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.

The original version of the game included four shrine types:

• Enlightened Shrine - +25% bonus to Experience. Until v1.0.5, Enlightened shrines did not appear in Inferno.
• Fortune Shrine - +25% bonus to Magic Find and Gold Find. This bonus stacks on top of other MF/GF bonuses from equipment, Nephalem Valor stacks, and Paragon levels. It will not exceed the max MF/GF cap, though.
• Frenzied Shrine - Increases attack speed and critical damage bonus by 25%.
• Protection Shrine - Reduces all damage taken by 25%.

Two more shrine types were added in v1.0.5:

• Empowered Shrine – Increased resource regeneration and reduced cooldowns. (Added in Patch 1.0.5.) For Demon Hunters, this shrine only increases Hatred regeneration; it does not change Discipline regeneration.
• Fleeting Shrine – Increased movement speed and adds 25 yards to gold and health orb pickup radius. (Added in Patch 1.0.5.)

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.