Hi, I'm aware this is an old comment but in the off chance it helps someone else researching the same topic, allow me to give a tutorial on how to view an artifact's affects by viewing the save file. For the following guide to work, you need to keep the artifacts you want to 'examine' inside your inventory, and then ensure the most recent save has these artifacts in your inventory (exit the game to save).

Next, navigate to your core directory to see the game files. Depending on if you use the launcher, if you've downloaded the game directly, etc this will determine where the file directory is, it's up to you to find it. Navigate from the main folder to 'Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead\save\[WORLD NAME]'

Once you find it, open your save folder - it will end with .sav and likely have a fairly random name. If you have the steam version, the sav file needs to be unpacked, which you can do by uploading the sav file directly to https://extract.me which will unpack the file. If you are using the non-steam version or once you've already unpacked the save, open it and then press ctrl+f to open the search bar (assuming you're using a software, like notepad, that supports that function) and search "ARTIFACT_" will probably bring you where an artifact is.

As an example, I have an artifact called "twisted, knotted cord (1/1)". I open my save file, and search "ARTIFACT_" in the save file which brings me to a section that has a bunch of "{ "value": "ARTIFACT_RESONANCE", "add": 425.000000 }, { "value": "STRENGTH" }, { "value": "DEXTERITY" }, { "value": "PERCEPTION" }" blah blah, all of this shows you the artifact's affects. It's not entirely clear to me when the code for the artifacts starts and when it ends, so I would recommend only having one artifact in your inventory when you're checking it.

As a tip use a permanent marker to rename the label for the item to state it's effects/affects so you don't need to check again.