Credits to ArisHacksTV for his leveling mod as this is just a stripped down and slightly altered version of it. Thanks to zatochu for correcting the names of the boosts and removing other features. Thanks to Geo for his cheat table and help along the way. And thanks to Nichiren for helping out with region unlocking specific special items.

ABOUT

Each artifact now gives one of these boosts:
Health boost is +10hp
Armor boost is +1
Damage boost is +1
Haste boost is +0.075
Regen boost is +0.1
Crit boost is +0.075
Resistance boost is +1

The artifacts still boost lamp radius, sailing speed, etc but that's just not shown. So each artifact boosts a combat stat and one of the original movement boost as well. Here is what boosts go together:
Health, Climbing
Armor, Swimming
Damage, Diving
Haste, Riding
Regen, Gliding
Crit, Sailing
Resistance, Lamp radius

There is an issue in vanilla where only the lamp radius and sailing speed were increased from artifacts, the rest were bugged and were not increased. This issue is still the same here. If it didn't work in vanilla, it doesn't work here. So a resistance boost artifact will boost lamp radius, but a haste boost artifact won't actually boost riding speed as it's supposed to.

In addition, the glider, reins, and boat are region unlocked and can be used from the start. You can still collect them in each region but that doesn't do anything extra. Since these are movement items, it feels like a chore to have to get the in every region. Gameplay is smoother and better served by having these movement items at all times. The other special items though still need to be collected in each region in order to be used.

INSTALLING

Put the FreeImage.dll and cubemod.dll into your Cube World folder (where the .exe is), should be Steam\steamapps\common\Cube World. Click yes to overwrite if needed and you're set.

TROUBLESHOOTING

If the mod doesn't work, download Visual Studio 2019 (make SURE you check the development for desktop with C++ module) then restart your computer and run the game again. You might also need the Visual Studio C++ Redistributable from: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2977003/the-latest-supported-visual-c-downloads.

MODDING

The source files is the cubemod folder at github: here. In Visual Studio 2019, open>open folder, then select the cubemod folder. There you can view and edit anything to your heart's desire. Ctrl+shift+B will compile and you'll find the cubemod.dll under cubemod/bin. For those wanting to modify the boost amount for each stat, download the source files. Then open the cubemod folder in Visual Studios 2017 or later using the open>open folder option. The boost amount is at the bottom of game_structures.h. Then you can ctrl+shift+B to compile and you'll find the cubemod.dll in the cubemod/bin folder. Just copy that over to your cubeworld.exe folder and overwrite the previous cubemod.dll file. Nothing extra needed for FreeImage.dll, that can just stay the same.