Since Patch 0.9 the amount of shrines that are present in areas is waaaay higher, to the point where they are almsot annoying.
Early on affix shard and idols shrines do feel great, but with the amount of shrines they are kinda too powerful.
I had half a stash tab full of generic idols before reaching empowered monolith and I always could easily fix my resistances with them. I don’t liked that too much. I could throw on whatever gear I found without worrying and fix everything else with idols.
Later down the line in some map lay outs shrines became annoying to the point where I ignored them.
Especially the buff and summon shrines feel bad very fast. i really would like shrines to be way rarer, but also more powerful.
For example Affix Shard Shrines could always drop 1-3 rare affix shards (Like Class Shards or Hybrid Health).
Idols Shrines could also drop a couple of class specific idols or maybe make an even rarer shrine that only drops class specific idol.
“Random” stuff like these shrines are generally a good addition to the gameplay and randomness within echoes.
But if they are too common they are simply not special enough and I personally tend to skip them more and more.
I want this feeling of not wanting to miss out, if the shriens would actually be super powerful, but at the edge of the map or in an dead end.
It needs to be worth going there.
Also the shrines are boring! It is not a good look to have an ice beetle shrine plus a hoard of ice beetle shrine and a swarm of bees shrine. These are quite literally useless and the opposite of engaging / fun.
Not sure about them being too common, mostly because at this point I don’t even notice them.
The problem for me is that they are generally not worth the effort of clicking them.
Now I am expecting them to be pointless and often times I don’t even check them.
Also, it is a bit odd that loot shrines and buff shrines appear identical.
I hope that once they get around updating the monolth gameplay, they will update the shrines to be more worthwile.
I honestly would like to see shrines go away. Replace them with rare modifiers on enemies that give similar buffs, or drop affix shards or idols or similar. You could mark those enemies on the map just like shrines.
The catch here is that the enemy doesn’t become some healthy unkillable god because it provides a bonus, if the bonus rate is kept as rare as shrines then just killing the enemy should be enough (just like how we just click on a shrine.)
It would also make the start of arenas a bit more bareable since you don’t have to go around collecting the shrine buffs and getting annoyed there’s a duplicate or whatever. You just do the arena and occasionally get a buff (the enemy would need to be distinct in some way to see it will grant a buff.)
I wouldn’t mind if they were slightly rarer but had stronger effects making them feel more impactful. Would also like them to be possible to identify without reading the text like having a symbol over them like in Diablo 2 or PoE.
Too bad you can’t store the buff or minion shrines as charges (max 3?) then use them, at 1-3x their power. Or for each shrine you find, the multiplier on the reward goes up by that much. 6x shrines? Get 6x the buff, on your 7th shrine. The drop-based shrines (shards, uniques, mobs that drop a type of item) are nice and I enjoy these still.
The mobs-that-drop an item should be slightly stronger. Maybe: mobs that drop item-type with high chance for one of those items to be exalted/unique/set item based on tier of the shrine…
