We've been monitoring the conflict surrounding shrines for quite some time now. After discussion, we've decided to make some general changes to facilitate a more engaging experience for both the aggressor and defender.

Firstly, only one person may DEFILE a shrine at a time now. There will be a short cooldown after each defile to prevent multiple people dropping a shrine very quickly. The balance of DEFILE (and SANCTIFY) has also been increased.

The second and larger change is that shrines may now be CONSECRATEd and DESECRATEd. A consecrated shrine may not be defiled until it is desecrated. Only members of the shrines order may CONSECRATE, and only people who are not in said order may DESECRATE. Both consecration and desecration take around one minute to complete during which time the initiator must be in the shrine's room. These are not channeled actions, so you may fight/cure/etc as necessary. If an order activates the WORLDBURN shrine power, all consecrations on said order's shrines will become dormant until the worldburn effect expires. You may only consecrate large shrines: anything smaller will need to be sanctified first.

The order shall receive a message (like with defiling) via the herald during desecration attempts. Consecration is also visible if you probe a shrine.

We hope that these changes shall allow orders to respond more frequently to shrines being attacked, as the window of opportunity to do so will now be much larger.

I'll also take this opportunity to mention that these will be the first of several changes to shrines to provide a more interesting system. Part of this will almost certainly involve there being a limitation on how many shrines each order can have at a time, as this will permit us to increase the relevance of said shrines. Therefore, it'd be a good time to start pondering which shrines you feel are most important to maintain for your orders, if you are one of those that currently possesses a lot of shrines.

Penned by My hand on the 24th of Miraman, in the year 713 AF.