The Greed Shrines in Megabonk give you 25 gold and permanently increase the run's difficulty by five percent. While this may seem like a massive downside at first, since it's natural to think you want your runs to be easy to win, you have to increase your runs' difficulty if you want victory.
The difficulty boost from Greed Shrines means more enemies show up on the screen, all with higher health, speed and strength. Since more difficulty means more enemies to kill, and because killing mobs is the best way to get Gold and XP, this added challenge implies there’s more XP and Gold available than usual in the form of monsters. Since one thing leads to another, the more difficulty you gain, the faster you can level up and the stronger you can get—if you don't die in the process.
