Artifacts and Artifact Realms work a little differently in Siralim 3 than they did in Siralim 2. One of the most common complaints I saw about Siralim 2 was that Artifact Realms were very boring. Not only that, but the “Quality” system (which served as a multiplier for artifact stats) wasn’t very useful since artifact stats became obsolete later on as your creatures’ stats scaled with Gene Strength, while artifacts did not. I have addressed these issues and many others in Siralim 3.

Artifacts

First, artifacts no longer have levels. It was an interesting idea, but ultimately it didn’t really serve the game in the right way and was yet another thing for players to unnecessarily worry about. Instead, artifacts now all have the following stat slots:

1-2 Primary Stats (just like in Siralim 2. Also, artifacts with 2 primary stats are now much stronger than they were in Siralim 2)

5 Secondary Stats (which you can enchant yourself using “common” or “rare” crafting materials)

1 Trait Slot (which you will enchant using a “legendary” crafting material)

1 Spell Slot (I’ll explain more about this in the “Artifact Realms” section)

As you can see, the number of secondary stat slots has been reduced to 5, down from 10 in Siralim 2. However, there’s now a dedicated “Trait Slot” that is used specifically for legendary crafting materials. After all, no one in their right mind would create an artifact without a trait anyway. The reason why the number of stat slots was decreased is so that players actually have to think about what they enchant their artifacts with – when there are too many slots available, your choices aren’t as impactful.

In addition, artifact properties now use percentage-based values rather than straight values. For example, an “Attack” enchantment now might increase your creature’s Attack by 20% instead of some arbitrary value like 300.

Legendary Crafting Materials

The Altar of Blood now allows you to sacrifice your creatures using 1 of 3 different types of extremely rare Knives you’ll find during your travels. Depending on the type of Knife you use, you’ll receive a certain item. Today, I’m only ready to reveal one such Knife, since it’s the only one that is relevant to this post: the Slaughter Knife.

Simply put, Slaughter Knives allow you to sacrifice a creature to receive its trait’s corresponding legendary crafting material. After you use a Knife, it will be gone forever, so choose the creature wisely.

This system was implemented to replace (and improve on) the old Sigil system in Siralim 2, which was previously the best way to target a specific legendary crafting material.

Crafting Artifacts vs Finding Artifacts

One of the things I dislike the most about the Artifacts system in Siralim and Siralim 2 is that the artifacts you find in the wild are hardly ever useful. Unless you get extremely lucky, you’re almost always better off using an artifact you crafted yourself. I hope to fix that in Siralim 3.

Artifacts you find in the wild will now have higher stats than the ones you craft. The tradeoff is that you can’t modify the artifacts you find in any way, aside from enchanting them with a trait. This means that, if you want some control over what stats your creatures have on their artifacts, you’ll have to settle for lower stats. Conversely, you might eventually find a really powerful artifact that is better than anything you could make on your own. Hopefully, this will make the loot hunt much more enticing and you won’t look at every artifact you find as salvaging fodder. Another nice side effect of this change is that Itherian Artifacts will be much more powerful.

Another small but important change is that reforging your artifacts now costs materials as well as resources. If you want to reforge your “Attack” enchantment, it will cost some resources and some common crafting materials. This change was made to compensate for artifacts offering percentage-based bonuses since you won’t have to constantly reforge your artifacts anymore to maintain their stats as your creatures level up.

Lastly, the Blacksmith now offers an additional option: “Craft”. Crafting an artifact works exactly like Forging, except it’s more expensive, and the artifacts it produces come pre-enchanted with randomized properties. Unlike artifacts found in the wild, you can modify these artifacts any way you want. But remember, they’ll have lower stats than those you could find in the wild.

Artifact Realms

Artifact Realms are no longer as easy as they were in Siralim 2. Now, enemies scale to your creatures’ levels (this is one of the few areas in the game that have scaling enemies). The number of floors you’ll have to clear is still 20, and each floor will be more difficult than the last. These floors are still meant to be cleared quickly, though, so all the fluff will still be absent from them such as Realm Quests and certain events and objects.

After you defeat the boss (yes, they have bosses now) at the 20th floor of the Artifact Realm, you’ll awaken your artifact, enchanting its “Spell Slot” that I mentioned at the top of this post. The enchantment will offer the equipped creature a chance to automatically cast a spell when it attacks. The exact chance varies based on how powerful the spell is, and these spells do not cost any Mana when they’re cast. As you might have guessed, this system serves as a smaller, less-overpowered replacement for Siralim 2’s automatic casting properties found on Spell Gems.

If you don’t like the spell that your artifact was enchanted with, you can try again with a new Artifact Realm.

And yes, you can awaken any artifact in the game – even those you find in the wild.

In addition, several exclusive rewards can now be found in Artifact Realms, such as Itherian Artifacts, legendary crafting materials, creatures, and more.