Altars

Altars are objects found in the Underworld. Interacting with one can produce positive or negative effects:

* Your hunger bar can be emptied.
* Your health and hunger bars can be filled.
* The altar can spawn any random, non boss monster in the game.
* The altar can double one stackable item in your inventory\* (restrictions apply).
* The altar can do nothing.
* The altar can disappear.

An altar can be used until it disappears.

## Duplicating Items

The altar can randomly select a stackable item in your inventory and duplicate it.

* This process will duplicate up to 30 of the randomly selected item to your inventory.
* Steel bars, poison extract, healing potions, and silver have a cap of 10 instead of 30.
* Gold and Orc Glass can only be duplicated by 1 each time, and **if there are more than 10 in your inventory, half of it will vanish.**

To leverage this mechanic, you can drop the stackable items that you don't want to duplicate before interacting with the altar (putting a floor tile down first is a good precaution). Just do not drop gold ***facing*** the altar if you have infamy, unless you wish to remove it.

## Removing Infamy

If you have infamy, dropping gold while facing an altar will pay to remove some of it. To remove infamy efficiently with your gold, drop the amount of infamy you have divided by 100. (Example: If you have 10,999 infamy and you drop 109 gold with "/drop 109" (10999/100 = 109.99), the altar will remove all of your infamy while taking a minimal amount of your gold.) If this isn't done, the altar will likely take a lot of gold

## Merging Ability Books

You can drop 3 Ability Books while facing an altar to combine them, the results depend on the type and tiers used.

* If you drop 3 of a book of the same type and tier, it will upgrade to the next tier of the same type.
* If you drop 3 of a book of the same tier but different types, they will become a random book of the same tier
* If you drop 3 books of various tiers/types they will become a random book of the lowest tier offered.

## Glowing Altars

This mysterious structure is more common in the deeper parts of the underworld and its inner mechanisms are fairly complex.

**WARNING: NEVER USE +0 BONE DAGGERS AS FODDER. THEY CAN DESTROY ANY OTHER ITEM PLACED WITH THEM ON A GLOWING ALTAR.** [Additionally: +0 bone daggers can only absorb runes from other +0 bone daggers, even on a 100g altar. Blunt daggers may experience a similar set of bugs. Renaming other items will allow them to take +0 bone daggers as fodder, as long as the bone dagger is not also renamed.]

Glowing Altars allow the process commonly called Melding which is combining two pieces of equipment's damage bonuses, defense bonuses,  skill bonuses,  plus bonuses (+1/2/3), and upgrading Runes.

The **dominant** item will attempt to absorb better traits from the **lesser** item.

* The dominant item is usually determined by level requirement. If one of the items is customized, (Smithed or renamed) that will be the dominant item.

Hammers are not needed to meld. Just drop the equipment you want to meld while facing the glowing altar. After two pieces of equipment are on the glowing altar, a sparking animation should play after around 3 seconds.

If the items are of the same type, then plus bonuses (+1/2/3) can sometimes be absorbed.

Equipment can be renamed on these altars just like on anvils; 10 gold normally but free for Supporters .

It's optional to offer gold to the altar to boost its power by 1% per 1 gold. Raising altar power increases the chance of upgrading equipment traits and reduces the chance of the altar disappearing after use.

* Offer (drop) gold first before dropping equipment to avoid unintended melding
* Altars used with no gold disappear after 2-3 uses.
* Glowing Altars when used changes the tile it is on into a Stone Floor which indicates it will likely disappear after using.

Items of a similar power level (or even better the same type) have better results when melding.

Gem bonus slots added with Smithing and built-in skill bonuses on equipment have a chance to transfer completely and will not upgrade or downgrade.

* For example: "+3 exploration +3 unarmed +3 unarmored" skill bonuses on Grass Bands can all transfer to a plain Hide Armor.

Runes upgrade by 1 every melding session until maxed out if the **lesser** item has the same or a higher level rune. Higher levels will have a greater pull and have better results.

* Similarly, Runes can downgrade if they are mixed with inferior runed items but the chance of upgrading is always higher than downgrading.
* A fully powered glowing altar will guarantee at least one rune upgrade if it is available.