I'm not sure if this has been discussed before, but I'll suggest it. Sometimes, the resources in the starting area are depleted by buildings with seers that search for specific artifacts and offer a reward for completing quests. Why not make it so that you can know the reward for a specific quest in advance? This would provide more incentive to search for the necessary artifacts. Often, by the time you find the right artifact and bring it, the reward seems insignificant, like 5k experience or gold...
You could also tie this to, for example, the "Keen Eye" skill, so that a hero with "Keen Eye" could know what the reward is, thereby increasing the value of this otherwise useless skill.