Screams of the Desiccated grants permanent shrine buffs while affected by no flasks - and it enables interactions the game has never seen before. This guide covers every shrine buff in the game, the four shrine-related unique items, and how to put it all together into a real build for 3.28.
POE Shrine Buffs
Shrines are a league mechanic you meet during the campaign and through endgame maps — guarded by a pack of monsters. Click the shrine, get a temporary buff. Simple. What's not simple anymore is that Screams of the Desiccated turns these temporary buffs into permanent ones. Below is a full analysis of every shrine, calculating stat ranges from 0% increased shrine buff effect (base values) up to 150% increased shrine buff effect (the ceiling from combining The Gull and Blunderbore). Even at 75% with just one of those items, the numbers are extraordinary.
Prayge This Works
It has not been fully confirmed by GGG that shrine buff effect from The Gull and Blunderbore applies to the permanent shrine buffs granted by Screams of the Desiccated. The base values alone are already excellent — if buff effect applies on top, the results are outright game-changing. Plan around the base values and enjoy the upside if it goes through. GGG, please let us have fun with this one.
Diamond Shrine
Offensive, S-Tier
Core Effect: All Hits are Critical Strikes
Scales with Buff Effect? No — Binary on/off
Every hit your character makes is a critical strike. Doesn't matter how much reduced crit chance you have, doesn't matter if the skill has 0% base crit — everything crits. Because it's binary, it doesn't scale with shrine buff effect at all, which actually makes it the most reliable shrine to plan around. You don't need The Gull or Blunderbore to get full value from it, so you can potentially keep your helmet and chest slots open for rare items depending on what defensive shrine is rolled on the belt.
Key Interactions
Marylene's Fallacy — 48% less crit chance is completely irrelevant here. Enjoy the ~300% global crit multiplier. Damage solved in one amulet slot.
Winds of Fate — Staff with ~1250 pDPS and 150% crit multiplier. Its downside can be ignored entirely with permanent Diamond Shrine.
Herald of Thunder — Has 0% base crit, meaning it normally can never crit. With Diamond Shrine, HoT crits every hit. Scale it easily for absurd damage.
Explosion effects — Explodes that crit now apply all ailments (which they normally cannot) and deal dramatically more damage. The most satisfying explodes you will experience.
Flame Dash and other skills with normally low or zero crit — all benefit massively.
Resistance Shrine
Defensive, S-Tier
All Elemental Resistance: +50% → +125%
All Maximum Resistance: +10% → +25%
This includes chaos resistance as well. Even at the base value of +50% to all elemental resistance, that's already hitting 10% overcap above the normal 75% cap before any gear. Minus res maps, minus max res map mods, and other annoying mechanics throughout the game are completely negated because of that overcap — stonks.
Maximum resistance is one of the scarcest stats in the game. Getting +10% baseline (up to +25% with full buff effect) to all max res — including chaos — normally requires an entire build's worth of investment. With full buff effect, you're looking at 90%+ max elemental resistance and 90%+ max chaos resistance for free. This is better than Mageblood flask resistance. This was also shown in the trailer alongside Diamond Shrine, so it's safe to plan around.
Community Note
"Screams of the Desiccated is insanely strong and may be mageblood rare. The guaranteed crit is good and all but perm resistance shrine is ridiculous. With all the shrine buff stuff will cap resistances at 90 easily." — This mirrors what many players are saying. The resistance shrine alone might be worth more than Diamond for many builds.
Acceleration Shrine
Offensive, S-Tier
Increased Action Speed: 50% → 125%
Increased Projectile Speed: 80% → 200%
Permanent crack mode. Action speed is one of the rarest stats in the game because it acts as a multiplier on everything your character does — attacks, casts, movement. It stacks additively with other action speed modifiers like Temporal Chains and Chill, but is multiplicative with regular attack/cast/movement speed. This amount of permanent action speed has never been seen before in any context. At 125% increased action speed, you're more than doubling your character's animation speed on top of all your other speed investment.
Projectile speed scales some skills extremely well. Spark is obviously eating very, very good with both action speed and proj speed together. Black Zenith + Winter Orb is another interesting option since WOrb benefits from projectile speed now. Does this amount of permanent action speed enable something special besides being absolutely insane? Probably — we may see entirely new archetypes emerge around this single shrine.
Community Note
Multiple players have confirmed that Acceleration Shrine + Spark is "completely broken" — even with unoptimized gear and level 1 support gems, it obliterates screens. One player described covering the entire screen in a carpet of sparks. The damage is bonkers regardless of ascendancy; just pick whoever you like defensively (Guardian with shrine upgrader or Inquisitor are both strong choices).
Echoing Shrine
Offensive, S-Tier
MORE Atk & Cast Speed: 100% → 250%
Skill Repeats: +1 → +2 additional
Note: this is a more multiplier — not increased, more. It stacks multiplicatively with every other speed source. 250% more attack and cast speed means your character is attacking 3.5× faster than it would without this shrine, on top of all your increased speed from other sources. And then your skills repeat an additional 1–2 times on top of that. Can repeat skills that normally can't be repeated, such as Flame Dash.
Not sure if this one will even be in the rotation (like Divine Shrine, GGG may exclude it), or if the repeat count scales with buff effect. But even accounting for just 100% more speed and +1 repeat, it's already truly insane. Pair this with Soul Eater and... yeah, I don't know if GGG servers are going to be okay. You're going to be tossing a bajillion projectiles every second. This is the shrine that will stress-test the game engine alongside Acceleration Shrine — too bad you can't get them both from the same belt.
Community Note
Players who tested Echoing + Acceleration stacking via The Gull's lesser shrines in previous patches described the interaction as "bonkers action speed plus duplicated actions go absolutely nuts with increased shrine effect." The mana cost becomes completely impossible to sustain without Replenishing Shrine or a very intentional build designed to drive mana costs low.
Gloom Shrine
Offensive, A-Tier
Non-Chaos as Extra Chaos: 10% → 25%
Explode on Kill: 40% → 100% chance
Gloom Shrine explodes always feel good. They have a big base AoE, high chance, huge base damage (a quarter of enemy max life), and deal chaos damage which enemies usually aren't very resistant to. Satisfying noise. Slap this on any build and you've got map AoE clear solved. At 100% chance with full buff effect, every single enemy you kill explodes.
The more interesting note is the gain non-chaos damage as extra chaos modifier. You don't see this stat much in the game, and it works in a way that many players don't expect. If you're running a conversion build, this modifier applies at each stage of conversion. Say you have lightning → cold → fire. The extra chaos applies to each conversion step separately, giving a far bigger damage boost than the tooltip number suggests.
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It's a very rare modifier and this amount is huge. This could open up some juicy damage scalings for conversion builds that weren't previously realistic.
Replenishing Shrine
Defensive, A-Tier
Mana Regen / Second: 10% → 25%
Life Regen / Second: 6.7% → 16.7%
This one really needs a deeper look. Percentage-based mana regen is REALLY hard to get in this game — there's maybe 5% or less total available across any class normally. This shrine at base gives twice that, and at full buff effect gives five times that. And note: this scales with increased mana regeneration rate, which you can realistically get 400% of. So you can hit 100% of your mana pool regenerated in one second. Currently, mana stacker builds lean towards attack-based because you can get mana leech — but with this shrine, spell-based mana stackers become far more comfortable and far stronger than mana leech ever was.
Life regeneration of 16.7% per second also just makes the game incredibly comfy. You're regenerating through most damage-over-time effects without any other investment.
Build-Enabling Interactions
Mind over Matter builds that consume a lot of mana. Archmage and Frostmage (the new support that works like Archmage).
Indigon, Mana Storm, Mind of Council — all of these have trouble with mana recovery and this shrine solves it.
Tinctures and mana burn costs become manageable.
Chainbreaker (alternate keystone from Timeless Jewel) + mana stack for seemingly "infinite" rage regeneration — this could enable something very juicy.
The Agnostic — ez pz to sustain now. It converts mana into life regen, and with this much flat mana regen the effective life recovery is enormous.
Eldritch Battery builds that convert life regen into ES regen also get a massive boost here, especially paired with Templar's consecrated ground ascendancy.
Massive Shrine
Defensive, A-Tier
Character Size: 30% → 75%
Increased AoE: 40% → 100%
Increased Life: 40% → 100%
Character size is pretty funny — you become visually enormous, classic Headhunter vibes from back in the day. Not sure if any skills or mechanics actually scale with character size. If there is something, it could be pretty enabling. At minimum it looks cool.
What matters is the rest: that is a ton of life and AoE. 100% increased life at max buff effect is a massive amount that would normally require heavy passive tree and gear investment. And 100% increased AoE improves clear and coverage for virtually any build. Not super build-enabling in terms of creating new archetypes, but still amazing as a generic defensive option for nearly any character.
Note: Blunderbore gives you a lesser version of this shrine passively (Lesser Massive Shrine Buff), so you get a portion of these stats even without the belt rolling Massive.
Impenetrable Shrine
Defensive, A-Tier
Inc. Armour: 100% → 250%
Inc. Evasion: 100% → 250%
Inc. Energy Shield: 100% → 250%
It's usually really hard to get a lot of multiple types of these defensive stats simultaneously. There's no easy way to get values like 250% increased armour and evasion and energy shield from a single source anywhere else in the game. This opens up build paths that weren't realistic before.
Transfiguration of Soul anoint — this converts a percentage of your increased energy shield into increased spell damage. Combined with 250% increased ES from this shrine alone, that's a huge chunk of damage from a single interaction. Iron Reflexes armour stacker with ES for "blue life" is another possibility. Hybrid defense builds that stack armour + evasion + ES simultaneously become realistic when you're getting 250% increased of each for free. Needs a deeper dive, but the potential here is real — especially for armour stackers or ES stackers who want the highest possible scaling.
Resonating Shrine
Off / Def, B-Tier
Charge on Hit: 20% → 50%
Charge on Kill: 60% → 160%
Max Charges (All Types): +1 → +2
It was changed. Resonating Shrine no longer grants a bonus per power, frenzy, and endurance charge. Instead it now grants additional maximum power, frenzy, and endurance charges. This shrine still grants charge generation on both hit and kill — and that generation is far better than anything any other build can normally achieve.
With any fast-hitting skill this will be easy max charges at all times. Up to +2 to all max charges at 150% buff effect means up to six extra charges total (2 power + 2 frenzy + 2 endurance). Discharge my beloved says hello. Any build that consumes charges, or any charge stacker archetype, will love this shrine if it's available. The 50% on-hit and 160% on-kill generation makes sustaining max charges trivially easy.
Community Idea
One player is planning a charge stacking Juggernaut with Unrelenting + Unyielding, paired with Resonating Shrine for charge generation and Resistance Shrine for 90% all max res. With tons of endurance charges, the flat reduced elemental damage taken + phys damage reduction becomes massive, and you can layer Immortal Call on top since 50% on-hit constantly refills your charges even after consuming them.
Brutal Shrine
Offensive, C-Tier
Increased Damage: 50% → 125%
Stun Duration on Enemies: 30% → 75%
Also: knocks enemies back on hit and extra gore. Well — this one. The way increased damage works in the game, you already have so many sources of it that this really only amounts to maybe 10–20% more damage for a built character, which isn't nothing, but it's just not interesting compared to what Diamond, Echoing, or Acceleration provide. A nice little side bonus.
The increased stun duration on enemies might enable some stun builds though? It's always cool to see those work. Not sure how easy it is to stack this modifier from other sources, so 75% here could push a stun build over a threshold. Note that Blunderbore gives you a Lesser Brutal Shrine passively, so you get partial value of this even without rolling it on the belt.
Lightning, Freezing, Shrouded, Skeletal
These are the dead mods of the belt - every unique item has these kinds of filler rolls. Lightning Shrine casts Shock Novas and creates shocking ground. Freezing Shrine casts Ice Novas and creates chilled ground. Shrouded Shrine creates smoke clouds around you. Skeletal Shrine summons skeletons. The chill/shock effects aren't nothing (shock and chill effect do have value), but they're not remotely close to what the other shrines offer.
The one possible exception: Skeletal Shrine might have something going on for minion builds that scale with number of active minions. Dark Pact with permanent summoned skeletons is an interesting idea that players have mentioned. You could potentially manipulate duration and attempt Cast When Damage Taken loops with the summon mechanic, though that's highly unlikely to work. Maybe some amount-of-minions-active scalings exist that make this worthwhile. Probably not — but maybe.
Divine Shrine
Not Available
Cannot be Damaged. You've probably seen these in game rarely — suddenly you can't die, but mobs take forever to kill because your build lags like crazy if you're hitting too many things. Lasts only 20 seconds normally, less than the default shrine duration. There is zero chance this is available as a permanent shrine buff. If somehow it was, the game would literally stop functioning. Consider it excluded from every pool that matters.
PoE Shrine Uniques
There are four unique items in the game that directly interact with shrine mechanics. Together they form an ecosystem: one provides permanent shrine buffs, two amplify those buffs with increased shrine buff effect (while providing their own passive shrine layers), and one offers a supplementary on-kill random shrine buff. Here's each one with full stats.
Screams of the Desiccated
Leather Belt · Requires Level 56
+(25–40) to maximum Life
You have (Offensive) Shrine Buff while Affected by no Flasks
You have (Defensive) Shrine Buff while Affected by no Flasks
+30 to Intelligence
+28% to Chaos Resistance
Drops from an endgame boss in League of Screams. Rolls a random offensive and a random defensive shrine.
The Gull
Raven Mask · Requires Level 38
Trigger Level 1 Create Lesser Shrine when you Kill an Enemy
(120–150)% increased Evasion and Energy Shield
+(30–45) to maximum Energy Shield
+(60–80) to maximum Life
+(30–40)% to Cold Resistance
75% increased Effect of Shrine Buffs on you
50% increased Duration of Shrine Effects on you
Blunderbore
Astral Plate · Requires Level 62
+(8–12)% to all Elemental Resistances
+(500–700) Strength Requirement
(80–120)% increased Armour
(50–75)% increased Effect of Shrine Buffs on you
You have Lesser Brutal Shrine Buff
You have Lesser Massive Shrine Buff
The Golden Charlatan
Lion Sword · Requires Level 65
+50 to Strength and Dexterity
+200 Intelligence Requirement
(200–300)% increased Physical Damage
(10–16)% increased Attack Speed
(100–200)% increased Critical Strike Chance
Critical Strikes with this Weapon do not deal extra Damage
Gain a random Shrine Buff for 30 seconds when you Kill a Rare or Unique Enemy
+1 to maximum Mana per 2 Intelligence
How They Interact
Screams of the Desiccated is the core piece — it provides permanent offensive + defensive shrine buffs as long as you have no flask effects on you. The Gull (helmet, 75% buff effect) and Blunderbore (body armour, 50–75% buff effect) both amplify those buffs while adding their own layers — The Gull spawns lesser shrines on kill that you can click for temporary bonuses, and Blunderbore passively gives you Lesser Brutal + Lesser Massive shrine buffs. Using both simultaneously reaches the 150% shrine buff effect ceiling but costs you both your helm and chest slots. The Golden Charlatan is more niche — its random 30-second shrine buff on rare/unique kill is supplementary rather than build-defining. Note: Blunderbore has a very high Strength requirement (up to 700 extra), so plan your attributes accordingly.
Blunderbore Passive Shrines with Buff Effect
If shrine buff effect applies to Blunderbore's passive Lesser Brutal and Lesser Massive shrine buffs at 150% total effect, those "lesser" buffs become quite strong on their own: ~50% increased damage, ~50% stun duration, knockback, ~25% character size, ~50% AoE, ~50% life. These are separate from what the belt grants and stack on top.
PoE 3.28 Shrine Build Setup Strategy
Shrine Buff Effect: How Much to Invest
The central decision for every shrine build: how many gear slots are you willing to give up for shrine buff effect? This determines your power ceiling and what defensive stats you need to source from elsewhere.
Shrine Buff Effect Tiers
Belt Only (0%): 0%
Gull OR Blunderbore: 75%
Both (Gull + Blunderbore): 150%
With The Gull (75%) and a max-rolled Blunderbore (75%), you reach 150% increased shrine buff effect. That's the ceiling. Using just one gives 75%. The trade-off is real — you're giving up your helmet and body armour for shrine power — but the permanent buffs at 150% effect compensate and then some. On top of the belt's buffs, Blunderbore gives passive Lesser Brutal + Lesser Massive, The Gull spawns clickable lesser shrines on kill, and any regular shrines you find in maps still work normally and are also amplified.
Diamond Shrine Exception
Diamond Shrine doesn't scale with buff effect — it's binary (crits or no crits). If your belt has Diamond Shrine as its offensive mod, you can potentially skip The Gull and Blunderbore entirely and wear rare helmet + body armour for raw stats. This only makes sense if your defensive shrine is also one that provides enough value at base — Resistance Shrine at base (+50% all ele res, +10% all max res) is already extremely strong and may not need the extra scaling depending on your build.
No Flasks? No Problem.
The belt's condition is "while affected by no Flasks" — not "you cannot use flasks." This distinction matters. Here’s how to mitigate the flask loss and turn it into an advantage:
+1 Ring Slot (Nameless Bloodline)
The Nameless Bloodline passive cluster has a small node — Unseen Hand — that says "Utility flasks are disabled." Normally a brutal downside. But since you can't use flasks anyway, it's completely free. The payoff? An extra ring slot. That's a massive amount of stats, resistances, and attributes from a node that costs you literally nothing.Instant Flasks (Worm Flask LOGIN?)
Flasks that apply their effect instantly may not leave you "affected" by a flask buff afterward. This includes the Writhing Jar (worm flask) — expect Worm Blaster builds to make an appearance. The exact interaction needs testing on launch day, but the potential is there for some classic jank.Tinctures — Warden for Double Tinctures
Tinctures are not flasks and are completely unaffected by this restriction. Warden characters can run double tinctures for strong bonuses while maintaining full shrine uptime. This makes Warden a particularly attractive class choice for shrine belt builds.
Multiple Belt Strategy
You can own multiple versions of this belt for different use cases. The shrine buffs are permanent as long as the belt is equipped, so swapping is seamless:
Speed Belt: Acceleration Shrine (offensive) for permanent crack mode. Swap this on when you're mapping and want to go fast.
Tank Belt: Resistance Shrine / Massive Shrine / Impenetrable Shrine for defensive layering. Use for harder content or dangerous map mods.
Build-Enabling Belt: Diamond Shrine for all-hits-crit. The build-defining belt that opens up impossible interactions.
Clear Belt: Gloom Shrine for permanent explodes. Slap this on any build and get free AoE map clear from chaos explosions.
These belts will be extremely expensive, so having a full collection is for the "rich rich peeps." But even owning two versions — say Diamond + Acceleration — lets you swap between precision bossing and speed mapping with a single gear change.
Bad Roll Utilization
Here's a weird but clever trick: you can use bad rolls of the belt in a strategic way. By equipping a belt with undesirable shrine rolls, you cancel the possibility of rolling those shrines on the Guardian's rotate shrine node. This means a higher chance of getting better shrines from the Guardian rotation mechanic. Cheap belts that nobody else wants suddenly have strategic value for manipulating the shrine pool. Buy them up before other players catch on.
Ascendancy Choices & Build Ideas
The shrine belt doesn't lock you into a specific ascendancy — the damage and defense it provides is so large that you can pick whoever you like defensively. That said, some classes interact better than others:
Spark (Acceleration)
OFF: Acceleration | DEF: Resistance or Replenishing
Spark scales insanely well with both action speed and projectile speed. Multiple players who tested this combination described it as "completely broken".
Guardian (shrine upgrader node) or Inquisitor are both strong ascendancy choices. Mana sustain is a real problem at this speed — pair with Replenishing Shrine or optimize mana cost.
Herald of Thunder (Diamond)
OFF: Diamond | DEF: Resistance
HoT has 0% base crit. With Diamond Shrine, it crits every hit. Scale crit multiplier through Marylene's Fallacy (~300 crit mult) and watch HoT obliterate screens. Pair with Winds of Fate for a massive physical damage staff whose downside is irrelevant. Explosion effects that crit apply all ailments for chain reactions.
Charge Stacking Juggernaut (Resonating)
OFF: Resonating | DEF: Resistance
Unrelenting + Unyielding with tons of endurance charges. Resonating Shrine gives trivial charge generation (50% on hit, 160% on kill) plus +2 max to all charge types. Pair with Resistance Shrine for 90% all max res. Layer Immortal Call on top — charges refill instantly even after consuming them. Absurd physical + elemental damage reduction.
Conversion Build (Gloom)
OFF: Gloom | DEF: Impenetrable or Resistance
The non-chaos-as-extra-chaos modifier applies at each stage of conversion. A Lightning → Cold → Fire conversion build gets 62.5% of original damage added as chaos from just 25% on the tooltip. Plus 100% chance to explode enemies. Open up juicy damage scalings that weren't realistic before.
Black Zenith Winter Orb (Acceleration)
OFF: Acceleration | DEF: Massive or Resistance
Winter Orb benefits from projectile speed now. Black Zenith + Acceleration Shrine's 200% increased proj speed + 125% action speed = massive coverage.
Archmage / Frostmage Caster (Diamond + Replenishing)
OFF: Diamond | DEF: Replenishing
Diamond Shrine for crits on a mana-hungry caster. Replenishing Shrine solves mana recovery — 25% mana regen/sec scaled with increased mana regeneration rate can hit 100% of your pool per second. Spell-based mana stacking becomes far stronger than attack-based mana leech. Indigon and Archmage builds love this.
Armour/ES Hybrid (Impenetrable)
OFF: Diamond or Gloom | DEF: Impenetrable
250% increased armour, evasion, AND energy shield from one source. Transfiguration of Soul anoint converts the ES bonus into spell damage.
Purifying Flame of Revelations
OFF: Diamond or Acceleration | DEF: Massive
Aim with the Shockwave, not the main hit. With Massive Shrine's 100% increased AoE, the shockwave coverage becomes enormous.
Endgame Farming Strategy
The League Farming Strat
Farm whatever you need to do to print the boss key / instance and fight the endgame boss that drops Screams of the Desiccated over and over. These belts are going to be the flavor of the entire league. If the belt works as described, it's the single most in-demand item of the patch. Every build wants one. Many builds want multiple with different shrine rolls. Optimizing your character to efficiently farm this boss is likely the most profitable activity in the League of Screams. Mageblood is going to be in the dirt — nobody cares about Mageblood anymore if this belt does what we think it does.
Planning Safely for League Start
Safest Shrines to Build Around
If you're theory-crafting a build before league start, the safest option is to plan around Diamond Shrine (offensive) and Resistance Shrine (defensive). Both were shown in the trailer and are guaranteed to exist on the belt. Don't plan your league starter around owning this belt — it will be a chase item and expensive early, possibly Mageblood-rare. But do consider what your build looks like with it as a mid-league or endgame upgrade goal. If your build works fine without the belt but becomes absurd with it, you're in a good spot.
A Note on Uncertainty
This belt shall work exactly as expected, in its greatest form. GGG pls let us have fun. But realistically — keep an eye on patch notes and day-one hotfixes. GGG may adjust how shrine buff effect interacts with the belt, restrict certain shrines from the rotation (Echoing? Divine?), or change the no-flask condition. The base values are strong regardless of what happens, but the 150% scaling ceiling depends on interactions that could change. If you find other interactions or tech, share them and the community will keep updating PoB links and build guides as information comes in.