Ruins are marked for searching — settlers with the “Sorties” job bring back items and shard dust.
Searched ruins can be dug deeper (for stone and planks). The finds are better there, but cave-ins happen.
Ruins are not endless. Once dug to the very bottom, nothing is left — they can only be taken apart for stone and ancient scrap. For new finds, go to other ruins, farther from the village. If the ruins are gone, the Trading post sells scrap, and ancient trace foundations sometimes yield it when taken apart.
Ruins come in different kinds: 🔭 Observatory — runes are found more often; ⚙ Workshop — more scrap, sometimes ingots; 📦 Storehouse — more stone and shard dust; 🏚 Dwelling — an extra item is found more often. Which kind you have is shown by the drawing of the ruins and in the ruins window.
At the bottom of some exhausted ruins a riddle of the ancients waits (on the map — blue lights in the corners). Obelisks: read the inscription and light the signs in order. A mistake — the obelisks go dark for a day. Mechanism: repair it with ingots, planks and shard dust. The reward is a legendary item, an arcane core and dust. Ruins that are taken apart take the riddle with them.
On the 3D map, a ghost of what stood here before the Shattering shows above searched ruins: the deeper they are dug, the more of it appears. Now and then on a clear night the ghost lights up fully — for half a minute you can see the ancient building as it was.
Caches of the ancients are hidden in the mountains. They are noticed when stone is mined nearby, and they open once the mountain is broken.
Mountains have different heights. The edge of a mountain is the foothills: you can walk there, but two and a half times slower, and you can’t build there. The middle is high mountains: impassable until broken ⛏ (a broken mountain becomes rock, then ground).
This guide is built from the data of the game “Oskolki” — a browser colony simulator on a floating shard among the ruins of the ancients. Play for free in the browser.