Relics

What a relic is

A relic is a small, specific advantage that lasts for one fight and then is gone. Some restore your resolve. Some make your strikes land harder. Some make you harder to hurt. One of them makes you hit much harder and take much more — which is either brilliance or a mistake, and that is between you and the mob.

One is used per fight, automatically, when you engage. You do not have to remember to use it and you cannot save it for the right moment. If you are carrying several, the dungeon picks. They do not come back.

How you get one

Roughly a third of loot boxes contain a relic. That is often enough to feel like the dungeon is paying attention, and rare enough that it still counts as a find.

Relics are given at the moment you open a box, not when it is created. A box that has been sitting unopened in your satchel since before relics existed will still be an ordinary box.

Who finds what

This is the part that makes your choice mean something. A relic only ever appears for a crawler it belongs to. Your class decides which class relics can turn up. Your race decides which race relics can.

• A Blizzardmancer finds the Mage relic. A Viper Queen finds the Rogue one. They will never find each other’s.
• An Elf finds the Fair Folk relic. A Troll finds the Scale & Claw one.
• Choose no race and no class and nothing belongs to you yet — every box is an ordinary box.

Every relic is a different tool, not a bigger one

This is deliberate. The Codex promises that no race is stronger than another, and a relic that was simply better would make that a lie. So each one is strong in the situation it was made for and close to useless outside it. A relic that doubles your damage is worth nothing if the fight ends before you swing. A relic that hardens you is wasted on something that was never going to hurt.

There is no relic worth choosing a race for. There are only relics you will learn to be pleased to see.

The catalogued class relics

These appear for the class types listed. A class that declares more than one type can draw from any of them.

• 🧨 Fused Detonator — Earth
  Opens the fight before it starts. You were always going to do this the loud way.
  strikes land harder; more critical hits
• 🗡️ Whetted Edge — Melee
  Sharpened until it stopped being reasonable. Everything hits harder after this.
  strikes land harder
• 🪤 Palmful of Rust — Rogue
  Their weapon is now worse than it was. That is the whole trick.
  you take less damage
• 🔮 Unstable Focus — Mage
  Enormous power for the rest of the fight. It also makes you careless.
  strikes land harder; you take more damage
• 🩹 Field Sutures — Healer
  Fast, ugly, and effective. No anaesthetic, no complaints.
  restores 65 resolve
• 📣 Rallying Word — Support
  Everyone stands a little straighter, including the ones not here.
  strikes land harder; your party counts for more
• 🎵 Perfect Refrain — Bard
  The right note at the right moment. Everything lands exactly where you meant.
  more critical hits
• 🫁 Sealed Breath — Monk
  Stillness, then movement. Both are useful and you have both.
  restores 40 resolve; more critical hits
• 🧠 Borrowed Nerve — Psionic
  You find the spot where it doubts itself and press there.
  more critical hits; you take less damage
• 🛡️ Bracer Plate — Fighter
  Blocked properly, once, and then answered.
  strikes land harder; you take less damage
• 🧰 Prepared Ground — Engineer
  You set this up before you arrived. It is already too late for it.
  strikes land harder; you take less damage
• 🏹 Patient Shot — Hunter
  Taken from further away than it thought possible.
  more critical hits
• 📖 Annotated Weakness — Scholar
  You have read about this one. It has not read about you.
  strikes land harder; more critical hits
• 🔩 Crawler's Improvisation — Crawler
  Whatever was to hand, used correctly.
  restores 35 resolve; strikes land harder

The catalogued race relics

• 🐾 Tuft of Fur — Beasts & Animal Folk
  A scrap of something you were, kept for luck. It still works.
  more critical hits
• ✨ Drop of Old Light — The Fair Folk
  Taken from a place that does not exist any more, if it ever did.
  restores 55 resolve; strikes land harder
• 🥫 Spare Ration — Human & Near-Human
  Boring, reliable, and the reason you are still upright.
  restores 30 resolve; you take less damage
• 🎭 Borrowed Face — Shifters & Mimics
  It hesitates, because for half a second it thinks you are one of its own.
  you take less damage
• 💀 Grave Chill — The Dead & the Damned
  You are already cold. It expected warmth and found none.
  restores 20 resolve; strikes land harder
• 🔻 Whisper from Below — Demons & Spirits
  Something on the other side is willing to help. Payment is not discussed.
  more critical hits; your party counts for more
• 🐊 Shed Scale — Scale & Claw
  Armour you were finished with anyway, held in front of you.
  strikes land harder; you take less damage
• 🌀 Thin Sliver of Elsewhere — Beyond
  A piece of somewhere the dungeon has no rules for. It works here anyway.
  restores 30 resolve; strikes land harder; you take less damage

Where they are kept

Your relics appear in your HUD under Relics, beneath your potions. If you are carrying none, nothing is shown — an empty satchel is not a problem to be solved, it is simply an empty satchel.

Relics are not tradeable, not purchasable, and not on any leaderboard. They are yours because of what you chose to be.