Ancient shrine
Ancient shrines, commonly referred to as ancient dangers due to the event card, are large structures that spawn on the map upon generation. They take the form of a massive, unexplored room. though they may be damaged somehow after map generation. If they spawn damaged, they are most likely ruins.
Having a colonist walk by the walls of the structure will trigger an Ancient danger event prompting:
"As (Colonist Name) draws near the ancient wall a sense of foreboding overcomes him. (S)He isn't sure why, but (s)he feels this dusty structure may contain great dangers"
Description
Ancient shrines are large rooms of stone or steel walls. In contrast to ruins, the walls of the shrine always begin undamaged and in perfect condition. Ancient shrines generate either partially or completely under natural rock formations. Ancient shrines are not guaranteed to spawn on small or medium maps, but will always spawn on larger map sizes. Two or more may spawn on the largest map sizes.
There are two components to the shrine's "danger":
- A non-human threat immediately revealed when opening the shrine. This can be either mechanoids, insectoids with their requisite bug hives, or even a few fleshbeasts if the Anomaly DLC is installed. Beware - even centipedes can appear in an ancient shrine.
- The beings inside the ancient cryptosleep caskets. They are not always hostile. This can contain a human, a human and a megascarab, a group of megascarabs, or nothing. Humans will belong to one of two Ancients factions; one faction is hostile, the other faction starts off neutral. Megascarabs are always non-hostile. Opening 1 ancient cryptosleep casket will open all the caskets. Humans may spawn downed or as corpses.
Due to being fully enclosed, one cannot see within the shrine, and hovering over the grayed out area as seen in the picture will only say 'Undiscovered' in the bottom left corner. The only way to find out what is inside is to deconstruct or destroy a wall section.
There are many rewards within the ancient shrine. It can contain artifacts such as psychic animal pulsers or psychic insanity lances, and valuable items like luciferium are common. Ancients often carry plasteel, gold, and advanced components; even their corpses carry loot. Ancients can spawn with synthread and hyperweave clothing, power armor, high quality weaponry, or may be naked.
In addition to the loot, ancient shrines will contain ancient cryptosleep caskets, tables of different sizes, columns, and/or urns. Their floors are generally made out of flagstone, steel tile, or stone tile. These can all be deconstructed.
Analysis
Dealing with the danger
Build the traps first, then the walls.
When opening the ancient shrine, it is recommended to not deconstruct the wall, but to destroy it with ranged weaponry. This gives you some distance to deal with scythers and other threats. Make sure to keep colonists drafted, or toggle their threat response from Attack to Flee.
The spike trap tunnel on the right is likely to take out scythers, lancers, and megaspiders that inhabit the shrine. For centipedes, it is recommended to have a bolt-action rifle or sniper rifle on hand and kite the centipedes.
If a trade caravan happens to spawn near the ancient danger, you can open it. Caravans likely have enough firepower to clear the entire danger, or at least, severely weaken it. In a similar fashion, shooting an ancient cryptosleep casket will unleash its ancients - mechs, insects, and ancients should all fight each other.
Dealing with ancients
The shrine itself contains a lot of loot, but so does its ancients. Even if the ancients are neutral, it is worthwhile to capture or kill them for assault weaponry, armor, and materials. If a stray bullet doesn't hit the cryptosleep caskets, they should remain closed, even after renovating the rest of the danger.
If captured, ancient soldiers have incredibly low resistance, making them very quick recruits.
- Using fire
By using fire, you can attack ancients without a gunfight.
First, enclose the shrine with a door, so that it is "Inside" for temperature purposes. Place some fuel and raise the temperature up high. Contiously throw molotov cocktails or other flame weapons until the room hits at least 200 °C (392 °F). Then shoot the cryptosleep caskets. Both hostile and friendly units will be downed through heatstroke, avoiding the usual death on down chance.
The ancient cryptosleep caskets will be at risk of destruction, which can kill ancients and damage gear. But they have quite a bit of health, so you can extinguish important items and capture important pawns before that happens.
Note that pawns that are downed by heatstroke are subject to the death on down chance, so this cannot be used to easily capture prisoners.
Fire being used to handle an ancient shrine's cryptosleep caskets, once the initial threats are cleared.
Place some fuel, toss molotovs from outside until the room is hot enough, then shoot the caskets to open them.
Even with enemy firefoam pop packs: it isn't the fire that kills, its the heatstroke (usually).
Loot table
 | This article is suggested to be rewritten. Reason: Percentages based on a random sample - multiple runs of each same need to be done to verify their accuracy. Dev Mode -> Open Debug Logging Menu -> Thing Set Maker Sampled -> MapGen_AncientTempleContents. You can help the RimWorld Wiki by improving it. |
The following loot can be found scattered on the floor of an ancient shrine. The percentage relates to the chance that the loot in question will occur in a given ancient shrine. For stackable items, it is currently unclear how the size of the stack to be spawned is generated.[Detail Needed]
Ruined objects and crates
 | This article relates to content added by Ideology (DLC). Please note that it will not be present without the DLC enabled. |
Ruined objects and crates like hermetic crates and security crates may spawn inside the ancient shrine. While the ruined objects will yield nothing upon destruction whether through combat or deconstruction, the crates will yield loot when opened, ranging from hyperweave to rarely thrumbo horn, and also includes some Royalty DLC items such as techprints, if the DLC is also enabled. The crates yield nothing when demolished as well.