ESO Antiquities Guide shows you how to unlock Scrying and Excavation, use the Antiquarian’s Eye and recover your first buried treasure in The Elder Scrolls Online. Start at the Antiquarian Circle in Solitude, Western Skyrim, where Verita Numida introduces both skill lines. You don’t need to hunt a rare boss or buy a lead to begin.
The Antiquities system is included with Greymoor, which becomes part of ESO’s base game on 19 October 2026. Until that change, you need access to Greymoor to unlock it. Having Antiquities doesn’t automatically give you access to other DLC zones where some Mythic fragments are found.
How to unlock ESO Antiquities in Solitude
- Travel to Solitude in Western Skyrim.
- Find the Antiquarian Circle near the Bards College and speak to Verita Numida.
- Accept the introductory quest, The Antiquarian Circle, and follow Verita’s instructions.
- Complete the Scrying and Excavation tutorial. This unlocks the two World skill lines and gives you the Antiquarian’s Eye.
- Open Journal → Antiquities to see which leads you can scry.
You can open the Antiquities Journal from the zone map as well. It shows leads you’ve found, leads you’ve already scryed and items you still need to excavate. A green starter antiquity is available in most supported zones, so it’s a good first dig before you go looking for rare loot.
How to scry your first lead
Go to the zone associated with an available lead, open the Antiquities Journal and choose Scry. The puzzle starts with a group of connected tiles at the bottom of the board. Select adjacent matching tiles to expand your territory towards the glowing points called foci.
Every focus you capture removes possible false dig sites from the map. Capture all the foci to narrow the search to the correct area, but you can still proceed if you capture at least one. You’ll simply have more potential dig areas to check. If you want a cleaner result, scry the lead again before heading out.
Completing the puzzle doesn’t give you the treasure. It highlights the area or areas where you can find the excavation mound. Open the zone map and travel into one of the marked areas.
How to find the dig site with the Antiquarian’s Eye
Open Collections → Tools and assign the Antiquarian’s Eye to a quickslot. Once you’re inside the highlighted dig area, activate the tool. Its glowing effect points towards the hidden mound. Follow that direction. The Eye has a 30-second cooldown, so move closer before using it again for another bearing.
The Eye gives you a direction, not a path through the terrain. If it points through a cliff or building, go around and activate it again. Look for a sparkling mound on the ground and interact with it to start Excavation. The Eye isn’t used to dig and it doesn’t automatically recover the item.
How Excavation works
At the dig site, use the Augur on different parts of the grid to find the buried object. Its readings indicate how close you are: green means you’ve found part of the antiquity, while other colours point you towards or away from it. Survey a few separated places instead of removing soil at random.
Once you know roughly where the object is, use the Hand Brush to clear the dirt above it. As you improve your Excavation skill line, you can unlock the Trowel and Heavy Shovel to remove soil more quickly. The Hand Brush also builds Intuition for those tools. Save the more powerful digging actions for places where they won’t damage the item.
You have a limited number of actions to uncover the main antiquity. If you run out, you haven’t collected it. You can find another dig mound in the search area and try again. Bonus treasures are optional, so concentrate on recovering the main object before spending actions looking for extras.
Scrying levels, lead colours and Mythic fragments
Both Antiquities skill lines progress as you excavate treasures. The Antiquarian Insight passive determines which rarity you can scry: green or Simple at the beginning, blue or Intermediate from Scrying level 3, purple or Advanced from level 5, gold or Master from level 7, and Ultimate difficulty at higher ranks. You need to invest skill points in the relevant passive rather than relying on the skill-line rank alone.
Most Mythic equipment needs five distinct excavated fragments. For each one, find its lead from the specified activity, scry it in the correct zone and finish the excavation. A lead sitting in your Journal, or a completed Scrying puzzle, isn’t yet a recovered fragment. Other Antiquities rewards can require different numbers of components; the Ebon Dwarven Wolf mount, for example, has seventeen.
Why Scrying or the Antiquarian’s Eye isn’t working
- The lead is locked: Check your Scrying rank and Antiquarian Insight passive.
- You can’t start Scrying: Travel to the lead’s associated zone; you must be there to scry it.
- The Eye isn’t pointing to a mound: Finish the Scrying puzzle, enter a highlighted search area and equip the Eye from Collections → Tools.
- You failed the dig: Find another mound in the search area and use the Augur to narrow down the object’s position before brushing.
- A Mythic fragment isn’t counting: Make sure you excavated it successfully, then check its completed entry in your Antiquities Journal.
For a quick start, work through the green and blue leads in zones you can reach. Once you’re comfortable with both minigames, you can move on to rarer antiquities or follow a specific Mythic’s lead list.
Related Guides
Official source: The Elder Scrolls Online Antiquities and Scrying support guide.
