Scrying

To find an Antiquity one must follow Leads to any zone supporting the new system (most zones, specifically excluding Cyrodiil, Imperial City, & Blackreach). Leads vary in difficulty and expire after 30 days, but can be reacquired.

Leads can be gained through any activity and once acquired are displayed within the Antiquities tab of your Quest Journal. The first Simple (green) Lead in any particular zone is automatically Scryable once you enter its zone. Upon acquiring a zone's Simple Antiquity you will automatically gain a Lead on an Intermediate Antiquity; also the first time you gain an Intermediate Antiquity in any given zone you will find a Lead on a Master item.

Intermediate (blue) and higher difficulty Antiquities can reportedly only be completed once (although the Quest Journal states you require a new Lead rather than that it is already complete, so future experience through RNG may prove this false). I had heard rumors that all intermediate/blue and higher difficulty Antiquities could only be done once and never repeated, but have personally seen this proven false; for most antiquities you simply need to acquire another copy of that item's Lead. (How was it disproven? I have found 4 copies of a particular Master difficulty Gold quality item) However, there are indeed some antiquities (not sure which) that can not be repeated (now confirmed in patch notes for Stonethorn).

You can follow a Lead by going to its appropriate zone and opening your Quest Journal to the Antiquities tab, then hover over the chosen Lead on the Scryable items list and press E to Scry.

Scrying the location of the Dig Site becomes more successful with more foci under your control within the game puzzle. The more foci you connect to your area of control the fewer false dig sites show on your map. You will be able to excavate an antiquity with only one foci connected, but may need to eliminate several false dig sites before finding the item -- or you can simply scry again hoping to capture more foci.

Starting from the crystal at the bottom of the puzzle, connect matching facet symbols to reach the puzzle foci.

This starting crystal shrinks as you play and will warn you when you have 3 or fewer turns remaining.

Scrying skills such as Coalescence, Dilation, or Farsight makes this process take fewer turns but require Magicka Charges which are gained by expanding your area of control.

To the left is an image before and after using the Coalescence skill to make the anticipated match cover a much broader area, connecting from a controlled node to an uncontrolled node in one move.

The 3 crystals atop the Scry screen show how many Magicka Charges power Coalescence (on the left), Dilation (in the center), and Farsight (on the right) skills. Each use of these skills requires a Magicka Charge.

Excavation

After identifying potential Dig Site areas through Scrying, travel to within the boundary of such a site. Once within the boundary, use the Antiquarian Eye from a Quick Slot to point you in the direction of the Excavation Site which displays as a mound that sparkles a bit as shown below.

After finding an excavation mound within the dig site area, you're ready for the 2nd puzzle mini-game. First we need to identify which portion of the excavation site is most likely to reveal the Antiquity. Using the Augur tool within the excavation site shows how close the Antiquity is. A green square shows that the Antiquity is directly beneath this area while yellow, orange, and red borders identify sections further from the buried item.

See the small plumes of smoke in the screencap above? Those are fissures. To not damage the antiquity, uncover it with the brush while avoiding any explosive fissures (fissures first appear with purple Antiquities).

The trowel & shovel uncover more area, but their use risks damage to the item if they are used in too close a proximity to the Antiquity's location and depth. These tools are also limited since each use requires Intuition gained by using the brush. The image to the right shows how much Intuition is available for the trowel or shovel. You'll need at least the first measure of Intuition to use these tools; when the Intuition meter is full the tools dig deeper.

A fake timer located atop your screen shows how many moves you have left. This is not actually a timed feature, but is limited by the actions taken during excavation, each of which reduces the time shown on the timer. Each use of the digging equipment (brush, trowel, shovel) seems to reduce the timer by 18 minutes.

The number below the timer appears to show the item's quality which diminishes if you make too big a move too close. If it goes below 1 then the encasement is broken and you need to start a new excavation nearby.

The sizes of the area you need to uncover to successfully retrieve an Antiquity initially seemed uniform across each difficulty tier, but this was later disproven. Fully revealing one square will allow you to know what shape item you are looking for from the table below.

5 squares Treasure Antiquity, Intermediate Difficulty		5 squares Treasure Antiquity, Advanced Difficulty
6 squares Treasure Antiquity, Simple Difficulty		6 squares Treasure Antiquity, Intermediate Difficulty
6 squares Treasure Antiquity, Advanced Difficulty		6 squares Treasure Antiquity, Advanced Difficulty
8 squares Furnishing Antiquity, Advanced Difficulty		8 squares Furnishing Antiquity, Advanced Difficulty
8 squares Furnishing Antiquity, Master Difficulty		8 squares Furnishing Antiquity, Ultimate Difficulty
9 squares Special (motif) Antiquity, Intermediate Difficulty		9 squares Special (motif) Antiquity, Intermediate Difficulty
9 squares Special (bodymarks) Antiquity, Advanced Difficulty		9 squares Special (furnishing fragment) Antiquity, Advanced Difficulty
9 squares Treasure Antiquity, Ultimate Difficulty

Once you've revealed the item you're seeking, you can use remaining time to try to find bonus items. If you've invested in the Trowel II passive, one way to do this is to use fissures to expose large areas. Connect a path of uniform depth between some/all fissures without touching the main item. Once the trowel tool is fully charged with 2 charges, use the trowel to detonate any connected fissure. This will trigger soil and rock-clearing chain reactions of all linked fissures at the same depth. Beware however that this can still break the encasement of the item you've excavated (if it's too close? not sure why this happened to me as the tool's description says "safely").

Uncovering a false dig site may yield nothing as the mound simply vanishes or may yield some small treasure although not the Antiquity itself. If you fail to successfully excavate an Antiquity at its true site, you will be pointed to another Excavation within the same Dig Site where that type of Antiquity can be found.

A newly uncovered Antiquity is sent to be evaluated and rapidly returned to your inventory with a short description of the item on your screen. Take note that some antiquities (such as the Aldmeri Symphonia music box, dwarven wolf mount, mythic items) require finding multiple pieces before gaining the item in your inventory!

Final Notes: Feedback & Desired Improvements

1. I wish the Quest Journal showed how many days left before Leads expire. It can quickly become overwhelming to try to keep track of which Leads are more urgent to pursue than others! (Rejoice! This has been addressed by the addon Display Leads).
2. It would be nice if Scrying showed how many turns were left at all times instead of only when 3 or fewer turns remain.
3. Making it clearer that the Excavation process is limited by the amount of excavation done rather than a timer would be beneficial.

The following bugs have been noted by guildmates or through the forums: