im getting close to being able to create a new epic, and these are my candidates: item values, ore values, army camp boost, market raid, speedy smelters, speedy crafters, hosptial boost, money cache boost, bonus money boost. the epics i already have are: alloy values, triple strike, time warp, supercharge army camp, army cache boost

i havent ascended yet and the current rares i use most are: IV, SS, SC, A^B, HB

so what do you think i should upgrade?

I would say make any epic and then immediately use it to go for Legendary Alloy Values + Army Cache Boost. The difference Legendary makes over Epic is huge.

i think legendary AV would be overkill at this point
i always have enough for mercs, way too many army camp upgrades, and decent mine upgrades
also i maxed increased alloy sell values a while ago

Instead of picking an artifact I will give my impressions of the ones you listed, plus a few more, and leave it to you figure it out for yourself.

ore values: situationally useful. With only an epic AV, you will sometimes run out of money, and this can help fill the gap when you get resource caches of fancy ores (e.g. neodymium) that you will never smelt. Combine with the corresponding (and cheap) phase 1 advancement for extra oomph.

item values: similar to ore values, lets you sell all that extra twine and welding rods from caches when you run out of money. But it tends to be less impactful because the boost percentage is lower and the corresponding phase 3 advancement is prohibitively expensive. This used to be more valuable in the old days before the market strategy when we would craft things like tin cans for profit.

army camp boost: great for new players and frequent super-ascenders, helps you get to the first market and juices up your drafts, but can be replaced by a relatively cheap phase 1 advancement.

bonus money boost: similar to army camp boost, good for starting a map, has a corresponding phase 3 advancement which doesn't have a lot of competition for the 25,000 AP you'll need to spend there.

territory money boost: also similar, but has a higher percentage boost, no corresponding advancement, and is slightly more helpful when you're bee-lining through high-level areas to markets, merc camps, and hospitals without completing the relevant bonuses. Oops, you didn't list this one.

market raid: meh. Eating a cooldown for a fraction of a power seems like a bad deal.

hospital boost: a great artifact, but it suffers diminishing returns with its nerfed upgrade curve (increases +2% per upgrade after a while), so it hits its sweet spot at rare. Keep it there for now.

speedy crafters: a solid mid-tier artifact. You'll need to do some long-ass crafting on a few levels (e.g. rivets on hard scandinavia) and this helps speed it up. But this is a minority of levels, so I recommend keeping it at rare, which is good enough.

speedy smelters: meh. You shouldn't be smelting all that much, and when you do, ore is more likely than time to be your bottleneck. This suggests that mine boost would be more important, but that's not great either.

money cache boost: fairly solid, though the percentage boost is kind of modest, and money caches in general are pretty underwhelming. The corresponding phase 1 advancement is a better value. Very important for hex earth runs once you get to that point.

And now for two more that you didn't list:

resource cache boost: has a higher percentage boost than the other cache boosters, sometimes helps you get techs earlier (e.g. draft), and also helps on levels with weak markets and resource caches with lots of bars in them (notably sengoku and copper creek).

mercenary discount: in the long run you should be getting the bulk of your armies from mercenary camps and army caches, and this helps make the former cheaper. It's not flashy, but it makes you more efficient, which is a good thing.

Oh, I didn't notice those other two comments. Alloy values is the most important artifact in the game, and you should make upgrading it to legendary a high priority.

thx for the advice!
i already have 5 epics, so i could get leg AV, but i cant let go of TW, SAC, TS, and ACacheB
and after reviewing your advice, ive settled on IV, which was one of the only good choices to begin with
i will eventually create leg AV tho

Edited 2025-11-20 11:27:07

Oh, I didn't notice those other two comments. Alloy values is the most important artifact in the game, and you should make upgrading it to legendary a high priority.

I will echo this sentiment. Epic AV simply does not cut it for several important levels, Legendary AV does.

If you said Insane AV is overkill, you would be correct though, that is a very low priority upgrade to do.

by "important levels", do you mean super ascension levels or high regular levels

idk but id ask one of the janitors around here.

Important levels being ones you cannot avoid (like EH, at least until you are many SAs deep) or ones you don't want to avoid because they're high in AP/time (like HOT).

With the notable exception of Hex, I don't think anybody considers the post-SA levels to be important (with the possible exception of PA, but only as a stepping stone to Hex after your SL powers are depleted).