Since the time that this article was written, some new and exciting changes have been done to artifacts to have more stuff! So, this will be lacking until someone can sit down and work it out!
Also known as ArtSci (or Artificium Scientiae for the more verbose among those on our payroll), Artifact Science is one of the most lethal duties aboard Monke Station.
For the sake of your own safety, the safety of others and the safety of Central Commands' budget, you will be expected to follow these steps of Standard Operating Procedure BEFORE even attempting to touch, smell or so much as exist in the general viscinity of an unidentified artifact.
- Get yourself clone scanned. This is inarguable and is a preventative measure against the inevitable.
- Collect a monkey cube (or two, a little extra never hurt anyone sentient) and a pair of cable ties.
- Get yourself suited up in a biosuit, sometimes Science has one or two in the entry airlock to their department, but not always. At worst, you can always order one from Cargo or just skip to step 4.
- Have at least one bottle of multiver ready, Medbay always has a few spare either on tables or in the smart fridges at the Pharmacy. This step is not necessary if you managed to get a biosuit.
- Inspect every artifact you plan on interacting with. The particularly dangerous ones usually have conspicuous markings, meaning they're bombs. (Neither borging or injecting artifacts have conspicuous markings, so remain diligent).
And that's all you'll need to begin with! Keep in mind this list does not fully prepare you for all the dangers you may face and as such it is advised you keep looking at the wall of text in front of you. I mean you're a scientist already (I hope), so you should be good at this whole reading thing... Right?
Now I can already see you looking at those artifacts that the lab has pre-prepared, practically foaming at the mouth and ready to throw yourself at them like the deranged scientsist with a death wish that you are but HOLD IT.
There are ways to go about this that don't involve you becoming a cyborg for the rest of forever!
For a first, don't actually be the one to touch the artifact in the first place. How do you do that you might be wondering? Well, that's what the monkey cubes I mentioned earlier were for! Spray one down with a fire extinguisher, cable tie the resulting chimp and grab them.
Upon dragging them next to the artifact, and (if this were a game) clicking on the artifact will, instead of touching the artifact yourself, cause the monkey to touch it in your place. Potentially taking the brunt of any possible bad effects caused by that artifact spontaneously activating (usually borging).
However not all artifacts are just activated by touching them, there are a few different activating stimuli and not all of them are obvious. In a comprehensive list, the triggers that're most tested are;
- Physical Trauma, just give it a whack.
- Heat Sensitivity, from testing it seems this means either hot or cold temperatures. Try both on the omni heating pad in your lab.
- Electrical Charge, zap it with your artifact zapper, try varying voltages.
- Radioactivity, put it in the x-ray machine and test it on both settings availible.
- Generic Contact, touch it with anything.
- Generic Range, throw anything at it.
- Data, slap it with a circuit board.
- Carbon Touch, activated when a living thing touches the artifact.
- Silicon Touch, activated when a cyborg (or a cyborg arm) touches the artifact.
And that's about it for activating stimuli, though it should be mentioned that extensive testing of the wrong stimuli will have extremely negative effects, such as random syringes being shot at you by the artifact (hence the need for a biosuit) or otherwise simply being warped to the other side of the station... Or be warped into the perma brig and never recovered.
Now that we've gotten the possible triggering stimuli out of the way, we should probably talk about the potential types of artifacts you may be activating. Such being;
- Bombs (either Gas or Explosive), always labelled with conspicuous markings. Do not activate these unless you want extensive damage to the station.
- Single Healers, these allegedly have a range of effectiveness, though the most I've seen from them is them healing 1 of every damage type.
- Injectors, generally you get mistaken for overdosing on maint pills when you end up in medbay after activating one of these. Can inject you with any chem as far as I know.
- Lamp, attracts moths but I don't think that's very anomalous. Glows a random colour when activated.
- Repulsor/Impulsor, throws things away from it or towards it when activated.
- Melee Weapon, exactly what it sounds like, typically very robust in a random damage type and can inflict stuns.
- Ranged Weapon, also exactly what it sounds like, however these have been known to spontaneously kill its user after too much use in one of many horrific ways such as (but not limited to), gibbing, spontaneous teleportation, toxin injections, etc.
- Borger, for the love of all that is holy don't drag this to medbay or risk gods wrath being brought down upon you.
- Forcefield Generator, generates a forcefield around the artifact for a time which nothing short of teleportation can bypass.
- Vomiting Inducer, can make you puke out organs so it's more deadly than it sounds, usually accompanied with a "gross aura" when inspected after being activated.
- Power Cell, functions like a yellow slime extract with not much variation other than how it can technically have negative charge, easily devouring the entire power grid in a way that's pretty well impossible to find and fix if you weren't the one to put it in an APC.
- Power Generator, ??? (haven't personally seen this one yet, though I'd imagine it does as its name implies.)
- Slammer, bonks you over the head with a hammer, which can give you enough brain damage to outright kill you, though not always.
That covers all the artifact types, and now we'll move onto-
Knowing these isn't really important unless you plan on selling your artifacts through cargo, but we'll go over it anyway just incase you plan on making someone else rich off your own hard work.
- Wizard, these artifacts are red/orange crystals held aloft with a golden foundation, usually making it look like some kind of ornament your grandma would have in her living room.
- Martian, appears as a light pink fleshy mass with the general shape of some human organs if you squint your eyes a bit.
- Eldritch, dark purple with lots of jagged edges or the visage of dark things that live beyond the edge of the universe.
- Precursor, chrome, typically barrel shaped with the occasional indentation we'd use on a conventional screw or with the general shape of a tesla coil.
- Robot, dark grey with straight lines along the surface that only turn on 90 degree angles.
Alright so you've read this far, I'm assuming you're all out of the labs starter artifacts now. Fortunately there's a way of getting more that doesn't involve you needing to scavenge maintenance for the ones that occasionally appear in there.
That being the meteor magnet! Though nobody seems to understand how it works so I'll explain it in a way that doesn't involve needing to use your brain.
The first thing you'll want to do is send a ping (obviously using the big bold PING button), which will then show you an azimuth. Walk the X-Axis either forward or backward, depending on if the Azimuth goes down or up (you want it to get to 0).
Typically if you go over the required coordinate on the X axis, the Azimuth will be set to 180, so you'll know then to start walking the X axis back by single digits.