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Shrines - Version 2 vs Version 3
May 31, 2026, 06:33 PM
Removed duplicate in-body wikilinks
Aug 6, 2026, 04:23 PM
Added manual time advancement at shrines and noted that skill points can only be spent there
11Overview22Shrines are the network of physical waypoints scattered across Vale Sangora. They serve two purposes at once: they are the only fast-travel anchors in the game, and they are the primary location where Coen learns and upgrades his perks. Activating a shrine for the first time is a mini-quest in itself; revisiting it later is the player's main way to bend the 30-day clock around the rest of the map.44Activation: Finding the Missing Heart66A shrine is inert when Coen first encounters it. Each shrine is locked behind a small unlock quest that the developers shorthand as finding the shrine's missing heart. In the demos shown to press, the process looked like a localised dungeon: the area around the shrine is held by a handful of soldiers or vampires, a chest contains the heart relic, and clearing the soldiers plus looting the chest restores the shrine to functional status.88Once restored, the shrine joins Coen's fast-travel map and unlocks its perk-vendor function. The unlock is permanent for the rest of the run.1010Fast Travel1212Restored shrines are the only fast-travel points in Vale Sangora. There are no horses or mounts. During the day Coen uses Mercurial Fervour to cover ground at speed; at night a perk-unlocked wolf transformation takes over the same role. For longer hops across the valley, the shrine network is what cuts the in-game day cost of travel.1414Travel between shrines does not advance the 30-day clock by itself. Quests at the destination do.1616Perk Vendor1818Shrines are where Coen spends his XP. Standing at an activated shrine opens a perk catalogue. Each perk shows two costs side by side: an experience-point price and an hourglass icon indicating how many in-game hours the player will burn training the perk. The training time is real; it advances the calendar by the listed amount.2020This is the core of why time matters even outside of quests. A run that goes deep into the skill tree pays for those perks in both XP and days. A run that takes the leanest perk path keeps more of the 30-day budget available for rescue planning and exploration.2222Not every perk is bought at a shrine. A handful of perks (such as Precision) are obtained by finding and reading manuals hidden across the world. Manuals bypass the shrine economy entirely; reading one teaches the perk without spending XP or in-game days.2424Advancing the Clock on Purpose26+Shrines are also where Coen can push time forward deliberately. A good deal of content is gated to one half of the cycle: scouting towers need night-form traversal to climb, Hex Magic only works by day, and some encounters only exist after dark. Rather than wait, the player can advance time at a shrine to reach the half they need. The segments still come out of the same 30-day budget, so this is a trade rather than a shortcut.28+Between perk training, the time price attached to it, and manual advancement, the shrine network is the single busiest point of contact between the player and the 30-Day Cycle. Skill points cannot be spent anywhere else, which means every build decision routes through a shrine visit.30+Religious Layer2632Shrines also appear in the world as objects of Brencis's reshaped religion. The roadside shrines that now line Vale Sangora's paths bear his likeness as part of the vampire regime's propaganda campaign. Most of those decorative shrines are not interactable as fast-travel or perk hubs; the player-facing system shrines and the decorative Brencis shrines share the same word in-fiction but serve different mechanical purposes.2834Strategic Use3036Because shrines combine fast travel with perk access, they reward routing the run through them. A common loop:3238Reach a new region. Identify the nearest shrine.Spend a small in-game window clearing the missing-heart unlock.Use the restored shrine as a quest hub: fast travel out for objectives, fast travel back to spend earned XP on perks before pushing further.Track the time spent at the shrine in hours, not days, so the perk budget stays predictable.3440Skipping shrine unlocks is viable for time-pressed runs but compounds: every skipped shrine is more on-foot or hex-assisted travel later, and is a perk vendor the player has chosen to walk past.3642Relationship to Other Systems3844Shrines connect directly to time as a resource, the 30-day cycle, skill trees, and exploration. They do not interact directly with the notoriety system: fast-travelling does not raise infamy, and shrine training does not draw Brencis's attention.
