you've beaten the story.

[nightworg]

Alien artifacts are not that hard to find, so i don't understand you have so much trouble finding it. I'm pretty sure you are able to find them all just flying around in sector one. I have bought plenty of them, but they usually only sells in small numbers. like 1-3 each station.

[n=1]

Stations that have an archaeological find status usually carry several pieces of alien artifacts, and for quite cheap as well.

[2wit]

Originally posted by nightworg:

Alien artifacts are not that hard to find, so i don't understand you have so much trouble finding it. I'm pretty sure you are able to find them all just flying around in sector one. I have bought plenty of them, but they usually only sells in small numbers. like 1-3 each station.

Not sure. I probably checked 100+ stations across all of the different sections -- lots of them were buying but nobody had any to sell. Maybe the game made it more rare because I had that mission?

[d[-_-]b]

I had a collect 16 alien artifacts for 2.8 million once. It took me a while to complete to find them all. I just kept it in the mission list and continued playing the game, collecting them whenever they loot dropped or were sold at different stations as I did other missions.

[Anelyn]

It's easy really, just time consuming. You scout stations and buy them, trade with traders or kill them, or just mine them yourself over a long period of time :D

You won't normally find them for sale in same system, so spread your wings and fly - aka search in other systems hehe :)

There's a point to those missions why they pay so good - all time involving missions pay great - like escorts ^_^

[2wit]

My question is: does the game make items rare if you have a mission to collect them? If so, I think it made the item *too* rare. Not that the mission is cancelled it seems like the artifacts are available in about 1/3 of the stations but earlier in the campaign they just didn't have *any*.

[Anelyn]

No, despite at times it may seem like that. The mission is RNG based on what resource to aquire. For example you might be in a system that has tons of food - agricultural rich, but technology poor. And you get a quest to get 15 robots. You most likely won't find them there, and if you do find any, they will be overpriced.

It really pays off to pay attention to system type, then station type / government / special situation to get good information and use it to your advantage :)

[Kerensky]

Step 1: Find treasure ship event.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=551877120

Step 2: Trade with or destroy treasure ship.

Step 3: There is no step 3.

[2wit]

It's a good thing outer space is so crowded or else they'd be hard to find