Dwarf Eats Mountain Best Artifacts Synergy Combos That Actually Work

Table of Contents

1. Correction First: The Old Version Of This Page Named Things That Do Not Exist
2. How Artifacts Are Actually Acquired
3. Combo 1: The Forge Engine
4. Combo 2: The Luck Cascade
5. Combo 3: The Den Chain
6. Combo 4: The Dodge Snowball
7. Combo 5: The Grudge Stack, And Why It Fights Combo 4
8. Combo 6: Gold Value Multiplication
9. Combo 7: The Prestige Sprint
10. Combo 8: Dwarf Throughput
11. Combo 9: The Cannon And Laser Lines
12. Anti-Synergies Worth Memorising
13. Selection, Not Slots: How To Actually Manage A Loadout
14. Final Take
15. Sources

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Correction First: The Old Version Of This Page Named Things That Do Not Exist

Eight combos, four of them built on artifacts I cannot find in the game. Fire Spirit Gem, Lucky Coin, Mithril Amulet, World Spire Shard, Runner’s Blessing, Speed Boots, Golden Pickaxe, Miner’s Heirloom, Sturdy Boots, Mithril Chainmail, Heart of the Mountain, Demolition Plans, Orequake Finger, Calamity Ward — none of these are in the 121-entry catalog. Neither is the “+25% Luck” or “+100% boss damage” effect I attached to them. Luck in this game is a flat number, the best example being Deep Gnome Bling at “+35 Luck but -12% Speed”, and no artifact in the list mentions boss damage at all.

I also invented the acquisition model. There is no Ritual reroll shop where Mountain Souls convert a bad relic into a good one. What exists is a Forge Artifact ritual with published odds, den rolls that exclude artifacts you already own, and Treasure Hunter returns.

Below is the version I can defend: every artifact name, effect line, cost, and percentage transcribed from the community catalog and the game’s upgrade data. Where the source does not answer a question I need answered, I say so instead of filling the gap.

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How Artifacts Are Actually Acquired

Four documented channels, and knowing which one you are fishing in matters more than any tier ranking.

Destroyed dens. A destroyed den rolls from artifacts you have not obtained or collected, excluding boss-only artifacts. Artifacts above the den’s max tier can still appear, but their weight is halved. So a low-tier den is not useless — it is just less likely to hand you a Tier 4.

Artifact-choice screens. These also exclude owned, collected, and boss-only entries, the offered choices are always unique, and higher mountain level adds weight to higher-tier artifacts. This is the reason to keep pushing mountain level even when your collection feels stalled.

Treasure Hunter returns. Named as a source for the unweighted, unique entries — the ones with no tier or weight in the catalog, including Eye Of Beholder, Forgebound Seal, Forgeheart Ember and Denhook.

The Forge Artifact ritual. The real fishing mechanic: 400 gold and 3 Mithril per use, with a 67% chance to create one of five unique Tier 5 artifacts and a 33% chance for a random Tier 3 or Tier 4. The Great Shabu Altar Tier 1 raises the odds of good outcomes for Forge Artifact, Alchemy, Spelunkers and Treasure Hunters at once, which is why it belongs in any collection-focused run.

One consequence of “rolls exclude what you own”: the pool self-cleans. Early on you will see duplicates never and trash often; by the time you hold 80 of 121 entries, every den you crack is a genuine step toward the last forty. [Unverified — no source publishes per-den tier caps or the exact weight table per channel, so the shape of that curve is my inference from the published rules.]

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Combo 1: The Forge Engine

Core: Forgebound Seal + Forgeheart Ember + Great Shabu Altar (upgrade) + one damage artifact for your main weapon line Vector: permanent damage that grows every time you spend Range: mid-game onward, once Mithril income covers 3 per forge attempt

This is the only loop in the game where paying for artifacts also makes your run stronger.

Piece	Documented text
Forgebound Seal	”Whenever you use the Forge Artifact ritual, Miners, Harpoon Ballistas and Great Duke Cannons permanently gain +5% damage.”
Forgeheart Ember	”Whenever you use the Forge Artifact ritual, all dwarves gain +30% damage and +10 mithril luck for 20 seconds.”
Great Shabu Altar T1	”Increases the odds of good outcomes for Spelunkers, Treasure Hunters, Forge Artifact and Alchemy.”

Twenty forge uses is +100% permanent damage on three weapon lines, before you count anything the forge itself produced. Forgeheart Ember covers the 20-second window so the run stays fast while you spam, and its +10 mithril luck feeds the same currency you are spending. That is the loop: mithril buys forge uses, forge uses raise damage and mithril luck, damage clears mountains faster, mountains fund more forge uses.

If you do not have both: Forgeheart Ember alone is a burst button. Forgebound Seal alone is slower but never expires. Take Seal first if your build is Miners or Ballistas, Ember first if it is Flamers or Laser Cannons, because Seal does not name those lines.

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Combo 2: The Luck Cascade

Core: Deep Gnome Bling + Crystal Skull + Greyglitter Dowsing Amulet + Divine Pickaxe (or Gilded Duke’s Emblem) Vector: flat Luck converted into proc chance Range: any run where a luck-scaled proc is your damage source

Luck in this game is not a stat that only affects drops — several artifacts publish their own luck-scaling formulas, and that is where the synergy actually lives:

Piece	Documented text
Deep Gnome Bling (T2 w50)	“Runners get +35 Luck but -12% Speed.”
Greyglitter Dowsing Amulet (T4 w7)	“All dwarves get +4 mithril luck.”
Crystal Skull (T1 w75)	“All dwarves have +10 gem luck.”
Divine Pickaxe (T3 w35)	“3% chance to transform into a golden pickaxe with +30% flat crit damage and +40 luck. The chance is increased by 0.04% per luck and by 1% per priest.”
Dodgy Profession (upgrade)	“Runners get a chance to dodge falling rocks and monsters. Dodge is increased by +0.15% per luck and capped to a max of 69%.”

Divine Pickaxe is the payoff: every point of Luck you add anywhere raises its proc rate, and the proc itself carries +40 luck and +30% flat crit damage. Gilded Duke’s Emblem is the cannon version of the same idea (5% base, +1% per Priest, +0.01% per Luck). If you are running miners, buy the pickaxe line and stack luck around it; if you are running cannons, the emblem.

Pay the cost honestly. Deep Gnome Bling’s -12% Speed is a real haul-rate tax, and the game’s own dodge cap (69%) means luck stops buying survival well before it stops buying procs.

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Combo 3: The Den Chain

Core: Warlord’s Mantle + Broodstone Idol + Mithril Compass + Death Mark (ritual) + Denhook Vector: dens as an infinite loot pipeline Range: mountains 10-60, where dens spawn faster than you can clear them

Piece	Documented text
Warlord’s Mantle (T2 w45)	“Collect: Destroy all dens, then spawn 2-3 dens. Passive: Destroying a den counts as if the destructor had +20 Luck.”
Broodstone Idol (unweighted)	“When a den is destroyed, there is a 12% chance to spawn another den or mithril vein.”
Mithril Compass (T2 w45)	“All dens have +12% chance to drop Mithril.”
Death Mark (ritual)	“Mark a den for annihilation. All Harpoon Ballistas focus that den until it is destroyed. When the marked den dies, it drops loot as if the destroyer had +42 luck and extra force.”
Denhook (unweighted)	“Harpoon Ballistas deal additional damage to dens equal to +0.1% of the den’s max health per rank of Quadruple-Bladed Bolts.”

The chain works because three of these stack on the same event — den destruction — from different directions: Broodstone multiplies the number of events, Warlord’s Mantle and Death Mark multiply the loot quality of each event, and Mithril Compass raises the mithril cut. Denhook makes ballistas the fastest den killer, which raises event frequency again. Since dens are one of the four artifact channels, this combo is quietly an artifact collection engine, and mithril from it feeds Combo 1.

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Combo 4: The Dodge Snowball

Core: Hermes Sandals + Golden Crane + Aegis Medallion + Quickbeer Dispenser Vector: dodge converted into permanent speed Range: high-calamity runs where runner deaths, not HP, are the wall

Piece	Documented text
Hermes Sandals (T1 w80)	“Whenever a Runner dodges a falling rock, he gets +1% Speed permanently, up to maximum of 30%.”
Golden Crane (T1 w80)	“Runners get +10% dodge.”
Aegis Medallion (unweighted)	“Whenever a Runner reaches his maximum carrying capacity, he gains a magical shield that protects him from falling rocks for 15-30 seconds.”
Quickbeer Dispenser (unweighted)	“Whenever a Runner delivers a payload, 20% chance of +50% speed, +100% gathering speed and +30% dodge for 12-16 seconds. Chance increased by +0.03% per luck and guaranteed if he delivered an artifact.”

Hermes Sandals is the engine and it is the reason this is a combo rather than four random defensive items: dodge chance produces permanent speed, so the more you dodge the more you haul, and the more you haul the more rock events you survive. Golden Crane supplies the base dodge, Aegis Medallion covers the heavy full-load trips, Quickbeer turns each delivery into a dodge-boosted window — and it is guaranteed when the payload is an artifact, which is exactly when you most want the runner to live.

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Combo 5: The Grudge Stack, And Why It Fights Combo 4

Core: Book Of Grudges + hazard pressure + straight damage artifacts (Fire Titan Core, Salamander Sacs, Lavalord Totem) Vector: taking hits as a damage currency Range: long runs on hazard-heavy mountains

Book Of Grudges (T4 w11) reads: “All dwarves permanently gain 0.01% damage whenever a Runner is stunned, up to 100%.” That is a 10,000-stun cap and it never expires. Salamander Sacs (“Flamers’ fire bolts now do double damage”, T1 w70), Fire Titan Core (“Flamers get +20% damage”, T3 w25) and Lavalord Totem (“Flamers and Flamelords have -20% cooldown reduction”, T2 w45) convert that damage floor into a fire build.

Here is the tension nobody puts in a tier list: Combo 4 and Combo 5 are mutually hostile. Dodging prevents stuns. Stuns are the only thing that pays Book Of Grudges. Stack Golden Crane, Hermes Sandals and Aegis Medallion on a Grudge run and you are actively throttling your own damage curve. Pick one philosophy per run: unkillable runners, or runners used as damage fuel.

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Combo 6: Gold Value Multiplication

Core: Divine Gem Polish + Divine Tongs + Golden Weighstone + Arkenstone Vector: price per unit instead of units per minute Range: mountains 40+, and every Prestige push where gold is the gate

Piece	Documented text
Divine Gem Polish (T4 w8)	“All gems are worth 20% more.”
Divine Tongs (unweighted)	“All non-gem ores are worth +15% more gold.”
Golden Weighstone (unweighted)	“All ores and gems are worth +10% more gold.”
Arkenstone (gate)	“+5 PP and +20% ore/gem gold value.”

The reason this set works is coverage without overlap waste: Polish is gems-only, Tongs is non-gem-ore-only, Weighstone and Arkenstone are broad. Four items that all said “gems” would be three wasted selections; these four divide the ore table between them. Arkenstone is the double-pay item — it is one of the eight Great World Spire gate artifacts and one of the better gold effects in the game, so you are never spending a selection on it twice.

[Unverified — whether the four percentages multiply each other or add is not published anywhere I could read. The catalog gives each item its own number and no global stacking formula.]

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Combo 7: The Prestige Sprint

Core: Grom’s Drinking Horn + Crown of Kings + Heirloom Treasure Map + Chronicle Stone Vector: Prestige Points per reset Range: equip-before-reset runs, roughly 12/45/120 PP tier gates

Piece	Documented text
Grom’s Drinking Horn (T4 w11)	“Collect: +5000 gold, +3 PP and +30% of your total gold.”
Crown of Kings (T4 w11)	“Collect: +5 PP.”
Heirloom Treasure Map (T3 w35)	“Collect: +2500 gold and +4 PP.”
Chronicle Stone (T2 w55)	“Every time you consume a mountain, you have 12% chance to gain +1 PP.”
Mithril Savings Bond (T1 w85)	“Collect: +4 Mithril and +500 gold.”

The mechanic that makes this a set rather than a list: “Collect:” effects fire once, when the artifact is picked up. Grom’s Drinking Horn is the extreme case — its +30% of total gold means it self-targets the moment it is worth most, so grabbing it at the end of a long bank run is strictly better than grabbing it early. Every Collect item in this table is an acquisition-timing decision, not an uptime decision. Read the section on selection below before you treat any of these as a permanent slot.

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Combo 8: Dwarf Throughput

Core: Holy Grail + Stoneshaper’s Rod + Bottled Dwarf + Cryopod + Golden Minotaur Vector: worker count and worker cost Range: build-out runs, and any run where buildings are the bottleneck rather than damage

Piece	Documented text
Holy Grail (T4 w5)	“Collect: +4 dwarves. Passive: Every 8-16 minutes, you gain +1 dwarf. Each dwarf gained increases the interval by 2 minutes.”
Stoneshaper’s Rod (T4 w7)	“Underground Housing costs 20% less gold.”
Bottled Dwarf (T1 w75)	“Collect: +1 dwarf, +1 mithril and +1 PP.”
Cryopod (T1 w70)	“Collect: +1-3 scientists (or dwarves if you don’t have a Grand Laboratory).”
Golden Minotaur (unweighted)	“Bulldozers gain +33% mouth size and +5 carrying capacity.”

Holy Grail’s deceleration clause is the detail that makes this a real combo instead of a wish list: each dwarf you gain lengthens the interval by 2 minutes, so the free-dwarf drip slows roughly linearly as it works. Stoneshaper’s Rod exists to spend that drip — cheaper Underground Housing means each gained dwarf converts into a staffed building instead of an idle body. Dwarves are the workforce for buildings and specialized units, so this set is a build-out engine, not a damage one.

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Combo 9: The Cannon And Laser Lines

Core (cannons): Lightning Linstock + Gilded Duke’s Emblem + Rapid Cannonade (upgrade) Core (lasers): Ancient Energy Idol + Triune Prism + Energy Sustainer (upgrade) Vector: commit to one weapon line and take only its named artifacts

Piece	Documented text
Lightning Linstock (T4 w12)	“Great Duke Cannons get +20% damage.”
Kraken’s Tooth (T2 w50) / Divine Tension Coils (T3 w25)	“Harpoon Ballistas get +10% damage” / “+20% damage.”
Ancient Energy Idol	”Laser Cannons get +20% damage.”
Triune Prism (unweighted)	“Laser Cannon’s POWER OVERWHELMING upgrade now also counts Stonecallers and Runesmiths as Scientists for its damage bonus.”
Sorcerous Spyglass (T1 w75)	“Ballistas and turrets get +10% flat accuracy.”

The trap here is weight. Lightning Linstock is a Tier 4 with weight 12, the highest weight among the tier-4s — you will be offered it constantly and it does nothing at all if you have no Great Duke Cannons. Same failure mode for Kraken’s Tooth and Divine Tension Coils in a non-ballista build, and for Ancient Energy Idol without Laser Cannons. These are the artifacts that make a random selection look like a good one and play like dead weight.

Triune Prism is the interesting exception: it does not add damage, it widens who counts, letting Stonecallers and Runesmiths feed a Laser Cannon bonus. Artifacts that change an upgrade’s eligibility are a different class of value from artifacts that change a number, and they are the ones tier lists miss.

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Anti-Synergies Worth Memorising

• Dodge vs Book Of Grudges. Golden Crane, Hermes Sandals and Aegis Medallion reduce stuns; stuns are the Grudge’s entire income. Running both philosophies in one load means you paid for a cap you will never reach.
• Steamskate Boots inside a dodge engine. “+18% speed, but -4% dodge and +12% resting time” — the resting-time penalty also cuts the Quickbeer and Hermes windows, since both trigger on delivery and dodge events.
• Deep Gnome Bling when hauling is the wall. Its +35 Luck is real and its -12% Speed is equally real; take it only when a luck-scaled proc (Divine Pickaxe, Gilded Duke’s Emblem, Quickbeer) is what converts luck into output.
• Multiple Collect-once items held in slots. Grom’s Drinking Horn, Crown of Kings, Heirloom Treasure Map, Bottled Dwarf, Mithril Egg, Chaos Orb — all pay on pickup. After that they are history, not throughput. Chaos Orb’s own line makes the point: “+0-3000 gold, +0-3 mithril, +0-3 PP, spawn 0-3 dens, and trigger 0-3 calamities” is a one-time dice roll that can hand you a mountain of value or three disasters.
• Weapon-line artifacts across lines. Linstock on a Flamer run, Fire Titan Core on a ballista run, Salamander Sacs with no Flamers. The catalog names the dwarf type in almost every damage line, so an off-line artifact is a wasted selection, not a small bonus.
• Calamity mitigation you do not need. “If you’re sitting on 40 Mithril and your mining damage is slow” — the same scarcity logic applies to defensive selections. [Unverified — no source publishes per-calamity damage values by mountain level, so mitigation value stays a run-observation rather than a number.]

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Selection, Not Slots: How To Actually Manage A Loadout

My old version of this section gave advice about “3-slot” and “4-slot” loadouts. I have never found a published slot count for this game, and I am no longer going to pretend I know one. What the sources do document is a selection model, and it changes the advice:

• Choice screens exclude what you already own, and the offered choices are unique. So your decision is which artifact to take from a set you will not see again in the same shape.
• Higher mountain level weights higher tiers. If you keep declining tier-3 offers to hold out, the same screen at a higher mountain is statistically better. Waiting is a strategy, not a failure.
• Divine Archives (prestige upgrade) reads “You can now select T5 artifacts” — the only published statement that selection quality is upgrade-gated. [Unverified — the catalog does not explain how selecting differs from holding, nor how many artifacts are active simultaneously.]
• The Forge Artifact ritual is the one place you can pay for a specific outcome class, at 67% for one of five Tier 5 uniques.

So the real management question is not “which four do I equip” but “which offer do I take, and should I have waited for a higher mountain.” That is a better game than the one I described in August, and it is the one actually shipping.

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Final Take

Nine combos, and only one of them needs luck: the Forge Engine, because Forgebound Seal’s permanent +5% per use and Forgeheart Ember’s 20-second window both scale off an action you take on purpose. Everything else in this list is a question of matching documented effect text to the bottleneck in front of you:

• Artifact income too low: Den Chain (Warlord’s Mantle, Broodstone Idol, Mithril Compass, Death Mark).
• Runners dying to rocks: Dodge Snowball (Hermes Sandals, Golden Crane, Aegis Medallion, Quickbeer Dispenser).
• Damage floor too low on long runs: Grudge Stack, and accept the stun count.
• Gold gating your Prestige: Gold Value set, then the Prestige Sprint Collect timing.
• Buildings stalled: Dwarf Throughput, Holy Grail with Stoneshaper’s Rod.
• Committed to one weapon line: take only that line’s named artifacts, and refuse Lightning Linstock if you have no cannons.

One honest limit on all of this: the catalog gives per-item numbers and no global stacking maths, and nothing I could read publishes a slot count or a per-den drop table. Where I said “compounds” or “multiplies,” that is my reading of effect text plus what my runs did, and I have marked it. If you test a stack and get a different answer, your number is the better citation.

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Sources

Source	What it provided
WikiTactics artifact catalog	All 121 entries: names, verbatim effect lines, tier, selection weight, per-artifact source notes
WikiTactics mechanics page	Den Selection and Choice Selection rules, the 121 artifact count, highest-weight artifact table
WikiTactics upgrades database	Forge Artifact ritual cost and odds, Great Shabu Altar, Death Mark, Dodgy Profession, Rapid Cannonade, Energy Sustainer
WikiTactics resources page	What Mithril and Mountain Soul are actually spent on
Steam store page, appid 4078200	Current build and DLC metadata

WikiTactics is a community wiki, not a developer source. Every effect line quoted above is transcribed from it, and where it does not document a mechanic I have written [Unverified] rather than inventing the missing piece.