Put on lucky ring and if you have the ring that was reward from killing the dust sprites... wear that too. It increases drops from monsters. Then, on lucky day, repeat floor that has flying bugs, like floor 5 or so. They have a chance to drop ancient seeds.

Keep a bunch of cheap fruits or veggies from a harvest and throw them in the seed maker - I’ve gotten 45 ancient seeds within a year from making seeds from corn. Each time you add something to seed maker you get like a .5 chance to get ancient seeds - I haven’t even found the artifact yet.

Killing bugs in the sewer, or as drops on the prehistoric floor of Skull Cavern (also a good source of Dino eggs!)

Killing insects in the mines/sewer.

If you have a bunch of crops you can put them into seed makers and there's a small chance of getting Ancient Seeds from it. Cranberries are excellent for this because you get so many of them from harvest.

It's really a matter of luck unfortunately. I've seen some people find it Day 1 and others year 3. It usually takes me about a year or two

Dont forget the loot chance ring you get from the 500 dust sprites killing quest. I usually find 1-6 ancient seeds a day when farming only bugs. :)

For me, i always find them in treasure chests because i have the pirate profession

I’ve had a couple of saves that just wouldn’t drop any so I finally gave up until I got a seed maker and just kept throwing random crops in it until I got an ancient seed. You’ll still need to get an artifact later (if you care about the museum), but at least you can get your plant growing.

bugs are def the easiest way , just repeat floors 5 , 15 and 25 with monster musk

Kill Insects in the mine. It just takes patience.

They can be found in fishing treasure chests if you are level 2 fishing or better. Bugs, Grubs, Cave Flies, from the mines or Mutant Flies and Mutant Grubs from the Mutant Bug Lair by Krobus can all drop them. Also try putting crops like strawberries, blueberries, cranberries (something you might have a lot of) through the seed maker. Otherwise, just keep searching for artifact spots or crack open Artifact troves.

You can also slay insects in the mines (use a burglars ring if you have it).

Or put a lot of stuff into seed makers. If you're close to summer, plant a lot of blueberries and put all of them through an array of seedmakers.

Artifact troves would be my go to, as they are easy to get with omni geodes.

Kill lots of bugs. 0.5% drop rate, it honestly doesn't take that long to find one. Because the mines reset when you return to the ground floor, just loop early levels and kill all the bugs you see (e.g., level 5, 15, 25, 0, repeat). Pick a good luck day and you're likely to find at least one by end of day.

In theory you can get “ unlimited “ ancient seeds if you have the luck and patience

That being the one you donate then plant the seed pack ( in the green house ) that Gunther gave you then seed maker the fruit

You can get artifact troves from the desert trader for 5 Omni geodesic each. I cracked open 100 troves and got 6 each of the pearl and ancient seed artifact.

When you get your next seed, remember to use the seed maker!

Yes, I have found multiple

My first 4 ancient seeds in my multiplayer world all came from maggots and bugs early in the mines.

I also got 3 in one day once I got the burglar ring and began to farm enemies.

Get one seed, get level 9 farming, grow an ancient fruit early and put all your fruits into the seed maker until you have a good amount for a winter greenhouse

Guaranteed way:

Farm a lot of a crop that’s easy to get a lot of. Blueberries work because each bush produces a heap of blueberries in a season. Aim for around 200. Put them into a seed maker and optionally save scum if you don’t get one. If you are save scumming, move the seed maker because the ‘random’ function looks at time of day, and coordinates of the seed maker so you may just get the same outcome if you don’t move it.

Or run loops of floor 20-29 in the mines killing bugs. Or the sewer mutant bug lair if you have unlocked it.

I’ve had the most reliable luck getting one from the artifact troves that you can get from the desert trader

you can find them at that vendor by the secret forest some times.

There are three ways to acquire ancient seeds:

1. Finding an Ancient Seed artifact, handing it to Gunther and getting a pack of Ancient Seeds as a reward.

2. Buying a pack of Ancient Seeds at the Traveling Cart.

3. Randomly getting Ancient Seeds from a seedmaker after putting in another plant.

The first is the most common but can definitely take a while.

• plantable crop: if you have a large field of blueberries/cranberries, run those crops through a seed maker (farming skill unlock)

• artifact: start going through the mines floors with a lot of flying bugs (15-29), it's an 0.5% drop from the grubs, bugs & flies, but should be available in a few days if you get a good pace going

If you're looking for it to grow Ancient Fruit, make a bunch of Seed Makers and run as many Blueberries or Cranberries through there as possible.  Each time you do, you have a 1/200 chance of getting Ancient Seeds instead of seeds for whatever you put in.

Ancient seed has a drop chance from bugs , so running floors 10-18 fast will usually net you one within 1-3 days if you have a good sword and at least a steel pickax to burn through the levels.

You've probably heard all this already, but I've found using the skill that shows where the artifact spots are on the map everyday is useful, as it allows the ability to know where to check. Also in the sewers (after unlocking the side area), killing the bugs has a good chance of dropping ancient seeds, at least in my experience. But at the end of the day, it's just luck/RNG I suppose. Good luck

Run crops through a seed maker.

You can dig up worms, or find them by killing things in the dungeons, or the merchant in the wagon in the woods sells them sometimes.

Seed maker.

0.5% chance of any crop proccing an Ancient Seed.

Plant a ton of blueberries, harvest them by the dozens, churn a couple hundred through. You'll probably get the seed within the season.

bugs / grubs from floor 10-30 have been a low chance.
Since you're in year 3, you probably have seed makers. Seed makers have a chance to produce mixed seeds or ancient seeds instead of their normal intended seeds..

Slay bugs on the 15th - 25th floors with a burglar ring. You should get at least one in like 1-3 days.

Seed other crops

*got. Check the Travelling Cart Fridays and Sundays.

I was in your situation... This is what I did: I planted a lot of corn and cranberries. And I had seedmakers. I kept cramming any corn and cranberries thru seedmaker.

Cranberries is great cos you get 2 from each bush on harvest. It's also weirdly profitable, cos if you seedmake 100 cranberries, you get 200 cranberry seeds on average, which sell for more than the cranberries would have.

BUT the important thing... after doing enough of batches, very good chances to get an ancient seed. Statistically, since it's 0.5% chance, for every 200 seed maker runs you should get a seed, but of course it's still random...

I did this and it kinda saved my farm cos I was getting really antsy about the lack of AF first fall...

Plant a lot of blueberries and put all of them thru seedmaker. Each bush gives 3 berries every 4 days when mature, so you'll easily get hundreds of blueberries with just a few iridium sprinklers. Like, plant 2×24=48, each bush gives 3, that's 3×48=144 per harvest. In a season you'll get 4 harvests, 144×4=576... Seedmake everything, extremely good chances one of those will be an ancient fruit seed. You're in spring, so plant in greenhouse or island...

But wait, there's more! You can sell the seeds for profit. 576 berries makes roughly 1150 seeds, selling for 1150×40=46000. Whereas the raw unprocessed berries would just sell for 576×55=31680...

So for the lo-lo price of having 2 iridium sprinklers dedicated for this, and 48×80=3840 gold, and having like 10-20 seedmakers, you'll be able to bruteforce it... Having lots of seedmakers is quite important since you'd be using them quite a lot. 😅

Edit: if you really just need the seed artifact and not the fruit seed, if you have a deconstructor from Qi shop, you can deconstruct an ancient fruit seed into the artifact.

Typically farming the bugs in the 20s range works well. I focus farmed by taking the elevator to 15 and 25, killed any bugs near elevator, then returned to surface and went again. One loop is pretty fast, so you can do lots if bugs in a short time.

Troves can drop seeds, it's just a matter of the order in the game seed.

I farm bugs in the mines; if you reset the levels on a super lucky day you can usually get one that way

If you have access to the bug lair in the sewer, that's usually a pretty good place.

Make like 10 seed makers and constantly, constantly fill it with seeds. There is a small chance (0.05% maybe?) that they will give you an ancient seed instead of the mixed seeds or the seed of whatever you loaded in. That is how I got my first ancient seed as well, and now I got like, 10 ancient fruit plants (I don't plan to expand my ancient fruit empire for now so...)