Spanish Doubloon Artifact — Where It Hides in Outer Banks
The sixth and final Outer Banks artifact — a gold pirate coin sitting right beside Blue Switch 1/2, and the kind of late pickup players flip the switch and swim straight past.
▶ TL;DR
The Spanish Doubloon closes out Outer Banks, Stage 3 of Scale the Depths. It lives in the late blue-switch route, parked next to Blue Switch 1/2, and MrLeLedg grabs it at the 3:49 mark of his 100% walkthrough. Because it shares the screen with a switch you're already hunting for, it's one of the most commonly missed late artifacts here — second only to the Sonar Receiver. The fix is simple: when you reach Blue Switch 1/2, grab the doubloon in the same pass instead of hitting the switch and leaving. It's collection-only, so the touch just banks toward your Outer Banks Secrets stamp.
◇ Step-by-step pickup
Open Outer Banks from the destination wheel.
Outer Banks is Stage 3 — the Graveyard of the Atlantic. By the time you're chasing the Spanish Doubloon you should already have the first five artifacts banked: Rat King Plush, Bio-Specimen Containment Unit, Sonar Receiver, Jar of Dirt and Canned Bread. The doubloon is the cleanup item that finishes the set.
Push deep into the late blue-switch route.
This is the far end of the world, well past the early and mid pockets. You're heading for the area that gates the two blue switches. MrLeLedg's chapter labels it 'Blue Switch 1/2 + Artifact (Spanish doubloon)' at 3:49, so use that chapter as your landmark if you're scrubbing the video.
Find Blue Switch 1/2.
When the first blue switch comes into view, slow down. The Spanish Doubloon is in the same pocket — look at the pickup icons around the switch rather than fixating only on the switch itself. Frame 1 above shows the two sharing the screen.
Grab the doubloon BEFORE you hit the switch.
This is the whole tip. The most common mistake here is flipping Blue Switch 1/2 and immediately swimming on to whatever the switch opened, leaving the artifact uncollected. Hook the coin first — it's the artifact-tagged icon, not the switch — and let the pickup bank.
Now flip Blue Switch 1/2 and continue.
With the doubloon safely collected, hit the switch as normal. From here the route opens to the second cosmetic at 3:56 and Blue Switch 2/2 at 3:59 — keep going, you're nearly done with the world.
Confirm Outer Banks is at 6/6 artifacts.
The Spanish Doubloon is the last of six. After this only the second cosmetic, Blue Switch 2/2, the late messages, a money chest, the Boat Blueprint and the Lost Dimetrodon catch-and-prep remain — none of those are artifacts. Check your Secrets count reads complete before you leave.
◐ Walkthrough Keyframes
✦ Tips
- Treat 'Blue Switch 1/2' as a two-item stop, not one. The switch and the doubloon live in the same pocket, so make a habit of clearing both before you move — that single rule prevents the most common Outer Banks miss after the Sonar Receiver.
- Use MrLeLedg's chapter title as a search term. The chapter is literally named 'Blue Switch 1/2 + Artifact (Spanish doubloon)' at 3:49, which tells you the artifact is bundled with the switch before you even watch the clip.
- If you're doing a cleanup pass for the Secrets stamp, the doubloon is one of the very last things to grab — sweep it together with Blue Switch 2/2, the second cosmetic and the money chest in one final run through the late route.
⚠ Warnings
- Don't hit Blue Switch 1/2 and leave. The switch is the eye-catcher and the artifact is right next to it, so it's easy to flip the switch, watch something open, and swim off with the doubloon still sitting there.
- Don't confuse the blue switch or the nearby money chest with the artifact. Only the doubloon counts toward the Secrets stamp — the switch is a mechanism and the chest is currency.
- Don't assume you're done with Outer Banks just because you've reached the blue switches. The doubloon is artifact 6 of 6 and the most-missed of the late ones after the Sonar Receiver — verify the full set is banked before you exit the world.
⌕ Common Questions
I flipped Blue Switch 1/2 and moved on — did I miss the artifact?
Where exactly is the last Outer Banks artifact?
Can I sell the Spanish Doubloon for money since it's literally gold?
★ What you get
- Completion
- Counts toward the Outer Banks 100% Secrets achievement.
- Endgame impact
- The last of the six Outer Banks artifacts — collecting it completes the Stage 3 Secrets set.
- Sells for
- Spanish Doubloon cannot be sold. Artifacts exist for lore and 100% completion only.
✎ What Players Are Asking
Real questions from Steam Community discussions, archived as they appeared.
“Don't hit Blue Switch 1/2 and leave — the artifact is right there. Grab the Spanish Doubloon in the same pass as the switch.”
Why this matters: Why this matters: the doubloon shares a pocket with a blue switch players are actively hunting, so the guide writer's whole warning is that the switch steals attention and the artifact gets left behind — the second-most-missed late pickup in the world after the Sonar Receiver.
⌬ Related Secrets
Why the game called this artifact a Spanish Doubloon
A doubloon is a real Spanish gold coin — most famously the eight-escudo gold 'piece of eight' — carried home by Spain's treasure fleets from the Americas across the 16th to 18th centuries. Many of those fleets and the pirate prizes taken from them were lost in the storm-and-shoal waters off North Carolina, the stretch sailors named the 'Graveyard of the Atlantic.' The marquee local example is Blackbeard, born Edward Teach, whose flagship Queen Anne's Revenge ran aground at Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina, on 10 June 1718. That wreck, found in 1996 in roughly 25 feet of water, has since yielded more than 400,000 artifacts — including a coin-testing weight stamped with Queen Anne's image. Of all six Outer Banks artifacts, the Spanish Doubloon is by far the most historically grounded: it's exactly the kind of treasure you'd expect to dredge up off this coast.