The druid promotion depends only on your party touching the main altar at midnight during the full moon. Everything else is ancilliary to this.To open the door leading to the main altar, you have to touch the 7 subsidiary altars, whether they sting your party or not. You probably do have to touch them in the right order, but I'm not absolutely certain of that - it's too many years since I did it any other way.
If you touch the subsidiary altars in the right order from the word go, your party gets a stats bonus from each and it doesn't hurt. But I cannot remember whether or not you lose the stats bonuses if you don't do it correctly from the get-go.
I have a vague memory that when I played the game for the first time, I got the main door open, but I didn't get the bonuses. But I can't remember now exactly what I did.
