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Shrine

Revision as of 17:37, 19 October 2012 by Vanadin (talk | contribs) (Added DH note to Empowered shrine)

Are you looking for shrines in Diablo I Shrines or Diablo II Shrines?


Shrines are randomly-located, randomly-spawned objects that characters can click to receive temporary buffs. Shrine effects pass to all players in the area when they are first triggered. All shrine benefits last for 2 minutes, and characters can benefit from multiple different shrines at once. Shrine bonuses do not stack, and second shrine of the same type will simply reset the benefit time to the full duration.


Shrine General Information

A Demon Hunter with a shrine buff.
Shrines do not appear on the mini map or main map. They are labelled when moused over. Once they are clicked a message will appear on screen notifying the player of the buff. Party members within the vicinity will also receive the buff and message. Shrine buffs are displayed just above the belt interface, with an icon that shows the buff and the time remaining.

Shrines are randomly generated. Although there are specific points at which a shrine may appear one won't always appear and the type is also random. Shrines do not regenerate, and each shrine can only be used once per game.


Diablo Shrines Through the Ages

In Diablo I, shrines appeared as black wooden constructions with white crosses on them, candles burning on both sides. When the player clicked on them, the shrine would become disfigured and slightly demonic with a sword appearing near the base.

In Diablo II, shrines came in a large variety but were a bit more primal and not as tied to the real-life imagery of religion. In the early game, the player would stumble upon a shrine that consisted of skulls and bones sitting upon the top of a pike, with stones gathered around the base on the ground. When the player clicked on it, they effectively "desecrated" the shrine, destroyed it, giving the bonus.

However, in Diablo III, shrines were natively "desecrated" and the player purified them by interacting with them. The character classes of Diablo III were attempting to undo the damage done by the carelessness of the Diablo II characters. The "desecrated" lable was dropped from all shrines during development.


Previous Development

The developers initially planned Shrines to function much differently in Diablo III than they did in the previuos games in the series. Bold statements about not providing just a short term random bonus were made, but ultimately the Diablo III team couldn't find a better implementation style, and went with a repeat of the format we saw in Diablo I and Diablo II, though the D3 shrines have some different effects.

  • Information and blue quotes about shrines during development can be seen on the Shrine archive article.

References