Welcome to the most annoying part of the game! It took me ages to find the Chipped Amphora, my last artifact. Just pray that RNGesus is on your side. The wiki is your best friend, but these are the spawn locations for each artifact:
- Chipped Amphora – Dig spot in Pelican Town
- Elvish Jewelry – Fishing Treasure Chest
- Dinosaur Egg – Dig spot in the Mountains or Fishing Treasure Chest
- Golden Relic – Dig spot in the Desert
- Strange Doll – Any Dig spot, in the Mines, or Fishing Treasure Chest
- Prehistoric Rib – Dig spot in Pelican Town
Now… here is the strategy that gave me the most success and should hopefully work for you.
- Dig up any artifact spot on the map relevant to potential artifact spawn locations (for you, this would be Pelican Town and the Desert, Dinosaur Egg also has a chance to spawn in the Mountains so you can try there as well).
- If you dig up an artifact you needed, skip to Step 4).
- If no needed artifacts were dug up, reload the save to restart the day. This time, don’t dig up any of the artifact spots.
- Use the remainder of the day fishing. Any location works, but I preferred the Mountain Lake. You will want to equip the Magnet hook and the Treasure Hunter tackle. Make sure to eat a meal that buffs your luck as well. Using this approach, pretty much every cast will bring up a treasure chest and the luck buff will improve the odds of finding a rare artifact.
- Go to sleep and repeat ad nauseum. The artifact spots that respawned when you reloaded the save, they have a chance of persisting to the next day. And when they persist to another day, there is a new random roll and therefore a new chance to spawn a needed artifact. Using this approach, you can get several chances of digging up an artifact from a single dig spot. Also note that digging artifacts becomes much more useful in Winter since there are much more available dig spot locations.
Photo results:
Good luck!
Original Link – Continuation of discussion