Artifacts, Relics, and Wands: Does anyone use them?

[Edgewalker]

I've never found a reason to use the weapons that are geared mainly to non-physical combat. Now that artifacts and relics reduce defenses, they're even less appealing. Many are slow, heavy, and useless in physical combat, which is by an enormous margin the most common and most deadly kind of combat. The risk is too great to equip (especially a small party) with weapons that will do nothing against a party of wasps.

There are options for the red-stat classes. I've had fun building for swords, axes, and hammers in the past. Currently, first strike damage of polearms makes them interesting, and bows and javelins finally have distinct and appealing personalities, even if there are still some balance issues.

But if you're a caster, it's books. I do like the books, and I like the new spells. But when it comes to the weapons in the title, I see no point. And sometimes I just want more variety.

Thoughts on the current state of these weapon classes?

[alan]

I can understand your point, however I find them interesting, especially when you get that one guy (scavenger) with no stats other than used by a --- wand ! Equip with some decent armour and you have a tank for all purple and yellow challenges, choose red only when you must.

[XenoReaver]

I use all of them and I feel they took a step in the right direction but at the same time didn't quite.

Artifacts and Relics
I like that they are a basically a mace for social/magic challenges. The buff for them to potentially gain an extra ability on elemental and legendary is pretty good but I don't understand the reason for the shielding reduction. Codexes did lose the ability for early game summons and I feel that was good and in return they got a third ability which overall still makes them much more desirable than artifacts and relics.

Relics pretty much have to be made out of metal or stone and this makes them very heavy and the characters that have stats for the relics abilities rarely have the carry capacity to carry it and any other equipment.

Like why would you want to use a weapon for social/magic challenges with 1 or 2 abilities/attacks with a shielding reduction passive and weighs a lot when you can instead equip a codex that gives you 3 abilities/attacks, no passive reduction and can weigh very little. I feel the shielding passive should be removed from artifacts/relics and put on the codexes.


Wands
I like wands but in reality they a lacking as a single codex of any level with give you multiple abilities that easy outdo the wands damage. The best parts of the wand is that even in social challenges it relies on the destiny stat so you don't need to worry about levelling up to 3 stats and that it counts as a ranged weapon for both challenges.

[Thunderllama]

The problem I have with relics and wands is that relics are WAY too heavy, needing stone and metal, and their few good abilities are spread out and only useful for a couple of characters.

-The armor debuff makes frontline combat with low HP characters dangerous. Now if relics had an armor BUFF (like swords used to), then their value would increase.
-The stat buffs are nice, but only for very specific characters. IF you have a witch or shaman with ground shake, then a destiny buffing relic could work, or one with snare. (On my current playthrough I have 40 characters and only 1 groundshake...on a 10 destiny wraith) IF you can dedicate a hunter to hunter's mark or zerca to weakness, those stat boosts are nice.

-Wands are so common as rewards that you can easily keep a few around for the very rare case a character can use them. If they had more interesting abilities or value in red fights, maybe they'd be worth making.

The biggest problem is going down either of these trees means you aren't going down another. What would you give up for relics or wands?

Armor? Everyone needs it and a third to half of your group can use either medium or heavy armor.
Shields? Again, depending on your gear, most of your team could use them.
Jewelry? Useful for your entire team in so many ways
Tombs/Scrolls? Useful for all your casters, so about half your team
A good weapon? Only good for warriors, but SO essential for them you can't really skip them.

With research points being so valuable, it's hard to unlock relics or wands for two to four characters while giving up something so much better for so many more characters.

[was_fired]

While I really like the idea behind equipment giving a mix of buffs and debuffs, I find artifacts and relics pretty meh at the moment. I've used a high tier artifact to buff the perception of one of my hunters, but they don't make much sense to use in mental or spiritual combat for a few reasons:

1. They require being on the front line while wands, scrolls and codexes don't
2. They're slow so unless you give them to someone with a lot of HP they'll die before using it twice.
3. They're heavy since two handed artifacts are often made using stone.
4. They depend on different abilities across challenge types which makes them weaker than wands, which permit single ability focus
5. They debuff the wrong defense stats. A social artifact should not debuff mental artifact should not debuff mental defenses.

I'd really like to see artifacts and relics give a mix of +X and X% bonuses to mental and / or spiritual defenses baseline depending on what materials are used to craft them. That way you could hand your scavanger a crystal relic that gives +5 mental armor, -10% physical armor and know that they can tank these challenges early game long before elemental armor shows up.

[whoyok]

Originally posted by XenoReaver:

I use all of them and I feel they took a step in the right direction but at the same time didn't quite.

Artifacts and Relics
I like that they are a basically a mace for social/magic challenges. The buff for them to potentially gain an extra ability on elemental and legendary is pretty good but I don't understand the reason for the shielding reduction. Codexes did lose the ability for early game summons and I feel that was good and in return they got a third ability which overall still makes them much more desirable than artifacts and relics.

Relics pretty much have to be made out of metal or stone and this makes them very heavy and the characters that have stats for the relics abilities rarely have the carry capacity to carry it and any other equipment.

Like why would you want to use a weapon for social/magic challenges with 1 or 2 abilities/attacks with a shielding reduction passive and weighs a lot when you can instead equip a codex that gives you 3 abilities/attacks, no passive reduction and can weigh very little. I feel the shielding passive should be removed from artifacts/relics and put on the codexes.


Wands
I like wands but in reality they a lacking as a single codex of any level with give you multiple abilities that easy outdo the wands damage. The best parts of the wand is that even in social challenges it relies on the destiny stat so you don't need to worry about levelling up to 3 stats and that it counts as a ranged weapon for both challenges.

the other way to look at it is the hunters have skills that allow them to not need a ranged weapon during red challenges. the relics not only give boosts to their stats it also allow them to be of some use during yellow and purple challenges... also some of their skills given are quite useful like aoe sleep weakness are good for hunters too. that being said, hunters also lack strength to use those stuff very well

[The Cynoid]

With as hard as it is to acquire research points, I am not seeing myself ever invest in any of this research. It just seems too weak when you need good materials to make it not ass and getting good materials unlocked is about 95% of your total research points in a 5-600 turn game

[David]

I agree that these weapons are not in a good state, but I do occasionally find them valuable. Not valuable enough to research, but they're still occasionally good for use.

Relics with ambush are strong on characters that don't need a weapon. Hunters and Gatherers with several ranks in a perception-attack are especially noteworthy, because there are relics with Ambush and % increase perception.

Relics with Snare would be similarly situational, but its much rarer to get a weapon-independent character with solid INT *and* most of the candidates for that would do much better with a codex anyway.

Scavengers make solid use of wands. It's a useless character for the ever important red challenges, but strength of the swarm + decent destiny + wand is a respectable lead for purple or yellow.

Some of the unlikley-to-ever-be-seen elemental and legendary relics and artifacts actually have incredibly good skills on them. Brotherhood of blood is better than inspire, Inspiring presence is legit incredible, except that it comes with the shielding penalties *and* a free hand for a shield. Even poison and choking fog have some game: Fast AOE's that work in every challenge type are serious build arounds.

--
The way I see it relics and artifacts (and, to a lesser extent, wands, codices, and scrolls) are suffering from a lack of clear purpose. They're an unpredictable jumble of things that aren't used for physical attacks, and that is too broad and unfocused to be appealing.

So here's what I'd do:

• Remove yellow, purple, or both from Random Blast. Right now, this skill is too powerful and versatile. Its just so much easier to get 25 or 30 mysticism than any other stat, that such a broadly powerful attack strangles other strategies. Nerfing mysticism gain from events could also work, but I think this is a better solution. Make them witches and shamans work harder to be good in *all* challenge types.
  
• Redefine artifacts as offhands, and make their core identity be providing useful passives. This is where ambush, snare, and increased stat % come to live, as the core focus of the item (meaning they persist into higher tiers of the item). This is an offensive/utility alternative to a shield or twohander, so we're probably looking for inspiring presence, corpse feast, dinner for two, and hopefully some sexy new passive and triggered skills at higher tiers. I also think this would be a good place to make bone the top quantity ingredient, but that is another discussion.
  
• Redefine relics and wands as the buildable source for non-board abilities. Wands would have a ranged destiny based attack, Relics would have a melee wisdom based attack for both yellow and purple -- but they should *always* also come with a utility ability. This is where we'll find Shatter shield, Quick Cover, Internal Armor Grow, Distract, Brotherhood of Blood, Sacrificial blood, and so on. While their primary attack can't be used in the vital red challenges, the utility ability will be, avoiding the very unsexy "this is useless" first reaction.
  
• Codex and scrolls become more focused on actives. Without random blast being universal, the second and third spell slots have a little more elbow room for distinctness. If random blast was red only, there is suddenly a huge distinction between a RB2 + Fireball and a RB2 + Fiery Gaze codex.

Obviously this would also remove the shielding malus from relics and artifiacts, require some tuning, and likely reshuffle the tech tree somewhat, but it doesn't demand a whole bunch of new art assets. :)

[Thunderllama]

You make some good points. I wouldn't remove damage from Random Blast, unless characters starting rolling many more abilities that could compete with Ground Shake.

I like the idea of artifacts as offhands. I think they all need more spells and different groupings, to encourage different resources being made with them. It was nice before when you could get an intelligence ice spike along with an intelligence summon.

An yes, remove the armor debuff. The skills are no where near powerful enough to justify this.

[was_fired]

Originally posted by TreeHippo:

So here's what I'd do:

• Remove yellow, purple, or both from Random Blast. Right now, this skill is too powerful and versatile. Its just so much easier to get 25 or 30 mysticism than any other stat, that such a broadly powerful attack strangles other strategies. Nerfing mysticism gain from events could also work, but I think this is a better solution. Make them work harder to be good in *all* challenge types.
  
• Redefine artifacts as offhands, and make their core identity be providing useful passives. This is where ambush, snare, and increased stat % come to live, as the core focus of the item (meaning they persist into higher tiers of the item). This is an offensive/utility alternative to a shield, so we're probably looking for inspiring presence, corpse feast, dinner for two, and hopefully some sexy new passive and triggered skills at higher tiers. I also think this would be a good place to make bone the top quantity ingredient, but that is another discussion.
  
• Redefine relics and wands as the buildable source for non-board abilities. Wands have a ranged destiny based attack, Relics have a melee wisdom based attack for both yellow and purple -- but they should *always* also come with a utility ability. This is where we'll find Shatter shield, Quick Cover, Internal Armor Grow, Distract, Brotherhood of Blood, Sacrificial blood, and so on. While their primary attack can't be used in the vital red challenges, the utility ability will be, avoiding the very unsexy "this is useless" first reaction.
  
• Codex and scrolls become more focused on actives. Without random blast being universal, the second and third spell slots have a little more elbow room for distinctness. If random blast was red only, there is suddenly a huge distinction between a RB2 + Fireball and a RB2 + Fiery Gaze codex.

I really like the idea of making Random Blast non-universal and switching artifacts to the off-hand. I also like the idea of giving wands additional special abilities since as you said they're really lack luster now.

I also like your point that if Random Blast gets restricted it makes every other spell more important. I don't know if I agree about making it Red only instead of a hybrid of two challenge types, but I do agree it shouldn't be all three.

[deadsanta]

Making them debuff a character as a passive is ridiculous, no other item in the game does that, except through encumberance, which these items have in spades. The relics should have 3 attributes, just like a tome, and the one that forces you to be on the front line better be awesome. Or have the passive be like a 2h sword: a buff, that would actually make sense.

[flaymanthings]

They could be useful before your zercas get divine favour to help you deal with spiritual challenges in early games. You could also equip scavengers with them since they have high base destiny don't have strong spiritual skills.

[Thunderllama]

Originally posted by Swarman:

They could be useful before your zercas get divine favour to help you deal with spiritual challenges in early games. You could also equip scavengers with them since they have high base destiny don't have strong spiritual skills.

Good suggestions. The challenge is that relics are ONLY useful in very specific cases. Since RP are so limited, are you going to unlock scrolls or codexes that are useful to 1/3 to 1/2 your group, or relics that are useful for 1 or 3 characters?

At their current power level, all 3 levels of both one handed and two handed relics should be unlocked for 1 or 2 RP.

[Gizzabe]

I used to avoid them like the plague until my most recent game. Swapped out javelins on my hunters for artifacts that increase perception since 99% of the time I only use them for one of two things: Hunter's Mark and Sneak Attack.

There's also a demon you can get from a goblin [Chance] option (I think it's called a horhlick or something? The non-tooth fairy version) that only has its main hand able to be equipped with an item i.e. no shield or 2-h weapon. Relics seem to be a great fit for those.

[xyloth01]

Originally posted by TreeHippo:

• Remove yellow, purple, or both from Random Blast. Right now, this skill is too powerful and versatile. Its just so much easier to get 25 or 30 mysticism than any other stat, that such a broadly powerful attack strangles other strategies. Nerfing mysticism gain from events could also work, but I think this is a better solution. Make them witches and shamans work harder to be good in *all* challenge types.
  
• Redefine artifacts as offhands, and make their core identity be providing useful passives. This is where ambush, snare, and increased stat % come to live, as the core focus of the item (meaning they persist into higher tiers of the item). This is an offensive/utility alternative to a shield or twohander, so we're probably looking for inspiring presence, corpse feast, dinner for two, and hopefully some sexy new passive and triggered skills at higher tiers. I also think this would be a good place to make bone the top quantity ingredient, but that is another discussion.
  
• Redefine relics and wands as the buildable source for non-board abilities. Wands would have a ranged destiny based attack, Relics would have a melee wisdom based attack for both yellow and purple -- but they should *always* also come with a utility ability. This is where we'll find Shatter shield, Quick Cover, Internal Armor Grow, Distract, Brotherhood of Blood, Sacrificial blood, and so on. While their primary attack can't be used in the vital red challenges, the utility ability will be, avoiding the very unsexy "this is useless" first reaction.
  
• Codex and scrolls become more focused on actives. Without random blast being universal, the second and third spell slots have a little more elbow room for distinctness. If random blast was red only, there is suddenly a huge distinction between a RB2 + Fireball and a RB2 + Fiery Gaze codex.

Random blast is overpowered, but usage in allcolour combats is not a bad idea but i see Your point in this randomblast / Fireball / Fiery Gaze... it is a gordian knot ...

I think artifacts as offhands should be a good shield alternative but maybe wands as well should be offhand equipments with NONredcombat skills/abilities...

alternatively:
jewellery and artifact on jewellery slot
wand and scroll on offhand slot
relics and codex twohanded

[Smokerunner]

To be succinct, relics are not worth investing in. There are too many other trees that will give better yields for their various costs/drawbacks.