Artifacts — a mod for artifacts in Minecraft

Artifacts — a mod for artifacts in Minecraft

Artifacts adds over 40 items to Minecraft with their own properties, which cannot be crafted. The mod encourages you to explore the world: each item can only be found in specific structures, chests, or dropped by mobs. In addition, a new underground structure appears — a campsite with a mimic that attacks players and always drops a random artifact on death. 

How to find artifacts 

Items appear in the chests of vanilla structures: desert temples, Nether fortresses, shipwrecks, pillager outposts, underwater ruins, and other places. A specific artifact is tied to a limited set of structures — this forces you to visit different locations rather than farming the same one over and over. 

An additional method is archaeology. Some items can be found in suspicious sand and gravel. The chance of an artifact appearing while excavating is 6.25% by default 

Skeletons, zombies, and zombified piglins spawn with an artifact equipped with a very small probability (0.15%). 

Artifacts equipped on the player

Underground campsites and mimics 

The mod generates small campsites underground — stone platforms with a campfire, a bed, and a chest. Their height is limited to the range from Y = -60 to Y = 40.

With a 30% probability, a mimic spawns in the campsite instead of a chest — a hostile mob disguised as a chest. Once killed, a mimic always drops a random artifact, so hunting them is the most reliable farming method.

An underground campsite with a mimic and a campfire, generated by the Artifacts mod 

Item categories 

Artifacts are equipped in six slots: head, necklace, hands, belt, feet, and general. The mod adds over 40 items, and each category fills its own role in gameplay.

Hats and glasses for the head slot focus on passive bonuses — increased drops from mobs, improved fishing, lower prices from villagers, faster eating and drinking.

Necklaces work on the same logic: extended invulnerability after a hit, a Luck bonus when mining blocks, a chance to set the attacker on fire or strike them with lightning.

Gloves in the hands slot are oriented toward melee combat and mining — extra damage, attack speed, life steal from enemies, automatic smelting of mined ore.

Belt artifacts are responsible for survival: extra hearts, a double jump, brief flight with a cooldown, reduction of negative effects, prevention of death.

Footwear covers movement — enhanced jumping, faster sprinting, fast swimming, running on water, walking on lava, moving on powder snow, repelling creepers and phantoms.

A separate group of items is not tied to a slot: an umbrella-shield with slowed falling, unlimited food with a cooldown.

A demonstration of each type of artifact 

Configuration 

The mod has three configuration files: general.toml, items.toml and client.toml. The main server-side parameters are gathered in general.toml.

general.toml 

items.toml 

Each item has its own block of parameters: generateAsLoot (whether it appears in chests) and numeric bonus values. For example, for Bunny Hoppers you can change jumpStrengthBonus, safeFallDistanceBonus and fallDamageMultiplier. 

client.toml 

Responsible for display: the position of the cooldown overlay (cooldownOverlayOffset), display of gloves in first-person view (showFirstPersonGloves), tooltips on items (showTooltips). 

Conclusion

In vanilla Minecraft, exploring structures loses its meaning after the early game, once the main loot has already been collected. Artifacts restores the motivation to visit different biomes and structures. The flexible configuration lets you adapt the balance to any modpack — from hardcore survival to a casual playthrough. There is one limitation: items cannot be crafted, so on servers with an already-explored map it is hard to obtain new artifacts without regenerating chunks. The mod is well suited for long survival runs where exploration is a key part of the gameplay.