The "Shadow Lord" Item

Yeah, managing to reach about turn 30 makes things easier for the Shadow Lord relic to appear as a reward for completing a playthrough, the chances are better if you beat Gargos, also, in case is not mentioned before, you can get a lower tier of the relic on Godlike and Challenging mode if your score is not high enough (I once got a Epic tier of it during a failed Godlike run almost a year ago, and a Rare tier one on another failed run prior to the Epic one), but TBH, most of the time the Rare tier of the relic is more than enough and easier to get on higher difficulties.

Yesterday I had beat Gargos on God like (on my 2nd try).
And on that try I had put the Shadow Lord item on.
As I notice:

  • My health = 115%; Basic 100% + Shadow Lord item 15% I think)
  • Damage 100%: I had Crimson ward (60), red dragon skin whatever it is called (25), and I think the rest was from Shadow Lord item (15)
  • Fast Shadow meter regen.

Blockquote
I think it might give you a selection of Gargosā€™s Buffs as its reward, or at least some of the nastier ones.

I assume this is the best definition of what it is. Random buff.

Oh yes, by the way I received the Shadow Lord item as a reward on Normal for beat up Gragos.
Somehow I manage to receive 4 items in a row. Guess it is also a random thing, but I did not died, and also I had finish around day 20? Something like that.
Hope that my notes will help.

I donā€™t believe the buffs are random to be completely honest, at least for the Killer variant. Iā€™ve noticed itā€™ll always give you a percent health and percent damage increase. Alongside that, itā€™ll give you very potent shadow meter and instinct drain whenever you land a shadow move on an opponent. Itā€™ll also give you what seems to be access to instant Level 4 enders, regardless of the damage the combo actually builds. The Shadow and Instinct meter drain on the Killer variant are absolutely outrageous. Whenever I did a mirror match against Shadow Lords Gargos with the Killer Shadow Lordā€™s artifact, he would almost never have Instinct and Shadow Meter and I would almost always have full bars for both. Whenever I did two Shadow Reckoningā€™s and the Shadow Command grab ender, I would completely drain BOTH of his Shadow stocks and could drain his ENTIRE Instinct bar TWICE because of how crazy the drain gets. You can even drain out his revive when he has full Instinct meter since he has a MASSIVE health pool and all characters build Shadow meter whenever they lose health. Since AI have the massive advantage of having a health pool over a defense pool, and correct me if Iā€™m wrong, the damage they take generates significantly more meter than a player does since Defense works more as a damage reduction rather than a health bar and the meter is generated based on the amount of HEALTH you lose, not the amount of damage youā€™re taking. Simply put, you should be generating just as much meter as you would without a guardian, the Defense is simply giving you a buffer from taking too much damage too quickly. That being said, the artifact gives you incredible buffs against your opponents and makes them feel kind of like resource dispensers whenever you really dig into them with Shadow moves. Overall though, I donā€™t think the buffs are random. If they were, I wouldā€™ve expected some health regeneration or the innate ability to parry with all characters, without needing an Exemplar. Again, thereā€™s a possibility that Iā€™m wrong about the artifact, but Iā€™ve used quite a lot of them. Iā€™ve used a lot of Common and Epic ones, but I use a ton of Killer ones since I always play on Godlike. The artifact is definitely an amazing buff though, it just takes some time to get the Killer version. I do wish they lasted longer though since you do need to put in a fair amount of time on the highest difficulty and canā€™t really speed run to Gargos since you wonā€™t have enough points to actually earn the artifact at the end of your run.

I should also add the exception of taking damage AFTER you lose your health bars, since that also generates meter and calculates differently.

However, I do wish there was special interaction when you put it on a specific characterā€¦ A character that the title matches quite wellā€¦

Please Iron Galaxy, at least make the Super OP Shadow Lord playable or testable somewhere in the gameā€¦ ;-;

EDIT: After some testing with the Guardians and the Shadow Lords Artifact, I was completely wrong about how the health and defense system worked. The Guardian defense seems to function exactly how a health modifier would. I originally thought that Guardians applied a damage reduction rather than a health modifier, but that was incorrect. The extra health on the Shadow Lords Artifact is still really nice though and is still technically the only thing thatā€™ll cause your health loss to calculate differently in comparison to the Guardians (Itā€™ll appear as you having 120% Health rather than the normal 100%).