Moonlighter 2 Backpack Guide: Relic Effects & Curses

Effect keywords

The TechRaptor relic guide and the Steam perfect-price guide list the same vocabulary:

Once Placed: triggers as soon as the relic is placed.
Corner: triggers in any corner of the bag, including new corners created by partial row upgrades.
Left-Right and Top-Bottom: triggers on those edges.
Pointed: acts on the relic in the direction of the red arrow; nothing happens if that square is empty.
Ongoing: can trigger repeatedly.
Back to Tresna: triggers when the run ends by any means, including the pendant.
Next Time: triggers the next time you do the action named in the effect.

Quality effects are stronger on Deluxe relics, but a relic that gets transformed loses its Deluxe status.

Kalina: Burn and Armor

Some relics Burn their neighbours. A burned relic is destroyed unless it is Armored; other relics grant Armor. Firewood is the classic burn source and many “Mother’s” relics are the value targets.

The Gallery: Shock and Overcharge

Shocking a relic puts it into the Overcharged state and raises its quality (three points per shock in the creator guide that mapped the system). Shocking an Overcharged relic again destroys it. Batteries remove Overcharge and are consumed in the process; batteries do not interact with each other and an unshocked relic cannot consume one, so they can be stored safely next to each other.

The high-quality chain that community guides use:

Get an Anger Disk (Epic). Each time its Overcharge is removed it gains the quality of the battery that removed it.
Shock it with wires or shock relics, drain it with your highest-quality battery, repeat.
Double it with Angelic Scepters (doubles the quality of the pointed overcharged relic).
Copy the result with a Dream Whistle, then copy that with Surprise Disks, which can copy already-used Surprise Disks.

Deluxe batteries can spawn with up to 60 quality before research is maxed. The Steam guide “How to create most expensive relics” reports the combo working three runs out of four, and lists 999-quality sale values of 80,246 gold for an Anger Disk, 72,196 for a Dream Whistle and 129,463 for a Surprise Disk before merchant upgrades, roughly tripling with level 5 upgrades.

Aeolia: Petrify and Absorb

Petrified relics become Aetherium crystals of the same rarity. Absorb effects destroy the crystals listed in the effect (for example adjacent ones) and add their quality to the absorbing relic. Any Aetherium left in the bag when the run ends is destroyed, which is why the crystals have no price on the relic table. Dolls transform: a Doll becomes a Soldier Doll, which absorbs pointed dolls or crystals of the same rarity and becomes a Prince Doll.

General rules

Fill the bag before rearranging; you want quality effects to land on as many Rares and Epics as possible.
Stack levels onto your highest-rarity relics: base value times quality is where the gold is. Utility relics often have low prices.
Use cheap Commons as sacrifices for destroy-on-trigger effects.
Chest inventory slots are useful staging space while planning.
Since Patch 1, relics taken from the shop back into a dungeon lose all their quality.
Dying halves the quality of everything in the bag (Expert deletes the relics; Hardcore deletes the run). Failing a Greed Colosseum halves quality too.
Since Greed & Glory, some relic effects were rebalanced; if a description does not match this guide, the in-game text wins.

Sources: TechRaptor relics guide (updated Mar 2026), Steam guides “Perfect Price (Greed & Glory)” and “How to create most expensive relics in the game” (Nov 2025), the Durandian mechanics video (Nov 2025) and the Patch 1 notes.

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