Destiny Rising’s artifacts are an essential part of NetEase’s take on Bungie’s sci-fi game, one of the best ways to get your character up to speed for high-level and endgame challenges. While Destiny Rising explains a bit about how artifacts work, it’s not the clearest tutorial, nor does it cover some of the most important details.
Below, we break down how Destiny Rising’s artifacts work, what you’re looking for in a good one, and how to get more artifacts.
Destiny Rising Artifacts explained
If you’ve played any Genshin Impact, Honkai Star Rail, or Zenless Zone Zero, you might think Destiny Rising’s artifacts are the same. Well, they aren’t. Mostly.
Artifacts are items you equip on your character to gain specific effects. Each character has four artifact slots, and each artifact is only equippable in a specific numbered slot. For example, Bellicose Precession and Bellicose Pact only work in Slot 3, so you can’t put them elsewhere or use both. You have to choose which artifact works best for your character.
Each artifact has a guaranteed bonus – Bellicose Precession always increases rate-of-fire when you hit enemies five times or more, for example – but they also have random attributes. One might boost healing, for example, while another comes with a defensive bonus. At high-level and endgame play, getting the right stats on these additional attributes often makes a noticeable difference in how your character performs, but don’t worry about it when you’re just starting out. Aiming for ideal attribute rolls is something for when you’re getting Exotic-rank artifacts.
Some artifacts won’t work on certain characters – not that they aren’t suited for them, just that they flat-out can’t be equipped. Make sure to check that you’re going after artifacts of a type that suits your character’s weapon. For example, if you can’t use spread or summon weapons, you can’t use those types of artifacts either. The artifact’s information panel will tell you whether your character can equip it, but with all the details Destiny Rising throws at you, it’s potentially easy to overlook.
What is the artifect set bonus in Destiny Rising?
Set bonuses are slightly misleading and underexplained. Destiny Rising’s artifacts don’t come in sets the same way, say, Genshin Impact’s artifacts do. Rather than having a Bloodthirsty set or a Bellicose set, you have sets based on their specific category – spread, summon, and so on.
These set bonuses don’t increase with the level of your artifacts, but, instead, as you reach milestones from leveling attributes across all four equipped artifacts. That means it’s easier to get higher set bonuses by using Mythic or Exotic artifacts, since they have more attributes to contribute to the combined level total.
How to get artifacts in Destiny Rising
You can purchase artifacts in institute bundles, but it’s not the most ideal way to obtain them. The main, and best, way to get artifacts in Destiny Rising is to complete Singularity: Chaos challenges in the Realm of the IX and spending pinnacle energy, after which you’ll get a random selection of artifacts. If you use Challenger’s Wish, you can tailor which artifacts will drop. That doesn’t guarantee you good attribute rolls, but it does mean you won’t wind up with a bunch of artifacts that don’t even work with your character.
You earn Choice Engrams by completing Singularity: Order challenges. Tier IV challenges give you Legendary Choice Engrams and tier V challenges reward you with Mythic Choice Engrams.
Once you clear the main campaign and unlock acclaim leveling, you can earn Exotic-grade artifacts. Clearing the weekly endgame activity The Expanse rewards you with a chest that includes an Exotic Artifact as well.
For more help, head over to our Destiny Rising character tier list and a rundown of every Exotic weapon in the game so far.