Alien Artifacts spawn chance after Rising Tide update.

[Alexion]

So I started a new campaign for Rising Tide update and in the Cold Caverns, I have yet to find a single alien artifact spawn. I havn't found any inside alien ruins, caves or on the general floor. I have not tried looking inside the abyss, but before the update they were fairly common all over the place. There are artifact missions, but those aren't what I am looking for as you can't keep them.

So my question is, have their spawn chance been adjusted or is it my seed of this play through that is very unlucky with spawns? I've done at least a dozen runs now and have yet to see a single one. Did they change the spawn chance in Cold Caverns and that I will find them more common at the later biomes? Or is it just a lot rarer now?

[Buggy Boy]

I'm currently still playing my solo campaign that I started probably two updates ago at least (probably Fire Under The Ice), like you I was finding several alien artefacts just laying around the cavern floors and walls, after the latest update I've found none at all. I'm in the Hydrothermal Wastes, I don't think the spawn chance was different between biomes before the update and it sounds like it isn't afterwards.

[Alexion]

Originally posted by Buggy Boy:

I'm currently still playing my solo campaign that I started probably two updates ago at least (probably Fire Under The Ice), like you I was finding several alien artefacts just laying around the cavern floors and walls, after the latest update I've found none at all. I'm in the Hydrothermal Wastes, I don't think the spawn chance was different between biomes before the update and it sounds like it isn't afterwards.

I see. Thank you for confirming. Since sometimes seeds can do some weird things so I wasn't sure. The only thing I saw on the patch notes was "set alien materials to spawn in abyss Islands". But I don't know if those are the artifacts or the trinkets/or alien mats for crafting.

[obama]

im close to finishing a 2nd campaign on current version
they just dont spawn at all
before they used to be everywhere
now even the ruin artifact holders are empty
i dont remember but MAYBE we found one or two in the ruins outside of a mission
there are none in the abyss either
this really sucks

[climbingeastofwinter]

Medic xenologist talents combined with frequent ruin runs should be enough to put artifacts in your hands.

[obama]

no
we are talking about the big artifacts
none of the medic perks provide you more of those and a lot of those require them to work but they dont spawn outside of missions

[obama]

https://github.com/Regalis11/Barotrauma/issues/7233

There should now be an artifact in the ruins only when there's a mission for it. This is because, otherwise we can't ensure that the mission artifact is spawned in the artifact holder, which in my opinion is a bigger issue. Previously we spawned artifacts also with random events, and so it could happen that the randomly spawned artifact was placed in the holder and the mission artifact was just laying somewhere on the ground.

I don't see it an issue that the holder doesn't always hold an artifact.

[RASTIL]

this patch ♥♥♥♥♥♥ whole game

[climbingeastofwinter]

I haven't been around for the last update (or maybe the one before that), but xenologist used to provide a chance for deconstructed small artifacts to become large artifacts. Maybe this is no longer the case.

[Champis]

Our campaign, new start 16.7, we have not seen one artifact either. Contrasted with our previous test game, we were seeing them all the time. Probably we were getting TOO many TBH. Now? While we haven't exactly been going out of way to find any, but, we weren't in our 1st game either and we couldn't stop finding them w/o really trying. We are in the 3rd biome now, and have exactly zero artifacts recovered.

[climbingeastofwinter]

Just wanted to chime in again, I recently deconstructed 10 (I think?) small alien artifacts from a cold caverns ruins run (no mission, just the odd ruin you might chance across), and upon deconstructing by a xenologist medic I received a full sized thermal artifact, and a full sized nasonov artifact, so there are still plenty of opportunities to generate large artifacts if you're willing to ruin delve.

[NvMe 令]

Originally posted by RASTIL:

this patch ♥♥♥♥♥♥ whole game

i dont mind all of the other changes

its just that the ai is now worse than before and monsters now are a bit more stronger so having your sub sink and hit the floor a few times in a single trip is pretty common which i cannot stand.

[Buggy Boy]

Originally posted by NvMe 令:

its just that the ai is now worse than before and monsters now are a bit more stronger so having your sub sink and hit the floor a few times in a single trip is pretty common which i cannot stand.

Bit off-topic, but custom sub is the way to go if you want to rebalance in your favour. Adding even 50 health to the outer hull (250 health total per hull piece) is probably enough to bring back the previous status quo without making things too easy.

[Champis]

if this particular change was intentional, I cant say too much bad about it. It was super-easy to acquire these as they were literally lying around for the taking. That said, it would be appropriate, imo, to at least have them appear, or have a chance to appear, in non-quest ruins no? I Make them rare spawns in the non-quest ruins and give players a reason to ruin dive outside of the quest instances.

[climbingeastofwinter]

Right, but with the medic xenologist skill tree as it stands, each medic you send into a non-quest ruin is still going to have 50% chance *per container to generate new items*, and there is ~20% chance for each alien artifact (small included) deconstruction event producing a new item which could be a large artifact.

If anything, the alien artifacts are far more abundant today, found through medic talents, than they were before the talent+ruins update, when ~3 alien artifacts could just be found laying around on the ocean floor per mission, depending on your luck and crew composition.

If you want to play a research sub build, each additional medic that goes on a ruin dive is going to generate their own supply of loot and that can become very profitable; same with if you want to play a salvage sub build and send scrapper mechanics into wrecks to pull out scrap which you either refine into alien materials at a 3:1 rate or just deconstruct the scrap for a very reliable way of producing lead and other useful materials you may not be able to find in sufficient quantities due to outposts being scarce late game.


I'm having too many lag issues to play through a full campaign this patch, so maybe I'm off here, but I don't feel like the current state of the game is unfair in such a way that it can't be balanced by mild tweaks and adjustments to drop rates or the like.

[Buggy Boy]

The medic artefact route doesn't help the solo campaign, I pretty much always die in alien ruins even when playing multiplayer, just extremely unlucky I guess, so this means I'm pretty much never going to get artefacts.