Quartermaster
What it is
A stat-category artifact that turns each level-up into a brief, field-wide pickup sweep. When the player levels up, the ship’s magnet range expands sharply for a short window, pulling nearby XP orbs and pickups inward, then snaps back.
The artifact has no passive behavior outside that window — it sits idle until the next level-up signal fires. Reads as “tier-up gathers the field.”
Identity
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Name | Quartermaster |
| Category | Stat |
| Trigger | Level-up signal |
| Icon | Package |
| Primary color | #ffcc44 |
| Secondary color | #cc9922 |
| Bright color | #ffee88 |
| Reward-card text | ”When you level up, your magnet briefly sweeps the field.” |
There is no damage-type pill — the artifact is type-agnostic.
Per-tier values
The artifact has four authored tiers (uncommon → rare → epic → legendary). A fifth common tier is prepended at runtime, reusing the uncommon values record but differentiated by the global flat bonus curve.
| Tier | Rarity | Magnet-range bonus (flat) | Duration (seconds) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | Common | 250 | 6 |
| 1 | Uncommon | 250 | 6 |
| 2 | Rare | 350 | 7 |
| 3 | Epic | 500 | 8 |
| 4 | Legendary | 700 | 10 |
Common and uncommon share the same magnet/duration pair because the runtime tier-0 entry copies the uncommon values record. Common-vs-uncommon differentiation comes from the global per-artifact flat bonus curve, not from these two numbers.
Effect
On every level-up:
- Apply a flat additive modifier to magnet range equal to the tier’s magnet value, lasting the tier’s duration.
- Spawn a burst-and-ring VFX in the bright palette color, count 24, scale 5.5, lifetime 0.40 seconds.
- Flash the artifact icon in the HUD.
The modifier carries a duration, so it expires on its own. No follow-up cleanup is required; magnet range returns to baseline when the window ends.
EXTRACT-CANDIDATE: the modify_stat action with a duration is the standard “temporary buff” primitive used across artifacts — worth a shared effect-primitives page if not already documented.
EXTRACT-CANDIDATE: the burst_and_ring VFX type with count/scale/lifetime/color parameters is reused by other artifacts and should live on a VFX primitives page.
Stacking rules
The magnet-range modifier uses refresh stacking with maxStacks: 1. Consequences:
- Procs occurring while the window is still active do not extend or add — they replace, resetting the timer to the full duration of the new proc.
- Only one instance of this artifact’s magnet buff exists at a time.
- Multiple level-ups in quick succession produce a single sustained window, not a stack of overlapping bursts.
The buff source key is artifact:quartermaster, isolating it from other magnet-range modifiers. Permanent magnet-range bonuses from other sources stack additively with the burst while it is active.
The artifact composes cleanly with other level-up-triggered artifacts (for example, ones that heal or shield on level-up): each fires its own action chain off the same signal without contention.
Summary
Quartermaster is a level-up-signal artifact in the stat category. Its one effect grants a flat, time-limited magnet-range bonus and plays a yellow burst-and-ring VFX. Tier scales both the magnet bonus (250 → 700) and the duration (6s → 10s). Refresh stacking with max-stacks 1 means rapid level-ups produce one sustained window rather than stacked bursts. No damage-type interaction, no passive behavior between procs.