Artifacts and relics are the valuables at the core of VOID DIVER: Escape from the Abyss. Recovering them is the primary reason a Diver descends into The Abyss, and they sit at the intersection of the game's two halves: they are the goal of a dive and the lifeblood of the shop business run out of the BALUSHA Antique Shop.
The Primary Objective
The main goal of any expedition is artifact recovery. A Diver's job is to find hidden valuables and escape safely. Getting the loot is only half of it, though, because failing to extract in time during Diving and Extraction can mean losing everything collected on the run. That risk is what gives the hunt for valuables its tension.
What Counts as a Valuable
The valuables hidden in the dungeon span several kinds of objects.
Super-scientific devices: Advanced technological items recovered from the dungeon.
Forbidden magic relics: Arcane relics that carry a darker significance.
Forbidden relics are more than just high-value goods. Dealing in them gradually reveals the city's dark secrets, so the relic trade is woven into the story of how the city came to be the way it is.
Loot and Builds
Recovered relics are not only sold. They also serve as build pieces. Gear customization lets players construct a character using weapons, accessories, and relics obtained from the dungeons, which means the same haul that feeds the shop can also feed a Diver's loadout. This connects artifacts directly to Weapons and Gear and Character Building.
The Relic Trade
Once back from a run, artifacts and relics flow into the management layer. As The Merchant, the player supports the Divers and grows the business by trading recovered artifacts through BALUSHA. This is where the loop closes: dangerous dives produce valuables, and those valuables become profit, story progress, and the means to fund the next expedition.
Grades and Tags
Artifacts and relics come in grades, and the grade drives how often they turn up. As campaign difficulty climbs, items of Elite grade or higher appear more frequently, while they show up less often on Easy difficulty. Drops are weighted by grade rather than lumping every rare-and-above item into one pool.
Every relic also carries a set of tags. The minimum number of tags a relic is guaranteed to have rises with its grade, so a higher-grade relic starts with more tags than a lower-grade one. Some artifacts appear abnormally modified, and because those can cause stability issues, the game converts them into artifacts that instead carry a specific status tag.
The Ring of Perseverance is one relic named directly in the update notes. It shows its duration in its description text, and that duration has been increased.
Status Tags and the VIP Trade
Those status tags are not just labels. When you negotiate with a VIP buyer, the status tags on the relics you are carrying are prioritized in deciding what that VIP likes or dislikes, so a haul's tags shape which buyers pay a premium for it. In Co-op and Multiplayer, that judgment is made for each player individually, so every Diver's own relics and tags are weighed on their own during a shared negotiation.
Artifact Contamination
Artifacts also track a contamination value, and that value belongs to the individual Diver carrying them rather than to your whole roster. Switching to a different character does not bring the previous character's artifact contamination along with it.
Related Pages
BALUSHA Antique Shop
Weapons and Gear
Diving and Extraction
The Abyss