Archaeology

criteria
 Reward
 Goal

*"Travel to a dimension with lots of buried Relics. When starting this challenge, you'll be granted access to 5 special new upgrades called Relics that grant a compounding increase to your Attack, Breed Speed, Radon, Resource Gain (Food, Wood, Metal, Science and Gems), and one that decreases Enemy Attack. These upgrades all cost science and increase in cost whenever any of them are purchased. However, your Attack, Breed Speed, Radon, Resource Gain, and Enemy Health Relics all decrease by 1 Relic level every Zone and can go negative. All Radon drops have a base increase of +200% in this dimension. Completing **Z90** with this Challenge active will grant an additional +500% of all Radon earned. After the first time you complete this Challenge, you'll gain the ability to create maps with Small and Large Research Caches! After the second time you complete this Challenge, you'll unlock powerful customization for AutoGold."*

**Archaeology** is a new challenge introduced in the 5.3 update.

## Radon challenge

**Archaeology** is a Radon challenge. There are a few rules which are followed by each one of them:

* The Radon reward from this challenge can be obtained repeatedly for multiple challenge completions.
* Completing **Archaeology** will increase all Radon earned until zone 90 (including 90) by 6x.
* Radon earned from completing Void maps will also be increased by 6x for each Void map completed on zone 90 or below. More information here.

## Rules

You unlocks 5 new Relic upgrades, which can increase your Attack, Breed Speed, Radon, Resource(Food, Wood, Metal, Science and Gems) Gain or decrease enemy attack. Their base cost is 1e6 science and they use the same cost. Buying any of them multiplies all Relics cost by 1.1x. However, clearing a zone reduces all Relics level by 1. If it goes negative, you get negative bonus. The maximum Relics level is 50.

For Attack/Resource/Radon Relics, the formula is x1.05level.

For Breed Relics, the formula is x1.1level.

For Enemy Attack, the formula is /1.05level.

Note that the tooltip for Radon Relic includes the 3x base Radon gain. With 50 Radon Relics, you'll have a 34.40x Radon multiplier (+3340%). With the 6x challenge completion bonus, this is effectively a 206.4x Radon multiplier.

During this challenge, Archaeology Automator is unlocked to help you auto buy Relics. You can access it by ctrl-clicking any Relic upgrades. It can buy a Relic whenever the Relics cost is less than or equals to your % of total science. You also need to give it a string to describe what Relic to buy when it buys one. See the in-game help (or its copy below) for more information.

*The Archaeology Automator is any Archaeologist's best friend (once they figure out how to use it)! Below you'll need to enter a string for the Automator to parse. Your string should be separated by commas, and will indicate priority for Relic purchases.*

*An example of a viable string would be '-10a,5s,5r,10s,10r,5a'. **Use 'a' for trimp Attack, 'e' for Enemy attack, 'r' for Radon, 's' for reSource, and 'b' for Breed speed.***

*As previously stated, each rule (separated by commas) in this string dictates the priority of that particular upgrade. With the given example string, the Automator will first buy Trimp Attack Relics until they're at or above -10, then will attempt to get the Resource Relic up to positive 5 points, then it will do the same with Radon. Once all of these Relics lose a point, the Automator will go back and fill Attack back up to -10 first, then Resource back up to 5, then Radon back to 5, then will move on to trying to get Resource to 10. Each time points are lost in a Relic, or if the Automator string is modified, the Automator will start back at the first rule and work its way back up.*

Note: you can only have a maximum of 25 separate Automator rules for this challenge.

## Strategy

Before doing a proper **Archaeology** run for Radon, these are the suggested preparatory steps:

* Do an initial Archaeology run to pick up the Large Research Cache map option. This run may be done in Golden Battle, and may not specifically emphasize Radon gains. It's also a good way to learn the basic mechanics of the run. Suggested Relic Automator string: **-80b,50s,50a,50e**
* Get a science-focused Heirloom staff (Scientist Efficiency), and a food-focused staff (Farmer Efficiency).
* Get a health-focused Heirloom shield (Trimp Health and Prismatic Shield), and a maxed VMDC shield. Having a shield with Breed Speed won't hurt either. but isn't essential.
* Invest Radon heavily in Greed and Tenacity. Also, do not skip on Resilience, and be sure to leave enough free Radon to buy at least 40 points of Equality (likely you'll need even more, especially on your first try).

The broad outline of the strategy will be to run with maxed (50) Radon Relics for as much of the run as possible, acquire 1250 Tributes to maximize the Greed bonus, and run your Void Maps as late as you can, picking up all of the Radon multipliers. Void Maps will be the majority of your Radon, but the Improbabilities along the way are also a considerable source, so you *do* want to keep Radon Relics at 50 the whole time.

Relic priority should be Resources and Radon first (equally high priority). Third priority is to keep Enemy Attack at a decent level to avoid being destroyed, and fourth, Attack (to avoid going too slowly). The Breed relic can be ignored, or nearly ignored. Suggested Relic string: **50s,50r,0e,-80a**

By the end of the run, your Trimps' breed time will be ridiculously long, so you will want to avoid dying as much as possible. This means pre-farming the final prestige sets and resources to avoid needing to enter the map chamber in the final zones (other than for running Void Maps), and keeping Enemy Attack low. Use Equality as needed (40 or more points in early runs, less in later runs).

Remember that you do not always need to wait for full breeding before sending out an army. You can press **F** to send a group any time your population is above half full. You can also speed up breeding by firing all workers, equipping a Breed Speed shield, or both. (A good time for this is while you're inching your way through the start of a zone, while Tenacity is still building up.)

The outline of a manual run is as follows:

* Start with VMDC shield and Science staff. Get Radon and Resource relics ASAP. Keep Radon at 50 at all times. Keep Enemy Attack high enough that you don't slow down (somewhere above 0).
* Workers should be Farmer/Scientist first, then Miner, then Lumberjack. Exact ratios are up for debate. Share Turkimp with Farmers.
* Play mostly normally in the first part of the run. Farm LRC maps as needed to keep your Relics up.
* Get to zone 85, or thereabouts. This is where you'll do your major farming. Swap workers and Heirlooms and map types to acquire the following milestones, in this order:
	+ 50 Resource Relics (science)
	+ 1000 to 1250 Tributes, as many as you can feasibly get (food)
	+ 14-16 Smithies (metal, wood)
	+ Melting Point for Smithy 16-18
	+ Equipment levels as needed
	+ Science to buy Relics in upcoming zones
* Proceed to level 90, keeping Radon and Enemy Attack and Attack Relics at desired levels. You may need to farm a bit more science if you underestimated the amount needed, or if you prefer to farm it with extra Speedscience bonus.
* Do Void Maps at 89 or 90 (later is harder, but gives more Radon).
* Finish zone 90.

As you get higher Greed levels, you'll be able to get more Tributes, and thus a higher Radon multiplier. Higher levels of Tenacity and other combat perks will let you move the farming to a later zone, where it'll be more efficient.