How Artifacts work in Beyond Earth: Rising Tide

Want to know how exactly artifacts are acquired in Beyond Earth: Rising Tide and how their reward is determined?  I dug through the code to find out.

---

How artifacts are acquired

Old Earth Artifacts
Are acquired when you:

1. Collect a resource pod
2. Excavate a derelict settlement or derelict ocean settlement
3. Excavate a wrecked ocean colonial lander

Crashed satellites will never provide artifacts.  You have a 20% chance to get an Old Earth artifact.  Every time you don’t your chance of getting one goes up by 10%.  Every time you get an Old Earth artifact your acquisition rate goes back down to 20%.

Alien Artifacts
Are acquired when you:

1. Pillage an alien nest
2. Excavate an alien skeleton or alien ocean skeleton

You have a 38% chance to get an Alien Artifact.  Every time you don’t your chance of getting one goes up by 7%.  Every time you get an Alien artifact your acquisition rate goes back down to 38%.

Progenitor
Are acquired when you:

1. Excavate a progenitor ruin or progenitor ocean ruin
2. Excavate an ocean progenitor device

You have a 55% chance to get an Progenitor Artifact.  Every time you don’t your chance of getting one goes up by 3%.  Every time you get a Progenitor artifact your acquisition rate goes back down to 55%.

Maximum Artifacts

There are 24 artifacts in each category (old earth, alien, progenitor). Each artifact can only be given out once, you can not get artifacts other players have found. Once there are no more artifacts left in category you won’t get more artifacts from that category.

Preferred Reward

Each artifact has a “preferred reward”. If you get an artifact it will be drawn from a pool. Artifacts (of the specific category) will be put into the pool if they don’t share a preferred reward with an artifact you already have. If an artifact shares a preferred reward with one other artifact you already have then the chance it will be put into the pool is 50%. The chance is 33% if two, 25% if three and 20% if four.

If nothing is added to the pool you will not get an artifact and you do not get the +10%/+7%/+3% bonus to finding future artifacts.

---

How Artifact rewards are determined

The three artifacts you combine will determine the pool of possible rewards.  The actual reward will be drawn from that pool.  Changing the order of the artifacts has no effect.  Removing and then placing the same artifacts in will not change the reward.  The pool will not contain any reward you’ve already earned.  There are 6 rewards for each category and 6 mixed rewards, totaling 24 possible rewards.

If you are breaking down three artifacts of the same category (Old Earth, Alien, Progenitor) the pool will be all the prefer rewards of those artifacts.  If all of those rewards have already been acquired than the pool is all rewards for that category.  If still no rewards are in the pool than the pool is all available rewards.

If you are breaking down three artifacts that do not all have the same category then the pool is the preferred rewards for those artifacts plus all the mixed rewards.  In the unlikely event that these rewards have all been acquired the game will add all the rewards for the categories of the Artifacts.  And if those are all taken, all rewards will be added to the pool.

---

Strategic Ramifications

Grabbing as many resource pods early is the best way to acquire Old Earth artifacts.  It is much faster than doing excavations.  Crashed satellite excavations will never provide an artifact.

When trying to get a specific reward you need an artifact with that as its preferred reward. Having other artifacts of the same category lets you form more unique combinations, each one providing at worst a 1-out-of-3 chance of giving you the reward you want. If trying to get a specific reward with a mixed set the odds are much lower because the 6 mixed rewards will clog the pool. Resulting in a 1-out-of-9 chance.

The Alien rewards are relatively weak compared to the extremely powerful Progenitor and Old Earth rewards.  Some of the mixed rewards may be considered more useful than the Alien rewards.

Notable rewards:

Old Earth:

• Warp Spire: +50% yield from internal trade routes
• Drone Command: +2 tiles worked for free

Alien:

• Sky Chitin: +50% Strength, +3 Range for Air Units
• Tidal Navigation: Naval Units gain +100% Defense against Ranged Attacks

Progenitor:

• Machine Assisted Free Will: Technologies cost -30% less Science
• Quantum Politics: +100% Virtue speed
• Dimension Folding Complex: -50% unhealth from population in all cities

Mixed:

• Slumber Slaughter Extract: +50% Worker improvement speed
• Soul Discerner Training: Covert Ops take -25% less time