Artifact combos: stack one, don't spread
Categories, thresholds, and what committing to a single combo actually buys you.
Stack. Take one combo to the top of its ladder before you take a second one past its first step. The reason is not that more of the same is tidier — it is that the last rung of a combo ladder usually pays in a different currency from the rungs below it, and you only ever see it by committing.
What a combo is
Every artifact carries one or more categories, printed on its card. Hold enough artifacts of the same category in your bag at once and that category pays out. Twenty categories carry artifacts in 1.0.23, and a few artifacts carry two categories at once — those count toward both ladders, which makes them the cheapest way to keep a second combo alive.
Most ladders have rungs at 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 artifacts. Several do not, and the exceptions matter more than the rule:
- Lake pays at 3, 6 and 9.
- Alchemy pays at 1 and 2 — it is a two-rung ladder.
- Curse and Negotiation stop at 4.
- Elemental stops at 6.
- Ember, Glacier, Magitech, Storm Cloud and Solar Blade switch a mechanic on at 2 and keep paying at 4, 6, 8 and 10. For the three debuff categories, the rung at 6 is a large cut to the debuff’s cooldown rather than a stat.
Where each ladder ends
This is the part worth planning around, because the top rung is rarely more of the same.
| Category | What the top of the ladder pays |
|---|---|
| Sturdy | Physical Damage Amplification +15% — the rungs below it were flat Physical Damage |
| Precision | Critical Damage +30% — the rungs below it were Critical Chance |
| Guardian | Defense +12 and Ignore Defense +5% |
| Wind Song | Weapon Damage +15 and Dash Count +1 |
| Companion | Companion Damage +20% and Companion Revive Time Haste +40% |
| Planet | Planet Damage +16% and Planet Attack Speed +12% |
| Academy | Grimoire Damage +15% and MP Regeneration +8 |
| Lake | Max MP +40 and +25 to MP-skill damage, at 9 |
| Shadow | Evasion +10 |
| Glacier | one fewer Frostbite stack needed to reach Freeze |
| Magitech | Electrocution activates in less time |
| Ember | Burn’s base damage multiplier is upgraded |
| Storm Cloud | cloud capacity +20 and multishot +2 |
| Solar Blade | +12% damage and +6 to the maximum blade count |
| Frost Relic | one extra activation |
| Elemental | all four Damage Amplifications +10%, at 6 |
| Curse | debuff damage +15%, at 4 |
| Negotiation | Barter +15 and the Golden Hand, at 4 |
That table is only the last rung of each ladder. The full combo ladders list every rung of all twenty, with the figures the game prints at each one.
Read that table as three different kinds of promise.
Ladders that change stat. Sturdy spends four rungs handing you flat Physical Damage and then converts to Physical Damage Amplification; Precision spends four rungs on Critical Chance and then hands you Critical Damage. In both cases the top rung multiplies what the lower rungs built. Stopping at 8 gets you the setup without the payoff.
Ladders that change how a mechanic behaves. Glacier’s top rung lowers how many Frostbite stacks it takes to Freeze — that is a change to the pace of the whole build, not a percentage. Wind Song’s Dash Count +1 is an extra dash, permanently, which is worth more to a lot of players than any damage line on the table. Storm Cloud’s multishot and Solar Blade’s blade count change what those mechanics look like on screen.
Short ladders. Alchemy, Curse, Negotiation and Elemental top out early and cheaply. They are not builds; they are things you finish on the side because four artifacts is an affordable number and there is nothing above it to chase.
Mystic is the odd one out and has no stat rungs at all: it doubles artifact level efficiency in a slot the game picks, and it interacts with Tablet Imprinting rather than with a stat sheet.
What the tenth artifact costs
A run starts with 24 bag slots and can reach 42, and every artifact, tablet and potion takes exactly one. Ten artifacts of a single category is a large fraction of a bag that also has to hold the tablets that raise their levels — see how bag capacity works for where those slots come from.
That is the real argument for stacking, and it is an argument about slots rather than about damage. Three combos at their first rung costs six artifacts and buys you three small stat lines. Ten artifacts in one category costs ten and buys you every rung on that ladder plus the top one. The six spent on breadth were not free — they were the six that would have finished your main ladder.
The corollary is worth stating too: a second combo at 2 or 4 is cheap and usually correct. Nothing about “stack one combo” means refusing the four artifacts that finish Negotiation or the two that switch on a debuff. What kills runs is the third and fourth half-built ladder.
What the game does not spell out is the ladder’s arithmetic — whether the earlier rungs keep paying once you pass them, or whether each rung replaces the one below it. Nothing in the game settles it, so read the figures above as what the top rung announces rather than as a total you can add up, and check your own combo panel mid-run for what a rung is currently giving you. Either way the shape of the advice holds, because the reason to climb is what sits at the top.
When spreading actually pays
There is exactly one thing in the game that rewards breadth directly: the Ingenuity talent at level 20, which gives Universal Damage Boost +7% for each active combo type. That is a real payoff and it changes the maths — but it is gated behind twenty levels of one talent, and until you have it, breadth pays only the first rungs. Check the talent list before you decide you are building the wide version of a run.
Steering the artifacts you get offered
You cannot pick your rewards, but you can weight them.
The Fruit Skewer is the main tool. Every category has a fruit — Ember has Orange, Precision has Starfruit, Glacier has Iceberry, Sturdy has Peanut, and so on — and the game’s own description is that the chance of related combo items appearing as rewards increases depending on the fruit you choose, and that you can lower the chance of combos you do not want. Pointing the skewer at your chosen ladder and away from a category you will never use is the single highest-value thing you can do for consistency.
Two smaller levers: Solera’s Serendipity raises the combo count of one random combo by 1, which occasionally lands the rung you were one artifact short of; and the Destiny Inscription’s unlock nodes widen the artifact pool permanently, so what shows up in your runs is partly a purchase you made hours ago.
Deciding in the run
A workable rhythm:
- Early floors: take what is strong and note which category keeps appearing. Do not commit on floor one — you do not yet know what the tower is offering you.
- By the middle of the run: pick the ladder that matches the weapon and costume you are already playing. A Companion ladder in a build with no companion is ten slots of nothing, and your costume has usually already pushed you toward an answer.
- After committing: point the skewer at it, and refuse artifacts that start a fourth category unless they carry two.
- Late: spend tablets on levelling the artifacts in that ladder rather than spreading levels evenly. The tablet placement guide covers how to point them, and the bag planner lets you check that ten artifacts and the tablets that serve them actually fit at the capacity you will really have.