All across the Diablo franchise, the randomly generated dungeons have been the most iconic, wonderful, and frustrating parts of the games. However, the devs don’t want their generated maps to be all labyrinths and hungry monsters; they also added things like treasure chests, body looting, and shrines.
However, unlike gear that you can right-click and learn all about, shrines can be a little more cryptics with what they do. So, let’s talk about everything you should know about shrines in Diablo II: Resurrected.
Shrine basics
To start, shrines can generate anywhere in any map in Diablo II (excluding boss arenas and town hubs, of course). Generally, they add buffs to your character, but sometimes they offer health, loot, explosions, or even bigger monsters to fight. They tend to be either these rock structures with a glowing symbol above them or wells with different colored liquids in them.
Like monster resistances, shrines can be complicated because while they tell a player what buff they do, they do not explain how it affects them. For example, the Combat shrine gives you some nice flavor text saying, “you feel ready for combat,” but what does that mean? Boosted damage? More attack speed? Buffed strength? It can get confusing and unclear very quickly.
Shrine types
There is a large multitude of shrine types, so let’s go through each and how they buff/supply your character.
- Mana recharge– You gain a 400% faster mana recharge rate for 96 seconds.
- Resist– This shrine can either appear as a resistance boost for fire, cold, lightning, or poison. During a 144 second period, the player character will be +75% resistant to the said damage type.
- Poison– A unique and putrid shrine, this one throws out 5-10 Choking Gas potions and turns the area around the shrine into a poison gas cloud.
- Armor– For 96 seconds, the player gains +100% to their defense.
- Skill– Adding +2 to each Dexterity, Strength, Vitality, and Energy skill level for 96 seconds, this shrine gives the player and overall buff.
- Gem– This shrine either upgrades a random gem or skull in your inventory, of if you have neither, drops a chipped gem or skull on the ground. Important note: anything in the Horadric Cube will not be affected.
- Stamina– Making players run for days, this skill actually doesn’t make you faster, it simply gives a player unlimited stamina for nearly 200 seconds so they can sprint without consequences.
- Experience– For 144 seconds, this shrine offers players the chance to earn 50% more experience per kill.
- Refilling/Mana/Health– This shrine works exactly like a rejuvination, mana, or health potion. For mana it fills your mana bar, for health it does the same, and for “Refilling” it does both.
- Combat– Giving players the ultimate attack boost, the Combat shrine buffs their Attack Rating and the maximum damage by 200% for 96 seconds.
- Monster– This shrine is exactly what it sounds like. Once touched, it turns the nearest monster into a Unique or Champion enemy. Great for experience, less so for anyone in danger.
- Portal– Scrolls of town portal are a valuable resource in Diablo, and this shrine makes like easier for the player by creating a portal back to town. It will stay open until the player leaves the Act.
- Fire– Pretty self-explanatory, if activated this shrine will shoot out fireballs in all directions. However, it’s not as helpful as it sounds. It’s just as hostile to players and any enemy or hero hit will immediately lose half their health.
- Explosive– Last but certainly not least, much like the poison shrine this one offers the player 5-10 Exploding Potions, but it also will toss out 5 more Exploding Potions in random directions to explode on monsters or the player.
