What are the artifacts that should be used and never should be used?

The only guide you need for artifacts:

https://www.warzone.com/Forum/589522-superascension-leaderboard?Offset=1506

Oh hey there is that post I was looking for but couldn't find when you ask in global chat 😅
Thanks Pkmx :)

Very subjective but it is a good list.

One of the weird one for me is stopping at LAV but listing MD as very useful.

Edited 2026-04-13 23:58:03

Nothing weird here. Leg AV is good enough for most levels and getting to insane is too much cost when there are many better choices (AcacheB, cacheB, AcampB). MD just helps a bit to tip the scale for those money-tight levels (Reconquest, China, for example).

That list is pretty good. I would probably move RCB up a tier (maybe two) and TD down a tier, but those are relatively minor tweaks. RCB frees you of MR for CCC and Nobunaga, plus it helps trim the early slow phase on a lot of the early levels if you hit the right caches. I like MD too, but it only really matters on a smaller number of levels (Hex, HChina, maybe EH, maybe HOT).

As a counterpoint to the above, I find MCB nearly useless except for on Hex where it's one of a couple ways to avoid waiting to hit the 170M cache.

#PkmX if you had a LMD(32) and a LAV(112) which would you push to Insane first?

Yes, RCB could be A tier if you know which caches to hit, and it helps with tech acquisition. I just feel like it doesn't help as much on later levels where resource caches contribute less to the total money in the level, unlike MD which is a flat bonus. However, I still think most players should just solve their money issues on those levels with MR+SM combo, and therefore I rate other artifacts whose effects cannot be easily replicated (e.g. AcacheB/cacheB/TW) much higher.

@Mindori: Insane AV of course. With market strat it nets you a lot more money than insane MD will save.

I agree that RCB is less useful for later levels, but I view RCB mainly through the lens of someone that has already SAed at least 10-20 times, as there are better choices to upgrade first, so this realistically would be the earliest time that you would start considering to take it up to at least Legendary. At that point, the number of later levels you play is rapidly falling away and you're proportionally spending a lot more time on the early levels, plus you're starting to feel the pinch of powers being finite.

FWIW, I played almost all of SA1 without an AV because RNG said no (IIRC, AV and CB were the last two artifact types I saw), so I burned a whole lot more MR and SMs than most people probably did.