Alien Artifacts (aka Error Cubes) seem nonexistent

[MattPieti]

My player rank is currently 81, my characters are promoted a total of 7 times and range from levels 14-21 in their current promotion cycle, and I have all other item collection trophies except for Bittergems, which I have at 9/10. I'm even close to 100 solo missions, and I did not use any glitches/exploits to make team missions count as solo. Yet I still only have 1/5 on my Alien Artifact trophy, which I think is from a game I joined. I know what to look out for on the walls. They just refuse to show up for me despite the trophy being almost three times as common as the Bittergem trophy. I'm guessing this is just terrible luck for me so far, but out of desperation, I figured I'd ask if there's anything at all I might be doing wrong or failing to do for them to appear.

 

Update Feb. 15: Looks like this post was the key to getting them to spawn. I've seen two in the last two days since making this post. Looks like trophy progress doesn't update on this site until I fully unlock another trophy.

 

Update Feb. 16: This isn't directly related, but I wanted to share. Just got my last Bittergem in a really lucky seed. The map had a Cargo Crate, Lost Helmet, Bittergem, and Compressed Gold Chunk. I was playing in private matches with the intent of making them public if I got a Bittergem or Error Cube so I could let someone else share the glory, so someone else joined and I got my trophy as soon as they deposited the Bittergem. Incidentally, I'm also at 4/5 Error Cubes, so I'm hoping pretty soon all I'll have left is my promotions and 500 missions. I'd mostly just been waiting for them to come naturally since the promotions are the real grind, but I got a bit impatient and started specifically hunting these.

Edited February 17, 2022 by MattPieti

[HuntingFever]

It's pure luck as to when and where the Error Cubes, Bitter Gems and Compressed Gold show up since they only have a small chance of spawning, thus your 1 and only option is to keep playing the game and look out for the tell tale signs that one is nearby. Playing missions with the Mineral Mania modifier will slightly increase your chances of finding the desired item but it is only a tiny increase.

Edited February 13, 2022 by HuntingFever
Update.

[Messknecht]

I have to admit I haven't found any of the items the last 2 weeks. 

 

maybe it's bad luck, but I found 7Bittergems,16 Gold, 3 Errorcubes, in the first 2 weeks of playing. ?

 

[ZeromusF4]

They are just exceedingly rare, I found one last night so they still do spawn.

[MattPieti]

1 hour ago, HuntingFever said:

It's pure luck as to when and where the Error Cubes, Bitter Gems and Compressed Gold show up since they only have 1-in-21 chance of spawning, thus your 1 and only option is to keep playing the game and look out for the tell tale signs that one is nearby. Playing missions with the Mineral Mania modifier will slightly increase your chances of finding the desired item but it is only a tiny increase.

I'll keep an eye out for Mineral Mania. Thanks. Small detail: I think 1 in 21 applies only to Bittergems. The Compressed Gold Chunk trophy requires 20 of them, yet is more than twice as common as the Bittergem trophy, which only requires 10. I wasn't able to find an exact rate for Compressed Gold listed on the Wiki, but I think it's safe to say they're more common. Error Cubes, on the other hand, are listed as 1 in 26 on the Wiki.

[HuntingFever]

2 minutes ago, MattPieti said:

I'll keep an eye out for Mineral Mania. Thanks. Small detail: I think 1 in 21 applies only to Bittergems. The Compressed Gold Chunk trophy requires 20 of them, yet is more than twice as common as the Bittergem trophy, which only requires 10. I wasn't able to find an exact rate for Compressed Gold listed on the Wiki, but I think it's safe to say they're more common. Error Cubes, on the other hand, are listed as 1 in 26 on the Wiki.

Thank you for the correction - I must have been looking at the wrong page .

[Messknecht]

14 hours ago, ZeromusF4 said:

They are just exceedingly rare, I found one last night so they still do spawn.

Can confirm. 

 

I've found one too last night. Even if they rarely spawned for me the last weeks, statistically  I am still on track. 

[ClassyCaptain]

I think that if you had to collect 10 of these, just like with the Bittergems, it would be way less common. The RNG Gods have been kind to me when it comes to the Error Cubes (I actually managed to find two in a row during the first week), so I do already have this trophy, but it is a pain in the ass...

[scribblestick]

I've got the trophies for Compressed Gold, Bittergems, and Alien Artifacts. Mineral Mania missions have a very high chance to spawn one of the three. Look for Mineral Mania missions on Point Extraction or On-Site Refining missions, which are usually on one big room with a few side paths. You can load into the mission solo as a Scout and quickly run around the entire map in a couple of minutes, looking for one of the three rare minerals. If you don't see any, leave and start the mission again. For other mission types, the rare minerals tend to spawn most often in the room with the objective, such the Heartstone in Escort or Drop Pod in Salvage.

 

RNG can be a harsh mistress. I went almost two weeks without seeing another Bittergem, then found my last three in one day.

[psycho_clank314]

I've found three of them yet only one bittergem in over 100 hours

[MattPieti]

On 2/15/2022 at 2:01 PM, talkingwires said:

Mineral Mania missions have a very high chance to spawn one of the three. Look for Mineral Mania missions on Point Extraction or On-Site Refining missions, which are usually on one big room with a few side paths. You can load into the mission solo as a Scout and quickly run around the entire map in a couple of minutes, looking for one of the three rare minerals. If you don't see any, leave and start the mission again. For other mission types, the rare minerals tend to spawn most often in the room with the objective, such the Heartstone in Escort or Drop Pod in Salvage.

I can't confirm exactly how much of an effect Mineral Mania has, but other than that, this is great advice for finding things that may randomly spawn in missions, such as Cargo Crates or machine events to fill Blank Matrix Cores. Of course, it works for the trophy-related things as well.

[rdhight]

It feels like error cubes disappeared for 2-3 weeks, then came back a couple days ago. Weird.

[Drunk-x-Viking]

i have found alot more in solo games than multiplayer 

[avatary1985]

Lucky for you, I have found only 1 cube and my trophy bugged at 0/5

[dieselmanchild]

I’ve actually found a cube so far, but it’s the bitter gems that seem nonexistent to me. I haven’t seen any yet. I’m a little worried about these rng trophies cuz you could be stuck playing forever, which historically has usually been the case for me with trophies like this lol.

[Messknecht]

46 minutes ago, dieselmanchild said:

I’ve actually found a cube so far, but it’s the bitter gems that seem nonexistent to me. I haven’t seen any yet. I’m a little worried about these rng trophies cuz you could be stuck playing forever, which historically has usually been the case for me with trophies like this lol.

 

Don't worry, they will spawn and you will be done long before you promote your last dwarf to gold. 

 

Edited May 5, 2022 by Messknecht

[dieselmanchild]

8 minutes ago, Messknecht said:

 

Don't worry, they will spawn and you will be done long before you promote your last dwarf to gold. 

 

I sure hope so. You’re probably right. It also felt like compressed gold chunks were really rare at first, but now I’m finding them every few missions. And they barely glow too so I’ve probably missed several more without realizing it.

[dieselmanchild]

Isn’t it funny how making a post or comment complaining about something like this is often the remedy you need? 
 

About 2 hours after posting that comment the other day, I found my first bittergem in an online game. Unfortunately I didn’t actually get to see it, but I saw the Scout tag it across the map and deposit it and got pretty excited. Since then I’ve found another one, as well as a few alien cubes! One game even had a cube & gem in the same mission.

 

Of course the cruel irony of it all is that with the PS4 trophies being broken right now, I know it’s quite likely the game hasn’t been registering any of these sweet finds. Ahh, the joy of rng. ?

[Messknecht]

You are rich! 

[psycho_clank314]

I found 5/5 error cubes and only found 3/10 bittergems in 170 hours of gameplay. Bittergems are what is non-existent for me. 

[MattPieti]

On 5/4/2022 at 11:40 PM, dieselmanchild said:

I’ve actually found a cube so far, but it’s the bitter gems that seem nonexistent to me. I haven’t seen any yet. I’m a little worried about these rng trophies cuz you could be stuck playing forever, which historically has usually been the case for me with trophies like this lol.

talkingwires' suggestion a few posts above yours works pretty well. If you somehow don't have the collectables after getting everyone to gold, just quickly pop into some Point Extraction missions with the Scout and do a quick scan. Even with bad-ish luck, you should be able to get any of the collectable trophies within a day.

[dieselmanchild]

8 hours ago, MattPieti said:

talkingwires' suggestion a few posts above yours works pretty well. If you somehow don't have the collectables after getting everyone to gold, just quickly pop into some Point Extraction missions with the Scout and do a quick scan. Even with bad-ish luck, you should be able to get any of the collectable trophies within a day.

Love me some Mineral Mania. ?

[avatary1985]

Don’t worry about Cube, Gem, Gold, guys. You’ll get it eventually before promote all Dwarf to Gold.   Keep focusing on exp, that’s the big deal more than these. 
 

I got both Cube. Gem and gold related trophy to my 2 friends. They don’t even know what’s the cube, gem and gold look like because I’m the one who got every single piece to them. 
 

My last cube is really a problem. Took me more than 100 missions to get the last one spawning and got trophy. After that, I got it so many times.  I think I have more than 20 cubes already but I didn’t found any cube in SS2 yet (literally, after commented I got one this morning)

Edited May 8, 2022 by avatary1985