Expanding Artifacts

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

Just throwing this out there as a potential addition…

Artifact ‘Power’

-How powerful a certain effect can be, dependent upon HOW the effect triggers
-From most powerful to least:
*Randomly
*When invoked (artifact is used)
*On kill
*On hit (weapon) or being hit (armor)
*When wielded/worn
*In inventory

Basically this means that the more stable and predictable an effect is the weaker it will be, where as if the artifact just happens to do something every so often it will do it very well!

New ways to gain charges
*Cannibalism
*Draining Morale
*Loud noises
*Killing a friend
*Being poisoned
*Being shocked
*inhaling smoke/toxic fumes
*Mutating
*Irradiating you
*(Very bad one) Artifact absorbs a bionic!
*(Very bad one) Artifact makes you forget a recipe!

New effects: Wielded/Worn/In inventory
*Makes you illiterate
*Grants a temporary mutation! (This could be the way to implement nether mutations)
*Very heavy / light
*Can’t be easily dropped/unwielded/unworn (Action takes a few hours)
*Ground you walk over is transformed to rubble!
*Lava trail!
*Makes food and drink taste awful/great
*Keeps food from rotting (in inventory) or speeds up the process
*Makes you hated or loved by NPCs
*Keeps you from activating bionics
*Reduces/increase how far you can be from crafting materials
*Add or subtract temporary levels to a skill

*New effects - Random

*Some of the above and pre-existing effects
*Messes with your overmap
*Damages/repairs something in your inventory
*Hurls you through the air
*Mi-go speech
*Infests you with parasites
*Changes itself into an entirely new artifact (Keeps this effect though)
*Lose/gain a turn
*Can’t craft!
*You can be seen through walls!

*New effects - On hit/being hit/kill

*Makes you sleepy, or more wakeful
*Replenishes or diminishes thirst/hunger
*Turn enemy to a pillar of ash/gibs/raging fire/burst of shrapnel
*Teleports you/enemy/both
*Temporarily buffs or debuffs speed/armor/dodge/damage/skill
*effects morale -/+
*Hallucinations
*Chance to instantly break!
*Creates a nether creature that’s hostile/friendly
*No retreat - You can’t move away from the last enemy you attacked.
*All deaths/attacks that hit cause a boomer-like explosion of goo.

New effects - Weapons only

*Is especially good/bad at smashing
*Can’t hurt living/robotic/nether enemies
*Very good at slaying living/robotic/nether enemies
*Can be fired like a whip
*Returns to hand once thrown
*Uses and trains an inappropriate skill, like cooking.
*Special combat moves

New category of artifacts - Invasive!

*These would be artifacts that are installed like bionics, but can’t be removed afterwards! Expect them to be assorted body horror or painful sounding items (Quivering spike, oozing worm, etc.) Some effects could be:
*Ugliness/Beauty
*Makes mutations less/more visible
*Various special and existing traits/mutations/powers or effects

New effects - Activated

-Reveals the effects of another artifact
-Destroys artifact
-Artifact counts down before exploding

New types of artifacts…

-Arrows/bolts/ammo for flintlock weapons which usually get destroyed upon hitting something, but have on hit/kill effects
-unarmed weapons
-whip-like weapons, some with greater range
-artifact food/drugs, with effects for when consumed
-artifact weapon mods that effect guns in ‘odd’ ways
-Vehicle parts with strange parameters (Heart engine that groans, for example. Or a gibbering flesh radio that mi-gos at you!)
-Furniture with effects when you’re on the same tile? Follow you around?

2

Just thought of another good one.

Coveted! - Everyone wants it. NPCs will desperately try to buy it from you, threaten you for it, steal it (Should you drop it) or just plain out and out attack you over it!

3

Hungry- Consumes a large amount of your hunger

Obsessed- picks up a random list of items nearby and forcefully puts em in your inventory to max. "XD what luck rocks, steel frames, and twobyfours, oh and dont forget teh curry

Constructive- when activated builds random wooden walls and cielings of nether looking origin/ bone walls

Destructive- when activated destroys walls, vehicle parts, and floor tiles

Flamboyant- leaves behind strange gas clouds with random effects, via teleportation, mutation, gonasiphilherpalation, or floatation.

just a few name tags for perhaphs artsafacts

4

Makes it so you can’t see enemies that are too close / too far away from you?

Randomly reassigns which items are keyed to what inventory letter

Makes you misstep, moving in an unintended direction

Plows dirt as you walk over it

Fire chases you, when possible.

5

Freezes you in time

Hurls you in a random directions

temporarily turns you into a gas

absorbs explosions

Turns damage to healing and healing to damage

Controls a random nether creature as if your controlling normal player

Turns you into a shade

Eats bacon that is in your inventory “food”

Repairs things in a radius

hurls all nearby enemys in a random direction

6

I like it.

7

Walking wasteland effect: In your proximity, perishable food rots faster, grass tiles turns into dirt tiles and trees into dead trees. Normal animals near you have their health slowly reduced until they drop dead.

8

Negative: Once wieleded, welded to your hand and causes great pain to remove.

9

I’d like to see more triggers actually.

When thrown
While on ground
When you strike something with it (an enemy or bash)
When installed on vehicle.
etc.

10

Knife type weapon recharges when used as butchering tool

11

I’m just here for the artifact vehicle parts, but be wary, artifacts haven’t been touched since Whalesdev’s day.

12

Yea, artifacts have had literally the least attention paid to them by developers of anything in the game.
the implementation is kind of a nightmare, it’s probably more likely that someone would start over from scratch than extend the current implementation.

13

Perhaphs a semi transmutation system, where you need to find a rare artifact crafting tool. which when you find it unlocks a new tab in crafting menu for arts which take a long time and alot of materials, and research.

14

What about anomalous objects like Baystations Xenoarchealogy? Some items may be mostly nonfunctional alien relics (because that is how the cookie crumbles), one that acts like a key or like a mundane (but still esoteric) object. Like a flashlight that uses sugar or a gun that turns loaded bones into shootable teeth, etc. The esoteric objects should be designed as potentially dangerous tools of use, rather random-effect disco. For instance, an object, when activated, spews freezing cold nitrous steam all around, or a matrice of some kind that when stimulated by a laser gives extreme teleglow to anything not behind a lead barrier (things like which, could be potentially contained and used if you were skilled enough) or a large draggable object that releases sound and turns all metal objects dropped too close to it into scrap, etc. Something alien, not madlibs like it is now.