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Archaeology Kit

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Ever wonder what’s under the ground in Windenburg or Sulani? Now you can find out. The Archaeology Kit mod expands the Sims 4 archaeology features from Jungle Adventure to work in every region (even Sixam).

Your sim archaeologist can now find almost 50 region-appropriate artifacts drawn from Sims lore in every world. Find medieval artifacts in the ruins in Windenburg, pirate treasure on the sandbars of Sulani, and ancient relics in the Magnolia Delta regions!

Archaeology Kit 2 is a massive update to the original Archaeology Kit with many new features, new game play and more Sim lore!

Features

  • Archaeologists of skill level 4 or higher can now Survey for Dig Sites in any world, just like in Selvadorada

  • Archaeology Site lot trait to randomly spawn region-specific dig sites to help you build your own archaeological site lots for beginning archaeologists or archaeology clubs

  • Almost 50 artifacts with backstories drawn from the lore in all Sims versions and historical eras

    • Menoset IX Period War Hammer
    • Komorebian Trade Vase
    • Yacothian Sword Rack
    • Hou Dynasty Pig Statuette
    • Brindleton Pirate Cutlass
    • Loot from Oasis Eleven Robbery
    • Buried Treasure Chests with more treasure inside
    • And many more

  • Artifacts are from ten different historical eras, each with their own unique legends and relics specific to the era. Regions contain artifacts from one or two different historical eras.

    • Prehistoric
    • Ancient
    • Shang Simla
    • Medieval
    • Komorebi
    • Sulani
    • Pirate
    • Modern
    • Sixam
    • Magic

  • Thirteen unique and powerful magical relics with legendary back stories of their own that can only be found on specific lots. Clues to find them are included in the game!

    • Wand of Lightning
    • Gloves of Thievery
    • Six Demon Bag
    • Hand of Simca
    • Yacothian Armor, +2
    • And more

  • Historical books that provide clues about where different types of artifacts can be found

    • The Ecclesiastical History of the Simlish People (Vol 1-3 & 8), by Venerable Smede
    • The Book of Hou, by Man De Zhao
    • Omiscan Book Of the Dead, by Felix Psyded
    • And more

  • New Sim Lore skill that provides the abilities to understand and use magic relics, read the Moon cipher and more

  • New Museum Docent venue staff in Museums give tours, answer questions, purchase artifacts, and provide missions

  • New Museum Contractor mission career provides 26 targeted missions (17 of which are repeatable) to find and authenticate different sorts of artifacts and retrieve legendary relics. Bonuses paid upon completion!

  • Three new magic spells uniquely useful to Archaeology: Identify, Divination and Dig.

  • Extensive in-game notebook integration to help you keep track of all of this stuff!

  • Archaeology Dig social event available

  • No overrides were used in the creation of this mod, Jungle Adventure features remain untouched!

How to use

This mod uses the same Archaeology Skill and same activities as Jungle Adventure. It enables your sims to Survey for Dig Sites (and then dig them up) in any region in the game. All current regions are set up to provide artifacts from specific historical periods in Sims historical lore.

If your sim has an archaeology skill of level 4 or higher, they can Survey for Dig Sites anywhere outside on the terrain. They can establish an excavation site once they find a dig pile, just like in Selvadorada.

If your sim has less than skill 4 in archaeology, you can add an Archaeology Site lot trait to a lot to have it spawn random dig piles on the lot’s terrain at periodic intervals.

  • Your sim dig up dirt clumps from the dig piles that have artifacts or magical relics inside.

  • You can click on the dirt clump or extracted artifact in your inventory and queue up an Uncover or Authenticate interaction on it. Your sim will route to a nearby archaeology table and begin work. When completed, the artifact will end up back in your inventory.

  • Artifacts can be sold for cash directly from inventory, on Plopsy, in a retail store or directly to Museums. If they are Rare they can be donated to the Simsonian Museum for increased fame and access to the Museum Contractor mission career.

Known Issues & Differences from Jungle Adventure

  • When you extract or authenticate an artifact, it ends up in your inventory instead of remaining on the archaeology table. This is by design, since it allows you to queue multiple items for extraction or authentication.

  • The Extract and Authenticate pickers on the Archeological work benches only handle Selvadoradan artifacts. I didn’t want to override those, and I didn’t like the idea of duplicates for this mod’s artifacts, so I skipped that functionality.

  • Unauthenticated artifacts are tinted darker brown, instead of having a stuccoed appearance. The name of the item will also begin with ‘Unauthenticated…’.

  • IMPORTANT: This mod conflicts with LittleMsSam’s Small Archaeology Overhaul mod. The symptom is that you won’t find any artifacts in the dig piles from this mod. You must uninstall the Small Archaeology Overhaul mod to successfully use Archaeology Kit. This mod provides some of the same behavior as the Small Archaeology Overhaul, in that it allows you to stack Uncover and Authenticate interactions by putting the finished product back into your inventory when it’s done.

Sims 4 Pack Requirements

Frankly, it needs a lot of them, primarily due to the objects used as artifacts. Some of them are needed for one or two animations for specific artifacts.

  • Jungle Adventure
  • Get to Work
  • City Living
  • Realm of Magic
  • Seasons
  • Pets
  • Paranormal
  • Get Famous
  • Get Together
  • Discover University
  • Island Living
  • Snowy Escape
  • Nifty Knitting
  • Bowling Night
  • …I may have missed some. I don’t have My First Pet, so not that one, and Batuu is not required (but if you have it, you can dig there…it’s a theme park just outside Del Sol Valley in my world, lol).

Additional Packs Used in Missions

The missions provided by the Museum Docents reference most of the regions that have maps. If you take a mission that requires you to travel to a region that you don’t have, you can cancel the mission. There aren’t any missions involving Moonwood Mill or Copperdale, but there are some that involve Tartosa and the rest of the regions.

Debug Cheats

Stuck in a mission? Bored? You can set the region, artifact era and rarity of any dirt clump or artifact by shift-clicking the item to show the debug menu. This will let you quickly give yourself artifacts with the correct source attributes to fulfill any mission (eg, Pirate era artifacts from Sulani, etc).

You can also ‘cheat authenticate’ an artifact by selecting Authenticate Immediately from the debug menu. This makes it a lot easier to populate museums full of Archaeology Kit artifacts, should you wish to do so (they make great places to analyze artifacts and increase Sim Lore).

If you run into a rare bug that might cause the archaeology table to become non-functional (you’ll know it if it happens), you can quickly replace the table for free by shift-clicking on the table and select Replace Table from the debug menu.

Translators Take Note!

I developed a new way to manage strings and STBL resources in my mods, based around the tools in frankkulakmods S4TK library. The result is that I have all the strings in this mod extracted into a single text file.

To translate it, all you need to do is replace the English text in the file with the translated text, and send it back to me. No special tools needed. I’ve attached the English strings in a separate download below.

Change Log

  • 2021-06-06, 1.0.0, Initial Release

  • 2021-06-08, 1.0.1, Inevitable post-release patch. Grammar and spelling corrections, reduced value of a few artifacts since archaeology isn’t usually a money machine. Also increased the chances of finding relics in certain regions.

  • 2021-06-10, 1.0.2, Fixed tuning conflict between two artifact eras that resulted in some empty dirt clumps. Fixed issue where pirate cutlasses weren’t draggable, so they couldn’t be dragged to the archaeology table. Made relics more likely to be found on the top of Mt Komorebi (since you need to go to the trouble of making the trip to find them…), also made finding rare books in Britechester more likely.

  • 2021-06-14, 1.0.3, Fixed exception when extracting artifact from Age of Pirates era dirt clump, Pirate Cask not being draggable, missing tuning on Brindleton Pirate Cannon. Also modified magical relics to draw on occult energy (or increase charge) instead of draining energy motive when used by vampires and spellcasters. Also decreased relic energy drain by about 20% when used by humans.

  • 2021-06-20, 1.0.4, Uncover Artifact and Authenticate Artifact interactions are now available from items in inventory. Sims will route to a nearby Archaeology Table, slot the item on the table and get to work. In both cases, the finished product is returned to inventory, allowing queuing of multiple Uncover and Authenticate operations. Removed Pirate Cannon and Komorebi Shrine from artifact finds for now, since they don’t easily slot onto Archaeology Table – they’re too big! The objects have been left in the distribution in case one of your sims already have one. Related note: You need to be an a medium or tall height room in order to authenticate the Yacothian Armor or the Neadersim Skeleton, due to their height. Outside also works. Game play improvements and bug fixes for several magical relics, artifact discovery distributions further tuned, spelling improvements.

  • 2021-07-20, 1.0.5, Fixes for patch 177.131.

  • 2022-06-23, 2.0b, First beta Patreon preview release

  • 2022-06-26, 2.0.1b, Added Send Away for Authentication interaction, more Moonwood Mill integration, added the ability to sell artifacts to Museum Docents.

  • 2022-07-07, 2.0.2b, New Sulani cultural artifacts, relic bug fixes and improvements, improvements to museum docent situation, improvements to Study for Historical Insights interaction, Brindleton Bay mission objective label corrected

  • 2022-07-17, 2.0.3b, Fixed Ancient era mission objective for Forgotten Hollow, further work on archaeology dig social event and museum docent interactions, increased chance of finding relics on specific lots from 1:25 to 1:15, some missions moved from level 2 to 3 in the museum archaeologist mission career, additional bug fixes

  • 2022-07-22, 2.0.4b, Converted Yacothian Armor and Komorebi Scroll to relics, finished drafts of three tutorial sections, bug fixes to relic interactions, as well as additional ones

  • 2022-07-27, 2.0.5b, Minor fix for patch 1.90.358, added DeathEater trait for vampires who read the Ordinary Necromancy relic

  • 2022-08-17, 2.0.6b/RC1, Added support for Copperdale in region artifact mapping and local history interactions, bug fixes

  • 2022-08-28, 2.0.8, Fixed bug involving autonomous excavations outside of social event, improvements to museum docent venue situation.

  • 2023-07-20, 2.0.9, Updates for Horse Ranch pack patch, fixed Archaeology-related spells.

  • 2024-03-09, 2.0.10, Removes inadvertent dependency on Batuu due to breaking change in tuning group ID semantics, bug fixes, dig spell fulfills Excavate-type objectives in Museum missions.

  • 2024-10-22, 2.0.11, Patch 1.110 Update

NOTE: Use the of custom spells included in this mod requires the Spellbook Injector V2, also available on this website.

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