Boons are the god blessings that build your run, and knowing which slot each fills is the difference between a random pickup and a plan.
A run in Hades 2 is not built by your weapon; it is built by the boons you draft on top of it.
Boons are blessings from the Olympian gods, handed to Melinoe as room rewards or bought from Charon, and each one attaches to a specific part of your kit. They last only until you die or retreat to the Crossroads, so every run is a fresh draft.
The system rewards players who read the door before they open it. Knowing which god fills which slot, which status curse each one applies, and how rarity actually scales lets you steer a run toward a real build instead of a pile of upgrades.
This guide covers the nine core gods and their curses, the five exclusive boon slots, how rarity and Poms work, the special Duo and Legendary boons, and the cleanest ways to force higher rarity.
god blessings that upgrade your Attack, Special, Cast, Sprint, or Magick, lasting one run only.Boons are upgrades from the gods that stack onto your weapon to shape a run, and they vanish the moment you return to the Crossroads.
You earn a boon by clearing a room marked with a god symbol above the door, or by buying one from Charon for 150 Gold. The wiki specifies each boon only lasts for the duration of a run, so nothing you draft carries over between attempts, which is why the door symbol you pick matters so much.
The reason boons feel like a build rather than a shopping list is the reward preview above each door. You see which god is offering before you commit, so a run becomes a sequence of deliberate choices: chase one god for a focused build, or spread across two to unlock a Duo boon.
Read the door symbol before you fight the room. You are choosing the reward first and earning it second, so a Zeus symbol next to an empty Cast slot is a very different pick than the same symbol when your build is already locked in.
Nine Olympians make up the standard boon pool, and each one applies a signature status curse that defines how its boons want to be played.
Picking a god is really picking a curse. A Hestia run wants Scorch stacks ticking, a Zeus run wants Blitz detonating, and an Aphrodite run leans on Weak to survive. Match the curse to your weapon and the build writes itself.
| God | Status curse | What the boons do |
|---|---|---|
 Zeus | Blitz | Chain-lightning and Bolt effects that detonate once a foe soaks enough hits. |
 Hera | Hitch | Spreads damage across a linked pack and raises the rarity of your other boons. |
 Poseidon | Froth | Knockback and Splash effects that push foes and boost your Cast. |
 Demeter | Freeze | Freeze and Gust slows that set up safer takedowns and seasonal growth. |
 Apollo | Daze | Daze gives foes a chance to miss, alongside huge area and backstab damage. |
 Aphrodite | Weak | Weak and Charmed cut enemy damage while adding healing and dodge chance. |
 Hephaestus | Glow | Glow feeds explosive Blast hits on a cooldown, plus Armor for survivability. |
 Hestia | Scorch | Scorch is a stacking damage-over-time curse that also blocks projectiles. |
 Ares | Wounds | Wounds boost raw damage through Blade Rifts and fast Plasma pressure. |
Every god offers boons for five exclusive slots, and each slot holds exactly one boon at a time.
The five core slots are Attack, Special, Cast, Sprint, and Magick, and the wiki gives each god's version a standardized name so you can read them fast. You cannot run two Cast boons at once, so Aphrodite's Rapture Ring and Apollo's Solar Ring compete for the same slot.
| Slot | Boon name | What it upgrades |
|---|---|---|
| Attack | Strike | Your basic weapon hits. |
| Special | Flourish | Your Special attack. |
| Cast | Ring | The Omega Cast you plant on foes. |
| Sprint | Rush | Your dash and the movement that follows it. |
| Magick | Gain | Magick regeneration and Omega-move fuel. |
When a god offers to replace a Core Boon you already hold, that is a Sacrifice. According to the wiki the replacement inherits the current level and jumps up one rarity tier, which makes Sacrifice one of the best ways to reach Heroic. It cannot appear if the existing boon is already Heroic, the maximum rank.
Fill all five core slots even with boons you never plan to use. An empty slot forces every future offer to keep pushing that slot, so taking a throwaway Sprint boon widens the pool and gets you more of the boons you actually want.
Standard boons come in four rarities, from Common up through Rare, Epic, and Heroic, with each tier making the numbers bigger.
Rarity and level are related but separate. Raising rarity bumps the same values a boon already scales, while a Pom of Power adds a level directly. A Heroic Common-level boon and a Common boon at high level can end up in a similar place, so both paths matter.
Pom of Power is your manual lever. It raises the level of a chosen boon, and stacking Poms into a single core boon is how focused builds get a payoff attack online early. The catch, the wiki notes, is that special boons cannot be leveled by Poms at all.
Save Poms for the one boon your whole run leans on. Spreading them thin across five slots feels productive but leaves you with five mediocre boons instead of one that carries the fight.
Three special rarities sit above the standard tiers, and each one has a prerequisite instead of just appearing.
Duo boons combine two gods and require you to already hold specific boons from both. Either god can offer one, and the pair trade dialogue when you take it. They are the payoff for committing to a two-god run rather than spreading thin.
Legendary boons are single-god capstones. Each god has at least one, and it unlocks once you hold the right combination of that god's boons. Infusion boons are tied to elemental essences and appear once you carry the matching affinities, sharing the Common rarity tier.
The important rule across all three: special boons roll from a separate pool and cannot be upgraded by Poms. Trimming your boon pool with a Vow does not raise their odds either, so you chase them through prerequisites, not luck.
Three givers sit outside the standard nine and follow their own rules entirely.
Hermes sells speed. His boons raise mobility, ability speed, evasion, and wealth, and they roll from their own rarity table rather than the main pool. Chaos hands out powerful blessings, but only after you eat a short debuff for a set number of encounters first.
Selene gives Hex boons, activated by spending Magick to unleash a big effect, and the wiki states they are the spiritual successor to Calls from the first Hades. Beyond these three, several gods appear only as guest NPCs: 
Artemis drops in with Crit and Marked boons, 
Athena brings Deflect, 
Dionysus applies Hangover, and Hades himself shows up in Tartarus with anti-Chronos blessings.
Higher rarity is not purely luck; several systems tilt the odds, and stacking them is how late runs snowball.
The Arcana Cards are the steadiest source. Excellence raises Rare and Legendary odds, Divinity boosts Epic chance, and The Queen adds Duo boon chance, all scaling with the card's own rank. Chaos Favor adds a flat rarity bump on top, and the Yarn of Ariadne from the Well of Charon guarantees a big rarity jump on a single boon.
Region matters too. Upgraded boons from Warden encounters climb in rarity as you progress, and by The Summit the odds of Epic and Rare are near-guaranteed. In practice, a Zeus-focused run that also holds Excellence and a Chaos Favor will see far more Epic and Heroic offers than an unfocused one, which is the whole argument for committing early.
Boons are blessings from the Olympian gods that upgrade your Attack, Special, Cast, Sprint, or Magick. You earn them by clearing rooms marked with a god symbol or buying them from Charon for 150 Gold. Each boon lasts only for the current run and disappears when you return to the Crossroads.
Nine gods make up the core boon pool: Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Apollo, Aphrodite, Hephaestus, Hestia, and Ares. Beyond those, Chaos, Hermes, and Selene give non-standard boons, and Artemis, Athena, Dionysus, and Hades appear as guest NPC boon-givers.
The four standard rarities are Common, Rare, Epic, and Heroic, each stronger than the last. There are also three special rarities with prerequisites: Duo boons, Legendary boons, and Infusion boons. Special boons roll from a separate pool and cannot be upgraded with Poms of Power.
The five exclusive core slots are Attack, Special, Cast, Sprint, and Magick. Each holds one boon at a time, so two gods cannot both fill your Cast slot. The wiki uses standardized names for them: Strike, Flourish, Ring, Rush, and Gain.
A Sacrifice is when a god offers to replace a Core Boon you already hold with their own. The new boon inherits the current level and increases by one rarity tier, making it a strong way to reach Heroic. It will not appear if the existing boon is already Heroic, which is the maximum rank.
Duo boons require you to hold specific boons from both gods involved. Once you meet the requirement, either god can offer the Duo boon as a reward. They cannot be obtained in the Family Dispute encounter even if you qualify, and they cannot be upgraded with Poms of Power.
Several systems raise rarity odds. Arcana Cards like Excellence, Divinity, and The Queen boost specific tiers, Chaos Favor adds a flat bump, and the Yarn of Ariadne guarantees a jump on one boon. Region also matters, since Upgraded boons from Warden encounters climb in rarity as you progress toward The Summit.
Yes, even with boons you do not plan to use. As of patch v1.0, an empty core slot makes every future offer keep pushing boons for that slot. Filling all five slots widens the pool, so you see more of the boons that actually fit your build.
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.