Periodically throughout the year we are blessed with events from Inno Games that has the ability to give us super cool things we don’t otherwise see normally, the exception being from Daily Quest prizes usually. Among these are the Shrine of Awe (SoA), Shrine of Inspiration (SoI), and Shrine of Knowledge (SoK). Each one has a different function, but after a certain point only one of them is worth building: Shrine of Knowledge. This is because after a while the pittance you get from the other two isn’t worth the beauty of the FPs you get from the SoK.
Something to note about the shrines is that all of them will give you population, and all of them will give you coins. In addition, the amount of what you get for population and coins is ruled by what era the shrine is in. The higher the era, the more you get. You also will only get the special production (medals, BPs, or FPs) if the building is motivated, so if you don’t get enough aid then you’re only getting the coins.
Shrine of Awe
The main function of the Shrine of Awe is to reward you with medals. When you’re first starting out (when you’re in Iron Age and haven’t really developed a solid city yet) these can be helpful for a brief spell, to unlock one or two Victory Expansions (these expansions cost medals). As you progress though the number of medals you get from this particular shrine really doesn’t hold up to the test of time. It especially cannot compare with other medal sources as far as a weekly income. You’d be better off building Colosseum, a GB that is absolutely useless and should never be built, than you would be to build SoA; that’s how inefficient they are.
You can even look at the efficiency of what it produces in the Industrial Era as far as medals go. This is a 2×2 building, so it occupies 4 squares of space total. In that four squares of space it is going to produce, daily, 16 medals, or 4 medals per square a day. That comes out to 28 medals a square per week, or 112 medals a week. That’s pitiful! A Victory Tower, for reference, would give you 25 medals a week in Industrial Era at level 1, and it’s a 1×1. Raise that Victory Tower to level 2 and you get 50 a week, meaning four level 2 Victory Towers are better than one Shrine of Awe. Again though, Victory Towers after a while outlive their usefulness for that space; but at least they don’t require Renovation Kits or One-Up Kits, nor do they require a road, and unlike a GB they cost nothing to put up. So as far as a temporary medal solution, Victory Towers are better than Shrine of Awe. Emphasis on temporary though, don’t get attached.
If you really need medals, there are two places where you can absolutely always get more: placing well in your Tournament Towers (done by winning battles anywhere in the game), or getting rewards off a GB (with or without an Arc bonus). In addition, the Daily Quest will often offer a medal reward here and there (often in the thousands for the lowest amount), and you can win them in GE (especially if you make it into Tier 4).
Tournament Towers (aka PvP Towers) are honestly a terrific way to get medals if you like to fight. The following is something I personally achieved in one week. Remember that the tower you place in is dependent on the highest era troop you take into battle, so if you find a bunch of hoodies with the default of two Spearmen for defense you can target them with various eras throughout the week to cover more towers (if you don’t GvG).
LMA – 1st – 175 Medals
PE – 1st – 750 Medals
ME – 1st – 1,100 Medals
PME – 5th – 300 Medals
TE – 2nd – 1,750 Medals
FE – 1st – 3,600 Medals
AF – 4th – 1,600 Medals
Total Medals: 9,275
So I could have made 728 medals off an FE Shrine of Awe that week, which is not even close to what I made taking some towers just to give you an idea; and the tower tournament isn’t taking up extra space in my city.
Shrine of Inspiration
The main function of the Shrine of Inspiration is to offer you Blueprints. This seems really exciting at first because BPs are something we all want to get, can be difficult to get, and we need them. There’s a catch to this building though. If you look closely, you only get one random BP every two days. That comes out to three random BPs in a week. On top of that, unlike the SoA and SoK, SoI is a 3×3 space meaning it takes up an extra five squares of space for that luxury of three BPs a week. You also have to take into account the age of the SoI, because that will determine what era BPs you could get. SoI will produce a random BP of its age or lower (and never of the no-age GBs: Observatory, Temple of Relics, and Oracle of Delphi). So the higher the era of the SoI, the lower the probability to get a certain BP.
Think about it. If you’re in Iron Age, and get an Iron Age SoI, then you have a 50% chance at getting a Zeus BP and a 50% chance at getting a Tower of Babel BP every other day. Those odds aren’t terrible. Even in EMA, you’ll have a 25% chance at Zeus, Tower of Babel, Colosseum, or Lighthouse of Alexandria; so that’s a 75% chance to get a decent BP every other day. In Iron Age and EMA this can be a bit of a benefit to try and secure the BPs for two essential GBs you need for a good foundation: Zeus and Lighthouse. Beyond EMA though the probability for decent BPs continues to decrease because the number of GBs you could receive a BP for goes up. So you add two GBs each era (generally) meaning in HMA you have a 17% chance per BP, LMA is a 13% chance, Colonial is 10% chance… so on and so forth. By a later era like FE where there are 26 potential GBs you could get BPs for, that brings it down to a mere 4% chance to get the BP you need every other day. Yikes!
You are better off hunting for BPs by placing on GBs in reward spots, or aiding specific era buildings. That way you know what you’re getting (or might get, if it’s through aid), and it’s not costing you precious space in your city to do it. Of all the shrines, this one is the most useless. Use it only in Iron Age, maybe EMA, if you’re struggling for those initial GBs (and as soon as Zeus and LoA are planted, get rid of it). Otherwise, don’t bother.
Shrine of Knowledge
The Shrine of Knowledge is the one shrine that will stand the test of time. If you’ve spent a whole day in game, you’ve come to realize that everything is ruled by the power of FPs. The more you have, the further you can go faster. Getting a high daily income of FPs when you collect is a goal that every single player has, and if you don’t have it as a goal yet then I ask, why not? It’s like going to auction, the more money (FPs) you have to throw around, the better you can leverage getting what you want. Whether this is locking into place on a GB, raising your own GB up, researching the tech tree, or helping guild mates by having a large banked set of FPs to toss around; you’re going to need FPs. The higher the era, the more FPs you’re likely to need. I mean, have you seen the cost of the tech tree as you age up? Holy smokes!
As it stands right now the SoK also remains fairly unrivaled in its space efficiency for producing FPs. It’s small, square, and gives you what you need. What’s not to like? There are plenty of other event buildings out there that will give FPs, but unless you’re willing to spend a lot of money on FoE to buy diamonds to get multiples of those event buildings, you’re likely only going to get them once. The SoK has the lovely bonus of being something you can earn fairly regularly. It pops up in events, it’s a prize at the end of completing seven Daily Quests, sometimes it’s a prize for completing a Daily Quest, and likely we’ll see them for purchase in the Antique’s Dealer. There’s honestly only one downside to the SoK, and that is the requirement of it being motivated by aid to work. As you grow and age up, you’ll get more and more SoKs, which means (in theory) more and more FPs. The catch is that they have to be aided to give you that income, so many users who don’t receive enough aid have to rely on the Self Aid Kit to get their full haul. This can be a struggle for many, and is why it’s good to be in a helpful guild that has a requirement for mates to aid regularly (that is being met most of the time by all mates), plus the reason why you should be trimming your friends list down regularly to only include active aiders. It’s also why many who attack have an “aid before raid” policy: they have a lot of things that need aid in their city, SoKs included, and if you aren’t gonna aid them to help them out then they choose to help themselves to your stuff instead by attacking and plundering.
It should also be noted that of all the shrines, only the SoK has the ability to be built from fragments. Fragments are something you can win as quest prizes, and once you have a whole set you can build them into an SoK of your current age. If this is the only shrine that has these fragments, it’s kind of like Inno said “oops, we screwed up on the other two, this is the only one that’s worth building”, right? That’s how I see it anyways.
So as you work on that city, getting the layout just right and picking out the perfect GBs, be sure to consider which shrines are worth the space. If you’re in HMA or beyond and still have a Shrine of Awe or Shrine of Inspiration, I’d recommend re-reading this article on why you should reconsider those choices. 😉
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