Artifact decay

OP-2 has several mechanics related to the artifact decay, or degradation, usually into Cobblestones, triggered by various events in the game.
This is often considered one of the most annoying features in OP 2.2, alongside the Plague mechanic.

## Radioactivity-induced

Each time your radiation poisoning reaches the maximum, there's a 0.4% to 3.2% chance to turn up to 2 artifacts in your inventory into inert Cobblestones, i.e. to decay. The chance depends on artifact quality; lesser artifacts are more likely to decay.

This mechanic is mostly annoying in early to mid game, as it mostly affects modificates of various tiers, but towards to the late game, players tend to use unique artifacts more.

The following artifacts are exempt and will **not** decay at all:

* artifacts that never spawn after blowout, including unique ones and stamina regen modificates like Snowball, Bur, Ear, Moss
* artifacts that can't be cooked and don't have a recipe
* the most basic artifacts like Droplets or Jellyfish that are cooked from raw materials.

**Beware: emerald artifacts don't have recipes but still can decay!** They are also quest-only, so there's only a fixed amount of those. The only way to obtain them outside of quests is to farm burers and save-scum their drops.

## Blowout

At the start of every blowout a decay check will happen, equivalent to the radioactivity-induced decay check.

## Deferred decay

Certain locations have some invisible areas called decay restrictors. Each time you step onto such a restrictor, there's 0.15% to 1.2% chance that up to 2 artifacts in your inventory will decay into Cobblestones, with the rules and exceptions similar to radioactivity-induced decay. The actual decay will happen 40-100 minutes (random) after the fact. If it decides to decay something but you have no susceptible artifacts, it will try again in 20-40 minutes (random), again and again until it finds something to decay. In that case, the only solution is to reload the game ~5 minutes back in time, and sacrifice a lesser artifact.

### Sacrificing specific artifacts

While you could reload the game until it picks a lower tier artifact, this can take dozens of reloads since you will likely be carrying significantly more good artifacts than bad ones. The reliable solution is to drop all non-unique artifacts besides the sacrifice into a rucksack, guaranteeing its selection. Meat Chunk and Fireball are light, non-radioactive, and relatively common artifacts that are easy to carry around for this purpose.

### Restrictors

Triggering a decay restrictor once is not especially risky since the chance is really small, but these restrictors are large (~80m across) and spherical in shape, so if you're particularly unlucky to do something on its edge, you could cross it dozens of times in a short time unknowingly by walking back and forth.

The following locations have one decay restrictor each:

## X-18 security system

After approaching the X-18 entrance, you'll be warned by the lab's autonomous defense system that some of your artifacts are not allowed inside, and will be degraded into Cobblestones. This is check happens in three spots throughout the lab: immediately at the entrance, on the staircase down the lab, and on the staircase down the pseudogiant room. It's only active until you leave the Dark Valley; in any subsequent visits throughout the game, you could carry all artifacts you want without them being destroyed.

You can leave unwanted artifacts at the door outside, in a rucksack; bandits won't steal it. There are three checks inside the laboratory: immediately at the entrance, on a staircase during the descent from level 1 to level 2, and on the stairs to the pseudogiant room. After triggering once, they will be disabled forever.

Here's the exact list of artifacts that will be destroyed in your first visit. All others are safe to carry. In particular, Stone Blood is not on the list, so you can carry a bunch to remove the radiation while you're there. Sparkler is also not on the list.

* Hide, Scale, Shell, Controller's Scalp
* Mama's Beads, Grandma's Beads, Great Grandma's Beads, Burer's Grandma's Beads
* Tears Of the Electra, Tears of Fire, Tears of the Chimera
* Porcupine, Electric Porcupine, Snotty Porcupine, Stone Porcupine
* Sea Urchin, Kolobok, Steel Kolobok, Titanium Kolobok, Diamond Kolobok, Giant's Younger Brother
* Fiery Dummy, Bright Dummy, Moon Dummy, Pudding
* Symbion
* Drops of the Soul, Fiery Soul, Crystal Soul, Crystal Soul of Bengal
* Plasma Caterpillar
* Emerald wrenched, Emerald Stone's Blood, Emerald Jellyfish
* Night Star, Goldfish, Stone Flower, Crystal, Soul, Moonlight, Mica
* Spring, Ruby Spring, Pellicle, Ruby Pellicle, Battery, Ruby Battery
* Meat Chunk, Golden chunk
* Gravi, Fireball, Flash, Crystal Thorn, Electric Microbe, Teleport
* Needle, Knot, Thistle, Fire Cotton
* Snowball, Bur

## Isomorphs

There are two one-time events in the Narodnaya Solyanka story (Isomorphs questline) that are scripted to "degrade" (or rather transmute) various items in your inventory.

### Ambush

After completing Ambush and waiting 40 seconds, the following artifacts in your inventory will transmute into the Spiral isomorph:

* Hide
* Tears Of the Electra
* Porcupine
* Steel Kolobok
* Fiery Dummy
* Drops of the Soul
* Plasma Caterpillar

So if you want to obtain more of them for Components search: 1st part, bring more artifacts from the list to the Ambush mission.

### Sniper's duel

After picking the Isomorph crystal up after Sniper's duel, all 12x76 Slug rounds in your inventory will transmute into 12x76 Isomorphs. Isomorph ammo hits harder, costs several times more, but is much less accurate and blocks your view with the fire effect where it hits. If you like it, bring more slugs to that mission.