Random Starting Keepsake – Hades II Mod

A small quality-of-life mod for Hades II that improves how prioritized keepsakes work at the start of a run.

Important!

The mod has not been fully tested yet and there may be some bugs. But don't worry, worst case scenario would be a game crash.

Motivation

Hades II allows prioritizing a single keepsake so it is automatically equipped when a run starts. In practice, this has a few drawbacks:

• You often forget to switch back after testing another keepsake
• It encourages always starting with the same one
• It doesn’t work well if you want to rotate between several god keepsakes

This mod removes that friction by letting you set up multiple favorites once and letting the game handle the rest.

Behavior changes

Multiple keepsakes can be marked as prioritized

When a run starts:

• One prioritized keepsake is chosen at random
• The keepsake selected on the previous run is excluded, preventing repeats
• Prioritized keepsakes and the last selected one are persisted between runs

No game save or progression data is ever modified !

The result is a "set up once and forget it" workflow: you naturally cycle through your favorite starting keepsakes without manual switching.

Setup

• This mod uses the mod loader Hell2Modding.
• Go to the mod manager r2modman page and follow the installation procedure.
• Launch the game & Enjoy

Configuration

Once the game has been launched once, you can modify prioritized list through the game interface. You can also directly modify the configuration from:

• r2modman interface, look for the Config editor side tab,
• Hell2Modding in-game interface (default key is insert) then go to the config menu,
• the file itself located (on Windows) at %AppData%/r2modmanPlus-local/HadesII/profiles/<YourProfile>/ReturnOfModding/config/SMarBe-Random_Starting_Keepsake.cfg By default, keepsakes are randomized at run start. This can be changed to only randomize when entering training room or by interacting with the oath of the unseen (as long as you unlocked the incantation). For this, set the property randomizeAtRunStart to false.

Compatibility

• This mod should be compatible with any mod that don't affect keepsake selection.
• Any mod adding new keepsakes will work with this one as well.

Mod suggestions

Check out my others QoL mods, those are all cross-compatible and meant to be used together:

• Improved Boon Info UI: improves boon information by adding a smart filtering system based on your currently picked boons.
• Run Boon Overview: aggregates all your currently available boons into Melinoë's Codex page.
• Weapon Loadouts: saves loadouts for each weapon aspects, uses this mod as a dependency to manage keepsake.

Issues and Feedback

Feel free to reach out to me on the official Hades modding Discord and/or add an issue on the repository for any encountered bugs or suggested improvements.

Changelog

All notable changes to this project will be documented in this file.

The format is based on Keep a Changelog, and this project adheres to Semantic Versioning.

Unreleased

1.0.0 - 2026-01-22

Added

• Configuration option for always randomzing at run start.

0.1.2 - 2026-01-07

Added

• Entry in the readme detailing the option randomizeAtRunStart

Changed

• Now using math.random to get RNG as game's method is oviously determinist but we don't want that

Fixed

• Bug with keepsake not unequipping sometimes and thus superposing with new one

0.1.1 - 2026-01-07

Fixed

• Typo that was causing a crash on game reload

0.1.0 - 2026-01-06

Added

• First version of the mod!