More Dangerous Small Artifacts

[Dhaidburt]

After doing a dive through the wiki and categorizing all the artifacts by if their effect is positive, silly, negative, or some combination of the three, I've come to the conclusion that there's not a single hand-held artifact with a negative trait. It's definitely harder for hand-held artifacts to be negative in the first place, but here's my go at it:


Material Transporter. Takes things inside of you and dumps them out, if no chemicals are present in your system you instead spew out blood. Range of units transferred would be somewhere from useless to life threatening, though never as much as 400 units (don't want any instant deaths)


Artifact Drone. Upon activation, the artifact begins floating as if possessed and begins locking onto the closest organic creature, much like the turret artifact. This one however, can move and fire its gun at the same time with the caveat of being frailer. Goodbye, test monkeys.


Egg. What you thought was an artifact was actually the egg of a dangerous species, of which you just finished its odd incubation. It will be hatching shortly, fully grown and ready to be kill. There's several messages about it moving on its own, before cracking open (destroying the 'artifact')

[aloe]

I support the general sentiment of handheld artifacts being more dangerous; there was a bit of an issue in the past because some of the handhelds were absurdly good (0 CD teleporters, gibbing melee artifacts), so it was pretty optimal to just run around scooping them all up. Worst case you'd get like, an instument.

Material transporter sounds neat, but I feel like just dumping chems on the floor isn't super interesting. Could maybe have varying effects based on originIe, eldritch ones steal your blood and dump it out, precursor ones can take reagents from things at range, martian ones replace reagents with synthflesh, etc etc (very rough ideas).
Drone sounds good and relatively easy to implement; just needs a mob with some simple AI that shoots things. Alternately, just give artguns a 50-ish% chance to spawn as drones that shoot the gun at you, and make them turn into a standard gun when you kill the drone.
Egg sounds fun, but difficult to code (needs custom mob sprites/behavior for each origin. Could use existing mob types, but that's not super interesting).

Even if these specific ideas aren't used I'm 100% on board with adding more negative/dangerous handhelds.

[Lord_earthfire]

Whats not on the wiki woth handheld artifscts are side-effects. I have seen multiple people get spaced by using an artifact gun for fun.

Then again, thats far too few side effects.

I really like the egg and the artifact drone.

Also, why don't we got handheld grenades? They can do stuff like spewing out gltter-smoke or create a mob-portal. Give them an examine warning so people that toroughly analyse them dont get unexpectantly spaced/smoked.

[Kotlol]

I think more dangerous hand helds are 100% good. Artificat handhelds are either:
"If I am an antagonist I will be unstoppable"
or
"Wow... this sucks."

There is no handle with care and in fact I know some players that go antagonist (including myself), tend to look for handheld artifact as soon as possible to maybe get that one lucky one, the worst is an instrument or beaker.

[Dhaidburt]

Material transporter sounds neat, but I feel like just dumping chems on the floor isn't super interesting. Could maybe have varying effects based on originIe, eldritch ones steal your blood and dump it out, precursor ones can take reagents from things at range, martian ones replace reagents with synthflesh, etc etc (very rough ideas).

I really like the idea of taking reagents from things at range, since my brain instantly went "My sandwich now" as you just yoink food out of someones hand. To keep with the theme of a more dangerous artifact though, I feel like martian ones could reuse biomass (aka your organs or blood, synthflesh if its in your system) to create a piece of martian something. My mind might be focused alot on blood, but if there was a wizard variant it could crystalize the stuff, depleting you of blood but giving you wizard blood pills, or maybe just make gore golems.

Drone sounds good and relatively easy to implement; just needs a mob with some simple AI that shoots things. Alternately, just give artguns a 50-ish% chance to spawn as drones that shoot the gun at you, and make them turn into a standard gun when you kill the drone.

Egg sounds fun, but difficult to code (needs custom mob sprites/behavior for each origin. Could use existing mob types, but that's not super interesting).

I honestly thought these two up with a more simplistic idea in mind, especially the artgun drone, though some robotic abomination spewing out of a cryptic dark egg is way cooler than a space bear!

Also, why don't we got handheld grenades? They can do stuff like spewing out gltter-smoke or create a mob-portal. Give them an examine warning so people that toroughly analyse them dont get unexpectantly spaced/smoked.

Thinking on it, that may be because grenades are more 'one and done', and you generally don't know whats in a grenade unless it's labeled. I don't think it'd be a good idea for them to be reusable either, since if your foe dodges the blast, they can now counterattack unless the cooldown is sufficiently long.

There is no handle with care and in fact I know some players that go antagonist (including myself), tend to look for handheld artifact as soon as possible to maybe get that one lucky one, the worst is an instrument or beaker.

Exactly! Nobody touches the large artifacts blindly unless they're looking for consequences, whereas small artifacts are basically 'oh sick free toy' despite the fact that several human-made handheld items are quite dangerous when used improperly! All the types of artifacts should have that same semi-dangerous feeling, that's what makes exploring the unknown so enjoyable!

[babayetu83]

it'd be interesting if there were one that would integrate itself into your body and begin taking over district 9 style

[Mouse]

artifact that on first use eats the hand it's held in and replaces it

[Kotlol]

artifact that on first use eats the hand it's held in and replaces it

Only when they "activate"

[Dhaidburt]

artifact that on first use eats the hand it's held in and replaces it

I think there's actually one like it? Not really as a negative but basically elemental arms, I randomly ended up with a ruby arm that I could attune to and make a handheld fireball after an artifact melded into my arm. Not like dnd or street fire fireball but just a ball of hot i could smear onto things once. (I think it might still be in development and the fact that it spawned was a bug?)

I'd like this more as an addon to other artifacts, like you suddenly have a forced-on gun arm and have to beg sec for a sticker lest you be endlessly pestered by guardbuddies during surgery. Or be stuck with a beaker and be sprayed with chemicals whenever someone uses disarm on you because medbay has better things to do and it's not killing you.