What do slotted artifacts do?

[Hans_Lemurson]

I couldn't find this information on the wiki.

Although it says for example that a Smooth Stone gives "5 Blunt Power and 10 Concussive Power when slotted", what does that actually MEAN? Does this mean that if I "slot" this item onto my hat, that I will be more effective at stomping on crickets?

Further artifact questions:
-What does the "Difficulty" mean? 20-65 what? What does this relate to? What do these numbers mean?

-What does "Proficiency type" mean? What effect does slotting a smooth stone have that's related to "Mines and Mountains"?

-How do you increase the chance of success? I was lucky enough when trying out slotting different items onto my clothing to only get a few "broken slots" on my pilgrim's outfit even at 34% chance of success, but suppose I was trying to outfit an expensive piece of clothing? What skills or proficiencies or humours do you need to improve the slotting chances so as not to waste the artifacts and clothing?

-Why am I doing this at all? This is actually just a repeat of my initial question. I've been operating under the assumption that "More is better" and slotting things "can't really hurt" (except making it impossible to slot further things), but when I place an arrowhead in my pants, does this have any effect other than looking like I'm happy to see you?

[Yourgrandmother]

I am the town tailor so will answer what I can based on experience.

If you have hover over each combat ability in the toolbar, it lists the damage type. Essentially you want Piercing Power/Defense and Common (which affects all types.) Impact is pretty useless so is blunt, concussive affects stomps and you could make a situational town defense stomper or offensive basher bodyguard with stomp. Without going into detail on the formula that determines what 1 piercing power will add to damage, think of it like adding 1 point of yellow bile to your stats and how that would affect your specific combat ability. Thrust for example would get a larger % damage increase with 1 piercing power compared to stomp and concussive power as the base damage dealt is lower vs a thrust un-modified. Defense subtracts the attackers modified bonus' and will even go below the old threshold. For example a character with 50+ piercing/common defense will take far less than 15 damage from a 90 yellow bile thrust without any artifacts.

Difficulty on both the clothing and artifact is taken into account. The first number is the difficulty level if there is no matching proficiency between clothing and artifact. There is a set minimum fail rate regardless of how high your proficiencies are. The second difficulty number is used IF both clothing and artifact have a matching proficiency. It is highly recommended you use matching artifacts and clothing to obtain the best success rate. Items with low difficulty numbers are better than others, the key number you want to look at tho is the second difficulty number since you want to be slotting artifacts that match clothing.

As an example, say you want to slot an Etterfang into a Pilgrim's Cape. An Etterfang has a difficulty range of 75 - 0. It has Cloak and Dagger and Sugar and Spice proficiency. Fortunately the Pilgrim's Cape has Cloak and Dagger proficiency so instead of it being a difficult artifact to slow, the difficulty value of 0 on the artifact is added to the difficulty of the Pilgrim's Cape of 30 - 20 which will be 20. Your proficiency value of cloak and dagger will determine the success. There is a square root formula out there already which shows all factors but keeping it simple like this you get the gist of it.

Once you learn this then you need to determine good and more importantly attainable gear sets for your character. Here are the good PvP artifacts you should consider:

Polished Buttons
Embroidery
Etterfang
Whispering Snakeskull
Colored Flagstraps
(Rainbow Scales are decent but their difficulty and requirement of Natural Philosophy + craftable items being short on having that proficiency make them undesirable)

When you look these artifacts you will see 2 major proficiencies that are required on average.

Cloak and Dagger
Arts&Crafts

Thread & Needle secondary

Focus on those and you will be golden.

How to level them? Ore purity is more important than ever before. Lover's Locket have high A&C and C&D and will be needed to get to high levels 100-200+. Now that you know the good artifacts take the time to look thru the clothing list to find high slot + matching proficiency clothing.

Don't forget the crafter side of things. 3 new artifacts were introduced recently that add to Tree Chopping Speed and Digging Speed. Here is a recommended gear set for a non fighting civilian.

CIVILIAN SETUP:

Boots:

Trapper Boots
- Feathered Brooch
- Enforced Seam

Belt:

Snakeskin Belt
- Buckskin Inlay

Pants:

*Endgame*
Fyne Pantaloons
- Feathered Brooch
- Buckskin Inlay
- Enforced Seam

Jute Pants
- Feathered Brooch
- Buckskin Inlay

Shirt:

Wool Sweater
- Buckskin Inlays
- Feathered Brooch
- Enforced Seam

Cape:

Pilgrim's Cape
- Feathered Brooch
- Buckskin Inlays

Hat:

Latest From Paris
- Feathered Brooch
- Buckskin Inlays

Coat:

Trapper Jacket / Sunday Gown
- Buckskin Inlay
- Enforced Seam
- Feathered Brooch

You will want Arts & Crafts, Thread and Needle, Hunting and Gathering, Frontier and Wilderness to have the best chance at making civilian gear sets with heavy focus on Thread and Needle.

Artifacts have a huge impact on the game in terms of PvP viability. Characters with high quality clothing and artifacts will be boosted to almost twice their strength in both damage and defenses. The most valuable items in the game will be fully slotted endgame clothing and deaths of notorious raiders will end up being more valuable than the town they defended.

Don't believe me?

Here is a theory crafted endgame gear set:

Endgame Totals:

Piercing Power: 80
Combat Power: 215
Piercing Defense: 60
Combat Defense: 115

Toal Power: 295
Total Defense: 175

[Hans_Lemurson]

Thanks for the detailed info!

I had had suspicions that the listed proficiencies on artifacts/clothing related to your proficiency level, but I hadn't had any inkling that artifacts and clothing would have affinity for each other.

The information you gave would be a very valuable contribution to the wiki.

[DragonScythe]

concussive is actually pretty nice for uppercut, but other than that it's good

[MagicManICT]

The wiki is community developed. The devs are very stingy with the information they give us directly, so it can take some time. I didn't read through your whole post yet, Yourgrandmother, but it looks like some pretty good information. Any qualms with putting it up on the wiki?

[Procne]

As an example, say you want to slot an Etterfang into a Pilgrim's Cape. An Etterfang has a difficulty range of 75 - 0. It has Cloak and Dagger and Sugar and Spice proficiency. Fortunately the Pilgrim's Cape has Cloak and Dagger proficiency so instead of it being a difficult artifact to slow, the difficulty value of 0 on the artifact is added to the difficulty of the Pilgrim's Cape of 30 - 20 which will be 20. Your proficiency value of cloak and dagger will determine the success. There is a square root formula out there already which shows all factors but keeping it simple like this you get the gist of it.

Are you sure about that? I remember someone saying that matching proficiencies don't automatically set the difficulty to the minimum but instead, your level in matching proficiencies moves the difficulty towards minimum

Here's what Ender wrote about that:

I have spoken with loftar about how slotting works, and that's what I know now:
Difficulty numbers show chance to fail.
If you do not have any matched profs in clothing and artifice, then maximum number is used, otherwise number in between them is used.
First, you need to calculate Effective Matched Proficiency - it is square root of sum of squares of your proficiency values of matched proficiencies in clothing and artifice - SQRT(Pr1^2 + Pr2^2 + ... + Prn^2).
Then for each 50 of EMP you divide distance from bigger difficulty number to lower by 2. Haven't yet figured what real formula would be, but with 50 EMP your chance to fail is right in the middle of the range, with 100 - 0.75 from bigger to lower. And I am not yet sure if difficulty on clothing and on artifice add up, or roll separately.

[Yourgrandmother]

Yeah I should have worded it better.

The 2 numbers represent the max and minimum on a difficulty scale.

Where you are to that number depends on the level of your proficiencies associated with the artifact and clothing.

[Hans_Lemurson]

Another question I thought of on this topic:

Does clothing itself provide any inherent advantages, or is the difference between the various clothes simply a matter of number of artifact slots, difficulty of slotting, and different proficiency associations?

[L33LEE]

Another question I thought of on this topic:

Does clothing itself provide any inherent advantages, or is the difference between the various clothes simply a matter of number of artifact slots, difficulty of slotting, and different proficiency associations?

You basically summed it up here yourself.

[datass]

I am the town tailor so will answer what I can based on experience.

I wana your info in sevenless's guide