Keepsakes are run-shaping items you earn by gifting Nectar, and the right one equipped at the right region can carry a whole build.
The best keepsake in Hades 2 is rarely the strongest one; it is the one that fixes whatever your current build is missing.
Keepsakes are items you equip before a run for a passive benefit, earned by giving Nectar to a character for the first time. They range from flat Magick boosts to boon-targeting tools to second-chance revives.
What makes them deep is that you can swap them between regions once you unlock the right incantation, so a smart run uses a different keepsake in each region rather than one for the whole night.
This guide lists every keepsake by its giver, explains how ranking and swapping work, highlights the best picks, and covers how to push a keepsake all the way to its Heroic rank.
equippable run items earned by gifting Nectar to a character for the first time.You earn a keepsake the first time you gift Nectar to a character, then equip one in the display case in the Training Grounds before a run.
Each keepsake ranks up automatically while equipped, the wiki specifies after 25 cleared encounters for rank two and 50 for rank three, upgrading from Common to Rare to Epic. The Quickening of Sentimental Value incantation halves those thresholds to 13 and 25.
Swapping is the part most players underuse. Once you leave the Crossroads, a keepsake can only be changed between regions, and only after unlocking the Kindred Keepsakes incantation that adds a display case at region transitions. Crucially, once you swap out of a keepsake you cannot swap back to it for the rest of that run, so plan your sequence in advance.
The fourth and highest rank, Heroic, is special. The wiki states it is only reachable by having the Cherished Heirloom 
duo boon from Demeter and Hera, which ranks up your equipped keepsake by one each region.
There are more than thirty keepsakes, split between ally and NPC gifts, the Olympian gods, and a few special sources like Chaos and Chronos.
The ally and NPC keepsakes below are the unique-effect ones worth learning by name. The Olympian keepsakes form a separate group covered in the next section, since most of them share the same boon-targeting effect.
| Keepsake | From | Effect |
|---|---|---|
 Silver Wheel | Hecate | +50 to +150 bonus Magick this night; stays even if you unequip it. |
 Knuckle Bones | Odysseus | Next Guardian loses 5 to 25% health; you take 10% less from Guardians. |
 Ghost Onion | Dora | Exiting a Location fully heals you, up to 50 to 150 total this night. |
 Evil Eye | Nemesis | Deal 20 to 40% more damage to the last foe that killed you. |
 Engraved Pin | Moros | When you first hit 0 health, become Doomed; clear it in time to survive. |
 Moon Beam | Selene | Next Path of Stars grants +3 to +7 upgrades; a Selene reward is likely. |
 Transcendent Embryo | Chaos | Gain a random Chaos blessing that rerolls every 8 encounters. |
 Time Piece | Chronos | At Fates' Whim, purge unwanted rewards a set number of times this night. |
Other ally keepsakes round out the set: Luckier Tooth (Schelemeus) acts as a bonus revive, Gold Purse (Charon) banks Gold, Discordant Bell (Eris) trades extra damage taken for damage dealt, Lion Fang (Heracles) front-loads big decaying damage, Blackened Fleece (Medea) powers Omega moves after you take damage, Crystal Figurine (Circe) activates two Arcana mid-run, Aromatic Phial (Narcissus) buffs Fountains, Concave Stone (Echo) gives a chance at a bonus boon, Silken Sash (Arachne) layers armor, Experimental Hammer (Icarus) grants a temporary Daedalus Hammer, and Calling Card (Zagreus) rarifies Olympian blessings at Fates' Whim.
The strongest keepsakes are the ones that solve a specific problem: Magick starvation, boss health bars, or a build that needs one more boon to come online.
Silver Wheel is the best opener for any Cast or Magick build, since the bonus Magick it grants stays even after you swap it out between regions. Knuckle Bones is the go-to for a region you know ends in a tough Guardian, cutting the boss health and the damage it deals.
For shaping a build, the Olympian Rarify keepsakes like 
Beautiful Mirror or 
Cloud Bangle make a specific god more likely and let you upgrade their blessings. Late in a run, Transcendent Embryo hands you a rotating Chaos blessing with no downside drawback, which is rare value for a single keepsake slot.
Sequence keepsakes by region. Open with Silver Wheel to bank Magick, swap to a boon-targeting keepsake in the middle regions to shape your build, then equip Knuckle Bones for the region that ends on a Guardian. The Magick from Silver Wheel persists, so you lose nothing.
Most Olympian keepsakes share one effect: they make that god more likely to appear and let you Rarify their blessings, upgrading a Common boon to Rare and so on.
Cloud Bangle, Iridescent Fan, Barley Sheaf, Beautiful Mirror, and the keepsakes from Poseidon, Apollo, Hephaestus, Hestia, and Ares all follow this Rarify pattern. They are the cleanest way to force a focused single-god build.
A few Olympians break the mold. Moon Beam boosts your Path of Stars instead, Artemis White Antler trades a Max Life cap for crit chance, 
and the duo-locked picks behave differently, and Athena Gorgon Amulet summons her with boons when you are out of Death Defiance. When you want raw build consistency, the Rarify keepsakes are the backbone; when you want a specific mechanic, the exceptions matter.
You earn a keepsake the first time you give Nectar to a character. Nectar is gathered during runs and bought from vendors. Once you have a keepsake, equip it in the display case in the Training Grounds before a run.
It depends on the build, but Hecate's Silver Wheel is the best opener for Cast and Magick builds, and Odysseus's Knuckle Bones is the best for any region ending in a tough Guardian. The Olympian Rarify keepsakes are best for forcing a single-god build.
Only between regions, and only after unlocking the Kindred Keepsakes incantation that adds a display case at region transitions. Once you swap out of a keepsake, you cannot swap back to it for the rest of that run, so plan the order.
Keepsakes rank up automatically while equipped: rank two after 25 cleared encounters and rank three after 50, upgrading Common to Rare to Epic. The Quickening of Sentimental Value incantation halves those to 13 and 25 encounters.
The Heroic rank is only reachable with the Cherished Heirloom duo boon from Demeter and Hera, which ranks up your equipped keepsake by one each region. No amount of encounters alone reaches Heroic.
Silver Wheel, from Hecate, grants +50 to +150 bonus Magick for the night depending on rank. Its standout trait is that the Magick stays even after you unequip it, so you can open with it and swap away for free.
There are more than thirty keepsakes as of patch v1.0, counting ally and NPC gifts, the Olympian gods, and special sources like Chaos, Chronos, and the Fates' Whim keepsakes. Each character gives one keepsake the first time you gift them Nectar.
Most do. The majority of Olympian keepsakes make that god more likely to appear and let you Rarify their blessings. A few break the pattern, like Selene's Moon Beam, Artemis's White Antler, and Athena's Gorgon Amulet.
Keep building out your Hades 2 knowledge with these next stops.
Game data and character art adapted from hades.fandom.com, used under CC BY-SA 3.0. Original content remains the property of the wiki contributors and Supergiant Games.