I have no idea if this is feasible, however, I would love to see a mod that allows the player to interact with the warp statues located across the map and use them to warp to any of the other statues without the use of the totems, much in the same way the mine-carts work. In fact, maybe even make them only available to the player after the mine-carts are unlocked, making it like an earned ability, effectively changing the mine-cart bundles to mine-cart AND warp statue bundles. Again, I have no idea if this is do-able or not, but if someone could make this happen, that would be great!
If this were possible, I think it would be better if you made it so that each statue only unlocked once you got the recipe to craft the warp item for each statue unlocked?
Like irrimn says, I'd like to see it somehow involve the totems personally. Something as simple as 'Use the shrine while you have the totem in your inventory and poof, you're there. Totem intact. No need to keep remaking them over and over and over again.' would satisfy me in this particular regard. But hey, not my suggestion so I'll shut up.
Exactly, which is why I said 'have the totem, use the altar'... to avoid this 'have totem, use totem anywhere, get anywhere else' issue. I could go one step further and say you ought to need both the totem of the shrine you're using AND the totem of the shrine you're wanting to warp to...
Why not make craftable permanent totems that are made from a large number of consumable ones? And then, when you have all of the permanent ones, allow you to craft them into one that lets you choose one of the three locations to warp to?
