Stellaris Relic Tier List 

You win bonus points for this video for featuring _Atlantis: The Lost Empire._ Such an underrated, largely forgotten movie. It's got Spock, Ivanova, and a total Daniel Jackson expy!

The Last Baol is S tier, I once got it very early in the game, and steamrolled the galaxy. Colonising every habitable planet and turning it into a Gaia world is game breaking.

One great point of the Surveyor is that it costs no influence to activate... you activate it any time your're tapped out on influence...

End game crisis relics seriously need a buff,why would I kill the prethoryn just to spawn more of the pests?

Having spent a great deal of time with the Surveyor active, I have noticed that it has a hidden effect. Wile activated it will sometimes (~50%) locate an additional deposit during its 5-year cooldown, it will also very rarely produce a strategic resource. That being said, I still agree that it belongs in C-tier because after mid-game the bonuses are completely irrelevant. Also, I too have never gotten the Galatron (2.5k hours).

Out of the minor relics, the Head of Zar’Qlan and the Blade of the Huntress are the most powerful. Anything that buffs ship speed and gives you free fallen empire ships in the mid-game is always a massive boon.

Atlantis is so beautiful !! I could watch it 10 times and never get bored by the animation !! It is a shame disney has given up on 2d.

Great list. Personally, I would bump surveyor into B tier, just becasue its so insanely cheap to use. Its a great general "filler" relic imo, to use if you have no better relic to use in your current situation or are short on influence.

Got the head in my latest playthrough. We're ascended synthetics. The spiritual fallen empire was mightily confused, but they still were ok with us settling on their nice holy worlds in a little pocket no one else could access. Thanks fellas :)

I like The Surveyor because it costs no influence. I find myself influence starved most of the time.

Damn, i've forgotten how many relics Guillis' Planet Modifiers and Features adds into the game. But nothing beats Zer0s' Infinty Stones mod for relics (except the warforge here in the S tier, it rivals even those).

One small point: the Javorian Pox, AFAICT, is the only method that a non-FP, non-Crisis empire can make Tomb Worlds from enemy planets. So if you're going Radiotrophic / Post-Apocalyptic, it can be useful. Of course, since you cannot control if you get it, you can't rely on it, but it can make the game quite different if you do. (Not saying it should be in a different tier.)

The blade of the huntress carried me so hard in the early game that I'm happy to see it being ranked at such good spot, this video did it justice along with the rubricator!

I am doing what I've never done before and disputing the wisdom of Montu. The Head of Zarquon is an absolute game changer every time I've received it. And watch Jon (MATN) and his impossible run, and see how he, or Marc of the Templin Institute, leaned on them to survive in their games. All. Hail. Zarquon!

If you're playing the StarnetAI mod you can camp the final system with the Unbidden's portal and secure the Warlock which in turn will be very helpful in war since at that point there'll be a few quite formidable empires on the map to overcome.

Pox should be C Tier: Like any precursor artifact you can get it very early on and an additional +20 years leader lifespan on top of all research is nice to have. Surveyor is easily B or even A: Killing the Mining Hub can be done very early on, activation costs only 500 energy and it saves so many building slots wasted on refineries.

Saw Atlantis on the RU-vid preview, never clicked faster in my life!

I love your added comment about the Galatron- "If you want to be THE senate..." lol. The Head of Zarqlan is my favorite relic especially if I get it early and if I'm extra lucky, the spiritualist FE are cute starfish people, Zarqlan wills it!!! I am torn between the War Forge and the Last Baol as the best precursor relic.

"assassinate him and steal his *chair*" Absolutely hilarious line, great use of Atlantis too. These tier lists are awesome!

Disagree on the surveyer, I once defeated mining drones protecting before even researching cruisers and it can randomly add +5 strategic resource plots in your empire. I think it is at least B tier.

IMO The Surveyer should be in B Tier just because it takes only 500 credits to activate. That means while you are strapped for influence you can still use the Relic 24/7

I quite like the Surveyor and would have probably put it somewhere on the B to A border. 500 energy for a shot of a permanent deposit of rare resources is a hell of a deal. When I get the thing, I almost always find myself running its triumph almost permanently. Plus, you can often get it much earlier than the other relics.

I really like the Head of Zarqlan just because I can get myself a nice fallen empire fleet. Throughout a full game you can get like 200 fleet power in fallen empire ships, and they are nice.

For me the surveyor is an a tier relic ! And for small empires an s tier because it boost your Systems heavy for a little bit of credits and u get many rare resorces over the game

On the topic of the surveyor - let's say hypothetically you're running a tell empire that has deposits on literally every planet (maybe you've used it so many times over the span of a very long game). What happens if you activate the surveyor while every planet already has a bonus resource?

Can we talk about the fact how having a medievel blade in your empire increases your planetary sensor range?? Like seriously how does that work.

I don't know if it's a bug, but I have noticed that the surveyor seems to activate itself every once in a while

Loved the Analysis !! Amazing work Montu

Ah, the Cybrex Warforge. The 'fire and forget', or in this case, the 'land armies and forget' button of Stellaris. I can't remember just how many times I've forgotten about my invading armies whenever I get the Cybrex Warforge.

I love the Surveyor. I was able to get it early by spawning next to the home miner system. I did see double resource pops periodically, and early or midgame, it did matter to get a six mineral, energy, or greater on a useless body. I balanced my economy and exploded fleet production just from those bonuses piling up. It makes those resource poor starbases much more efficient, and is better for a less aggressive single play. It even helps with research and strategic deposits. I got the Galatron once, that influence was great!

@Montu Plays time to revisit this tier list with today's Dev Diary!

Just got stellaris + all DLC on Winter Sale, your vids have been extremely helpful. Cheers!

A quick correction: With the Rubricator, the Relic World that it is attached to is random in size. In my many multiplayer games with friends, the Rubricator Relic World varied from size 14 to size 25.

Only time I actually took advantage of an end game relic was durin my DE playthrough, battleships instant hyperlane jump and probably max sub light speed with the warlock, it was fun watching corvettes being intercepted by a fleet a battleships

My personal favourites are the Cybrex warforge, Khans throne & the boot relic? - SABATON!!! That was it. Made from liquid metal. Must be in a mod I use.

Hey Montu been enjoying your videos for a while and I think your doing a great job keep it up. I was wondering if you might make a video taking about the galaxy settings before the start of the game. Is there a best setting? Or one you always chose? How might your game look depending what you have set? Thanks

To be honest, i'd rank the surveyor even higher, for the sheer fact oh how cheap and quick it is and how much it can benefit you in a long run, especially if you roll strategic resources.

I am loving the intros to these videos. Huge fan of Atlantis and Titan AE myself.

So I'm playing stellaris and get a notification of a new Montu video. Cool, pause game and watch. We get to the A teir and I'm like "oh yeah, reliquaries." So I buy one... bam Galatron. I wish my luck was like that irl

Correct me if I am wrong, but I am pretty sure the Rubricator relic world isn´t garanteed size 25, or does it grow in size when shard dies? I would also personally rate Surveyor higher since you can get it super early and each activation can spawn multible deposits (I think it is 1.6 per activation on average).

I quite like the surveyor relic. I think it should be one tier higher, maybe, because of the short activation cooldown time, cost, and the probability to get between 1 and 3 deposits (which may include alloys or engineering research). Personally when I see the extraction hive I always go out of my way to try and get it.

The Surveyor is very underrated, the thing is amazing, in my last run it was just spitting out loads of new strategic resources. And consider that the resource edict costs scale up along with the other edicts now, you always want to have as many sources of them as possible.

Great stuff Montu! Just an Idea, but it would be neat to learn some meta combat strategies or tips from you. Just an Idea, but either way excellent work!

throwback to the time both me and a friend scored a galatron in the same game, so there were 2 galatrons in the universe

Montu, first of all thanks for the great content :) I was wondering, do you have any tips or tutorial to play grand admiral?

The scourge queen should have a WAY lower cooldown. Like, a year tops. Basically “you can convert 10k food to a small fleet whenever you want”

I usually play with gigas and acot, so for me that tier list becomes S: contingency core (+300% megastructures build speed is huge and game doesn't end after defeating the crisis) A: baol, rubricator (all two early game), cybrex forge (both early for alloys and late for armies) A/C: surveyor is A if you are void dweller, C otherwise F: every other one Also, for precursor, you should also consider the "dwell into the secret of" bonus when evaluating the relic

"If you want to become the Senate." Ahahah You crack me real good. Also, i know you're playing Twilight Imperium.. you cannot hide from me.

Noice. Glad you got around to make this.

The surveyor relic is really good if you can get it early. It becomes less and less useful as the game progresses

You need to do a tier list for reaching into the shroud effects too!

Montu would you be willing to make a "How to" video on how to get these relics? There are some I never seen before. Also I got the Galatron when I was bored playing Supreme Ruler of everything so it was sadly useless to me.

Thanks Montu!

Hold up! How is it possible that someone does not accept the worm into their hearts and minds???!!!

The surveyor it's forced to reveal resources, it even gives resources to segments of rings. That is why I think it should be in B tier.

Fun fact : i got the Galatron the first game i played. did not know it was this rare, and did not get to use it because my military was weak and the Khan spawned next to me

I always play void dwellers, I love the surveyor! After a few thousand hours lol. I only got it once.

Surveyor is A tier for me. It actually has lower cooldown (5 years), a high hidden chance to trigger a second deposit a few years after the first and basically no cost for activation. Also it's quite easy to get if you find the droids base, you can get it in early mid game.

I will say the Omnicodex is really good for Life-Seeded and Void Dweller empires as if you get it early you can start colonizing worlds without having to conquer natives (if your empire ethics don't allow it) or meeting another friendly empire to set up migrations with or getting Droids. You will have to colonize with one of your empire though, but then you can Omnicodex on the world you colonized and then get pops perfectly suited to where you landed

The Prethoryns dont account to your fleet power nor have upkeep so if you have a longer game they can be quite good

The one game I had where I got the Head of Zarqlan was probably the best possible scenario, I was a driven assimilator surrounded by militaristic spiritualists on one side, and a spiritualist fallen empire on the other, this was also like, 40 or so years in, carried me for a while.

Loved the video, great and massively useful content as always, however if I may offer a bit of constructive criticism. As someone who is not super familiar with the artifacts and since each tier added all items from that tier at the start. I wasn't super sure which icon referred to which artifact description (if you went left to right or right to left). Might just be a me issue, as I think the formula for these is left to right, bottom to top, but just wanted to point that out :)

Surveyor is great for small empires because you can get things like a value of 6 gas deposit, and then it goes off again for free a few years later

A while ago you did a video the effectiveness of the focused arc emitter and tested fleets with it against the kinetic artillery. The ships with the arc emitter were equipped with neutron launchers, which do not work with the arc emitter as much as the cloud lightning. If both are used on the same battleships I believe that they will be more powerful than the battleships with the kinetic artillery. I have not tested it in a controlled environment, so I would love to see them getting proved effective!

Honestly, outside of tier consideration, surveyor is my favourite artifact. Having a lower cool down and kind of okay activation that only costs 500 energy rather than the influence that I usually find is at a premium means that if I have a surveyor I will ALWAYS have a relic activating at all times. surveyor when I have nothing else good enough to warrant the influence, or not enough influence to spare,something else once the shorter cooldown finishes.

Fun fact about the surveyor that you didn't mention in the section on it: it doesn't just trigger once and give you one deposit, while it's cooling down you will continue getting random surveyor events every so often that reveal more resources each time. So it's better than it seems, though if that makes it good enough to go up a tier is doubtful.

Prethoryn queen is now actually pretty good, and you don't have to beat the crisis to get it. Sometime during the crisis galaxy wide event spawns that let's you get it if you clear cetrain enemy system. And the "small fleet" i got from this was way over 250k power fleet, my second (after federation fleet) biggest fleet.

With Zarqulans Head you are also allowed to settle on the holy worlds around the spiritualist fallen empire. The Rubricator does not generate a size 25 relic world, the size is random, but their might be an aditional lower limit, my last rubricator world was size 17.

The surveyor should be higher up IMO, it gives you more than one deposit, usually about two per activation and also it can give you large deposits of strategic resources which save you having to make refineries

If you use the Archaeology Story Pack mod, you can get the Galatron through the Axis of the Planet dig site. I remember getting it at one point but not how. One of my neighbors just got it in my current game so I was able to observe to find out what happened. Luckiest AI got four of the best (ruined world, rain world, isolated world and axis of the planet). Fun mod if you have not tried, it's in the steam workshop.

This is very cool, however, you arn't taking into account all dlc are you? As I have seen more relics then just the ones shown (however, the few that come to mind (e.g. emergency fallout supply cache thing) isnt that amazing so maybe its below f tier lol

I believe ive gotten the Galatron once, though it mayve been a fever dream, as i remember it being a long time ago, and at that point in time, it didnt do anything as relics hadn't been implemented, but as it was so long ago, it may be one of those fake memories that happen when you try to remember something similar that happened.

You forgot something about the archive. Its not stated in the description but it increases the chance on shroud events. This makes it really easy to get psyshields etc.

Montu which is better the scales of the worm or accepting the worms love?

The holy head one might be underwhelming but it sounds really cool; I'd love to get it someday.

I think there's probably an error about the Rubricator world, sometimes it was very small to the point where all the district blockers on it totally stalled growth. It was documented in the Wiki as being between quite a wide range. I haven't found quickly the state at the time of the video, but I did report the issue and they altered the minimum growth and I never heard anything about "fixes" to the event.

The Zroni precursor chain (and therefore the relic) is quite decent for Clone Army Origin (Ascendent + Psionic Ascension) The last time I rolled The Last Baol and was a machine empires I didn't reroll... Because I was playing Driven Assimilator. I also found the omnicodex and while neither made great pops, they were still pops, and their biological and technological distinctiveness was added to our own, in our quest for perfection.

I missed this if you said it in the video apologies if I did. but can you get relics from other people/AI? cause that's never happened to me yet

You should bump up the crystal one, because the path to it gives you psionic theory, so if you find the arch site early, it's a lot more powerful.

The Head of Zarqlan can be really powerful if you get it early- and even late game, can make some great smaller fleets (for patrols or to leave a FE fleet at the homeworld and build up every decade). Admittedly, the current run I got it, I'm running Rogue Servitors, so not worried about the Spiritalist issue- but I could see that being an issue in a non-Spiritual/non-gestalt/Hive empire. (Would probably put it at A-Tier, if a Spiritialism Empire or that ethic attraction is moot) Also, for Machine Empires, the Gaia World bonuses still apply- so the Last Baol is more beneficial than just the society research bonus. Lastly, the S+ Tier is Bubbles, right?

The yuht cryo core is the same to me as the crisis ones by the time it becomes helpful it’s not a big deal since it just lowers upkeep it’s not as versatile as the cybrex war forge which turns minerals into alloys instantaneously witch can be used to make new ships and also offset the upkeep of existing ships and also also can also be used to make mega structures and also also also gets you access to cybrex war forms which are very good for invading planets so you don’t have to waist as much time bombarding them and also also also also comes with a ruined ring world (I may be mistaken but doesn’t it get you mega structures early?) so yeah if these two precursors both relate to alloys and one is far and above better than the other there’s no competition and unique niche for the yuht CRYo core. Plus one pop (which will be unemployed if you also get the expansion tradition that does the same thing but for unity and you can get earlier in the game making the CRYo core even less useful since there are only two colonists jobs upon initial settlement meaning they’re just more upkeep until you build a district which can take awhile!) isn’t as useful and becomes useless after you settle all your worlds! F tier for sure it’s not competitive not unique and you miss out on all the better precursor artifacts!

In my opinion, head of zarqlan is one of the best relics out there, for 1 reason: you are able to trade with the spiritualist fallen empire… I have gotten it many times and traded all my resources for alloys. The fallen empire has a massive stockpile of resources and is usually cheaper than buying it from the market, though you can only really use stragetic resources. But usually you gen get over 100k+ alloys for relatively cheap

I've only just seen this (only got Stellaris recently). Its missing the Crystal of Odryskia, how do you rate that one?

I feel lucky! Galatron and Cybrex Warforge in the same game. Was a great ride but got it almost at the very end of the game. A more regular but powerful combination is Cybrex plus Great Khan Trophy. That was awesome, too.

If you havent already done so a "How to find the relics on my relic tierlist" video would be nice.

My current huge empire dug up so many archaeological sites and only found one relic. It makes me wonder if expanding to take dig sites is worth the bother or not. It also makes me wonder if it's best to dig them up later or if the chances are fixed.

I got Blade of the Huntress for the first time in my current playthrough, and good god it's fantastic, especially combined with Rapid Deployment. It's a huge tactical advantage, especially when you're fighting a war on multiple fronts.

had to add a comment about "the surveyor" relic. it CAN add more than one during its duration. its low cooldown and cost makes it easy to just use constantly, and sometimes it can pop out 2-3 resources during its "cooldown". which is kiiiiiinda implied by the wording of it. edit: 2400 hours played and have seen the galatron 3 times. earlier today even! edit2: the chain for the rubricator VERY rarely spawns a 20+ relic world. its mostly size 12-16. and almost exclusively inside another empire. i would estimate maybe 20% of the time its possible to get the system without going to war for it

Now in defense of the head I think it is A tier because (not sure if this was a later patch maybe) the fleets scale up nicely using it at every opportunity or almost every opportunity so if you get it early enough it cam be amazing. Also withthè second artifact activation from Astral actions it got a good bit better.

Is there a way you can take relics from another empire? I read somewhere there is a chance you can get their relics if you defeat them.

I hope for a ship set tier list next

I know this is a late to the game but the contingency core currently allows you to build a second of any multi-stage megastructure in the game

I got the Galatron once, i was a Rogue Sevitor with 3 passed resolutions down the Greater Good and a ton of bio-trophies. Suffice to say my diplomatic weight went bonkers so i just made the community into the Galactic Empire :D

I agree with the list, I would be tempted to upgrade the Surveyor to B tier because it has a chance to activate more than once and because it doesn't cost influence but as the game advances it does lose its value.

Always pay attention to the passive effects, realized this only recently. Can be significant.

I have had that war forge once it’s quite useful

The Rubricator event chain doesnt guarantee a size 25 relic world afaik, the times ive gotten the chain they were always size 12 or 13 or something along those lines. A relic world is nice, but its something to keep in mind

I just got my first galatron while watching your video thanks for the luck

It's a lot of work, but how about you do a Tier List about Galactic Resolutions....this came up in one of your recent multiplayer-episodes.

Can confirm. Was lucky enough to get Cybrex and the relic world with the Rubricator. A second Relic world 5 jumps away. A ruined Dyson Sphere AND ruined Megashipyard in my 40 system sphere. Was rolling two ecuminopolises and a single ringworld and rebuilt Dyson Sphere before 2300 in a 0.25x habitable world game. Best unmodded game I ever had