Artifacts & Loadouts
Necrosmith 2 caps you at four active artifact slots, chosen from a much larger collection, which is a sharp change from the first game's find-and-keep relics. Swap your loadout to match the job: Master's Hat and Sands of Time for spell-heavy boss fights, Holy Grail for gold, and Rollerskates plus Pocket Magnet for manual sweeping runs. The Telescope is safe to equip. It caused a frozen in-game timer at launch, fixed in version 1.0.2, and note that it is a day and night stat artifact and not a view range one.
Necrosmith 2 limits you to four active artifact slots, chosen from a collection you build up as you play. The artifact room's central altar has exactly four mounts, with the rest of your collection on shelves around it, and there is shelf space for 64.
That is a real change from the first game, though not quite the way it is usually put. Necrosmith 1 called them relics, found at random on the map during a run, granting permanent stacking bonuses with no equip limit. Necrosmith 2 turns them into a loadout you choose from.
Storage Limitations
You can only equip four artifacts at a time, so exploring libraries and looting is less about raw accumulation and more about finding the right tools for your current goal.
Treat artifacts as situational tools and never permanent upgrades. You should adapt your loadout based on whether you are trying to kill a boss, survive Chaos Mode, or farm for missing secret recipe components.
Recommended Loadout Presets
The Boss Hunter
Designed for taking down the Hand, the Reaper, or the final boss, and built around casting spells more often.
- Master's Hat: "35% chance to skip cooldown after using a spell." This is the artifact people mean when they talk about resetting cooldowns, and it is the community's top pick for spell-driven boss fights.
- Sands of Time: Reduces spell cooldowns by 30%, at the cost of every spell damaging your tower for 5% of its maximum durability. Pair it with tower healing from the Magic Smithy to absorb that.
- Holy Grail: +100 gold, +50 ore and +25 mana for every enemy lair destroyed.
For keeping a Titan or a breacher alive, note that there is no Vampirism artifact. The sustain artifacts are individually named and none of them is lifesteal: Star Flower restores 100 HP per resource picked up, Crown of Power fully heals a unit that destroys a lair, Phoenix Feather restores 1,000 HP when a nearby ally dies, and Forgotten Lollipop grants +20 regeneration near a boss. For a Titan build, Flag of Valor gives nearby units +50 damage.
The Sweeper
Designed for driving one unit around to farm gold and missing body parts. Both of these only affect the unit you are actively controlling, so this is a manual technique.
- Rollerskates: +50% speed to the creature you control.
- Pocket Magnet: Gives the controlled unit an aura that collects all resources inside it automatically.
No artifact in the game grants view range or reveals the map. The Telescope reads "+20 to speed of the dead at night, +350 to maximum HP during the day", which makes it a day and night stat artifact. The Scope is similar, giving +15 speed to a unit far from the tower.
Historical bug note: at launch the Telescope froze the in-game clock. The timer stopped, monsters stopped spawning, and lairs stopped firing, though the game kept running. Alawar acknowledged it within hours and fixed it in version 1.0.2 on March 29, 2024, so it is safe to equip. Timer freezes were separately reported without the Telescope afterwards, which 1.0.5 addressed.
Budgeting Four Slots
Four slots sounds generous until you try to build a loadout, and the players who struggle with the cap are almost always trying to cover every eventuality with it.
A working allocation splits the slots by function instead of by power level:
| Slot | Purpose | Example |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Primary multiplier for what you are actually doing | Master's Hat on a spell-heavy boss run |
| 2 | Survivability for your key unit | Star Flower or Phoenix Feather on a Titan build |
| 3 | The specific problem this disc creates | Holy Grail when you need gold |
| 4 | Flexible, swapped most often | Pocket Magnet while farming, dropped for a fight |
The mistake is filling all four with raw power multipliers. A loadout of four damage artifacts kills things faster right up until the moment something kills your squad, and then it does nothing at all. Slot two is not a luxury.
Swap Between Objectives, Not During Them
Artifacts are situational, so the discipline that matters is remembering to change them at all. Plenty of runs are played entirely on whatever loadout was equipped when the run started.
Build the habit of a deliberate check at every transition point. When you finish sweeping a disc and turn toward a boss, that is a swap. When you clear a boss and go back to farming parts, that is a swap back. Two swaps per objective change is a small amount of clicking for a large amount of effective power.
The sweeper set and the boss set genuinely do not overlap. Rollerskates and the Pocket Magnet contribute nothing to a Reaper fight, since neither does anything unless you are personally driving a unit, and the Master's Hat contributes nothing to clearing an empty map faster. Running one set for both jobs means playing half of your run with dead slots.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many artifact slots does Necrosmith 2 have?
Four active slots, chosen from a collection with shelf space for 64. The first game used relics instead, found on the map during a run and kept permanently with no equip limit, so the cap is genuinely new.
What are the best artifacts for killing bosses in Necrosmith 2?
Master's Hat, which gives a 35 percent chance to skip a spell's cooldown after casting, usually alongside Sands of Time for a further 30 percent cooldown reduction at the cost of tower damage. For keeping a unit alive there is no Vampirism artifact. Use Star Flower, Crown of Power or Phoenix Feather instead.
What is the best artifact loadout for farming parts?
Rollerskates and the Pocket Magnet, plus Holy Grail if you want gold from lairs. Note that Rollerskates and the Magnet only affect the unit you are actively controlling, so sweeping is a manual technique and not something your units do on their own.
Is the Telescope artifact still broken in Necrosmith 2?
No. At launch it froze the in-game clock, which stopped monster spawns and lair attacks, and Alawar fixed it in version 1.0.2 on March 29, 2024. Also worth knowing: it is not a view range artifact. It gives +20 speed at night and +350 maximum HP during the day.
Should you treat artifacts as permanent upgrades?
No. With only four slots, treat them as situational tools and rebuild your loadout around the current goal, whether that is killing a boss, surviving Chaos Mode, or farming missing secret recipe components.
What to Read Next
- Assembling Minions. Squad builds each preset assumes.
- Titans. Artifact support for Titan-focused runs.
- Exploration and Map Progression. Sweeping loadouts in practice.
- Tips and Tricks. The four-slot cap, and the artifact that stopped freezing the clock.