The Greed Shrines in Megabonk give you 25 gold and permanently increase the run's difficulty by five percent. While this may seem like a massive downside at first, since it's natural to think you want your runs to be easy to win, you have to increase your runs' difficulty if you want victory.
The difficulty boost from Greed Shrines means more enemies show up on the screen, all with higher health, speed and strength. Since more difficulty means more enemies to kill, and because killing mobs is the best way to get Gold and XP, this added challenge implies there’s more XP and Gold available than usual in the form of monsters. Since one thing leads to another, the more difficulty you gain, the faster you can level up and the stronger you can get—if you don't die in the process.
It's not a coincidence that the description of the Cursed Tome, which increases Difficulty like Greed Shrines, reads "Only gamers pick this one." You need to be good at the game, know your builds, and plan what you'll do to take advantage of higher difficulties.
Best way to use Greed Shrines in Megabonk
Use Greed Shrines when you feel the game is too easy. If you're defeating enemies quickly and don't see enough of them popping up, look for the light red spots on the mini-map. This is a Greed Shrine location. Approach the skull mounted on a stake, activate it, and look for other of these shrines if the game still feels too easy.
On Tier 1 runs, this method of difficulty scaling should be good enough. If you want to win in Tiers 2 or 3, you will need to activate Greed Shrines aggressively to reach high levels quickly so you can take down the Stages 2 and 3 bosses.
Don't activate Greed Shrines too early into a run, especially with characters who have slow starts like Sir Chadwell. Grab some Weapons and Tomes first and work on increasing difficulty later, or the run will become too hard for you to handle. If you overdo and have too many active Greed Shrines at once, you can't reduce difficulty later, so it's better to restart your run and take it easier next time.
If you're using Sir Chadwell, you'll likely avoid Greed Shrines in the early game because his passive ability increases difficulty by one percent with each level he gains. Unless you want an extreme challenge, you can avoid these shrines if you're using Sir Chadwell.
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The post What Greed Shrines do in Megabonk appeared first on Destructoid.
