*gold = piety

Did western jungle with an elf mage, found a subdungeon with taurogs altar, cleared the guards, clicked the altar, popup with choices to worhsip or deny occured + list of items.
All choices were greyed-out , nothing clickable (aka no feedback on click)
when leaving subdungeon, altar followed to main dungeon and stayed at the entrance of subdungeon.
Even though the char had 0 piety, it was possible to gain/buy 2 items
of the altar and on every magic use there came an annoying message from the altar.

Popup displays of enemies were bugged (their healthbar had red patterns) , weapon dmg of the char displayed 1, but did more dmg on hit.

(sadly no screenshot, closed before thinking. But if this occurs again, ill provide)

This is what normally happens when you unlock a new deity. Are you sure you had 0 piety? Taurog gives you some bonus piety upon leaving the subdungeon where he's unlocked. This is normal for Taurog. He's a very annoying deity, and sadly you are forced to worship him when you unlock him. This is a one-time event, however, and you can ignore him when his alter appears in later dungeons. I'd need to see a screenshot to know what's going on here. There are lots of effects that can cause weird interaction with damage.

tbh, i really miss the screenshot (and an abiity to save games during dungeons for this kind of situations, though hat would be abused ofc)

what i can say definitely, that there was NO Option anytime _highlighted/ungrayed_ at the altar-interaction popup. (i played later another game , took taurog as deity and witrh enough peity the popup had highlighted the options/items i could buy - it felt as it should be, was definitely a difference, During the "bug" run (even tough i wasnt aware of the god mechanics) the greyed out options felt buggy, esp when i still got an item after klicking on the greyed out button.

This and the Dmg display made it really feel "bugged". But thats ofc too less information/incidence to act on it, i know.

I dont want to start a new kingdom right now just to get to the stage where i was, but if theres any way to rewind taurogs unlock to to that (quest) dungeon, i try it with the same "build" again and report.

p.s thanks for teh answers, appreciated!

I've played a lot of new kingdoms recently, since I'm doing some groundwork for a speedrun attempt of the whole game, and I haven't seen this bug despite several playthroughs.

Thats actually good news! did you try the first time western jungle with a non supposed class? (mho quest supposed a fighter) it shoudnt be an issue, but thats the only thing that comes to my mind as some kind of a non-expected player behavior, though on the other side i cant really imagine that this should make a difference.

The two classes required by the quest are Fighter and Berserker. Since I'm scouting it out for a speedrun there is no reason to complete it with any other class than these two.

You are correct that it could be related in some way to unlocking Taurog with the wizard, since that isn't something that most people would encounter (the dungeon tells you to use Fighter and Berserker, and Wizard is arguably the single worst possible class to play with in Western Jungle)

not 100% sure, but afaik you can get western jungle as a random choice if you chose the random dungeon, so wizard should be considered somehow - even if its worst case.

the end, i rather tend towards a borked perception than a bug unless proven..
going mentally through it, there could be a moment when enough piety was there and while test-spam-clcking the options i (accidently) bought the items - then piety back to 0 - then doing things taurog didnt like - bam punishements - that explains the 1 dmg display and the bugged looking (but not bugged) enemy healthbardisplay, since the yellow hitsegmentmarkers build a bar so it looked very uncommon at that moment.