No Man’s Sky Origins has introduced a few new features to the game, and one of those is the Artifact Exchange. This terminal allows travelers to swap their found artifacts from ancient ruins for rarer, more valuable artifacts, and they are well worth seeking out.
The Artifact Exchange in No Man’s Sky is located within Colossal Archives.
Before you can trade your ancient relics (that obviously belong in a museum) for rarer items in No Man’s Sky, you’ll first need to locate a Colossal Archive. I have a full guide on how to do so here, but to boil it down real fast in this article: grab commercial planetary charts from the cartographer and pop them all in space until a “Planetary Archive” appears. Make your way to that waypoint and you’ll find a Colossal Archive, where an Artifact Exchange will be waiting.
There are typically a few of these terminals scattered about the archive, yet the easiest one to find is just outside the landing pad near the vendors on the upper level. It looks like a giant lockbox (the glowing locks kind of give it away), and it will say “Artifact Exchange” when you go to interact with it.
You’ll need some artifacts on hand if you plan to make an exchange. In No Man’s Sky these are either old biological samples, fossil samples, or lost artifacts dug up from ancient ruins, bone sites, etc.. So long as you have one of these in your inventory you can swap it at the Artifact Exchange for a different artifact of equal or greater value.
Now, from what I’ve seen, whatever race the Colossal Archive is a history for will determine which of the three has the better chance of “upgrading” to the next tier. In my case, a Vy’keen archive turned all my purple biological samples into yellow, rare lost artifacts. Two of these sold for nearly 4-million credits, which was a vast increase over the 200k I would have received for the two purple artifacts I traded in.
I’ll update this guide once I or the community figures out the exact science behind artifact trading, but for now you can still use the Artifact Exchange in No Man’s Sky to flip artifacts for potentially greater gains. Go out and prosper, travelers! For science, of course . . . .
