No Smilies = No sarcasm
I mean you know that it degrades your DNA in the same way as you feel an evil presense inside other artifacts or feel like the nether has turned its attention on you. Its supernatural "magic", supposed to work in odd ways.
That’s true, but those explanations are quite vague as to what’s going on. Evil presence denotes nothing specific, and a presence watching over you doesn’t either, though the nether part has got to go. We;re talking about someone diagnosing precisely what is going wrong, and precisely where it’s going wrong, not just, you “don’t feel so good but you don’t quite know why”.
Plus its mostly gameplay aspects, most other things have rather precise descriptions( ex: examining a book tells you the recipes inside, viewing a pistol gives you its exact stats), it makes sense for artifacts to do the same.
Books have an segment at the front that tells you what to expect inside.
As for the weapons argument, employing it is a doubled edge sword. Why indeed does the character know precisely what its stats are, especially when some of these characters have no background with them before picking one up? I do not see why saying this other aspect suffers the same issue has any bearing on whether the issue is indeed a problem.