because it does not respawn right away. I am not sure of the respawn time in Verhoffen, but I think it is around 90 days or so. What Peter was saying is that the artifact that was there when you were in there the first time is replaced by another when the area respawns and the former is lost.In other words, you only lose the artifact that was there if the area respawns and you had not retrieved it prior to the respawn.
There is a cure for that, however. kkc, one of the contributers to this tavern, wrote a short routine that will "reset" the artifact counter in the HDR file and you can get all the artifacts a second time if you use that. Someone can probably give you the link for that.
There are those much more knowleagble than I about this and maybe one of them can add or correct something to this post.
