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CK2 Dev Diary #34: Facts about Artifacts, Real talk about Relics

Hello all, it’s been a while, but it’s my turn to write a Dev Diary again! Today I’m going to tell you about the Treasury system we’re adding in 2.7. This system itself is part of the free patch. However, a lot of the content for it is part of Monks and Mystics.

The Treasury is where characters store their items, such as weapons, artifacts, or holy relics. In many ways items are much like Character Modifiers which you are likely already familiar with, but Character Modifiers are a fairly limited and not entirely clear system. With the new Treasury system we have greater control over how they work and when they are active as well as more UI space to display and explain them. Not only that, this system allows items to be inheritable and stealable.

We hope that seeing your character’s items as physical object rather than just a number on their character sheet will offer greater immersion, especially for player who like to focus on role-playing. Sure, in the past you could find a nice axe to increase your personal combat skill, but it was just another number - now you’ll see a gleaming axe, ready to hew the limbs from your foes!
artifacts_example_isolated.png

this is not quite final artwork, but it should be similar to what we end up with

As an example, say your Character has found the Holy Grail - you will now see the Grail in your Treasury with a picture and a description as well as the effects of owning it. Further, if some Norseman comes along and raids your castle, there’s a chance that he’ll make off with your precious Grail - however, since he’s not a Christian your most holy relic is nothing more than a fancy cup to him.

As mentioned, items are also inheritable, they all go to a character’s primary heir. In the event someone dies without an heir, the items will pass to their liege if they have one, but they have a chance of being lost in the process. If an independant character dies without heirs, their items are lost - although if time permits we have talked about them having a chance to be snapped up by powerful vassals.

For 2.7 we’re converting several character modifiers into items, such as the +1 axe you might find while raiding, the saint’s bones you might find on a pilgrimage, or the trophy you made from the skull of your rival. With Monks and Mystics we’re adding a lot more, such as:
  • Commissioning swords from skilled smiths.
  • Buying fabulous Crown Jewels.
  • Hunting for Holy Artifacts.
As well as the items you can find or make while playing, we have also added a system to place some Artifacts into character’s Treasuries when a new game is started. These are mostly placed at random to keep things interesting, but there are also a few historical artifacts given to famous characters.
Paradox_CK2_TreasureChamber_big_v02.jpg
 
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Jewels don't magically kill people in reality. Though I guess they could have some poison applied to them, but that would be worn off with time plus it should give it's effect with a short time (a few months at most).

Cursed jewels, which is what I understood his proposal to be, don't have a place in the game in my opinion---especially not when the devs are reluctant to do the game rules differentiation needed for it not being a question of accepting all ridiculous fantasy stuff or cutting out significant amounts of content which are perfectly explainable without magic or aliens.
There's already a cursed diamond in the game. It's a RoI event chain.
 
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This is going to add so much to most of the mods, expecially the fantasy ones.
 
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Very good idea - I am certain it will greatly improve the RP feeling...
It could be VERY cool, if it was made possible to "transfer" items to someone specific. Say you have a vassal you wanna be good friends with, you can grant him a beautiful item. Or if you have a favorite son, a warrior, it would make sense you could grant him your heirloom sword, rather than it goes to your inbred no-good, imbecile, dwarf son, who is your heir... sadly...
 
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Jewels don't magically kill people in reality. Though I guess they could have some poison applied to them, but that would be worn off with time plus it should give it's effect with a short time (a few months at most).

Cursed jewels, which is what I understood his proposal to be, don't have a place in the game in my opinion---especially not when the devs are reluctant to do the game rules differentiation needed for it not being a question of accepting all ridiculous fantasy stuff or cutting out significant amounts of content which are perfectly explainable without magic or aliens.

Some people uses "lithotherapy" (Pseudo-medicine) and keep some stones near their skin. Some of these stone are radioactive at dangerous level... So you can have a realistic explanation for something would appear mystical to people of this era. And this is only one explanation. Some metals can produce toxic/allergic oxyde, futhermore in contact with skin moisture. So yes, if the item is always stored in a room, no problems. But if you always keep it on you, it can slowly attack your health.
 
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Great! Will it be possible to sell your precious heirloom in case of dire need? Also, it’s great chance to introduce coronation, and as a result character gets a crown.

P.S. Also, nitpicking here, but I hope plate armor is available in late middle ages; before that mail is preferable since aforementioned was not developed yet.
Yeah that'd be great the fate of the crown of Byzantium comes to mind.

Will you be able to steal enemy battle-standards?
I like this one.

- Are you sure you have the right Grail if it is a fancy cup? Shouldn't it be the cup of a simple carpenter...?
Except it wasn't Jesus' cup he was taking the last supper at the house of a wealthy merchant as I recall it.

- With the Grail being discussed, can we get Excalibur from some strange woman lying around in a pond
I could easy see a character giving you "excalibur" and claiming to have received it from the lady of the lake to give to you but the lady actually showing the lady is more than I'd like.

or perhaps the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch?
No just no.

Please put in the Ark of the Covenant. I'd like to know for sure exactly what's in it when I open the Ark....

"Keep your eyes shut"
Eh... the ark contains the broken stone tablet moses first took down from the mountain, that's kind of the point. Also the ark should be inherited with whomever holds the bishopric of axum.

Jewels don't magically kill people in reality. Though I guess they could have some poison applied to them, but that would be worn off with time plus it should give it's effect with a short time (a few months at most).

Cursed jewels, which is what I understood his proposal to be, don't have a place in the game in my opinion---especially not when the devs are reluctant to do the game rules differentiation needed for it not being a question of accepting all ridiculous fantasy stuff or cutting out significant amounts of content which are perfectly explainable without magic or aliens.
Well it could just be a quirk of fate, there are plenty of jewels who have had similar stories. It's not so much that the jewel is actually magical as it is that when someone dies in possession of a fabulous gem it later get's said that it was the gem in question.


I miss CK2 the grand strategy game.
Was it ever really? I got to say I like stuff like this in general, becuase it makes you look back at the characters you played and say hey that was the guy who had that and that happen to him.

There's already a cursed diamond in the game. It's a RoI event chain.
Really? Never seen that one.

Some people uses "lithotherapy" (Pseudo-medicine) and keep some stones near their skin. Some of these stone are radioactive at dangerous level... So you can have a realistic explanation for something would appear mystical to people of this era. And this is only one explanation. Some metals can produce toxic/allergic oxyde, futhermore in contact with skin moisture. So yes, if the item is always stored in a room, no problems. But if you always keep it on you, it can slowly attack your health.
Or like I said inversed storytelling, someone dies soon after getting a valuable gem so they say the gem is cursed, someone else dies soon after getting a totally different gem and the story get's told that it's the same gem.
 
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Yes. Absolutely yes.
No, maybee as part of an insanity event where you have to blow up a killer rabbit with it, but played strait it's ridiculous.
 
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I assume "masterwork" refers to the quality of craftmanship.
I think you missed my point a little bit. Of course it is the quality of the craftmanship. So if we then have a "level 10" sword, is there also a "level 9" and "level 13" swords with some bland stats variations and similarily mundane names to them? And then that you should have a thousand different items in the usual suspect categories? Because that is a system I wouldn't like. If it on the other hand has a specific game mechanic with back story, then I think it is fine. And I really also want it historical over fantasy. The meaningless crap inflation factor is potentially enormous here, and I'd really not like to see it go in that direction. I don't think it will, but still - sometimes people are silly. Not arguing, just re-explaining my post.
 
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I think you missed my point a little bit. Of course it is the quality of the craftmanship. So if we then have a "level 10" sword, is there also a "level 9" and "level 13" swords with some bland stats variations and similarily mundane names to them? And then that you should have a thousand different items in the usual suspect categories? Because that is a system I wouldn't like. If it on the other hand has a specific game mechanic with back story, then I think it is fine. And I really also want it historical over fantasy. The meaningless crap inflation factor is potentially enormous here, and I'd really not like to see it go in that direction. Not arguing, just re-explaining my post.
Well truth be told it makes more sense that a masterwork sword would be a better than average sword than some old blade you found somewhere that was created centuries ago. After all smiting skills did improve vastly in the time period.
Any combat bonuses to a sword should really be lost after the first user.

Also it would be cool if we could actually name our regular master crafted sword if we are famous enough ourselves, turning them into a legendary weapon (or perhaps claiming that mastercrafted sword our father passed down to us wasn't at all created by his local master smith but is in fact some other legendary blade.

The latter is perhaps a lot more common in real history, for an example the British royal family's durendal is not nearly as old as it would be if it was really the sword of Roland.

Edit: It's Curtana the sword of Tristan that is in the possession of the British monarchy not Durendal.
edit edit: Curtana is the sword of ogier only later was it added to the Tristan legend
 
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Jewels don't magically kill people in reality. Though I guess they could have some poison applied to them, but that would be worn off with time plus it should give it's effect with a short time (a few months at most).

Cursed jewels, which is what I understood his proposal to be, don't have a place in the game in my opinion---especially not when the devs are reluctant to do the game rules differentiation needed for it not being a question of accepting all ridiculous fantasy stuff or cutting out significant amounts of content which are perfectly explainable without magic or aliens.

Sure they don't. Unless they're radioactive [likely to increase chance of "randomly" getting certain diseases (with RD) e.g. cancer, or just occasionally losing 0.5 health without any notification (without RD)].

Also as i understand it, mercury used to be a marvel for its liquid+metal properties, and was (as I understand it) often a valuable alchemical ingredient. If the alchemist part of the update cares about family stashes of rare ingredients there's no reason why owning a large amount of cinnabar might not be secretly bad for your health, for example.
 
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The implication from the dev-diary is that you can have some number of artifacts but you can't have them all active at once.
Is there an interaction to activate them?
Can you have artifact decisions so people can script their own interactions?
If so you could do artifact turnover by a random chance when you activate an artifact that it breaks, though you'd probably want to exclude legendary one-of-a-kind artifacts from that.
 
Nothing about this DLCs takes away from that. If you just want to play your grand stratedgy game leave your treasury empty and go play it.

No, you misunderstand me -- I miss the time when developer focus was on making a better medieval grand strategy game rather than a skeleton for fantasy modders.

I know I'll just get a bunch of disagrees from the RP community here but that's because that's all that's left here. The grand strategy players have moved on. Sucks too, since CK2 was once my favorite game.
 
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Could be really nice, depending on what happens. But please don't start making that generic d&d/Diablo crap with "sword of doom" and "ring of the dragon" kind of stuff. The "masterwork sword" starts leaning in that direction.. in that case, really? Who is this master? Where did he come from? Why do I have his sword? Etc. Unless there is a back story, it risks being superficial.

You are missunderstanding the Masterwork Sword as someone elses Sword. But "Masterwork sword" does only mean its a custom made, very good sword. Thats all.
 
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The Game of Thrones mod is going to love this.
Depends on if we can see them on dead character otherwise you won't be able to trace back the inheritance of VS swords etc which is something I like to do. We could probably work around it but it would be a nice thing to have

Also we have no artists to make the images lol
 
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