[SPOILERS] Artificer vs Saint ascension(?)

[suomuhauki]

I am confused about something about artificer void sea ending and saint ending.

If Saint really does become an echo in his ending, we know how becoming an echo looks like
However, when Artificer tries to ascend, we can see she failed to do so but does not show signs of becoming an echo like Saint does
But failed ascension means you become an echo, so how does Artificer not become one?

[Stavbearer]

Assuming that they actually do become an echo, it could be that we don't stay with artificer long enough for that transformation to start. And, Saint is special enough that that may just be how Saint's cycle looks like.

[skinspiders]

Originally posted by John Cope Vilgerðarson:

I am confused about something about artificer void sea ending and saint ending.

If Saint really does become an echo in his ending, we know how becoming an echo looks like
However, when Artificer tries to ascend, we can see she failed to do so but does not show signs of becoming an echo like Saint does
But failed ascension means you become an echo, so how does Artificer not become one?

A lot of people think Arti just dissolves and disappears. No afterlife, she just fades away.

[Cits]

Originally posted by im a catto:

A lot of people think Arti just dissolves and disappears. No afterlife, she just fades away.

While possible, It doesn't fit with everything else we know about the sea. It'd raise questions about what made her unique or why the ancients didn't take this seemingly easier route to escape. Currently the only safe answer is we don't know.

[Redlegoguy1]

My guess would be that what happens to artificer is functionally the same as just regular death, and that the fluid only removes you from the cycle if additional requirements are met. As for why this counts as permadeath for save file purposes I’m not sure, but given the other instances of it I don’t see any clear indication of what that could imply for artificer. Hunter ends in permadeath regardless of ascension, and Saint ends in permadeath despite the beginnings of the restart actually being shown.
Overall there’s not a lot to go on. The one other thing that may be worth mentioning is that in dev commentary, there was talk of an artificer colored void spawn that would show up if you had completed artificer’s void sea ending, but it sounds like one of the reasons that was scrapped was that they weren’t sure if it was lore accurate. My assumption based on that is that the interpretation the MSC team went with is that artificer dies and becomes a void spawn, but they made the indications of that less concrete to make it less likely to conflict with the original lore should their interpretation be inaccurate.

[Tat011]

In vanilla it's binary, you either ascend or you become an echo. Some things may break this rule like there's theories were void spawn and the dust buildup come from the void but both of them are highly speculative.
If you apply that to DP then Arti does become an echo but you just don't see it.
However DP likes ignoring vanilla when it wants to and this opens up other posibilities:
The option that breaks the lore the least is ironically the void spawn one were Arti somehow becomes one, not much to say here cuz we know next to nothing on voidspawns.
The other alternative which seems to be the intended interpretation is that Arti got erased, this goes pretty hard against vanilla imo cuz in it being deleted by the void and ascending were always considered interchangable to the ancients and iterators.