Here’s a book I never used: Book of Artifacts, by Zeb Cook.

It’s not for lack of trying, really. The book is packed with 50 magical artifacts, all of which are interesting and many of which are iconic in D&D and none of which I would dream of using in one of my campaigns, no matter how free I was at distributing magic items.

Which is ironic, considering the book starts off by trying to dispel misconceptions about artifacts like “they are too powerful” and “they’re a pain.” Zeb makes a good argument, but it’s still a load of hooey.

The one useful part of the book is at the end, which details how characters can make their own magic items – something glossed over in the DMG. This, too, is like juggling old dynamite, but not the sort of dynamite that would crack the world in half.

All that said, artifacts are cool. Like really, really cool. My favorite is probably the magical war mech, the Mighty Servant of Leuk-o (in my longest running game, the party had occasional access to a tricked out Apparatus of Kwalish and the Might Servant feels like the luxury model of that). There are many more, all worthy of their own campaigns.

Which is kind of the problem with artifacts. TSR devoted scads of adventures to the Vecna artifacts and published a whole box set for the Rod of Seven Parts. I can only run so many campaigns, though, and I don’t want them all to focus around a magical MacGuffin, so in this way Book of Artifacts is of dubious usefulness. But don’t let that stop you, it’s the best kind of useless book.