Hades II Boon Advisor

Hades II Boon Advisor is a quality-of-life mod for Hades II. It analyzes Olympian Boon choices during a run and adds build-aware information to the choice screen. It never changes gameplay, RNG, offered Boons, damage, saves, or the player's selection.

Installation

Recommended: Thunderstore and r2modman

Install Hades II Boon Advisor through Thunderstore with r2modman. The mod manager installs the plugin and its declared dependencies into its profile.

On one tested Epic Games installation, Thunderstore Mod Manager/r2modman installed the ReturnOfModding files inside its profile but did not copy them into the game's actual ReturnOfModding directory. If the mod does not appear in game, compare the active profile's ReturnOfModding directory with:

<Hades-II-root>\Ship\ReturnOfModding\

and, if necessary, copy the profile's ReturnOfModding contents there manually while Hades II is closed. This is an observed workaround, not a universal manager behavior.

Manual: minimal GitHub ZIP

Download Hades-II-Boon-Advisor-v<VERSION>.zip from GitHub Releases, ensure Hell2Modding and the declared dependencies are already installed, then extract the archive and copy the single Local-HadesIIBoonAdvisor folder into:

<Hades-II-root>\Ship\ReturnOfModding\plugins\

No PowerShell is required for this manual workflow.

Advanced: PowerShell tooling

Repository PowerShell tools provide controlled installation, transactional updates and compatibility diagnostics for advanced users. See installation, updates, and uninstallation.

Supported builds

The advisor on the main branch supports these three build profiles:

• Sister Blades — Aspect of Melinoë: Intermediate
• Sister Blades — Aspect of Morrigan: Meta / Blood Triad
• Black Coat — Aspect of Melinoë: Intermediate

These profiles have passed offline checks and representative in-game testing by the maintainer through human-controlled DEV gameplay, with screenshots and DEBUG logs used for validation. This does not imply exhaustive testing of every Boon combination.

These profiles are not yet available in the published release, which supports Sister Blades — Aspect of Melinoë: Starter only.

Compact build-status UI, Duos, Hermes and Poms guidance remain future work.

Build profile selection

BUILD_PROFILE = "auto" is the default setting in config/settings.lua.

In auto mode, the advisor first matches the current weapon and Aspect, then uses the current run state to resolve the compatible build profile. Owned Boons are the primary evidence; validated pre-Boon signals may be used when needed at the start of a run.

The advisor's displayed text follows the in-game language; English labels are used here by default.

If multiple compatible profiles remain ambiguous, the advisor shows SELECT PROFILE and does not guess or display rankings.

For a weapon/Aspect with no compatible profile, it shows UNSUPPORTED PROFILE.

Compatible profiles can also be selected explicitly with:

• intermediate
• morrigan_meta
• coat_intermediate

The historical starter profile belongs to the published v0.1.2 line and is not part of the future-v0.2 runtime set.

Community sources and validation

The v0.2 Build Registry was assembled from community build guidance, with Mobalytics used for the intermediate routes and Lee Reamsnyder plus NeonHades2 used for the meta/Blood Triad review. Reddit was consulted only for substantive conflicts or unclear interactions. These are documentary references; the project claims no affiliation or endorsement and republishes no source text, tables, images or layout. Recommendations were kept separate from executable rules, then matched against native Hades II text, scripts and runtime identifiers. The active profile mappings and the approved v0.2 showcase were reviewed and validated by the maintainer through controlled DEV gameplay, screenshots and DEBUG logs. Documentary conditions and rows that could not be mechanically verified remain non-executable or deferred.

Boons that cannot be evaluated reliably remain NOT EVALUATED rather than receiving a speculative score.

AI-assisted development

This project was substantially developed with assistance from OpenAI ChatGPT and Codex, including architecture, code generation, code review, documentation, and testing support.

Project requirements, design and release decisions, review of generated changes, and in-game validation are performed or approved by the maintainer.

Project roadmap

The project roadmap is maintained privately and is not published.

Release material

The Thunderstore definition is in thunderstore.toml. The deterministic manual ZIP contains exactly the runtime plugin files. CHANGELOG.md records the V1 release notes, and this project uses the MIT License.

Disclaimer

Unofficial community project; not affiliated with Supergiant Games.