Xenoarchaeology just doubled. I have opened four new dig sites, one under each of the zones the first survey never touched: the Network Sump, Debris Fall, the Fracture Verge, and the Hollow Floor, which is as far down as I have mapped and further than I would go alone. Twenty new artefacts are buried out there as a second series, and they surface rarer than the first set did. That is on purpose. The deep catalogue is meant to be a long walk.
The deep boards also read twice. Some cells carry a second, fainter number, and what sits under those is not an artefact: it is resonance, held in the ground like a sound that never finished. Dig it and it is yours.
What is in the update
- Four new dig sites - Network Sump, Debris Fall, Fracture Verge and Hollow Floor, opening between levels 62 and 80, three strata each, with new research for the deeper layers.
- Series II artefacts - 20 new artefacts on their own Collection shelf, and a new achievement for the complete catalogue.
- Echo cells - a second kind of reading in the deep sites, paying out Resonance in two grades. Fully additive; the readings you know are unchanged.
- Cell marks - right click a cell (press and hold on mobile) to bar it from digging. Your queue and idle digging both respect marks. Eight free per day, resetting at 00:00 UTC; extra marks cost a Resonance Trace.
- Idle digging continues past your queue, honoring your marks - a half-solved board finally survives the night.
- Deep Survey expeditions - a new Nexus expedition for xenoarchaeologists, up to four players, three depths. Pays in survey charges that chart readings and sharpen artefact odds, and sometimes a sealed Nexus Crate rides along.
- New drops in the deep ground: sealed crates turn up more often, and two new imprint types.
- Quality of life: the title picker sorts alphabetically, earned titles that failed to stick restore themselves on login, and the daily Delivery notices the day rolling over without a reload.
Recovered, unexplained
There is a carrier tone on the old survey band that was not there before. It loops what sounds like a catalogue of fifteen, waits, and starts again. It does not resolve for me.
And one recovered page ends mid-sentence, in handwriting nobody here recognizes: the record keeps whoever finishes it.
Dig.