SegmentNextRisk of Rain 2 Artifacts: Every Code, How To Unlock And Which To Use
Artifacts are run modifiers you toggle on the character select screen, and nearly all of them have to be earned first by punching a nine symbol code into a machine and then winning a fight. They change a run far more than any single pickup does. One lets you pick every item you collect, one deletes chests entirely, one doubles the number of monsters, and one gives everybody five times the damage and a tenth of the health. This page lists all twenty, writes out the code for each of the nineteen that have one, and explains the machine you enter them into.
How The Code System Works
The Compound Generator is the machine that reads codes. It sits on the lower level of Sky Meadow, the fifth stage, and on the highest level of Helminth Hatchery. Its face is a three by three grid of tiles and each tile cycles through four symbols: square, circle, triangle and diamond. You set all nine tiles to match an artifact's code, confirm, and a portal opens.
That portal drops you into Bulwark's Ambry, a small arena of block shaped platforms built around the Artifact Reliquary. The Reliquary has an enormous health pool and monsters keep arriving while you chip at it, so the fight is a test of whether your build can hold a position rather than a damage check. Kill it and the artifact is unlocked permanently on that profile, ready to toggle on before any future run. The codes themselves are found on tablets scattered around the game's stages, which is the intended way to learn them; the table below saves you the hunt.
Two of the twenty need an expansion. Artifact of Prestige belongs to the Alloyed Collective expansion, and Artifact of Rebirth comes with Seekers of the Storm and is the one artifact with no code at all, so it cannot be earned through the Ambry trial the way the others are.
Every Artifact Code
Read each code as three rows of three, left to right and top to bottom, exactly as the generator's grid is laid out.
| Artifact | What it does | Code, row by row |
|---|---|---|
| Chaos | Friendly fire is on, for survivors and monsters both | Circle Triangle Circle / Circle Triangle Circle / Circle Triangle Circle |
| Command | You choose every item you pick up | Square Square Square / Square Square Square / Triangle Triangle Triangle |
| Death | When one player dies, everyone dies | Circle Circle Circle / Square Triangle Square / Circle Triangle Circle |
| Delusion | After the teleporter event, risk your items on a memory test to win more | Square Circle Square / Circle Circle Circle / Square Triangle Square |
| Devotion | Broken drones become Lemurian eggs; feed one an item and it follows you | Triangle Diamond Triangle / Square Diamond Square / Diamond Triangle Diamond |
| Dissonance | Monsters appear outside their usual environments | Circle Square Square / Square Square Square / Square Square Circle |
| Enigma | Spawn with a random equipment that rerolls every time it is used | Diamond Square Square / Triangle Square Triangle / Circle Diamond Diamond |
| Evolution | Monsters gain items between stages | Diamond Diamond Diamond / Square Square Square / Circle Circle Circle |
| Frailty | Fall damage is doubled and lethal | Circle Circle Circle / Triangle Circle Triangle / Triangle Triangle Triangle |
| Glass | Allies deal 500 percent damage but have 10 percent health | Diamond Diamond Diamond / Diamond Diamond Diamond / Diamond Diamond Diamond |
| Honor | Enemies can only spawn as elites | Square Square Square / Square Triangle Square / Square Square Square |
| Kin | Only one monster type per stage | Circle Triangle Triangle / Diamond Circle Triangle / Diamond Diamond Circle |
| Metamorphosis | You always spawn as a random survivor | Diamond Square Circle / Diamond Square Circle / Diamond Square Circle |
| Prestige | A Shrine of the Mountain every stage, and its effects are permanent | Triangle Circle Circle / Square Circle Triangle / Circle Circle Square |
| Rebirth | Start the run holding a gift from a previous life | No code |
| Sacrifice | Monsters drop items on death, but chests stop spawning | Triangle Triangle Triangle / Triangle Triangle Triangle / Triangle Diamond Triangle |
| Soul | Wisps rise out of the monsters you kill | Circle Square Circle / Circle Diamond Circle / Square Diamond Square |
| Spite | Enemies scatter exploding bombs when they die | Triangle Circle Triangle / Circle Circle Circle / Triangle Circle Triangle |
| Swarms | Twice as many monsters, each with half the maximum health | Circle Circle Triangle / Triangle Diamond Triangle / Triangle Circle Circle |
| Vengeance | A doppelganger of your team invades every ten minutes | Diamond Square Square / Diamond Circle Square / Diamond Square Square |
Which Ones To Unlock First
Command is the one to go after first, and it changes how every other guide on this site reads. Instead of hoping a chest gives you the right white, you pick it, which means the stacking argument our items tier list makes stops being theory. That list's whole S tier is five items that get better with every copy, so with Command you simply take Syringe after Syringe, or Tougher Times after Tougher Times, and watch the number climb. It is also the artifact that makes a build guide reproducible: the loadouts on our survivor builds guide assume items you cannot normally guarantee.
Sacrifice is the next one worth having, and it pairs badly with Command by design, since it deletes the chests Command would have let you choose from. On its own it speeds a run up enormously because every monster is a potential drop and you never stop to open anything. Swarms earns its place for a different reason: our Artificer builds open by asking you to kill twenty enemies quickly so the primary scales, and doubling the spawn count while halving monster health is the fastest way to get there.
Two more are quietly useful rather than dramatic. Metamorphosis hands you a random survivor every run, which is the cheapest way to find out whether you actually like REX or Acrid before committing to unlocking one properly. Enigma gives you a random equipment on spawn that changes on every use, which is a cheap way to learn the equipment pool without spending Lunar Coins on pods.
The Ones That Make A Run Much Harder
Glass is the famous one. Five times damage sounds like a cheat until you notice that ten percent health means a Stone Golem's laser or a single Wisp can end the run outright, and that the survivors who hold up best under it are the ones with a way out rather than the ones with the biggest numbers. Honor forces every enemy to spawn as an elite, which turns a stage three teleporter event into the kind of fight most builds are not ready for until much later. Frailty makes fall damage lethal, which sounds minor until you are using a survivor whose mobility is a dive.
Chaos and Death are the multiplayer ones. Chaos turns friendly fire on for everybody, so a Will-o'-the-Wisp chain or an Artificer's Ion Surge lands on your own team, and Death ends the run for everyone the moment one player goes down. Vengeance sends a copy of your own team at you every ten minutes, with your own items, so the further a run goes the harder its own doppelganger hits. Spite adds bombs to every corpse, which is only a nuisance until you are fighting in a corridor.
One interaction is worth knowing before you toggle anything: with Sacrifice active, the Lunar Pods that dispense lunar items stop spawning everywhere except Commencement, so a run built around trading Lunar Coins for Shaped Glass or Gesture of the Drowned has to leave Sacrifice off.
Artifact Questions
How many artifacts are there in Risk of Rain 2?
Twenty. Nineteen are unlocked by entering a nine symbol code at the Compound Generator and beating the Artifact Reliquary in Bulwark's Ambry, and Artifact of Rebirth, from Seekers of the Storm, has no code.
Where is the artifact code machine?
On the lower level of Sky Meadow, the fifth stage, and on the top level of Helminth Hatchery. You cannot enter codes anywhere else, so an artifact hunt means surviving to stage five first.
Do you have to unlock artifacts again for each survivor?
No. An artifact is unlocked once on the profile and is then available to toggle before any run, with any survivor, including the ones on our unlock guide that you have not earned yet.
Which artifact is best for farming unlocks?
Command, because most survivor and skill challenges ask for a specific thing to happen rather than for a long run, and being able to hand yourself the exact item that makes it happen removes the luck. Our Risk of Rain 2 hub walks the same ground by stage of a run.