Difference between revisions of "Shrine"

Revision as of 17:07, 12 September 2011

Shrines were a feature in Diablo I and Diablo II, and return in Diablo III in a very slightly modified form. Shrines are altars of sorts that exist within the game that, when interacted with by the player, will grant short-term bonuses or buffs to the player and any party members within a few screens of distance.

For information on shrines in previous Diablo games, please visit the links below.

• Diablo I Shrines
• Diablo II Shrines

The Sanctity of This Place Has Been Fouled

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 are natively "desecrated" and the player purifies them by interacting with them. Apparently the character classes of Diablo III are attempting to undo the damage done by the carelessness of the Diablo II characters?

Shrines and Wells in Diablo III

Purified shrine.

In Diablo III, a player clicks on a shrine or a well to gain its effect, just like in the previous games. However, a new buff icon will appear (with a clockface-like animation that is displaying how much longer is left of the buff), and the icon also has a tooltip to inform the player as to what, precisely, the buff is.

In addition, text is splashed across the middle of the screen, also informing the player of what the shrine effect is after the shrine has been purified. This splash text does not occur with wells, as wells simply heal the player.

A Demon Hunter with a shrine buff.

Shrine buffs generally last 300 seconds. Each player that is affected by a shrine will have a shrine buff animation that plays over their head; the animation will represent the type of effect the shrine gives.

Confirmed Shrines and Wells

Healing well from the beta test.

The following shrines and wells were spotted in the Diablo III Beta and are assumed to be in the final release of the game:

• Desecrated Shrine of Fortune - Raises chance to find magical items by 25%.
• Blessed Desecrated Shrine - Reduces damage taken by 25%.
• Frenzied Desecrated Shrine - Increases attack speed and chance to critically hit.
• Healing Well - Heals the player and presumably the party. Like the wells in Diablo II, these will refill over a period of time.

Unconfirmed Shrines and Wells

The following shrines and wells have been observed previously but are either unconfirmed or are unlikely to make it to the release of the game:

• Skilled Desecrated Shrine - Skill levels are increased. (Presumably won't make it to the release of the game as there are no longer skill levels)
• Ice Armor Shrine - Basically gave the player an Ice Armor buff, similar to what the Wizard has in her arsenal.

Previous Development

• The following section is retained for historical purposes, and is not current information.

Shrines were last seen in the BlizzCon demo. (That same demo build was shown at Gamescom 2009 and 2010, as well as PAX 2009.) In that demo, shrines were spotted around the surface desert area, and provided various bonuses reminiscent of their Diablo II counterparts.

In Diablo III all shrines were called a "Desecrated Shrine," which was "restored" by the player's click. This seems to suggest an unknown plot relation or implication.

Known Shrines

Below is a list of known shrines, all seen in the Blizzcon 2009 gameplay demo.

• Fortune
  • Your chance to find magic items and gold is greatly increased.
  • Lasts for 60 seconds from activation.

• Ice Armor
  • Slows movement and attack of enemies that attack you.
  • Lasts for 60 seconds from activation.

• Unknown Shrine
  • Shrine Restored. You feel Blessed.

• Unknown Shrine
  • Shrine Restored. You Feel Ready For Battle.

Development

First ever seen Shrine.

The D3 Team previously mentioned shrines and said they're tossing around ideas about how to implement them, but nothing was set yet.

Jay Wilson has addressed the issue of shrines in a couple of interviews. And given essentially the same answer both times.

Blizzcon 2008

Jay Wilson addressed the issue of Shrines at a press conference at Blizzcon, in October 2008. [1]

Blizzcast #8

The question came up again six months later, in April 2009. Jay's answer indicates that the team hasn't done any work on the issue since last October. The questions were submitted by fans, and relayed to Jay by Blizzard Community Manager, Bornakk.

Will shrines be making a return to the world of Sanctuary in Diablo 3?
Jay Wilson: Well there are some aspects of shrines that we liked, experience shrines I think are probably the prime example everyone uses. They're fun because they drive the player forward. Monster shrines are sometimes fun because they bring out a rare that you didn’t know or weren't expecting that could come from any direction and that's cool.

But for the most part, the pure mechanic of shrines, a random powerup that just appears in the world for no reason, we don't really want to literally bring that back. What we are going to try to do is integrate a lot of the best things of shrines into our quest and event systems so that when you encounter a random quest or random event that has a story context within the game it either rewards you like a shrine would reward you or something that is actually built into the gameplay of the quest. So while technically no shrines are not coming back verbatim, we are trying to bring back kind of the best things of them in a different form.

So you'll still have the randomness and spontaneity of it.
Jay Wilson: Exactly, and really they are kind of there to change up the gameplay and add a little factor of randomness, but we felt that very few of the shrines actually did that – accomplish that goal...

Stamina shrine?
Jay Wilson: Yeah, stamina shrine lets you run a long time. Skill shrine made you a little bit more powerful. We feel like we can take the best and put them within actual events that are a lot more fun and have a lot more gameplay to them.

References

• Gamescom Wizard Gameplay Footage
• BlizzCast 8
• BlizzCon 2008 press conference with Jay Wilson