Reliquary

Each city has what's called a reliquary and the reliquary begins to spawn unique items for the citizens to take advantage of based on the performance, progression and achievements that those citizens have within the world. So if your citizens are part of downing a world boss or completing a dungeon in a record time or crafting a legendary item or whatever: all of these different types of progression paths for the cities could result in the production of a relic that exists within the reliquary.[3] – Steven Sharif
Reliquary is a Scholarly service building in Ashes of Creation.[4][5][6][3]
Node building type | Constructible service building |
---|---|
Construction duration | 1 day |
- The reliquary is where powerful relics that have been found and returned to the node can be put on display to enhance the node in various ways
- Relics stored in a node's reliquary grant passive and active benefits to node citizens and vassal states.[4][5][6][3]
- Benefits will also be conferred to those who capture, steal or sabotage relics held the reliquary.[4]
- The reliquary's debris following a successful node siege will contain a stockpile of shards of the relics that were stored there.[7][8][9][10][6][3]
- These may be lootable by registered attackers after successfully destroying that node in a node siege, even though they are not citizens of that node.[6][3]
- When the node is destroyed, the reliquary's contents become available for spoil amongst the attackers; and now even though they weren't citizens might have access to what they wouldn't have access to before, because they weren't a citizen. They'll have access to grab a number of those instances of that material and that's going to be an important aspect because relics are going to be important as part of the whole crafting scheme. So this incentivizes- it acts as an incentive for players to want to engage and battle with these nodes and try to take what they have.[6] – Steven Sharif
Relics
Relics are discoverable items that provide bonuses and benefits to nodes and their citizens.[7][13][6][14]
- That is with our relics that are going to be essentially caravan boxes that can be found out in the wild and brought back to nodes and kept within the node's trophy building, or Reliquary as we call it. And then upon destruction, or upon a successful siege, those will be lootable along with any material resources.[7] – Steven Sharif
- There are different types and rarities of relics. Some may be automatically granted to nodes upon discovery, others may require transportation back to the node as cargo (via caravans, merchant ships, or mules). Some exclusive relics may need to be fought over or stolen.[7][13] Previously it was stated that relics automatically manifest in the node's reliquary when specific conditions are met by that node. For example, it may require a certain number of citizens to accomplish a particular achievement a number of times before the relic is granted to the node.[6][3]
- Q: I'm curious to know if the intended mechanics or design for relics have changed during development? When Steven picked up the relic, was it automatically put into the nodes reliquary or is this something the player does when they return to the node?
- A: They're talking about the Firebrand egg is that what they're referencing? So the relic system is still having some outstanding feature work that's necessary and there are different types of relics that can be acquired. Generally the way that relics will be surfaced is through our cargo system, which means that you will be required to either have a mule or a caravan, or later down the road depending on the size of the relic perhaps a merchant ship that can facilitate the dimensions of the relic; and it does conform to the spatial grid confinements of the cargo space in the Caravan or other cargo hold that you will then have to bring back to the node. You can be interrupted through PvP with that transition if you want to. There might also be some relics, upon completion of the quest or completion of the task, that just automatically get granted to the node. It depends on what the purpose of the relic is. There's a lot of common relics out there and there's a lot of exclusive relics that need to be fought over or potentially stolen, or pursued if a node acquires it.[13] – Steven Sharif
- Relics stored in a node's reliquary grant passive and active benefits to citizens of the node and its vassals.[13][4]
- Some relics offer AoE buffs (such as damage, attack range, or health). There is some flexibility in choosing the types and range that these buffs may offer.[13][15][16]
- Q: While most or the majority of relics will benefit all citizens of a node and their vassal nodes, will there be relics that only benefit patron guilds of a node and its vassal nodes?
- A: There aren't any planned right now that just focus on benefiting those groups, however there is flexibility in the relic system where you can assign different types of benefits to different types of groups. That is functionality that we want to preserve for relics: the types of buffs that they grant, whether it be zone of influence wide or down to just individual groups.[13] – Steven Sharif
- Some relics allow citizens to craft certain legendary items and progress in certain legendary questlines.[6][14]
- Relics are embodiments of certain types of achievements. You may have the scale of a dragon that's been defeated- the all-scale aspect of it- and from that every week a citizen might be able to derive one scale material component that can be used across a plethora of high-end types of crafting.[6] – Steven Sharif
- Relics don't grant benefits to the carrier while being transported.[13]
- Q: If a found relic is not automatically sent to the reliquary are there any benefits provided to the carrier while it is in their possession?
- A: No. The relic isn't meant to be kept or hoarded by an individual. It's a hot potato. You want to get that thing back to a safe space and until you do that you're in jeopardy.[13] – Steven Sharif
- Relics can be awarded for accomplishments that span many different progression paths, such the number of citizens achieving advanced stages of their artisan classes.[6]
- The other component of relics that's important to note is that it's not just adventuring relics, these are accomplishments that span a lot of the different progression paths. So you could have accomplishments get unlocked by how many number of citizens achieve the creation of a particular type of item. You may have now an alchemical genius that is a citizen of your node and as a result there is an alchemical relic that's been granted to your reliquary in a similar fashion to the dragon.[6] – Steven Sharif
- Limited access to the relics stored in a node's reliquary are granted to players after a node is destroyed by a node siege.[9][10][6][3][17][18][19] Benefits are also conferred to those who capture, steal, or sabotage relics held the reliquary.[4]
- Looting a relic from a node will create a shard of the relic, which can be used in recipes for certain crafted items and enchantments; or it can be consumed for a single-use buff that reflects the original relic's purpose.[8] These shards can be traded.[20]
- Relics include the four Ancient artifacts of Verra that were originally discovered by King Atrax in his pursuit of the power of The Essence.[21][22]
- These artifacts were in close alignment to The Essence on Verra due to their proximity to the ley lines of Essence spread across the world.[23]
- These artifacts were originally housed in the vault of Fallow's Hold, which is one of the great dungeons of Ashes of Creation, located near the capital city of the ancient Toren empire, Torall.[23]
- Constellations enable the acquisition of certain relics.[24]
- Certain relics can only be discovered through exploration.[25]
Ancient artifacts

This is not the Staff of the Ancients per-se, it's a staff... Here in the curvature and design of this staff you'll see that it has a very specific and unique looking type of mold so-to-speak. So there could be some relationship between these designs of the staves and/or weapons that you'll see, which are used to harness or focus the use of the Essence, or magic; and how perhaps those structures relate to the types of magic that those creatures are using.[27] – Steven Sharif
The Ancient artifacts of Verra were originally discovered by King Atrax in his pursuit of the power of The Essence.[21][22] These artifacts were in close alignment to The Essence on Verra due to their proximity to the ley lines of Essence spread across the world.[23] These artifacts were originally housed in the vault of Fallow's Hold, which is one of the great dungeons of Ashes of Creation, located near the capital city of the ancient Toren empire, Torall.[23] They are now considered relics that can be acquired by nodes and housed in their reliquary.[21][22]
- The Golden Chalice was believed to bring everlasting life but was actually allowing the corruption of manipulating The Essence to enter the soul through the physical representation of drinking something.[21]
- The Crown represented a direct link The Ancients had into the thought process of King Atrax that the Ancients were able to manipulate.[21]
- The Sword brought unusual power through manipulation of the evil side of the Essence, which is how Atrax maintained his dominance over his people: through physical might, essentially striking down any foe that opposed him among his administration.[21]
- The Staff enabled Atrax to project his magic across great distances, which enabled him to extend his power and manipulation throughout the lands of Verra and allowed him to maintain vigilance over his realm.[21]
- The Toren Godspike is an artifact that could initiate a fissure that can siphon out Essence that lies within Verra. It is used as a PvP objective in certain node war types.[28][26][29]
Node buildings

The important thing with the service building system for us is that it's a way to shape your node like a character; and to give you an exclusive niche that you can carve out in the world; or a niche that you fight over. If you go down this weaponsmithing path and you build your node to be this mecca of weaponsmithing and the node three doors down builds it, there's reason for you to conflict over it. They're taking your business. Or maybe you are in a zone and there isn't a weaponsmithing thing anywhere near you, and you do want to start to carve that path for yourself to make your node a place people visit and come to.[31] – Chris Justo
Service buildings within a node are either default buildings that come with the node, or they are constructed buildings, which are initiated by the mayor and built by players.[30][31][32][33][34][35][36] Service buildings are further broken down into two main types:[30][31]
- Active service buildings are service buildings that players directly interact with. These are further broken down into Artisanship, Business, Magic, Player housing, and Political categories.[30][31]
- Passive service buildings provide passive benefits to the node or its zone of influence. These buildings are broken down into Civic, Cultural, Fabrication, Scholarly, and Vocational.[30][31]
- Constructed service buildings are available to every type of node in every location. Where the uniqueness comes in is in some of the default buildings like your node-type building.[37] – Chris Justo
Service buildings are upgraded by expansions, which are unlocked through the placement of passive service buildings.[30][31]
- Building expansions unlock higher tier workstations at the cost of dedicating service building plots.[38][34]
- Node service building expansions specialize the building through a tech tree based on the stage of the node.[39][40]
Service buildings incur a regular maintenance cost of node commodities and gold from the node treasury in order to continue operations.[30][41]
Node building destruction

You could be more precision oriented in the decision to attack a city. Let's say it's a rival node that's trying to reach a node stage five or something and you want to disable their ability for the religious system to progress so you target the temple during the attack, or you want to disable their scholars academy from reaching a higher level so that your nodes can; or you want to disable multiple buildings that allow for experience and quests to be undertaken by its citizenship, which prevents them from keeping up in pace of experience gained with your node. These can be more precision oriented and don't have to effectualize an actual takeover of the node.[43] – Steven Sharif
Node buildings (including player housing) have hit points and can be damaged or destroyed by different systems.[40][17]
- NPC-driven events that are a response to story arcs or node atrophy.[40]
- Node sieges and node wars.[40]
- Attackers may not be capable of destroying a node during a siege. Instead they may carry out precision attacks to disable specific service-oriented buildings within the node. These buildings can be targeted with siege weapons and bombs.[43]
- Hazardous events such as tornadoes or hurricanes.[44][40]
- Mayors have the ability to demolish constructed node buildings. This will have a node mandate cost and will require player buy-in via a vote.[30][41]
- Mayors will also have the ability, if they want, to demolish constructed buildings. So if they if they so choose they can destroy a building if they don't think it's needed anymore. But this will have mandate cost and a player buy-in votes. So we want to make sure that [the] mayor can't just go and blow up the whole node if they're trying to grief or something. So this is very important and impactful decision.[30][41] – John Collins
If building maintenance is not paid, or a building is damaged as the result of an event or siege, the building will enter a state of disarray.[30][41] Any NPCs or services offered by that building will not be available until the building is repaired.[33][17]
- Players must contribute materials to repair disarrayed buildings and restore them to an operational state.[30][41][40][17][45]
If a node siege is successful, or if buildings otherwise take significant damage, they are destroyed and appear as rubble on the plot they occupied.[30][41][40]
- Node leadership must clear any rubble on plots before any buildings can be reconstructed. Any prerequisites for the building reconstruction must be satisfied beforehand.[40]
- Buildings also live within a prerequisite system. So in order to build down the tech tree of what these buildings provide, as the node grows larger to access stronger building types, you may get a kink in that chain if it's destroyed and you'll have to stand that back up in order to support the service again.[40] – Steven Sharif
- If the node is destroyed by a node siege, the debris field will contain spoils that are lootable by attackers or defenders.[46][9][10][17][18][19]
- Player housing that is destroyed during a node siege can no longer be sold.[47] Furnishing and decorations are retained and can be placed again later.[47][48][49]
Related NPCs
- None -
Related quests
- None -
Visuals
See also
References
- ↑ Livestream, May 10, 2017 (28:09).
- ↑ Livestream, May 12, 2017 (49:50).
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 Interview, July 18, 2020 (56:11).
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Livestream, April 29, 2022 (27:00).
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Livestream, April 29, 2022 (21:00).
- ↑ 6.00 6.01 6.02 6.03 6.04 6.05 6.06 6.07 6.08 6.09 6.10 6.11 Podcast, September 29, 2021 (10:49).
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 Livestream, January 11, 2025 (19:01).
- ↑ 8.0 8.1
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Livestream, October 14, 2022 (52:31).
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 Podcast, September 29, 2021 (14:21).
- ↑ Podcast, August 4, 2018 (1:35:58).
- ↑ Video, August 30, 2024 (23:32).
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 13.5 13.6 13.7 Livestream, September 27, 2024 (16:02).
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 Livestream, February 9, 2018 (29:26).
- ↑ Livestream, July 25, 2020 (1:22:40).
- ↑ Livestream, June 26, 2020 (1:33:10).
- ↑ 17.0 17.1 17.2 17.3 17.4 Interview, July 8, 2020 (57:46).
- ↑ 18.0 18.1 Livestream, April 30, 2020 (1:14:44).
- ↑ 19.0 19.1
- ↑
- ↑ 21.0 21.1 21.2 21.3 21.4 21.5 21.6 Livestream, November 8, 2020 (15:01).
- ↑ 22.0 22.1 22.2 Livestream, November 8, 2020 (00:49).
- ↑ 23.0 23.1 23.2 23.3 Livestream, November 8, 2020 (07:58).
- ↑ Video, December 2, 2022 (11:11).
- ↑ Livestream, February 24, 2023 (6:51).
- ↑ 26.0 26.1 Livestream, March 29, 2024 (2:21:10).
- ↑ 27.0 27.1 Livestream, November 30, 2020 (52:56).
- ↑ Video, May 31, 2024 (57:56).
- ↑
- ↑ 30.00 30.01 30.02 30.03 30.04 30.05 30.06 30.07 30.08 30.09 30.10 30.11 Blog: Development Update with Village Node.
- ↑ 31.0 31.1 31.2 31.3 31.4 31.5 31.6 Livestream, August 31, 2023 (50:25).
- ↑ Video, August 31, 2023 (2:59).
- ↑ 33.0 33.1 Interview, July 9, 2023 (1:32:45).
- ↑ 34.0 34.1 Livestream, May 19, 2017 (33:57).
- ↑ Livestream, January 20, 2018 (38:17).
- ↑ Livestream, 2018-04-8 (PM) (51:49).
- ↑ Livestream, August 31, 2023 (56:18).
- ↑ Livestream, August 31, 2023 (52:56).
- ↑ Video, August 31, 2023 (34:37).
- ↑ 40.0 40.1 40.2 40.3 40.4 40.5 40.6 40.7 40.8 Livestream, March 31, 2022 (1:13:00).
- ↑ 41.0 41.1 41.2 41.3 41.4 41.5 Livestream, August 31, 2023 (57:23).
- ↑ Livestream, October 31, 2019 (36:20).
- ↑ 43.0 43.1 Livestream, November 22, 2019 (16:56).
- ↑ Forums - Livestream Q&A 2022-08-26.
- ↑ Livestream, November 22, 2019 (17:59).
- ↑ Interview, July 9, 2023 (1:36:24).
- ↑ 47.0 47.1 Livestream, June 26, 2020 (1:02:12).
- ↑ Livestream, July 18, 2017 (40:14).
- ↑ Livestream, November 17, 2017 (47:10).