Tips for artifact 'Golden Mask' and 'Skeletal Hand'?

[chris]

I'm quoting wiki "The Golden Mask is an Artifact that can be found by digging in the Desert." and "The Skeletal Hand is an Artifact that can be found by digging up an Artifact Spot at the Beach."

I literally go to Calico Desert and the Beach every day for maybe a year now and never found them.

Okay maybe I will eventually get the Golden Mask (wiki said 4% chance) since it's only been "a year" and I already get 6-7 'Golden Relic' (8% chance) there.


But my main question is the Skeletal Hand. I love fishing in stardew valley and probably already go to the beach hundreds times since year 1, and ofc I always hunting for artifact spot there since day 1. is the beach even the right place? are there any more place to find those thing?

Any tips would be much appreciate.

[goatbreath]

I have never found the skeletal hand at the beach. I have found it on the way from the farm up the path to the mountain, & another place, which I cannot recall atm

[Snow]

Just keep at it! Those artifacts can be a real pain. But you will get them eventually. I am trying to complete the artifacts on my first save and I have put in a few years already trying to find the last three. You just can't give up.

[BISSA CUCA]

I got my _only_ Skeletal Hand (6 years file) on the backwoods map, but i dug it in the road below, during winter! So keep your eyes on this part of the map when you go around, specially on winter, when the diggable spots are everywhere!

In all thoses years I've yet to find one at the beach.
Later I tried a mod to increase diggable spots, put the maximun variable, dug EVERY artifact spot on the beach and no skeletal hands ever appeared, in days. But in the backwoods I found 5 or 6, in the same test days. Of course it could be very bad RNG at work, but if you consider the difference in diggable area of the two maps, it made me think the Skeletal Hand might not even be available at the beach anymore.
Good luck!

[chris]

Wow thank you guys, sad I'm still in Spring now and last Winter I focus to much at the Desert and the Beach.

Excelent information tho, at least now I know another place to looking for, thank you very very much !

[Pristine1281]

I still have artifacts to find and I am in year 4. For me there's no rush. I've yet to get the 4th Dwarf scroll too. I think those are the only ones left I need for the Museum.

[Mrrshan68]

Surprised nobody has told you the trick to farming artifacts.
Just start a day as normal and ride around finding all the artifact spots, then if nothing good comes out of them just restart the day and this time simply ignore the spots (but record their positions).
The next day they will reroll the loot they drop (provided they didnt hit the 15% despawn chance).

This is the best way to make artifact farming a little less tedious but its still a really really bad mechanic.
The minerals are waaay better imo since its more controllable/farmable making you feel like you have some control as opposed to just ever worse rng.

[I Kinda Fail]

Can you get it from Fishing?

You can get the pirate perk, magnet bait and treasure hunter tackle, and about 1/3 fish will have treasure attached. It's a decent way to farm artifacts, if you don't feel like going to the mines.

[chris]

@Mrrshand68, wow thanks man, really glad i'm ask in this forum, got lot of great info now.

@I Kinda Fail, thanks man, I did have the pirate skill, magnet bait and trasure hunter tackle, and like I said before I love fishing and to be honest I do get tons of artifacts from fishing but never those 2 (Golden Mask and Skeletal Hand).
I don't know how reliable the wiki is, but it did said you can't get those trasure from fishing :(


@Pristine1281, I'm year 4 too and pretty much have everything now on my farm, so I'm hunting for achievement now. There's a good way to get all those Dwarf scroll, go to the mines level 93 (use elevator from level 90) then use bomb or hoe on dirt there (that place has huge area with dirt), keep repeating the process untill you get the artifact you want.
The artifacts that spawn there > Strange Dolls (both dolls), Rusty Spoon, Rusty Cog, Skeletal Tail, Dwarf Scrolls 1,3,4.

[I Kinda Fail]

I know I've gotten a skeletal tail from a fishing chest... It's dumb if they're from different places. Bleh. I'm never gonna finish the museum.

[Abalister]

I don't know if it's my luck or the way I play, but I've completed museum 3 times. My current playthrough (1.1), the museum was completed on Winter 27th, Year 3.

Funny thing is, I never wanted to find them, they just came to me. The last 2 artifacts (the 2 strange dolls), are always my last 2 to find, and I found them in treasure chests. 3/4 of all my artifacts came from fishing. And yes, the skeleton parts were the ones I got from the hoe, in the winter, near the train station and Linus' hut.

[chris]

Thank you very very much everyone, finally got both of them using all your tips.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=795858499

and after keep restarting the day for almost 2 months non-stop, finally..

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=795759093


now I can die in peace...

[Snow]

Congrats on finding those elusive pieces!

[goufalite]

For those arriving here from google, you can modify the save game to add more artifacts spots in an area!
- backup your save file (%appdata%/stardewvalley) This is very important because when you close the game it might upload a corrupted filegame in the steam cloud!
- go to the beach and look for an artifact spot, it must be surrounded by sand (no rocks, shells,...)
- open your save file and search for "beach", it must be in a <gamelocation> xml tag
- slowly search further for "Artifact spot", once you have one, copy somewhere else all the text including the <item> tags
- You can now duplicate this item block by changing the X Y coordinates. For the higher values you must do a simple division (in my case, 640 / 10 => 64) to find this number and adapt it to new coordinates
- put the new item blocks next to the one you found
- load
- dig
- ????
- ARTIFACTS!!

I slept one night with a lot of them, they are still here the next morning (only 2 disapeared)

[MickyOr]

it's been 2 years of just hunting and still no skeletal hand on the beach nor backwoods Thanks a lot for the info on the threat. Now the search will be much quicker ignoring the beach :)

[MickyOr]

Holy #$%&! Found it after just 30 minutes of hard searching with @Mrrshand68 technique, thank you guys so much! <3