Loathers.netArchaeologist's Spade: Overview
March 16, 2026 // IOTM Overview
We’re going to call this spade a shovel, because the good folks in the Ascension Speed Society have already handled all the spading. The Archaeologist’s Spade is the March 2026 IotM, and it’ll let you excavate some turn savings.
General Summary
The Archaeologist’s Spade is a usable item that allows 11 Digs a day in the most recent area that you’ve visited.
You can choose to dig one of three kinds of things:
- Dig up something from the area - randomly grabs 1 item from the current location
- Dig up something ancient - dig up a dinosaur bone/egg, a pork elf potsherd/kit, or landfill detritus/fabric
- Dig up a skeleton - start a free fight with a Skeleton from the zone, if the zone has any
Speedrun Applicability
The two most relevant uses are digging up something from the area, and digging up a skeleton. Because the area-dig is random, your best bet is locations with only 1 relevant drop, notably Sonofa Beach or the three Filthworm gland zones. Meanwhile, fighting a skeleton for free counts as an in-zone fight, so that’s also worth using in places such as The Haunted Kitchen, The Haunted Ballroom, or even The Defiled Nook or The Red Zeppelin. However, the chosen skeleton is truly random; neither banishes nor sniffs can affect who you get, so The Defiled Nook is more like a 66% chance of -4 evilness and 33% chance of -1 evilness. No matter what, effective uses of either dig type represent a minimum of 1 turn saved, so the Archaeologist’s Spade is worth 11+ turns saved each day. That’s pretty good!
Although digging up something ancient doesn’t have a ton of speedrun utility, there’s one item with a bit of use. The Pork Elf toilet can reduce your fullness by 1 per day. Might be relevant in 1-day softcore, plus a bit of free turngen every day, forever!
2026 In-Standard Synergies
- The biggest IotM synergy is with the Peridot of Peril, which allows you to set each zone once per day, for free. Absolutely perfect for setting up The Haunted Kitchen, The Defiled Nook, Sonofa Beach, or the Filthworm zones.
- Another IotM that can be paired together with the Archaeologist’s Spade is the Legendary Seal-Clubbing Club, where the spade frees up uses of Club Across the Battlefield. For example, you can use the Spade to fight a skeleton in The Defiled Nook, then use the Legendary Seal-Clubbing Club in that fight to club into a spiny skelelton/toothy sklelton for +1 evil eye.
- While fairly minor, a guaranteed way to fight skeletons is pretty good for gathering knucklebones from the Skeleton of Crimbo Past.
- Finally, as always, any time you want Familiar Experience, using the Archaeologist’s Spade to get a bunch of free fights can never go wrong.
Overall Rating
We’d rate the Archaeologist’s Spade a Tier 1 IotM. A guaranteed 11 turns saved each day is fantastic, and there are very obvious ways to use even 22 charges in a 2-day ascension. If you like going fast and saving turns, you’ll really dig this IotM.