Did you miss the Archaeology livestream on March 24th? You can catch up with all the news right here, or alternatively head to the bottom of the post to watch the entire thing!

So far on the Road to Archaeology, we’ve taken you behind the scenes to show you what you’ll actually be doing in this brand new skill, as well as where it’ll be taking you in Gielinor. In this week’s stream, we looked at the rewards you’ll be receiving for participating in Archaeology.

Relics

Relics are brand new items that provide you with various benefits no matter where you are in the game world. In order to unlock their powers, you have to take them to the Monolith at the Archaeology Museum and spend a certain amount of Monolith power, depending on just how powerful the relic is.

Relics can be found by exploring dig sites and completing collections of artefacts, among other things.

You can select which relic powers you want to have active at any given time.

Relics have two costs associated to them: Monolith Energy and the Chronotes currency.

The amount of Monolith Energy you can have grows as you progress. At level 1, you have 150 but by the time you reach level 90, you’ll have 500.

"Relics are one of the main reward spaces for Archaeology. You can find relics throughout the game. You can find them via methods such as training the skill, figuring out a mystery at a site and you can also get them from collectors." ~ Mod Ryan

Ancient Summoning

At Archaeology level 68, you’ll unlock Ancient Summoning at the Infernal Source dig site. Similar to regular Summoning, this allows you to call forth a familiar to help you out, but there’s a twist. Ancient Summoning sees you making a blood pact with the demons of Infernus. If you defeat creatures while carrying one of these contracts, you’ll be able to bring them back as a familiar.

The hell hound is the lowest-level ancient familiar, requiring level 45 Summoning. It takes 10% of all damage for you.

The highest-level ancient familiar is the ripper demon, complete with its death jump skill which does 350-times its max hit. This creature can be used at level 96 Summoning.

Summoning XP comes from capturing and using familiars rather than pouchmaking.

Pouches are tradable, so you can trade your way into Ancient Summoning.

"The ripper demon familiar mimics the actual ripper demon's effects. It's special is the death jump. Of course it's not an insta-kill, but still deals a lot of damage." ~ Mod Iago

Ancient Invention

Through the Archaeology skill, you’ll be discovering more about the advanced civilizations from the past and you’ll be able to reconstruct some of their technologies. This part of the new skill is unlocked at level 70 when you can go to the Stormguard Citadel and find blueprints for new items like the Autoscreener. This allows you to automatically screen soil when excavating.

Archaeology introduces four new materials called ancient materials. What were previously referred to as ‘ancient’ materials have now been renamed as ‘Third Age materials’.

Both tradable and non-tradable blueprints can be found. Tradable ones require more materials.

Ancient Invention allows you to make ancient gizmos, which are an evolution of the gizmos found in regular Invention.

Rather than using the five-cross grid from Invention, Ancient Invention uses a nine-slot grid which can lead to new perk tiers and permutations.

Ancient materials can also be compacted into a material crate which stores them. These are tradable.

"If you want to train Archaeology and not touch any of the Invention stuff, you can, but if you are someone that just trains Archaeology, you can still create the blueprints because that's actually a crafting requirement. Once you've created them, you can trade them on and sell them on if you don't have the Invention level to actually use them. ~ Mod Ryan “Archaeology has its own path. You don't need Summoning and Invention. They are reward aspects you can’t take advantage of if you have the levels." ~ Mod Ryan

Other Rewards

In addition to those already mentioned, there are still a few more rewards you can pick up on your Archaeology adventure. You can find the Tetracompass if you discover the four pieces that comprise it. It points you towards treasure! There’s also the Hero Mattock which provides a number of benefits when training Archaeology.

You can get the Archaeology skilling outfit at level 70, while the elite outfit can be picked up at level 99. These are tied into the qualifications mentioned in the 10/3/2020 livestream.

There are also a number of world-firsts in Archaeology. If you’re the first person to solve a certain mystery or hit certain levels, there’ll be a broadcast to celebrate your achievement.

"There are a lot of rewards in this skill beyond what we’ve been able to cover. This time we’ve added more levelling benefits, something we learned from the Mining and Smithing Updadte. When you level up in a gathering skill, the higher level you are, the more successful you are at doing an action. There are certain levels you want to try and get to and they naturally improve aspects of the skill." ~ Mod Ryan

The RuneScape Team