Read this before collecting any Rift artifacts, especially those for Altair's outfit
First of all: there is a glitch with the Rift artifacts that can destroy every chance of collecting everything.
Short: you must backup your save game before collecting any of them as they will only unlock the rewards randomly/by chance.
Long version:
If you simply collect the artifacts and do not follow my advice you will very likely ending up not getting all items (like me) or even miss Altaïr's outfit.
I just got my Altaïr outfit (yeah!), but it was a hard fight. And like for many others it wasn't working in the first place. Note that whatever you do, it must be done while you are online and indeed connected to the Uplay server. Sometimes this connection is not working even if the internet/PSN/Live network is fine, so make sure you can access the E-Shop or your club, then you're connected with Uplay.
So, what's it about?
There are 24 Rift artifacts you can collect:
- 6 can be collected by having an AC Initiates profile
- 18 can be collected when completing the according missions in the Companion app
Those artifacts are spread over the rift missions with one of them appearing at a time. Which one is random, you will need to restart (but not complete) a Rift mission several times to get them all.
They are spread like this:
Belle Époque
Data Harvest: 1 Initiate and 3 Companion app artifacts
Tornado: 1 Initiate and 3 Companion app artifacts
Occupied Paris
Covert: 1 Initiate and 2 Companion app artifacts
Data Harvest: 1 Initiate and 2 Companion app artifacts
Tower: 1 Initiate and 2 Companion app artifacts
Middle Ages
Battlefield: only 3 Companion app artifacts
Quarry: 1 Initiate, 3 Companion app artifacts
The 6 Initiates artifacts
There are 2 sets of 3 artifacts unlocking the Fauchard and Flintlock wapons.
You needed to have an AC Initiates profile, but since AC Initiates is dead these artifacts can be collected directly. However, as usual, there is a glitch that you can't collect them and still get the message to get an AC Initiates profile first. In that case you need to restart the game and try again, it will work after some tries (it worked for me after doing this)
The 18 Companion app artifacts
There are 6 set of 3 artifacts unlocking the 5 Tailored Phantom items and the last set unlocks Altaïr's outfit. Each of these rewards is unlocked only by collecting the 3 artifacts of the according set.
The glitch
You can collect the artifacts and they will be accounted in the game progress bar for artifacts, but they are not accounted in the progression of the sets. There is no way to see if an artifact was accounted on both or not, until you have completed a set. If they were all accounted correctly you receive the item/outfit directly after collecting the third artifact, if not the set reward and Paris story reward in the Memento Gallery won't be ever unlocked.
So what shall you do?
To avoid this happening you must make a backup of your save game once the according artifacts were unlocked in the game and before you start collecting them. Have the game running, start the app, have it connected with the game, confirm the finished app mission unlocking the artifact set, save the game by fast travel or such and end it to backup the save game (in the cloud, USB stick, whatever)
It is wise to start with the initiates artifacts without having companion artifacts unlocked yet. If something goes wrong and the reward is not unlocked you need to retry from the backup save game. You might need to do this several times.
Once done you can unlock the companion artifact sets once by a time and have them collected in the game (backup after unlock, gather the three artifacts, retry if reward is not unlocking).
I noticed how this is working unfortunately only for the last artifact set. When I tried to get Altaïr's outfit I gathered the three artifacts and got nothing. I reloaded my backup and tried again the same way: nothing. I tried a third time and there nearly immediately after I collected the third artifact (again) I received the message that a new outfit is waiting for me in the Café Théâtre.
Unfortunately I didn't know it for the other artifacts so I'm missing the rewards for both Initiate sets and one of the Tailored Phantom items. Therefore I'm now missing the artifact reward in the Memento Gallery even though I have 100% of the artifacts. :(