Artifact & Ego ideas

[Gorm]

Alternate reward for completing brawler's arena:

Tier 4 artifact: "Coward's Brass Knuckles"
Occupies both ring slots.
+X Cunning
Increases unarmed physical damage by X%
On melee crit: X% chance to cripple enemy
Cunning / Dirty Fighting: +0.3

"Hit 'em right between the eyes!"

How to get the item:
In the Brawler's arena, the orb of command is replaced by a "Ringmaster" NPC. After you pay the 150 gold, give a new dialogue option that says: "[50 gold] Chances aren't looking to good for your champ. Why don't you make me "forget" my brass knuckles in the preparation room?" If you choose the option, he says "Just so you know, the Master of Blood doesn't take too kindly to dirty tricks, hehe". You now get access to the brawler in the arena, who instead of having grapple talents has Dirty Fighting talents. Once you win, the Master of Blood turns hostile and says "Cheating!? In my arena!?!" and attacks. If you choose this option you don't unlock the brawler class, and you don't get Bloodcaller as a reward, but you get the "Coward's Brass Knuckles" item instead.


Design idea:
- Make Dirty Fighting a more viable category for Brawlers. Achieves this by three-pronged synergy:
1. Bringing category efficiency up to par.
2. Gives brawlers access to a powerful status effect they're otherwise gonna have a hard time getting, which synergises with Backstab and Twist the Knife talents from the Dirty Fighting category.
3. Gives a boost to cunning so you don't have to put as many points into cunning to unlock Dirty Fighting capstone talents. Important as Brawler stat allocation usually is Dex > Cunning for capstone talents > Strength > Excess Cunning

- Give options other than Bloodcaller (lifeleech ring) from brawler's arena, which at the moment I think is best-in-slot? If not, it's close. Cripple is a super powerful and synergistic effect for brawlers as its proc makes your character do an additional unarmed strike, so this item should be a contender, even if it occupies both ring slots.

- Flavourtown. I mean come on, a dirty fighter putting on brass knuckles instead of rings and crippling his opponents is super flavourful :p

[Chronosplit]

I just realized that there's no Skirmisher/Agility geared tier 5 artifact shield. We should fix that. Off the top of my head, something like...

Highfin's Wooden Buckler
Nature Powered
Unknown Powered
+Mastery in Agility and Buckler Training
+Armor, low end for a Tier 5
+Defense, higher end for a Tier 5
+Fatigue minus
+DEX and CUN
+Acid, Nature, and Fire resist
+Luck
+Stun and Pin resist
+For every time that you block an attack with your shield (but without using block), you get a buff that stacks.
+You can use this shield to activate Vault.

When used as a weapon:
+Of Earthen Fury's damage bonus

This small shield served the famed explorer Krestin Highfin throughout his adventures. Though it only looks to be made of simple Elm, it appears to withstand all blows with ease. Legends everywhere only theorize where the material came from.

[Phantomfrettchen]

Flame of Covaran
Lite
Material Tier 5

This runeencrusted, dusky brass lamp only provides a hint of greenish light through dusky glass.

While Worn
+3 light radius
+40 Blight Res
+10 Max Blight Res
+50% disease immunity
+15% blight damage
+10% Spellcrit
+10 Spellpower
+10 Magic
+40 max Vim, +4 Vim on Spellcrit
-5 hp regen

While in Inventory
-1 hp regen

Grants Sustain/active with deactivating active: open the lid
You lift the cage of brass locking the light away from the outside world.
As you do, the green flame inside hungrily bursts forth, it's greenish light rotting, feeding from
the flesh of everything it shines upon.

While active: +6 light radius.
Everything within your light Radius takes 50 blight damage each turn, while draining 20 vim per turn it's active. Needs to be expensive enough that it can be dangerous to use if there are too few enemies in range.


You lift the cage of brass locking the light away from the outside world.
As you do, the green flame inside hungrily bursts forth, it's greenish light rotting the flesh of everything it shines upon.


This lamp was once created by a former grand corruptor in an effort to
create a cauldron of lifeforce. A storage, where their lifeforce could be stored and
later harnessed. Yet after finishing it, the energy he had stored inside just
dissipated away. Trying again and again, he got a little careless. Putting more and more
lifeforce, more and more Vim into it, the flame which had always dissipated so quickly before,
grabbed a hold of him, rotting his skin and his flesh alike. His corpse was later found by
one of his colleagues, only bones remaining. Alongside the device, a small green flame burning in it,
flickering up as the corruptor approached. Curious, he experimented with the
lamp, testing it on unsuspecting victims. He implemented mechanisms to protect
himself from the draining effects of the light and locked the flame inside, to
only leak to the outside, if he so desired.

PS: story and values might require some optimizing.