Relics

Relics are the persistent artifacts of an Ascender’s build. They carry Skills, Modifiers, and other build-shaping properties. Relic mechanics intersect with The System (Relics are part of The System’s substrate) and with the Tower’s Infinite blocker (Relics dropped from Infinite-killed Ascenders persist in the world).

Loot taxonomy

Loot falls into four categories. Two are ratified; two are deferred to future iterations.

Relics — persistent artifacts that carry Skills, Modifiers, and other build-shaping properties. See Relic subtypes below.

Materials — crafting ingredients used by Artificers and other production Skills. They have no direct mechanical effect on an Ascender but are essential for the Service economy.

Consumables (deferred) — ephemeral items that produce a one-time or limited-duration effect when used. The Simulation does not model Consumables in its first iteration.

Currency (deferred) — the medium of exchange for the Service economy. Currency design is deferred to a future iteration focused on economic simulation.

The key structural division is persistence: Relics persist across encounters; Materials persist but are consumed by crafting processes; Consumables are destroyed on use.

Relic subtypes

Relics fall into three subtypes based on their primary build-shaping contribution:

Skill Relics — carry one or more Skills. Equipping the Relic makes those Skills available to the Ascender. The Relic’s value is determined by the quality and rarity of its carried Skills.

Modifier Relics — carry Modifiers that adjust Attributes or other game-state values. They do not grant Skills directly but reshape the Ascender’s stats. The Relic’s value is determined by the magnitude and layer-placement of its Modifiers.

Cursed Relics — carry powerful Skills or Modifiers but also impose a drawback. The drawback may be a negative Modifier, a forced Skill, a restriction on other equipment, or a conditional penalty. Cursed Relics are high-risk, high-reward items that can enable Broken Builds or break them.

Relic slot limits

An Ascender can equip a limited number of Relics simultaneously. The default limit is 6 slots.

This limit exists for two reasons:

1. Scarcity: it forces trade-offs. An Ascender cannot equip every powerful Relic they find; they must choose which combination produces the strongest Build.
2. Build construction constraints: the slot limit is the primary boundary within which Build optimisation happens. It creates the combinatorial space where synergies, anti-synergies, and emergent properties arise.

Slot limits can be modified by Skills, Buffs, or permanent transformations, but the default is 6.

Connection to ItemTemplate

For the Simulation’s implementation, each Relic is represented by an ItemTemplate with these fields:

• ModifierSlots: the Modifiers the Relic carries (empty for Skill Relics)
• GrantedSkills: the Skills the Relic carries (empty for Modifier Relics)
• ArchetypeAffinity: optional Archetype affinity that affects drop rates or equippability (see Archetypes for full reconciliation)

These fields are defined in the Domain Primitives layer (HCWS-820.2).

Durability and degradation

Relics are not permanent. They degrade through usage and through the death of their bearer. A heavily-used Relic, or one that has accompanied its bearer through multiple deaths, may eventually require repair to remain usable.

Relics can also be destroyed outright — through overwhelming force, through specific abilities targeting Relics (see pacifier mechanisms below), or as a deliberate act of an enemy seeking to break a Broken Build.

Repair

A degraded Relic can be repaired. Repair is a Service: the Relic owner sacrifices Currency, materials, or another resource to a Skilled Artificer who restores the Relic.

Sale as crafting ingredient

Relics are valuable crafting ingredients. A Skilled Artificer can use a Relic — intact, degraded, or destroyed — as input material in creating a new Relic.

This gives every Relic a secondary economic value beyond direct use, including those dropped by Tower-killed Ascenders (see tower.md Death and Relic legacy).

Artificers

Artificers are Ascenders (or NPCs) who have invested in Artificing — the Utility Skill that enables creation, repair, and reforging of Relics.

Artificing is available to any Class. It is not a Relic Skill — meaning Artificing cannot be granted by equipping a Relic, traded as part of a Relic, or stripped from a Relic on its loss. The Artificer carries the Skill themselves.

The same status applies to several other production and service Skills:

• Healing
• Revival
• General Crafting

These are all Utility Skills, carried by the Ascender directly, tradeable between NPCs and Ascenders at will.

Combat versus Service tradeoff

Pursuing a Craft or Service Role (Artificer, Healer, Reviver, Crafter, and similar) means sacrificing Combat potential. The opportunity cost is real: an Ascender who specializes in Utility Skills is correspondingly less capable in Combat.

This is the design lever that creates an in-world Service economy. High-power Combat Ascenders are not also expert Artificers, and vice versa. The two roles must trade with each other, or rely on Faction support.

Pacifier mechanisms

Relic-disable and Relic-destroy abilities are the mortality vector that prevents Broken Build Immortality (see tower.md Mortality of Broken Builds).

The specific mechanism design — which Skills disable Relics for what duration, what conditions destroy them, how the effects propagate through recursive builds — is open canon, tracked under ed-130 epic.

Open canonical questions

• What concrete forms does Relic degradation take? Reduced effect magnitude, increased chance of failure-to-trigger, visible wear in inventory?
• Does a Relic degrade with each use, or only with major events (death, intensive combat)?
• Are there Relic tiers or rarities that affect degradation rate?
• Can Relics be combined or upgraded short of full reforging?
• Do Relics dropped by Tower-killed Ascenders retain any property that distinguishes them from other Relics on Artificer inspection?
• Combat-vs-Service tradeoff: is this a hard partition (cannot have both) or a soft one (each invested point in Utility costs a Combat point)?
• Can a Skill carried by an Ascender be transferred to a Relic by an Artificer (or vice versa)? Resolved: No. Relic-carried Skills are locked at Relic creation; Ascender-acquired Skills are permanent and personal.

Tracking

• Pacifier mechanism design: ed-130 epic — Relic pacifier mechanism design.