A Minor Artifact drops at one of three named power tiers, and the tier it drops at is set by the Keystone level your run completed at — not by luck.
| Keystone level at completion | Drop tier | Power |
|---|---|---|
| 1–4 | Dormant | 50% |
| 5–8 | Awakened | 75% |
| 9+ | Ascended | 100% |
“Power” here scales every non-resistance combat attribute the artifact has relative to its own fixed baseline — resistances never scale, by design, so a tier upgrade won’t be visible on an item whose only standout numbers happen to be resist values. Every one of the Minor Artifact types currently in the drop pool has at least one non-resistance stat that visibly differs between tiers, so a genuine Dormant-vs-Ascended comparison is always possible somewhere on the item.
Reaching 100% without pushing high Keystone levels
You don’t have to complete a Keystone 9+ run to eventually own a 100%-power artifact. A lower-tier artifact (Dormant or Awakened) can be raised toward Ascended over time by spending Ichor on it — see Upgrade Resources: Ichor and Attunement & Upgrade Workflow. Upgrading only ever raises an artifact’s existing properties — it never changes what the artifact fundamentally is.
How to tell an artifact’s tier at a glance
An artifact’s in-game name shows its current tier and upgrade progress directly, for example:
Blaze of Death (Dormant 2/5)
That updates live every time you spend Ichor on it and whenever you cross into a new tier.