Corruption altar - Githubissues

A Rare Dungeon Feature that allows you to sacrifice a group of items and have it "chaotically" return a new item. For example: if you offer a couple of potions, it will return a new potion with the value of the two combined items. If you offer Rune Gear, it may return a Rune or the same Gear with different enchantments.

If a mixed group of Items is offered, a random item is picked, making it possible to "meta-game" slightly - such as offering two cheap potions and a powerful Satff for a 2-in-3 chance of getting a powerful good potion in return. Precious objects are valid offering but only as "boosters" - on their own, they will simply return other objects but in a group they will be ignored in favor of any other items. Artifacts are beyond an Altar's power.

Altars are always active and ready to receive items so they probably should take 10±10% of the total gold value as "sacrifice", to prevent players from just re-rolling gear eternally until they get what they want, while also allowing them to do it at least once or twice without completely losing their original Item's value.

One downside to this is that the item categories need to setup manually, which makes it easy for new content add to fall through the cracks - but it shouldn't be a major problems as long as a dynamic "catch-all" category exists that include all items not covered by the explicit categories. So, say, if the main categories are Scroll, Rune Gear and Potions, offering a Staff will return anything from another Staff to Eidolons to Wands.

The main objective of these Altars are:

Thematic. They're very risky but also can deliver any item in the game, while Shops and treasure are limited by nature. They even (very loosely) mimic the concept of addiction as even on a good result you can be tempted to try again for better odds (keeping in mind that even a lower-value item can be more powerful in the right circumstances).
It's a "junk disposal" system that works as an alternative for simply going back to Town and selling things - to the point players may want to find or go back to an Altar rather than selling. Selling is good if you know what you want to buy with the gold received (including services) but this is not only objectively better returns (~90% over ~50%) but it can return you any item in the game, theoretically, even if the chances for the best-case-scenario are much smaller compared to just being it if you can find it in a Shop (also slim in themselves). So, basically, an alternative "vendoring" system with plenty of virtues and flaws that should stand on its own.
Similar to the last but as an "upgrade system" rather than "junk disposal" - is your Staff or Rune Gear getting underpowered after being used for 10 levels straight? Put it in an Altar, throw some precious gems in there for good measure and you have a good chance of getting something better suited to your current power level on the other side of it.

tukkek / javelin

Corruption altar #308