The Best Artifacts in Relief: An S-Tier Guide to Overpowered Builds

The single best artifact in Relief is the Hourglass of the Penitent, as it enables infinite scaling builds that can completely break the game's difficulty curve. Getting the best artifacts Relief can throw at you is about more than just luck, though. Truly overpowered runs emerge from combining S-Tier items like the Hourglass with powerful support pieces like the Sanguine Locket and Whispering Skull to create unstoppable synergies.

This guide cuts through the noise of the 300+ artifacts to identify the elite items that define winning runs. We'll rank the S-Tier, break down the most reliable A-Tier workhorses, and show you how to combine them into builds that can effortlessly clear the final Lament.

01

What Defines an S-Tier Artifact?tag

Not all Transcendent artifacts are created equal. To make our S-Tier, an item must meet at least three of these four criteria:

• Run-Defining: The artifact fundamentally changes how you play your run, often enabling entirely new strategies. The Crown of the Usurper, for example, turns any build into a dedicated boss-killer.
• Exponential Scaling: Its benefit isn't just a flat stat bonus. It provides a way to grow your power exponentially, whether through resource generation, cooldown reduction, or damage feedback loops.
• Synergistic Potential: It combines with a wide range of other artifacts to become more than the sum of its parts. The Sanguine Locket is powerful alone but becomes game-breaking when paired with items that grant extra attacks on kill.
• High Consistency: It provides its benefit reliably, without relying on low-probability chances. Gambler's Dice can be powerful, but its randomness keeps it out of the S-Tier.

An artifact that simply gives you +50% Spite is good. An artifact that gives you +1% Spite for every 100 Echoes you've ever collected is S-Tier. That is the fundamental difference.

02

The S-Tier: Game-Breaking Powertag

These are the artifacts you should pray to the Echoing Ones for. Finding any one of these can be the cornerstone of a victorious run. Finding two is often an instant win.

Hourglass of the Penitenttag

The undisputed king. On its own, the Hourglass seems simple: it reduces all ability cooldowns by 15%. The hidden text, however, is where the magic lies: this effect stacks multiplicatively with other Haste sources. With just two other decent Haste items, you can easily reach a 50-60% cooldown reduction, allowing you to spam abilities that were clearly balanced around long downtimes.

Why it's broken: It allows for near-permanent uptime on defensive abilities like the Bulwark's Aegis or offensive devastators like the Shade's Umbral Cascade. With enough Haste, you become an invulnerable, room-clearing whirlwind of skills. It single-handedly enables builds that ignore basic attacks entirely.

Sanguine Lockettag

Sustain is one of the biggest challenges in the deeper Laments. The Sanguine Locket solves it, completely. It restores 5% of your missing Resolve (health) every time you defeat an enemy. This might sound minor, but in the mob-dense chambers of the Sunken Spires or the Ashen Keep, it translates to a constant, massive firehose of healing.

Why it's broken: It flips the script on difficult encounters. Instead of being a drain on your resources, a huge pack of enemies becomes a walking health potion. This artifact is the single greatest enabler of aggressive, high-Spite builds, as it allows you to trade health recklessly, knowing you'll heal to full just by clearing the room.

Whispering Skulltag

Resources win runs, and the Whispering Skull is the ultimate economic engine. Every 50 enemies you eliminate, it spawns a friendly Tormented Spirit that follows you. This spirit does minor damage, but more importantly, it automatically collects Echoes and has a 10% chance to duplicate any Echo pickup.

Why it's broken: Over the course of a run, the duplication effect generates thousands of extra Echoes. This means you can buy out every shop, afford every Shrine of Donation, and supercharge any other artifacts that scale with your wealth, like the Gilded Blade. It turns a run from a desperate scramble for resources into a triumphant shopping spree.

Crown of the Usurpertag

This is the specialist. The Crown of the Usurper grants you a stacking buff called Tyranny. You gain one stack for each elite enemy you kill, and five stacks for a boss. Each stack of Tyranny increases your damage against elite and boss enemies by 3%. By the time you reach the final boss, the Warden of the First Seal, you can easily have 30-40 stacks, translating to a 90-120% raw damage multiplier.

Why it's broken: It completely trivializes the game's biggest hurdles: the bosses. Many builds that excel at clearing rooms of weaker enemies falter against the huge health pools and devastating attacks of a Lament boss. The Crown ensures that no matter your build, you have a reliable way to burst down the toughest foes in seconds.

03

The A-Tier: Core Components of Victorytag

While not as reality-bending as the S-Tier, these artifacts are the powerful and reliable foundation of most successful builds. You'll see these far more often, and learning to leverage them is key to consistency.

The key takeaway for this tier is synergy. The Reaper's Scythe is good on its own, but when it's triggering the Sanguine Locket's heal and the Mantle of Shadows' invisibility on every low-health enemy, it becomes part of an S-Tier engine.

04

Cursed Artifacts: Are They Worth the Risk?tag

Cursed Artifacts offer immense power in exchange for a punishing downside. They are the definition of high-risk, high-reward. A common mistake is to grab them indiscriminately. You should only take a Cursed Artifact if your current build directly benefits from its upside and can mitigate its curse.

The Grasping Coinpurse: The Ultimate Greed Itemtag

This is the most infamous Cursed Artifact. It doubles all Echoes you pick up. The curse? You lose 1 Resolve every 3 seconds, a constant, nagging drain that can't be stopped. This damage will kill you if you stand still for too long.

When to take it: Only if you already have a powerful source of healing to counteract the drain. The Sanguine Locket is the perfect partner, as the constant healing from kills will easily outpace the health loss. Taking this without a sustain plan is a guaranteed death sentence.

The Shard of Betrayal: Glass Cannon Definedtag

This shard grants a colossal +75% Spite bonus, a damage increase larger than almost any other single item in the game. The curse is equally extreme: your Armor is reduced to 0 and cannot be increased by any means. You will take full damage from every single hit.

When to take it: Only if your build is focused on avoiding damage entirely. The Shade's Burden, combined with the Mantle of Shadows, can create near-permanent invisibility, making Armor irrelevant. If you are playing a tanky Bulwark build, this artifact is a brick that will end your run.

05

Example Overpowered Buildstag

Theory is one thing; application is another. Here are three examples of god-tier builds you can create by combining the right artifacts.

Build 1: The Immortal Reapertag

This build makes you virtually unkillable as long as there are enemies to fight. It's the most consistent build for clearing the entire game.

• Core S-Tier: Sanguine Locket
• Core A-Tier: Reaper's Scythe
• Key Synergies: Mantle of Shadows (for repositioning), anything that increases attack speed or area of effect to ensure you are constantly getting kills to proc the Locket.

Build 2: The Echo Magnatetag

An economy-focused build that becomes an unstoppable force by the mid-game by simply buying all the power you could ever need.

• Core S-Tier: Whispering Skull
• Core Cursed: Grasping Coinpurse (only with a healing source)
• Key Synergies: Gilded Blade (+damage per 1000 Echoes), Shrine of Donation (dump your infinite money for insane buffs), any shop-related items.

Build 3: The Time-Warp Executionertag

This build focuses on spamming a single high-impact ability to stunlock and obliterate bosses and entire rooms before they can even act.

• Core S-Tier: Hourglass of the Penitent, Crown of the Usurper
• Core A-Tier: Items that grant bonus ability charges or reduce resource costs.
• Key Synergies: A starting Burden with a powerful ultimate ability, like the Zealot's Divine Reckoning. The goal is to reduce its cooldown from 60 seconds to under 10.

06

Frequently Asked Questions about Artifacts in Relieftag

How do you unlock new artifacts? You unlock most artifacts by simply finding them for the first time during a run. However, a specific pool of around 50 artifacts is locked behind challenges, such as defeating a boss without taking damage, reaching a certain Lament depth with a specific Burden, or interacting with secret rooms.

What is the rarest artifact in Relief? The Transcendent artifacts are the rarest class, and the rarest among them is the Eye of the Progenitor. It has a less than 0.1% chance to drop from the Warden of the First Seal (the final boss) on the highest difficulty setting. Its effect is appropriately powerful: it duplicates the effect of every third artifact you collect.

Can you stack the same artifact? No, you cannot find or hold more than one copy of the same artifact. However, you can and should stack artifacts with similar or synergistic effects. For example, combining the Reaper's Scythe with the Executioner's Hood (both provide on-execute effects) is a very powerful strategy.

07

The Final Takeawaytag

While luck is always a factor in a roguelike, understanding the hierarchy of artifacts in Relief is what separates failed runs from consistent victories. Don't just grab the item with the biggest stat boost. Always prioritize artifacts that create powerful feedback loops and synergistic engines. The Hourglass of the Penitent, Sanguine Locket, and Whispering Skull form the holy trinity of game-breaking power. Build around them, and you will find the relief you seek.