Hades 2 – All Keepsakes And How To Unlock Them

TL;DR

  • Keepsakes are unlocked by gifting Nectar to characters during your first interaction with them
  • Strategic character prioritization saves resources – focus on Crossroads NPCs first for consistent access
  • Olympian gods require immediate gifting before conversation to secure their unique accessories
  • Surface world characters demand specific progression milestones before becoming accessible
  • Proper Keepsake management provides combat advantages and relationship progression bonuses

GameSpot may receive revenue from affiliate and advertising partnerships for sharing this content and from purchases through links.

Hades 2 transforms each failed attempt into meaningful progression through its Keepsake system. These powerful accessories provide crucial combat advantages and relationship milestones. Understanding the strategic approach to collecting all 33 Keepsakes dramatically enhances your underworld survival capabilities.

Our comprehensive Keepsakes guide delivers essential intelligence for navigating both subterranean depths and surface world challenges. We begin with core acquisition mechanics, progress through character-specific protocols, and conclude with optimization strategies for maximum efficiency.

Building your complete Keepsake collection demands substantial Nectar investment. For optimal resource management, consult our Nectar sources guide to master acquisition techniques and prioritize your gifting strategy.

When encountering supporting characters or divine sigils, the Gift interaction becomes available. Execute this action promptly and select Nectar from your inventory. Initial gifting triggers the character’s unique Keepsake reward. However, strategic considerations vary significantly across character categories.

  • Crossroads NPCs – Most hub characters accept Nectar immediately upon acquisition. Their sporadic availability requires patience – reentering the central chamber often refreshes spawns. Persistent absence typically indicates the need for additional expedition attempts to reset character rotations.
  • Olympians – Divine beings demand immediate attention; activate the Gift function when adjacent to their sigils before initiating dialogue. This pre-conversation requirement makes Olympian Keepsakes among the most easily missed if protocol isn’t followed precisely.
  • Dungeon NPCs – Randomized encounters during underworld traversal create collection challenges. These characters appear unpredictably, requiring multiple runs to guarantee meetings. Strategic route planning increases encounter probabilities.
  • Surface World NPCs – Exclusive to Ephyra’s urban landscape and Thessaly’s mystical rifts, these characters necessitate complex progression milestones. Our surface world/wards guide details the intricate processes for accessing these restricted zones and their elusive inhabitants.

The complete collection comprises 33 distinct Keepsakes, each cataloged within the ornate repository cabinet situated in Melinoe’s private chambers. This collection serves as both trophy case and strategic arsenal.

Pro Tip: Maintain a Nectar reserve for unexpected character encounters during runs. Missing a gifting opportunity due to insufficient resources can significantly delay your collection progress.

Seasoned collectors should prioritize Crossroads inhabitants initially, as their consistent accessibility provides reliable early-game advantages. Olympian Keepsakes, while powerful, depend entirely on random boon appearances during runs.

Common Collection Mistakes:

  • Exhausting Nectar on low-priority characters early
  • Failing to gift Olympians before conversation initiation
  • Neglecting to check the Crossroads hub between runs for respawned NPCs
  • Attempting surface world progression before acquiring essential upgrades from earlier zones

For players struggling with Battlefield 6 style progression systems, the methodical approach to Keepsake collection will feel familiar. The strategic resource allocation mirrors advanced BF6 loadout optimization techniques.

Endgame collectors should focus on the elusive surface world characters, which typically provide the most powerful Keepsakes but demand significant progression investment. These final acquisitions often require mastering multiple game systems simultaneously.

Integration with our Complete Guide provides context for how Keepsakes complement broader progression systems, while the Class Guide helps determine which accessories best suit your preferred playstyle.

Deity keepsakes in Hades 2 serve as powerful tools for influencing your boon acquisition throughout each escape attempt. These specialized items create targeted build opportunities by manipulating the game’s randomization systems in your favor.

Core Mechanics: When equipped, a deity keepsake significantly increases the probability that boons from its associated god will appear during your run. This probability manipulation allows for strategic build crafting rather than relying purely on random chance.

Rarity Enhancement Feature: Each keepsake provides a single-use ability to upgrade the rarity of one boon from its deity per escape attempt. This powerful effect can transform common boons into rare or even epic versions, dramatically increasing their potency.

Strategic Applications: These items enable players to focus on specific playstyles by ensuring key boons appear more frequently. Whether you’re building around attack enhancements, special abilities, or defensive options, deity keepsakes provide the consistency needed for reliable build execution.

  • Location Accessibility: Both underworld chambers and surface world encounters feature deity boon opportunities, allowing for flexible keepsake usage throughout your entire run.
  • Barley Sheaf: This agricultural-themed keepsake connects to harvest deities, perfect for builds focusing on sustained damage over time or area control effects. The rarity upgrade can create devastating combinations when applied to core damage boons.
  • Adamant Shard: With its mineral-based design, this keepsake aligns with earth and forge gods, ideal for defensive builds or abilities that benefit from durability and resilience.
  • Iridescent Fan: This air-themed item associates with wind and movement deities, excellent for mobility-focused builds or abilities that scale with attack speed and evasion.

Advanced Usage Tip: The single rarity enhancement per run should be saved for boons that serve as cornerstone abilities for your build. Upgrading a synergistic boon early can snowball your power throughout the entire escape attempt.

Common Mistake: Many players waste their rarity upgrade on the first available boon rather than waiting for a more impactful option later in their run. Patience with this resource often yields significantly better results.

Strategic Keepsake Rotation: Advanced players often begin runs with one keepsake to secure essential boons early, then switch to complementary deity keepsakes in later stages to round out their build. This approach maximizes both consistency and flexibility.

Optimization Technique: The most effective keepsake usage involves planning your entire build path before starting a run. Identify which deity provides your core damage boon and which offers the best supporting abilities, then prioritize accordingly.

Pitfall Avoidance: A frequent error involves committing too heavily to a single deity when your build would benefit more from diversifying across complementary gods. Understanding class synergies can help avoid this trap.

Time Investment: Mastering keepsake strategies typically requires 5-10 complete runs to understand how different deity combinations interact with your preferred weapons and playstyle in our complete gameplay system.

Mechanics Deep Dive: The boon appearance rate increase isn’t merely additive—it creates weighted probability that makes your chosen deity’s boons appear roughly twice as frequently as normal, fundamentally changing your build options throughout each attempt.

Among the most daring defensive options available, Moros’ Engraved Pin represents a high-stakes survival mechanism that demands precise execution. When your health pool depletes completely, this accessory initiates a critical 10-second timer counting down to potential demise. Your objective becomes eliminating every hostile target before this countdown concludes to preserve your run. Failure to clear the battlefield results in either consuming a standard Death Defiance charge or facing permanent defeat.

The Engraved Pin stands out as a top-tier defensive Keepsake because it activates prior to conventional Death Defiance tokens, engaging the moment your health reaches absolute zero. This sequencing effectively grants you theoretically infinite resurrection opportunities, provided you can consistently meet the elimination requirement. However, this comes with significant strategic considerations that separate novice from expert usage.

Primary challenges emerge when facing overwhelming enemy numbers or bosses with substantial health reserves during the critical window. New enemy spawns during this period or encountering tanky opponents with damage-reduction mechanics can easily cause failure. Additionally, the minimal health restoration provided leaves you vulnerable against high-damage enemies in later biomes, where single attacks can often deplete your entire health bar.

A more versatile approach centers on selecting Keepsakes from Olympian deities whose blessings complement your preferred combat methodology. For players favoring crowd control through freezing mechanics, Demeter’s Barley Sheaf significantly increases the probability of encountering her boons throughout your run. This accessory also provides a single-use rarity enhancement for her blessings each attempt, dramatically improving your damage output potential.

For comprehensive guidance on optimal ability combinations and synergistic builds, consult our advanced boon optimization guide.

The strategic value of Echo’s Concave Stone lies in its capacity to generate exceptionally powerful opening sequences. Visualize commencing a run where you encounter blessings from Hephaestus or Demeter simultaneously. Typically, you would select only one enhancement, but the Concave Stone introduces probability for automatic dual acquisition. This frequently yields long-term advantages, such as securing Hestia’s scorch-application ability alongside passive modifiers that amplify scorch effects.

Building upon the Concave Stone’s early-game advantages, the Transcendent Embryo emerges as another exceptionally valuable Keepsake that provides sustained benefits throughout your entire run. This accessory functions by granting a randomized Chaos blessing devoid of detrimental curse modifiers, with the blessing cycling every eight combat encounters. Crucially, if you replace this accessory during transitional areas between major zones, the currently active blessing becomes permanently retained for the remainder of your attempt.

Here’s an optimized implementation strategy for maximizing these accessories’ effectiveness:

  • Initiate your run with Concave Stone to potentially secure two complementary abilities during the critical early stages.
  • Assuming completion of the Kindred Keepsakes Incantation, transition to Transcendent Embryo after clearing the Erebus region to lock in a powerful Chaos blessing.
  • Consider carrying a third Keepsake for specific boss encounters or challenging zones where specialized bonuses provide decisive advantages.

Advanced players should note that Chaos blessings obtained through Transcendent Embryo can synergize remarkably well with certain Olympian boon combinations, particularly those enhancing raw damage output or providing unconventional utility effects. The key is identifying which Chaos blessings complement your current build before making the transition.

Mastering Keepsake sequencing requires understanding both immediate power spikes and long-term value accumulation. The Concave Stone’s early dual-blessing potential can establish such dominant opening momentum that subsequent transitions become significantly smoother. However, this demands careful evaluation of which two blessings provide the most synergistic combination for your intended build path.

When employing Moros’ Engraved Pin, experienced players recommend pairing it with high-burst damage weapons or abilities that can quickly eliminate groups of enemies. Weapons with area-of-effect capabilities or high single-target damage become essential for consistently meeting the 10-second elimination requirement.

Common strategic errors include switching Keepsakes too early before securing essential boons or retaining defensive options too long when offensive power would provide better protection through faster enemy elimination. Another frequent mistake involves misjudging the timing for Transcendent Embryo transitions, potentially losing valuable Chaos blessings or carrying suboptimal accessories through difficult segments.

Action Checklist

  • Acquire 3-5 Nectar per run through strategic resource gathering
  • Gift Crossroads NPCs first for consistent early-game progression
  • Always gift Olympians before conversation during boon selections
  • Document encountered dungeon NPCs and prioritize based on accessibility
  • Master surface world access protocols for final Keepsake acquisitions
  • Identify your build’s core deity and equip their keepsake at run start
  • Save rarity upgrade for boons that synergize with your weapon and other abilities
  • Switch to complementary deity keepsakes in later biomes to round out your build
  • Experiment with different deity combinations across 5-10 runs to find optimal synergies for your playstyle while working on weapon mastery
  • Start runs with Echo’s Concave Stone for dual-blessing opportunities
  • Transition to Transcendent Embryo after Erebus to permanent Chaos blessings
  • Practice Moros’ Engraved Pin with high-burst damage weapons
  • Match Olympian Keepsakes to your preferred damage-dealing style
  • Complete Kindred Keepsakes Incantation for flexible swapping

No reproduction without permission:SeeYouSoon Game Club » Hades 2 – All Keepsakes And How To Unlock Them