[Campaign suggestion]: Religion is back to Wraeclast with area mods for current and alt characters

Injecting my own suggestion to a game is one kind of a hobby. And since I'll probably be playing this game again and again just like with PoE1, I want to make suggestions to the continuous campaign experience by introducing account wide agency to the campaign difficulty.

# Lore connection

Innocence and Goddess of Justice from PoE1 are presumably alive in PoE2 timeline. My pick for the suggestion though would be the Goddess of Justice because it makes sense for her to scale and balance any risk and reward system I'm about to propose.

# Preface for interacting with the mechanic

Currently it often seems that the best use for early Divines is to trade it for gear, but I kinda want for players to have a choice to hold onto their early Divine Orbs. To do that, imagine there is a divine Scale in the campaign, located in a remote place or town. There you can prove you're worthy by offering up to 6 Divine Orbs as a tribunal to tip the Scales of Justice of the world. The orbs are not lost, because you can take them back, but you would then lose the effect.

# Mechanics

The Goddess statue holds the Scale of Justice high up in one hand, and the Sword of Judgement down low in the other hand. Putting Divines onto the Scale can have up to 3 effects to the campaign areas, where is up to the players to have their own agency over them:
- The first side of the Scale increases the monster speed and experience gained by 4% for each Divine. To my presumption by surprising the players with ever so slightly faster enemies makes the campaign feel a bit more fresh, and coupled with increased experience gained the campaign is going to be faster with ease of meeting attribute requirements. This is for those who feel the campaign as a boring chore.
- The second side of the Scale increases monster life by 4% and item rarity by 8% for each Divine. To my presumption it will be easy to make more challenging campaign enemies and bosses feel more rewarding with IIR alone, whereas finding rarer items helps with gearing against the said enemies, presuming GGG won't skimp too much with the effect of IIR. This is for those who want to have more meaningful combat and mastery over the loot.
- The third effect is varied and changed for each Divine put into any Scale. Each Divine lowers the hand holding the Scale of Justice and raises the hand holding the Sword of Judgement. A static increase to monster damage by 4% for each Divine in the scale is added. In addition it adds an interesting mechanic to spawn or happend during the campaign to make the campaign experience feel more fresh. For example new boss mechanics, more shrines and unique strongboxes, few traps that affect both enemies and players, or more rogue exiles. These individual effects are not additive, but swap depending on how many Divines there are, so each level of investment can make the campaign feel more distinct. This is the core PoE experience, where risk and rewards increase together and variety is the spice of life.

# Player perception and risks

It is not presumed players can or want to immediately fill the Scale with Divine Orbs, but even putting one orb in should make the campaign feel a bit different. But as time progresses there should be an opportunity for 6 somewhat different campaign experiences.

The mechanic is mainly designed for alt characters, but I can imagine there could be some end game challenges as well for the main character as well. As an example it could also affect Ascendancy Trials as well, but I would be afraid it would make the Divine cost mechanic feel mandatory.

The biggest risk for players would be for the HC-players, because presumably my suggestion would not allow players to remove Divines from the Scale until they can get to them in the campaign. I hope there would be a solution to this. For example for the effect to be active the player would have to carry in their inventory a 2x1 sized Offering to the Goddess quest item. To disable the effect the player can throw the Offering to the ground, which will destroy it and remove the effect immediately. Dying also has a chance to destroy the Offering to reduce the number of rage quits, because I know some players have no impulse control over the challenges when promised with increased rewards. The offering can be bought back from the Jewellery shop in each town. In multiplayer the Offering effects stack for added fun, whereas the Extra added to campaign is determined by the owner of the instance. In Riverbank the first zombie our character stabs drops the Offering if it would have an effect to have an immediate start.

# Tldr

Using Divines one can have rogue-lite features added in combination with a 'new game +' feature in the campaign.