Oblivion:Artifacts Found
Artifacts Found is a statistic that tracks how many Daedric Artifacts the player has received as quest rewards. This objective makes up a very insignificant portion of the run time but it is easy to fail if you are not aware of the proper way to acquire each artifact. This article only focuses on the route logic that this requirement directly affects, so information about optimizing each quest is not included on this page.
Overview
There are 15 Daedric Artifacts, each as a reward from one of the 15 Daedric Shrine quests. In order to obtain an artifact from a quest, you must complete it in a specific way. If you "fail" the quest, such as killing an NPC required for the quest, you cannot get 100% completion. Since these quests need to all be completed anyway, this quest barely adds any time to the run aside from forcing the player to complete the quests without failing them. The Clavicus Vile quest has two possible artifacts that can be obtained, but Umbra does not increment the Artifacts Found statistic, so it is not part of the requirements.
Note that you do not need to hold on to the artifacts, you just need to acquire them as a quest reward. For example, getting rid of an artifact for Blood of the Daedra does not lower the Artifacts Found statistic.
A list of Artifacts is provided below with information on the requirements to obtain them.
Previous Methods
This requirement has not changed since Version 1. For improvements to the actual quests themselves, refer to each individual quest page.
Current Method
Each artifact is obtained from the following quests in the following ways, with blank requirements indicating that there is no way to fail that quest:
| Artifact | Quest | Quest Requirement |
|---|---|---|
| Azura's Star | Azura | |
| Goldbrand | Boethia | |
| Masque of Clavicus Vile | Clavicus Vile | Return Umbra to Clavicus Vile to get this artifact. |
| Oghma Infinium | Hermaeus Mora | |
| Saviour's Hide | Hircine | |
| Volendrung | Malacath | Keep the ogres alive to get this artifact. |
| Ebony Blade | Mephala | Avoid getting caught committing crimes in Bleaker's Way and only kill NPCs in the way the quest instructs you to in order to get this artifact. |
| Ring of Khajiiti | Meridia | |
| Mace of Molag Bal | Molag Bal | Have Melus Petilius kill you with the Cursed Mace to get this artifact. Killing him or being killed without the mace will fail the quest. |
| Ring of Namira | Namira | Have the priests of Arkay killed only by Namira's Forgotten to get this artifact. Killing anyone in Anga yourself fails this quest. |
| Skeleton Key | Nocturnal | |
| Spell Breaker | Peryite | |
| Sanguine Rose | Sanguine | Successfully cast the Stark Reality spell on the Countess during the dinner party to get this artifact. |
| Wabbajack | Sheogorath | |
| Skull of Corruption | Vaermina |
Of all the artifacts listed, only three are currently used in the run outside of needing them for the Artifacts Found statistic. The Masaque of Clavicus Vile is used to complete Blood of the Daedra, and the Oghma Infinium and Skeleton Key are used during the Skill Grind. Most artifacts are extremely heavy so they are dropped to avoid being over-encumbered.
Potential Improvements
There are currently no proposed ways of acquiring the artifacts faster aside from simply improving the quest logic for each individual quest. There may exist some glitch that allows for glitching the Artifacts Found statistic but so far there are no leads. Theoretically this would allow us to fail the quests for a decent time save.
The following quests would be faster if they could be failed:
- Malacath sequence break into Bleak Mine as usual but then kill the ogres to skip a cutscene.
- Mephala has several failure states that could easily be achieved to skip the second cutscene.
- Molag Bal could be failed by killing Melus Petilius after starting the quest, skipping a cutscene.
- Namira could be failed by killing anyone in Anga to skip a cutscene.
- Sanguine could potentially be failed by casting Stark Reality when the Countess is not at the dinner party to save both a cutscene and a backtrack to finish Ahdarji's Heirloom, although this would need to be tested further.
Some Daedric Artifacts have potentially game breaking bugs associated with them that are underexplored:
- Wabbajack has the Schrödinger's Ogre glitch.
- The Skull of Corruption has a unique dupe glitch that causes other exploits like Corrupted Nirnroot.