Artifact Crafting Guide

This guide is intended to help you build high leveled artifact equipment.

This guide is not at all necessary to complete the early game or story endings. Even beating the Ogre's Den or Spirit Land are doable without high leveled artifacts. However, if you enjoy dealing large damage numbers or would like to make endgame content like Ruins where the Devil Sleeps or Spirit Land on difficult mode more manageable, this is the guide for you.

## Terminology

All of this is given more detail in the Equipment page.

* **Enhancement Level** means the -/+ value in the description of the item.
* **Grade** refers to the *Normal* (no color), *Rare* (blue), or *Legendary* (orange) status of an item.
* **Modular Attributes** refer to the attributes that can applied to any item via **Transfer**, **Upgrade**, crafting or via Magic Essence.
* **Fixed Attributes** are what are listed in the Artifact Blueprint. They cannot be altered and do not transfer between items.
* **Transfer** means to use the Magic EQPT Bench to sacrifice an item and some Mana Motes with a chance at transferring its Enhancement Level and or attributes to another item.
* **Refine** means to use the Magic EQPT Bench with 3 Crest of Transcendance and certain minerals/metals to increase the Enhancement Level of an artifact item.
* **Upgrade** means to use a Vision Blueprint or an Artisan's Workshop to increase the **Grade** of an item from **Normal** to **Rare.**
* **Material Item** means an item used as an ingredient for another action, such as **Transfer** or when crafting an artifact.

## Setup

If you want to make your life easier, you will want to do this since the start of the game.

* Cut down a lot of Trees.
* Save any weapon you find with +2 or more Enhancement Levels on it.
* Save your Enhance Weapon incantations.
* Save any Artisan's Workshop locations until you know which artifact you will be building.
	+ Always bring your **Normal** grade items with you when going to Somewhere in a Strange Land or to a Dungeon Owner's Dungeon because you never know when an Artisan's Workshop will spawn in one of these randomly generated dungeons and they are inaccessible once you leave.
* Trade with the Meat Cuisine Exchange Merchant until you get the Artifact Blueprint that you want.
	+ This merchant sells lower tier weapons earlier on in the game, which makes it more affordable to trade with them early rather than when you're already into the endgame - Tier 5+ items are worth many times more the Tier 1-2 items.
	+ Not necessary if you have a permanent artifact you like.
	+ Preferably one that only needs 1 Gold Bar and 1 Silver Bar, but you can make this work with a blueprint that needs 2 of one or both - even on difficult mode.
* Trade with Cuisine Exchange Merchant to get all the Gold Bars, Silver Bars, Platinum Bars, Mythril Bars and Mana Crystals / Mana Motes you can.
* Make notes of where Mana Lump locations have spawned and when - they respawn every 200 days.
	+ You can save their locations in the Memo tab and make Baskets with labels of the day you last found mana there.
* Make three Lightning Rods and check them often to get Mana Motes.

## Disclaimers

* **Transfering** costs 5-11 Mana Motes depending on how high the **Enhancement Level** of each item is. Higher tier items have a lower chance of actually getting the Enhancement Levels or attributes of the **Material Item**. If you are trading 8 or more Mana Motes to do a transfer, it may not be worth it.
* Vision Blueprints are always worth the price, but the price varies depending on the item. Save your Artisan's Workshops for when you're low on the metal you need.
* **Refining** for the first time on <+10 items can be very expensive. If you are playing on normal or easy difficulty, this is not a problem because Mythril Bars are easy to get. But if you're playing on difficult mode, it may not be worth it until refining is always 1 Platinum Bar and 3 Crest of Transcendance
* You can use Magic Essences to update the **modular attributes** of an item if you get really bad RNG on the item you're planning on playing with.
* Crafting an Artifact will generate an item with somewhere between the average and the sum of the two **Material Items**' Enhancement Levels, give or take a few Enhancement Levels. As you craft higher Enhancement Level artifacts, you have a decreasing chance of getting in the higher range.
	+ i.e. (Fodder+20) + (Fodder+30) will generate an artifact somewhere between +25 to +50
	+ i.e. (Fodder+25) + (Fodder+25) will also generate an artifact somewhere between +25 to +50
	+ The RNG can incredibly frustrating at times. Be sure to craft with very similar Enhancement Levels so you don't risk getting a lower Enhancement Level than one of your Material Items.

## Artifact ^ 0

* Craft a **Tier** 4.5, 5.0 or 5.5 item (whatever you have the blueprint and materials for).
* **Transfer** +2 **Enhancement Level** or higher items to get the item to +2.
* **Upgrade** the item if it is not already **rare**.
* **Transfer** +2 **Enhancement Level** or higher items (or use Incantations) to get the item to at least +4

## Artifact ^ 1

* Craft an artifact from the +4 or higher items crafted in #Artifact ^ 0
* **Transfer** or **Refine** to +10 or higher

## Artifact ^ 2

* Craft an artifact from the +10 or higher artifacts crafted in #Artifact ^ 1
* **Refine** to +20 or higher

## Artifact ^ 3

* Craft an artifact from the +20 or higher artifacts crafted in #Artifact ^ 2
* **Refine** to +40 or higher

## Artifact ^ n

Continue this process to as high as you would like

## Final Thoughts

Comment below your best artifacts! On normal mode, you can do this quite quickly as well if you aren't too unlucky. Here are the days that these artifacts were crafted on

[Discussion about this process in r/thewilddarkness]