The trailer:

Checkout belgie's video on my pack!

Also Check Out my other projects at theblackswitch.com!

Any small donation (even if it's 1$) really helps me out creating these projects! coff.ee/theblackswitch

Ancient Artifacts is a minecraft datapack centered around, You've guessed it, artifacts! There are over 50+ artifacts each with their own levels and abilities! Those artifacts can be traded, crafted, recycled and even upgraded!

Check out our discord for any questions or chat with the developer! https://discord.gg/CTwEDA8kJb

💍Artifacts

Artifacts are special items which grant you special effects and abilities. Artifacts come with 1 - 5 levels, each carefully chosen with unique abilities. You can equip upto 2 artifacts at the same time. All artifacts also come with a rarity which determines how rare the artifacts is. You have common uncommon rare unique and divine.

Some artifacts and their abilities

Artifact	Name	Level I	Level II	Level III	Level IV	Level V
	Allies Amulet	Regen I to all tamed mobs	Add Strength I	Add Speed I	Add Jumpboost I	All effects level II
	Final Shout Crown	Explode + Instant Health I when your health drops below 3 hearts	Explode, Health and Absorbtion II	Explode, Health, absorbtion II and lightning bolts	/	/
	Combo Boots	Allows you to perform a parry when using your shield right before taking damage	Parry + Slow down time when using a bow in the air	Parry + Bow slow + Smash downwards with a weapon when in the air	/	/
	Lifesteal Necklace	5% of the damage dealt regenerates you	Upgrade to 10%	Upgrade to 15%	/	/
	Detecting borla	Make ores glow within a 5x5 area around the player	Make ores glow within a 7x7 area around the player	/	/	/
	Keep armor on death	Keep armor + hotbar on death	Keep armor + hotbar + artifacts on death	Keep everything on death (except xp)	/	/

Challenges

Each artifact also comes with it's own challenge. These are advancements you can try to achieve to earn some more artifact loot!

Obtaining

To obtain artifacts you'll have to go and explore the world in the hopes of finding an overgrown structure. Every dimension has it's own set of structures to explore. There are over 40+ overgrown structures!

An overgrown jungle temple:

Once you've defeated all the mobs, you'll be able to locate an artifact chest. This special chest can only be opened using an amethyst shard. Once open, your loot will pop right out! If you're lucky you'll recieve an artifact!

Upgrading

When obtained, artifacts always start from level one. They have a varying amount of levels can be upgraded using an artifact upgrade . To upgrade an artifact, put the artifact in your offhand and use the upgrade, just like shown below.

There's also a heavy artifact upgrade . This special item upgrades artifacts to their max level and it can even upgrade expensive artifacts!

⚔️Bossfights

The pack also adds 2 completely unique bossfights. They are carefully designed to give you the best experience possible!
They both have custom music and an awesome bossbar!

🧙Artifact Smith

The artifact smith is a new villager which trades all sorts of usefull stuff. It has an artifact cauldron as it's job block You can trade your duplicate artifacts for
emeralds and also buy some useful goodies like artifact upgrades , artifact templates , and essence . The Smith changes it's artifacts trades every day so you have the chance to get rid of that common artifact you have 5 duplicates of ;)

As a final trade the smith has a dungeon map which leads you to the very end game and difficult artifact dungeon.

🛠️ Artifact Cauldron

The artifact cauldron is a special block obtained by using an artifact upgrade on a normal cauldron. It can be used as a job block or used to craft 2 recipes. If you ever forget how the recipes work, no problem there is a gaint tooltip floating in front to tell you exactly what to do!

Artifact crafting

Artifact crafting is one of the recipes the artifact cauldron can craft. It's a more mid to late game way of obtaining artifacts. Throughout your explorations you'll find parchments these parchments contain tips about what items are used to craft certain artifacts. These recipes are randomly generated for every world.

With all that knowledge you can combine an artifact template with some compounds and the right relic in the artifact cauldron. And there you go, If you've used the right ingredients, you should have a new artifact now!

Artifact Recycling

Artifact recycling is another one of the recipes the artifact cauldron can craft. It's a very late game option and it allows you to get rid of all your duplicate artifacts!

Destroying

To start, you first have to go to the artifact dungeon, a very difficult rogue like dungeon, in order to retrieve the artifact hammer.

Using your artifact hammer you can destroy your artifacts which gives you artifact blend , maby an artifact template , maby the relic the artifact is made of or sometimes some artifact essence .

Recycling

In order to turn those items back into some loot, you have to use 3 blend. During the recipe, you can also add some artifact essence . These items are used to change the chance to get an artifact of a certain rarity. For example using unique essence will give you more chance to get a unique artifact.

This pack also adds some configs which can be opened using /trigger ancient_artifacts_config. There are currently 2 settings but there will be more soon!

Q: Can I use this pack in my modpack?

A: Yes ofcorse! Can you please credit me and link this page, it's really difficult to share datapacks :)

Q: Can you update this pack for version X?

A: I'm trying my best to update the pack to the newest versions, backports are not possible.

Q: I have a suggestion / bug what do I do?

A: Ooh nice thank you for your collab to the project, you can report bugs and suggestions on my github!

You basically have 2 options:

Download the mod version:
You need any of the supported mod loaders for this:

1. dowload the file
2. put it in your mods folder
3. If you're on a server, you have to put it in the server's mods aswell as in the client's mods folder!

Download the datapack version:
There is no need of any software, it runs on just vanilla (NOT PAPER!!) and if you're on a server, your players don't need to install it.

1. download the datapack version
2. put it in you datapacks folder of your world: saves/<your_world>/datapacks/<put_the_file_here>
3. download the resourcepack
4. Put it in your resourcepack folder: .minecraft/resourcepacks

If you're the server owner, you can put the resourcepack on the server and enable it as required, this will automatically install the resourcepack on your player's clients

Ancient Artifacts © 2026 by theblackswitch is licensed under CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0

An exception is made for video content, which can be monetized. However, video creators must give appropriate credit by leaving a link to this page in the video.

Additional condition: The content of this work, as a whole or in parts, may not be used for training, fine-tuning, or enhancement of artificial intelligence systems, machine learning models or any other type of program where computers use data and algorithms to learn patterns and make predictions without being explicitly programmed. This includes, not only and all, for commercial, non-commercial, educational, research, or personal projects.

Reasons:

1. I hate generative AI content. It has no unique-ness.
2. You're essentially stealing my long term hobby project made with love whilst making profit from it
3. I don't receive anything unless I'm also an AI bro like you
4. Did I mention already that I hate generative AI?
5. Please don't

The datapack

• theblackswitch - Project lead
• theblackswitch - Project Ideas
• theblackswitch - Textures
• theblackswitch - Code
• theblackswitch, Bidoof_Oofington, TheDarkGlue - Some help with Structure Building
• theblackswitch, Bidoof_Oofington, Flor_4, TheDarkGlue, Shelfhead, Gertje - playtesters
• Bidoof_Oofington, Flor_4, Shelfhead - Motivating me
• HeDeAnTheonlyone/Taglib - useful tags
• ESN Productions/Free Horror Ambience (Dark Project) - the dungeon ambient sound
• HalbFettKaese/common-shaders - for help with shaders
• AmberWat/NegativeSpaceFont - for custom font stuff
• misode.github.io - for generating large json files
• mcstacker.net - for generating large commands
• CheburKot - prior explorer skeleton floor model inspiration
• Infrared Scale/RedStone128 The Final Battle (8-bit Epic) - sculk heart boss music
• Naku|enhanced-boss-bars - inspiration for the custom bossbars
• Midnight Danger/The Last day - The shulker king boss battle music
  
  

Used troughout the images and trailer

• Kryqu - Gui Experience +
• Septonious - solas-shader
• inaudio - Infraction Music- Heroes - The song used in the trailer