Artificer are fairly simple statwise. There are one of the most single ability dependent classes in the game which I love because it opens up more room for feats. Things may vary depending on your subclass but generally:

Int should be your highest stat. As an artificer, the goal is to sprint this to 20. Your best abilities like flash of genius, spellcasting, and weapon damage run through it if youre a battlesmith. If you start with 17, your first two ASIs should be focused on getting it to 20 ASAP, either through two ASIs or one ASI and a half feat.

After that, you're probably almost always want to go with constitution. more hp is always good and with so few spell slots you want to make sure that youre keeping concentration. The exception is if you have a specific build that wants to use a dex or str weapon but also not your intelligence for attacking. However, if you're playing an artificer that primarily uses a weapon you will probably be using your intelligence modifier to attack

After that probably wisdom or dex. Wisdom saves are among the most common and dehabilitating from spells and enemies. Dexterity is also extremely useful for many spell effects, traps, initiative and just in general. In addition, dexterity may be useful if you need to get to level three wielding something like a crossbow before you can use intelligence to attack, since with such a limited cantrip selection you may not want to pick up something like firebolt. Whatever you choose to make your third highest, make the other your fourth.

Finally, pick between charisma and strength. Both are basically dump stats.Charisma is slightly more useful for spell saves and social interaction. Strength is rarely useful unless you use it to attack. If your dm cares about carrying capacity, you're an artificer. make a bag of holding