Carcassonne

What it feels like

The richest destination in the game by buried value. The city is laid out on the real wall circuit — two north lobes and the barbican spur — with a ruined chapel inside it and a citadel at its heart. Geese wander their pen keeping their own flock spacing, and cows graze the barn in irregular bouts. Stone, water, livestock, and a long history of people losing things down wells.

The expedition: The seven relics

Carcassonne’s expedition runs on water rather than soil. The detector and pickaxe still work here, but the story is fished out, not dug.

1. Learn the magnet — Buy the fishing magnet for $80. The purchase itself starts a lesson that leads you to the barn trough, whose lid raises when the magnet is bought and closes again once its relic is out.
2. Fish the wells — Six more wells sit behind permits, bought from a well claims board. A purchased well’s cover lifts two metres out of the way. Lower the magnet, sweep, feel the haptics tighten as you cross a hotspot, hold it there, and something clamps on. Pools deplete as you work them.
3. Seven Limoges plaques — One in the trough, one in each paid well. Everything else the magnet pulls up — and it pulls up plenty — is worth nothing. The junk is there for texture and for the ambiguity of the hunt, not for the wallet.
4. The chapel — Seven sockets on the ruined chapel wall, laid out three, three and one. Bring a plaque to its silhouette and it snaps flush. Completing all seven plays a one-time ceremony: golden links, a seven-piece cross, an inward collapse, and the Lady Carcas Crown travelling to the altar.

The crown is worth 700 and is the destination’s signature payoff.

On the side

The citadel chest

A locked strongbox sits in the citadel. Poke it while it is locked and it only rattles. The Ornate Citadel Key is buried somewhere in the world and has to be found with the detector and dug with the pickaxe — the rusty keys the wells give up do not fit, which is the joke. Bring the real key to the lock and it snaps in and turns, the lid swings open, and the hoard launches piece by piece out of the chest floor to chest height.

Free prospecting

Around 1,900 buried items inside and around the walls, worth roughly 29,700 in all. Carcassonne’s money comes from its buried loot, the chest and the crown — never from what the magnet brings up.

The real place

The fortified Cité de Carcassonne has stood on its hill above the Aude since the Romans, and has been UNESCO-listed since 1997. Lady Carcas is the legend the city’s name is said to come from. The place and its history are real. The relics and the people you meet are not.