How to Get the New Artifacts in 'Destiny: Rise of Iron'
It’s not nearly as complicated as you’d imagine.
Originally released with The Taken King expansion, artifacts were a new piece of gear that filled a slot on the player character in Destiny. Instead of providing unique bonuses or a special gameplay mechanic, they were a bit underdeveloped and served as little more than a way to boost your Light level. Thankfully, that’s not the case in Rise of Iron as they’ve been completely reworked.
Artifacts are now an essential part of your character’s loadout. There are eight present in Rise of Iron that feature a set of game-changing abilities which alter the way your Guardian performs in a few different ways. Some of the new artifacts are built to help you tackle player-versus-environment — PvE — content, such as the Memory of Skorri, which speeds up the super recharge for all of your allies in close proximity; some are geared towards players-vs-player — PvP —content, such as the Memory of Perun, which highlights enemies with full super in yellow and enemies with low health in red.
Here’s a list of every Rise of Iron artifact we know to be currently available:
Memory of Felwinter: Lose your super, but gain access to an extra grenade and melee charge, a boost to all of your stats, and orbs of Light now recharge your grenade and melee abilities.
Memory of Gheleon: Gain a more detailed radar at all times, including when you aim down the sights of your primary weapon.
Memory of Perun: Enemies with full supers are highlighted in yellow and enemies with low health are highlighted in red.
Memory of Radegast: Allows you to reflect energy-based projectiles (including rockets in Crucible) with a sword and increases your sword ammo capacity.
Memory of Jolder: Sprint cooldown is completely removed allowing you to sprint indefinitely.
Memory of Silimar: In Crucible, all damage-over-time effects are dramatically reduced.
Memory of Skorri: Speeds up the super recharge rate for all of your allies in close proximity when your super is full.
Memory of Timur: Melee attacks can turn low-level enemies into allies in combat for 30 seconds or until you melee them again.
Instead of relying on Destiny’s luck of the draw to drop you one of the new artifacts, you’ll actually be able to pick one up from Tyra Karn, a new vendor in Felwinter Peak. Once you’ve completed the initial line of quests in Rise of Iron and unlocked the new social space, you’ll find her perched atop the mountain right before the chamber containing the statues of every Iron Lord.
To purchase an artifact from Tyra, you’ll need to obtain an Iron Lord’s Legacy by killing enemies, doing activities, and completing patrols out in the expansion’s new zone: The Plaguelands. Players can only receive one Iron Lord’s Legacy each week, so if you’ve got multiple characters capable of diving into Rise of Iron, you should be able to obtain three each week, one per character. It’s worth noting that we’ve yet to test this ourselves, but the theoretical math checks out.
Best part about the new artifacts? They can all be used by any character, regardless of class. Once you get one, you’re good to go. Unless, of course, you’d like to use the same one on each of your different characters without swapping them over.
As expected, a few feel a little more powerful or useful than others, namely Skorri (which will almost always be required in Raid groups) and Silimar (which can be used to counter Thorn in the Crucible). But, until players get their hands on all of them to test their effectiveness, we won’t know for sure.
