The Artifact System

The Artifact system switched on for real in game version 1.1.1008. The tables were partly in the files before, but this patch is the one that shipped the interface and filled them in — the resonance table alone went from 51 rows to 601. It unlocks at character level 45, so if you are sitting at the level-60 cap it is already open, and it is the single biggest block of stats available to you.

What an artifact actually is

An artifact is a permanent, class-locked power slot. It is not a weapon you equip and it does not take an equipment slot — it sits in its own screen and its bonuses apply on top of everything else you are wearing. Each class has exactly two, one for each of its playable specs, and you unlock one by using its activation item.

Once unlocked, an artifact grows along five separate tracks, and they cost completely different things: slots (flat stats, paid in Artifact Essence and Bound Gold), affixes (random rerolls, paid in the four artifact materials), cores (socketed stat items), talents (a small point tree), and resonance (an account-wide percentage multiplier). Resonance is the one that matters most in the long run and the one nobody notices first.

Which artifact is yours

Two per class, one per playable spec. The unlock item is what the game consumes to activate it. Every artifact also has a second skin, bought with its own separate item, and that skin is worth talent points rather than being purely cosmetic.

Every class gets exactly one artifact per playable spec, which is why the table has eighteen rows and not twenty-seven. The Warrior is the only class with a third spec at all, Fury, and the game prices its talent tree at 999 points — its way of saying “not finished” — so it has no artifact either. Two quirks worth knowing before you go looking: the two Druid artifacts are crossed in the game's own files, so Feral Fang is unlocked by Moonfury Essence and Staff of Moonfury is unlocked by an item called Feral Fang; and several alternate-skin names in the config belong to the wrong class entirely. Go by the unlock item, not the name.

Track one: the artifact's own level

Before any of the other tracks matter, the artifact itself levels from 0 to 299. This is the track that gates everything else — slots open at artifact level 10, 20 and 30, talents unlock on artifact level, and the flat stats here dwarf what the slots give.

Levelling costs Artifact Energy and Bound Gold, and unlike the slots the price rises as you climb: it starts at 20 Artifact Energy and 1,200 Bound Gold per level and finishes thirty times higher.

Maxed, the level track alone is worth +5,400 Attack Power, +3,000 Max HP and +500 Strength, and it stacks milestone bonuses to Attack Power along the way (+2% at level 50, +4% at level 100, +6% at level 150, +8% at level 200, +10% at level 250). The full climb costs 91,820 Artifact Energy and 5,509,200 Bound Gold.

The three slots

Each artifact has three slots that unlock as the artifact itself levels. They are independent: leveling one does nothing for the others. The cost per level never changes and never scales, which makes the whole track easy to budget — and very long.

Affixes, and why rerolling is a trap

Each slot carries four affix lines. Rerolling a line rolls a level from 1 to 20 and replaces what was there. The tiers unlock with the artifact: Basic at artifact level 0, Rare at artifact level 20, Epic at artifact level 40, Legend at artifact level 60, Mythic at artifact level 80.

The roll is weighted, and the weights are in the config, so the odds are exact rather than estimated. They sum to 100,000, which makes each weight a probability directly. The average roll is 6.51. The distribution peaks at level 5 and then falls off a cliff:

Read the bottom of that table carefully. A level-15 or better line takes about 147 rerolls on average. A perfect 20 takes about 100,000 — on one line, of four, on one slot, of three. There is no pity counter in the table: every roll is independent, so a long dry streak buys you nothing.

Each of the four lines costs a different material, so a full slot reroll is four separate payments:

Cores

Cores are stat items you socket into the artifact. There are 514 of them in four qualities, and each rolls its value inside a fixed range. The Attack Power column below is the like-for-like comparison — a core carrying HP or a percentage is on a different scale entirely.

Mythic cores are by far the largest group (304 of 514), because that tier is where the percentage and situational stats live rather than plain Attack Power. Match the core to what your spec actually scales with before you chase quality — a Rare core in your main stat beats a Mythic core in one you do not use.

Breaking down a core you cannot use returns resonance fuel, which makes duplicate cores a resource rather than clutter. Never leave an unusable core sitting in the bag.

Talents and skins

Every artifact has two skins. The base skin comes with activation. The alternate skin is what actually matters, because it carries talent points.

The alternate skin is worth 2 talent points and the base skin is worth none, so the skin is a power upgrade wearing a cosmetic's clothes. Everything else comes from artifact levels: one point every ten levels, at level 9, 19, 29 and so on up to 289.

The tree for the first artifact, in the order it unlocks. Each node takes five levels at one point per level, so a single node fully maxed is a sixth of everything you will ever have:

Respeccing costs 100 Bound Diamonds, a flat fee per reset rather than per talent, so experimenting is cheap once you have the points — and given how few points there are, you should experiment.

Resonance — the one that actually wins

Resonance is a separate 600-level track fed by artifact points. Its bonuses are percentages on your core stats, which means it scales with everything else you own instead of adding to it.

At the cap it grants +100% to Max HP %, Attack Power %, Spell Power %, Strength %, Agility % and Intellect %, plus up to +18% to the PvP stat block. Doubling your primary stats is more than any gear tier in the game gives you, which is why the correct long answer to “what should I spend artifact materials on” is almost always resonance.

Materials convert to artifact energy at fixed rates, so the cheapest path is always to feed the lowest-tier material you have a surplus of:

Switching artifacts

If you commit to the wrong artifact for your spec, inheritance moves progress across rather than making you start over. It has five tiers and they are cheap:

At 16,000 Bound Gold for the top tier this is rounding error next to a single slot level. Do not let fear of picking wrong stop you from starting.

What to do first

1. Activate the artifact for the spec you actually play

   Not the one for the spec you might play later. Inheritance is cheap enough to fix a mistake, and every day you wait is a day of resonance points you did not bank.

2. Level the artifact itself, and keep levelling it

   This is the track that pays best per unit of material and it is the one that unlocks everything else. The first 30 levels cost 1,160 Artifact Energy and open all three slots. Nothing else should compete with this until the artifact is comfortably into three figures.

3. Then open Slot X

   The offensive slot is the only one that pays you damage per level. Slots Y and Z give 15 points each, which is worth having eventually and worth nothing right now.

4. Put every Artifact Essence into Slot X

   +20 per level, forever, at a fixed price. This is the most predictable power in the game and the only artifact track that cannot disappoint you.

5. Feed spare materials into resonance, starting with the cheapest

   Resonance is account-wide and percentage-based, so it compounds with every piece of gear you will ever get. Spend Anima Essence freely and hold Titan Orb until you are pushing a milestone.

6. Reroll affixes only to clear the low band

   Get each line on your offensive slot to 10 or better and walk away. The tail of that odds table is where materials go to die.

7. Then, and only then, open the defensive slots and chase cores

   By this point you will know which stat your spec is starved of, which is the only way to pick cores sensibly.