Ancient Relics
Unlocking Ancient Relic Shards
At base level 140 the Valkyrie at the south western part of Prontera will talk to you about ancient relics and give you a Relic Bag to hold them in. Alternately, this feature will automatically unlock if you obtain an Ancient Relic Shard prior to this.
Ancient Relic NPC in Prontera City
Look in your inventory for this bag to see which ancient relics and relic shards you have. Ideally you want to luck out and get some relic shards. These shards look like they don't do much but you combine them into higher rarity relics with much better stats.
What are Ancient Relics?
This is a special accessory that is created ancient relic shards. They provide substantial stat increases which are enhanced using dusts to increase the values and are equipped to a hidden slot that slides out from your top accessory slot.
Example of a Light Saint Ring ancient relic
Obtaining Ancient Relic Shards
There are a few ways to obtain ancient relic shards:
Purchasing Unknown Acient Relic Shards using Svartalf Normal Dust from the Ancient Relic Shop in Prontera City
Hunting world MVP/MINI's which may drop an unknown ancient relic shard, sometimes one with blue or purple rarity
Very rarely obtained from the Red Slip Gachapon Machine
From the auction house with BCC (whale option)
Unknown ancient relic shards will contain either a basic Ancient Relic or rarely, an Ancient Relic Shard. You really want the shards as these relics are basic and only give you 40 attack/mattack and 4 to a main stat. Compared to the example above these basic ancient relics are significantly weaker though they are still a bonus that you can use until you're able to get one of them remolded.
Example of a Basic Ancient Relic
Example of an Ancient Relic Shard
Obtaining Svartalf Normal Dust
Since the shards are pretty rare you'll need a lot of dust so you'll need to know where to get them:
Purchase up to 24 per week from the Ancient Relic NPC in Prontera City
Drops from mobs in the Blooming Land, an Eclage Area
Sometimes given from events or your Kafra Adventure Log
Your best bet is to farm in the Blooming Land as it's going to take a lot of luck to roll any of the shards needed to turn them into an Ancient Relic. You'll obtain some basic ancient relics that give 40 attack/matk and a main stat but the good ones require ancient relic shards.
Shop to purchase Unknown Ancient Relic Shards from
Creating an Ancient Relic
Due to recent changes you can actually start making your ancient relic as soon as you have one shard for it. Talk to the ancient relic shop Valkyrie in Prontera and select the option to Combine Ancient Relics. On the left side you can select each relic to see what stats it has and on the right it shows which relic shards you need to combine to create this relic and the stats that that relic gives.
If you have one of the required shards then there will be a green + sign over the icon indicating that you can insert that into the relic. As soon as you supply the first shard it will give you that ancient relic and will open up the stat line for the shard that was provided.
For example, providing a Rainbow Gem (the +10atk shard) will unlock the ATK stat line that goes up to 200 attack. In the examples below I had two shards for the Lord of Vein, one for Attack and one for Pen/MPen.
Previewing the stats and relics needed for a Lord of Vein
After adding a Rainbow Gem (Atk +10) unlocked the ATK line and gave me the Lord of Vein
After adding the Old Horn shard (Phy. & M.Pen. +1%) unlocked the Pen and MPen line, adding these stats to my newly acquired Lord of Vein
Note that there are actually two rarities of relic, blue and purple. The blue ancient relics require only four shards and only buffs stats. The purple ancient relics require five shards and provide a unique passive. This passive can only be activated when all five relic shards are inserted and all of the stats are "remolded" to a certain level.
Upgrading (Remolding) Ancient Relics
You'll notice your newly crafted ancient relic only has 1 or 10 points out of the possible maximum. In order to increase this you must use Svartalf dusts. To do so, speak to the Valkyrie and select Remolding Ancient Relic.
This will bring up an interface showing the relics you have crafted on the left, and their current upgrades on the right. You can either use the purple F2P dust or the orange P2W dust to attempt to upgrade the relic. Anytime you use dust there are three outcomes:
One or more stats will increase
One or more stats will all decrease but it will cancel this automatically so you don't actually loose any stats
Stats will increase and decrease and you will preview this result and choose whether to save those changes or keep the relic as it was
Increases are pretty small so it takes a lot of dust to raise a relic to near max using F2P dust. Purple relics will require P2W dust at a certain point, somewhere around 40% progress, so avoid purple relics unless you're a whale interested in spending a ton of money on this game or are so far into the game that you can just throw tons of F2P dust at it.
Remolding a Dark Night Shadow Ring
Results of a Remold Attempt
Video of a Whale spending over 9B in zeny plus excessive amounts of real cash just for a single purple ancient relic...
Don't go for purple unless you're a whale, P2W dust is necessary to reach the special bonus effect...
Decomposing Relics
Finally, you can turn unwanted relics into dust by speaking to the ancient relic shop NPC and picking the Decompose Ancient Relics option. Here you can select duplicate green relics you've pulled and turn them back into dust to either buy more ancient relic shards or to upgrade ancient relics. The green duplicates you're probably going to be overloaded with give you 2 dusts each. You can also decompose relic shards this way too so be careful that you don't throw those out unless you absolutely need to.
Example decompose screen showing what you'd get for decomposing a blue relic shard.