Dwarf Eats Mountain Artifact Tier List: 122+ Relics S/A/B/C

Table of Contents

1. Correction: What The Old Version Got Wrong
2. How Artifacts Actually Work
3. S-Tier: The Documented Effects That Change A Run
4. A-Tier: Strong, Conditional, Or Timing-Dependent
5. B-Tier: Real Effects, Narrow Jobs
6. The Gate Items: Boss Drops And The Eight The Spire Wants
7. Combos That Hold Up Against The Actual Effect List
8. Artifact Verdict: What Actually Moves Your Run
9. Sources

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Correction: What The Old Version Got Wrong

I have to open with this, because the version of this page I published in May was wrong in a way that would waste your time. Most of the artifact names in it do not exist. “Goblin King’s Crown”, “Lucky Coin”, “Runner’s Blessing”, “Mithril Amulet”, “Heart of the Mountain”, “Golden Pickaxe”, “Sturdy Boots”, “Fire Spirit Gem”, “Calamity Ward” — I checked every one against the community catalog for the current build and none of them appear. They were written from what an idle-game artifact list usually contains, not from what this game contains.

What I found when I actually read the data:

• There is no boss-damage artifact. Peak fights are gated by DPS against a 180-second timer, and the answer is prestige upgrades, not a relic.
• Luck is a flat number, not a percentage. The real item reads “+35 Luck but -12% Speed” (Deep Gnome Bling). Nothing in the catalog gives “+25% Luck”.
• PP bonuses are flat and modest: +2, +3, +4, +5, +6, +7, +8, +9 depending on the item. Not “+10 PP”.
• The game’s own tier scheme runs 1 to 4, not 1 to 5, for the weighted pool — with a separate group of gate items carrying no drop weight at all.

The tables below use names and effects transcribed from that catalog. My S/A/B/C placement is still an opinion, and it is labelled as one.

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How Artifacts Actually Work

The catalog splits artifacts into two groups, and understanding the split matters more than any individual item.

The weighted pool — the bulk of the 121 entries. Each item carries a tier (1 through 4) and a selection weight. Higher tiers are rarer, and the weights are published per item, so “fishing for a specific artifact” is arithmetic rather than patience.

The gate items — zero drop weight, obtained from specific content. The four peak bosses, the Triple Seal Vault, and the Great World Spire requirement line. Boss-only artifacts are explicitly excluded from den rolls and choice screens, so you cannot grind or fish your way into these; you clear the content that hands them over.

Where artifacts come from — four documented channels, and the old version of this page named none of them correctly:

1. Destroyed dens roll from artifacts you have not obtained or collected, excluding boss-only items. Artifacts above a den’s max tier can still appear, with halved weight.
2. Artifact-choice screens also exclude owned, collected and boss-only entries, always offer unique choices, and put more weight on higher tiers as mountain level rises.
3. Treasure Hunter returns are the named source for the unweighted unique entries (Eye Of Beholder, Forgebound Seal, Forgeheart Ember, Denhook and friends).
4. The Forge Artifact ritual costs 400 gold and 3 Mithril per use, with a 67% chance at one of five unique Tier 5 artifacts and a 33% chance at a random Tier 3 or Tier 4. The Great Shabu Altar Tier 1 improves those odds alongside Spelunkers, Treasure Hunters and Alchemy.

There is no Mountain Soul reroll shop — the “Ritual system at the Great Forge” I described in May does not exist. The Great Forge is a building that unlocks the Runesmith, and rituals are cast buffs (Boon of Chad, Call Earthquake, Death Mark) rather than loot filters.

Two mechanics shape how you use them:

• Collection effects fire once. Several of the best items read “Collect: +X”, meaning the payoff lands when you pick the artifact up, not while you hold it. Grom’s Drinking Horn is the extreme case: +5000 gold, +3 PP and 30% of your total gold, all on collect.
• Selection is a limited resource. Prestige upgrade Divine Archives reads “You can now select T5 artifacts”, which tells you two things: higher-tier selection is upgrade-gated, and the upgrade tree and the artifact pool are the same economy of attention. [Unverified — the catalog does not document the exact slot count or how selection differs from equipping, and my earlier slot-count claims were guesswork.]

Gallery progress is real and documented: the community late-game guide treats artifact collection as the gate on the Great World Spire, and v1.3.0’s King of the Spire upgrade exists precisely because missing artifacts were blocking runs.

The artifact gallery. The catalogue lists 121 entries; you will not see most of them in a single run.

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S-Tier: The Documented Effects That Change A Run

Ranked on published effects, with tier and drop weight from the catalog.

Artifact	Tier / weight	Effect as catalogued	Why it ranks here
Book Of Grudges	4 / 11	”All dwarves permanently gain 0.01% damage whenever a Runner is stunned, up to 100%.”	It is the only permanent stacking damage effect in the list. The 100% cap is a whole-run payoff, and it rewards keeping calamities running rather than avoiding them.
Grom’s Drinking Horn	4 / 11	”Collect: +5000 gold, +3 PP and +30% of your total gold.”	Scales with your bank, so it self-targets the moment it is worth most. Best prestige-efficiency item in the pool.
Greyglitter Dowsing Amulet	4 / 7	”All dwarves get +4 mithril luck.”	Mithril is the tightest resource in the mid game, and flat luck is how the game hands it out. Weight 7 makes it a genuine find.
Holy Grail	4 / 5	”Collect: +4 dwarves. Passive: Every 8-16 minutes, you gain +1 dwarf.”	Dwarves are throughput. A passive drip of free dwarves is the closest thing in the pool to a compounding economy engine.
Divine Gem Polish	4 / 8	”All gems are worth 20% more.”	Narrow but huge if gems are your gold source, and it multiplies rather than adds.
Crown of Kings	4 / 11	”Collect: +5 PP.”	Flat PP, on collect, in the highest tier. The pure prestige-speed item.
Arkenstone	gate / 0	”+5 PP and +20% ore/gem gold value.”	Spire requirement and one of the better effects in the game. The only gate item you want for both reasons.

On Book Of Grudges specifically: it is the one entry where the honest recommendation is “read the effect twice before you judge it.” A 0.01% per-stun stack sounds like filler. Against a 100% cap it is a run-long damage curve, and whether it pays depends entirely on how often your runners get stunned in your build.

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A-Tier: Strong, Conditional, Or Timing-Dependent

Artifact	Tier / weight	Effect as catalogued	Caveat
Lightning Linstock	4 / 12	”Great Duke Cannons get +20% damage.”	Weight 12 makes it the most common tier-4. Useless unless you are committed to cannons.
Stoneshaper’s Rod	4 / 7	”Underground Housing costs 20% less gold.”	A build-cost discount, not a power increase. Big in a housing-focused run, invisible otherwise.
Mithril Egg	3 / pool	”+2-4 mithril and +2-4 PP.”	Randomised on collect; the floor is still a clean early-mithril injection.
Heirloom Treasure Map	3 / pool	”+2500 gold and +4 PP.”	Straight PP and gold with no condition attached.
Arcane Headlamp	3 / pool	”Miners get +20% damage.”	Miner damage is the early bottleneck; this is the real version of the fake “Miner’s Heirloom” I used to list.
Ancient Energy Idol	3 / pool	”Laser Cannons get +20% damage.”	Same job for the laser branch. pairs with the Scientist line.
Deep Gnome Bling	2 / pool	”Runners get +35 Luck but -12% Speed.”	The only documented trade-off item in the pool. Take it for mithril hunting, leave it when hauling is the wall.

The A-tier trap is weight, not power. Lightning Linstock is a tier-4 with weight 12, so you will see it often and want it rarely if your build has no cannons. Tier tells you quality; weight tells you how often your build will actually meet it.

Mid-game setup. Pick the artifact that matches the dwarf class already doing your damage.

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B-Tier: Real Effects, Narrow Jobs

Artifact	Tier / weight	Effect as catalogued	When it earns a slot
Golden Crane	1 / pool	”Runners get +10% dodge.”	Calamity-heavy runs where runners keep dying. This is the item I used to publish under a fake boots name.
Bottled Dwarf	1 / pool	”+1 dwarf, +1 mithril and +1 PP.”	Early game, when +1 of everything is a percentage, not a rounding error.
Chronicle Stone	2 / pool	”12% chance to gain +1 PP.”	Prestige-push runs; a dice roll you pay a slot for.
Crystal Skull	1 / pool	”+10 gem luck.”	Gem-density builds only.
Crown Coin of the First King	1 / pool	”+700 gold and +2 PP.”	Tier 1, small, and still better than empty hands before mountain 10.
Golden Weighstone	unweighted	”All ores and gems are worth +10% more gold.”	Broad gold multiplier. Listed outside the weighted pool, so treat availability as content-gated.
Divine Tongs	unweighted	”All non-gem ores are worth +15% more gold.”	The ore-only sibling. Stronger number, narrower base.

C-tier, honestly: I removed that section. The old version filled it with five invented items. Every artifact in the real catalog has a documented effect, so there is no defensible way to name a dud from a list I cannot verify in play. [Unverified — no source publishes per-artifact drop rates by den, so “which artifact appears where” is still community guesswork.]

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The Gate Items: Boss Drops And The Eight The Spire Wants

This is the part the old version of this page got most wrong, because it is the part with a hard requirement attached.

The Great World Spire sits at level 100 and its forcefield requires eight specific artifacts before it opens and Endless Mode begins:

Gate artifact	Source	Effect as catalogued
Goblin Crown	Goblin King Peak (level 20, 180s timer)	“Collect: +4 PP”
Dragon’s Egg	Dragon’s Peak (level 40, 180s)	“+7 PP”
Mountain Core	Architect’s Summit (level 60, 180s)	“+8 PP”
Shadowflame Whip	Balrogg’s Pit (level 80, 180s)	“+9 PP”
The Nauglamir	Triple Seal Vault	”+6 PP”
Arkenstone	Spire requirement	”+5 PP and +20% ore/gem gold value”
Philosopher’s Stone	Spire requirement	not catalogued in the data I could read [Unverified]
Dial of Destiny	Spire requirement	not catalogued in the data I could read [Unverified]

Two observations from that table. First, the four peak bosses hand over roughly 28 PP between them — which is more than a full first prestige’s worth of upgrade budget, and it means boss progression is a prestige-economy decision, not just a damage test. Second, the Spire’s artifact gate is the reason the v1.3.0 King of the Spire upgrade exists; the changelog adds it so the Spire stops blocking runs on missing artifacts, and its Rank 2 requires Ascension Rank 5.

Since the May 22 patch, losing to Dragon’s Peak or Balrogg’s Pit no longer forces a prestige — the same protection Goblin King and Architect’s Golem already had. Attempt the peaks as many times as you need.

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Combos That Hold Up Against The Actual Effect List

The old version listed five combos built on items that do not exist. These are the honest ones, keyed to documented effects:

1. Mithril Engine (mid-game, mountains 10-40) Greyglitter Dowsing Amulet + Mithril Egg + Deep Gnome Bling Logic: flat mithril luck, a mithril injection on collect, and +35 Luck at the cost of runner speed. Take it when mithril is the wall and hauling already is not.

2. Prestige Sprint (any reset push) Crown of Kings + Grom’s Drinking Horn + Chronicle Stone + Heirloom Treasure Map Logic: +5 PP, +3 PP plus a gold-percentage bonus, a 12% PP dice, and +4 PP with gold. Every slot is buying resets-per-hour. Equip before the reset, since the collect effects are what pay.

3. Damage Stack (late, calamity-heavy) Book Of Grudges + Arcane Headlamp + Ancient Energy Idol Logic: one permanent 0.01%-per-stun curve up to 100%, plus +20% on the two dwarf branches that scale with your bottleneck.

4. Cannon Build (tier-4 committed) Lightning Linstock + Book Of Grudges + Divine Gem Polish Logic: the highest-weight tier-4 finally worth taking, with the global damage stack underneath it and gem gold on top.

5. Gold Base (early-to-mid, no specific build) Golden Weighstone + Divine Tongs + Holy Grail Logic: +10% on everything sellable, +15% on non-gem ore, and a permanent dwarf trickle. Weak individually, and a complete economy together.

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Artifact Verdict: What Actually Moves Your Run

After re-reading the whole catalog against my own earlier claims:

• Chase tier 4 only for four items: Book Of Grudges, Grom’s Drinking Horn, Greyglitter Dowsing Amulet, Holy Grail. Lightning Linstock and Stoneshaper’s Rod are tier 4 with conditional value, and a conditional artifact in a limited selection slot is how runs stall.
• Collect bonuses are spend-on-the-spot value. “Collect: +X” means the item is worth more the moment you grab it than while you hold it, which flips the usual idle-game instinct about saving the good pull for later.
• Boss progression, not artifact collection, is the Spire gate. You need the eight named gate items, so the real long-term plan is peak bosses at 20 / 40 / 60 / 80 and the Triple Seal Vault.
• There is no boss-damage relic. Stop optimising your artifact set for Goblin King and optimise your prestige tier gates instead: Tier 2 opens at 12 PP spent, Tier 3 at 45, Tier 4 at 120, Tier 5 at 180, Tier 6 at 250.
• The PP math is the argument for the first reset point. Community data still pegs 14-15 PP as the efficient first prestige, because Tier 2 plus a 2-PP upgrade unlocks at 12; the +25 PP-per-Ascension-rank change in v1.1.0 applies far later, after the Spire.

If you want the peak-by-peak breakdown of how those boss gates actually feel, the Goblin King guide covers the first one, and the T6 and Endless guide picks up at the Spire.

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Sources

Source	What it provides
WikiTactics artifact catalog	The 121-entry list: names, verbatim effects, tiers 1-4, selection weights, unweighted gate entries
WikiTactics prestige catalog	97 upgrades, tier gates at 12/45/120/180/250 PP spent, King of the Spire rank requirements, Divine Archives T5 selection text
WikiTactics special mountains	Peak levels and 180-second timers, the eight Spire artifacts, Endless Mode after clearing
WikiTactics changelog	v1.1.0 to v1.5.0, the May 22 forced-prestige removal, the v1.3.0 King of the Spire entry
When To Prestige guide	The 14-15 PP first-reset figure and the Tier 2 threshold behind it

WikiTactics is a community wiki, not a developer source, current through v1.5.0 as of this check. Where a claim rests on it alone, that is stated. Build and DLC metadata on this page was read directly from the Steam store page for Dwarf Eats Mountain.