Cosmochoria Artifacts

Overview

A list of the 24 Artifacts and 11 Stones you can find during the game and what they all do.

The Basics

This guide will assume you already know roughly how to play, and are just wondering what all those weird things you keep finding actually do, or what else might still be out there to find!

A few basics anyway though:

When you bring a planet back to life by planting enough seedlings and letting them grow to full size, a treasure chest will rise up out of the core of the newly-revived world. When you open it, you can get anything from more seedlings or building materials, some number of crystals (depending on how many Stones you’ve collected), weapon powerups, ultranovas, or occasionally a strange vaguely-described item which you can carry around with you.
Taking the item back to The Bearded One (which is who your compass always points “north” at) will result in a more detailed description of the item, and it will then become available to activate or deactivate from the Title Screen. The item will only take effect on starting a new game (from any of the One Stone checkpoints).
12 of the artifacts help you and make the game easier (I’ll call these Bonus artifacts), while 12 make it more difficult (Malus artifacts). They are distinguished on the Artifact collection screen by green or red item backgrounds. Some are significantly more helpful/harmful than others.
Most Bonus artifacts have a Malus counterpart that does the opposite. I don’t know if activating both effects will always fully cancel each other out, but some Malus artifacts clearly override the Bonus ones, i.e. activating “Find an egg on starting world” and “No eggs exist” will still leave you eggless when you begin.
Some of the most helpful artifacts will only show up if the game’s difficulty has been significantly tilted against you, i.e. you’ve activated several more Malus artifacts than Bonus ones.
I don’t know whether the different artifacts actually have different difficulty-mod values or what the thresholds are to make the rare ones show up. If you do know, comment below and I’ll add the details here with credit!

The Bonus Artifacts (-difficulty)

Energy Pack
Planets store double health

Gloves of Infinite Gardening
Instant planting
One of the rare ones! Play on a difficult mode to find this.

Fairy Water
Less enemies

Goggles of Destiny
See NPCs and bosses on the map
One of the rare ones! Play on a difficult mode to find this.
NPCs will be indicated by planetary rings, bosses by a red dragon head

Blue Ring
Touch damage cut in half

Breakfast Diner Stool
Find egg on first planet
One of the rare ones! Play on a difficult mode to find this.
You’ll still need to find the planet it wants to hatch on.

Lotus Flower
Health refills when not shooting or carrying a sword
One of the rare ones! Play on a difficult mode to find this.

Enchiridion of Insults
Enemies have less HP

Ancient Breakfast Cereal
No wasp hives

Golden Bullet
Don’t lose weapon powerups

Hammer of Leapmen
Instant base building
One of the rare ones! Play on a difficult mode to find this.

Compressed Gas
Fast jetpack refill

The Malus Artifacts (+difficulty)

Jar of Acid Rain
More evil plants
Note only ultranovas can get rid of the spiky stem evil plants leave behind.

Conch Shell Kazoo
No weapon powerups
Completely harmless if using Illumina sword or the Interstellar Superweapon.

Chaos Emitter
More aggressive enemies

Wart Star
Enemies have double health

Deaths Drum
More enemies

Electro Magnetizing Pulsifier
No ultranovas allowed
Opening a chest still emits one free ultranova even if this is active.

Unfinished Blueprints
No bases allowed
You cannot construct any lasers, towers, shields or (worst of all) moai.

Frying Pan of Yore
Exist in a universe without eggs

Unvarial Pendant
Double touch damage

Eye of Sinistax
Jetpack only refills with kills

Ancient Income Tax Form
No currency
No crystals will drop. A bad one to use if you ever hope for the RRSP achievement.

Mutagen
Completed planets don’t heal you
Even worse than the “No structures” blueprints! No special achievement (that I know of!) for completing a game with this active, either. (Phew!)

The 11 One Stones

The 11 fragments of the One Stone serve as continue checkpoints of sorts, allowing you to begin a new game with a certain number of planets already revived and the corresponding bosses already defeated. Structures are not saved however and will need to be rebuilt.

THE SEED

Begin a new cosmic journey… without any pants.