This covers how the rewards that are offered on doors are chosen.
Guide to Room Rewards
Room rewards are selected randomly from a bag. They are then checked against eligibility for that room. Certain rooms have restricted eligibility (“Free” rooms in the end of biomes cannot have money, midbosses can only have boons, etc). If a reward is not eligible, it is replaced into the bag.
If no rewards in the bag are eligible, the bag is refilled with another copy of the original bag, while leaving the ineligible rewards in the bag. Multi-exit rooms cannot show the same reward, so that will remove things from eligibility. Boons can be shown on multiple doors, but cannot be the same boon, though different gods are not separate rewards in the bag (except Hermes).
Shops do not generate their rewards using this system, see Charon’s Shop Information for shop information instead.
The following bags exist in this game:
- RunProgress: General rewards that help your run. Either this or MetaProgress will be used for normal rooms in Erebus, Oceanus, Ephyra before the hub, and Thessaly. Major rewards in Fields are always drawn from this bag. This is the main one where knowledge of the bag’s contents and functionality may be helpful for speedruns.
- MetaProgress: Meta resources that have no benefit during the run. Marked with little green tassles next to the shown reward.
- HubRewards: The main room rewards in the Ephyra hub.
- SubRoomRewards: The rewards for small subrooms in Ephyra.
- SubRoomRewardsHard: The rewards for large subrooms in Ephyra.
- FieldsOptionalRewards: The small rewards in Fields that do not require clearing an encounter.
- TartarusRewards: The rewards for non-express route rooms in Tartarus.
Bag Contents
Notes: “Core gods” refers to the gods that can offer core boons (Aphrodite, Hera, Demeter, Apollo, Zeus, Poseidon, Hestia, Hephaestus). “Boon” with no further comment always refers to a boon from one of these gods. The specific god is chosen in a later step. Natural Selection is the duo boon between Poseidon and Demeter.
Listed after the colon are the eligibility requirements for that reward (specific room-based restrictions are not listed here). I am also not covering cross-run requirements here for brevity’s sake (sorry fresh filers). Numbers after rewards simply distinguish multiple instances of the same reward in the bag (which may or may not have different requirements).
Run Progress:
- Centaur Heart 1: no Natural Selection
- Centaur Heart 2: no Natural Selection, picked up at least one boon from a core god
- Soul Tonic 1: no Natural Selection
- Soul Tonic 2: no Natural Selection, picked up at least one boon from a core god
- Gold 1: no Natural Selection
- Gold 2: no Natural Selection, picked up at least one boon from a core god
- Pom of Power 1: at least one pommable boon
- Pom of Power 2: at least one pommable boon, picked up at least one boon from a core god (afaik all pommable boons are from core gods, so that second condition seems pointless)
- Daedalus Hammer 1: no hammers picked up yet, no hammer on sale (if the door is the exit of a shop)
- Daedalus Hammer 2: exactly one hammer picked up so far, cleared at least 2 biomes, no hammer on sale (if the door is the exit of a shop)
- Hermes boon: no Hermes boons picked up yet this biome, at most one Hermes boon picked up this run, completed at least 8 encounters, no Hermes on sale (if the door is the exit of a shop)
- Trial of the Gods: completed at least 8 encounters, completed at least 2 encounters in the current biome, picked up boons from at least two different core gods, at least 15 rooms since last taking a trial, room has at least 2 exits
- Selene Hex: no Hex picked up yet, no Selene on sale (if the door is the exit of a shop)
- Path of Stars: has a Hex, Hex is not fully upgraded, cleared at least one biome, not picked up a (normal) Path of Stars in the current biome
- Boon 1: no requirements
- Boon 2: no requirements
- Boon 3: no requirements
- Boon 4: no requirements
Meta Progress:
- Nectar
- Bones 1
- Bones 2
- Small Ashes 1-4: only in Erebus
- Small Ashes 5-8: only after Erebus on saves with less than 100 total Ashes obtained
- Big Ashes 1-4: only after Erebus on saves with at least 100 total Ashes obtained
- Small Psyche 1-4: only in Erebus
- Small Psyche 5-8: only after Erebus on saves with less than 200 total Psyche obtained
- Big Psyche 1-4: only after Erebus on saves with at least 200 total Psyche obtained
Sub Room Rewards:
- Small Soul Tonic
- Small Centaur Heart
- Small Centaur Soul
- Small Gold
- Air element
- Earth element
- Fire element
- Water element
- Nectar
- Bones 1
- Bones 2
- Ashes 1
- Ashes 2
- Psyche 1
- Psyche 2
- Centaur Heart 1
- Centaur Heart 2
- Soul Tonic 1
- Soul Tonic 2
- Pom of Power 1: at least one pommable boon
- Pom of Power 2: at least one pommable boon
- Gold 1
- Gold 2
- Mini Path of Stars 1: has a Hex, Hex is not fully upgraded
- Mini Path of Stars 2: has a Hex, Hex is not fully upgraded
Sub Room Rewards Hard:
- Centaur Heart 1
- Centaur Heart 2
- Soul Tonic 1
- Soul Tonic 2
- Pom of Power 1: at least one pommable boon
- Pom of Power 2: at least one pommable boon
- Gold 1
- Gold 2
- FieldsOptionalRewards:
- Small Soul Tonic 1
- Small Soul Tonic 2
- Small Soul Tonic 3
- Small Centaur Heart 1
- Small Centaur Heart 2
- Small Centaur Heart 3
- Small Gold 1
- Small Gold 2
- Small Gold 3
- Food
- Armor
- Nectar
- Bones
- Ashes 1
- Ashes 2
- Ashes 3
- Ashes 4
- Psyche 1
- Psyche 2
- Psyche 3
- Psyche 4
- Mini Path of Stars 1: has a Hex, Hex is not fully upgraded
- Mini Path of Stars 2: has a Hex, Hex is not fully upgraded
Tartarus Rewards:
- Triple Gold
- Triple Pom of Power: at least one pommable boon
- Daedalus Hammer 1: no hammers picked up yet
- Daedalus Hammer 2: exactly one hammer picked up so far
- Trial of the Gods: completed at least 8 encounters, completed at least 2 encounters in the current biome, picked up boons from at least two different core gods, at least 15 rooms since last taking a trial, room has at least 2 exits
- Selene Hex: no Hex picked up yet
- Boon 1
- Boon 2
- Boon 3
Comparison to Hades Run Progress Bag
- +2 Soul Tonics (one requires a boon)
- +1 Selene
- +1 Path of Stars
- +1 extra Boon
Hermes can’t be offered if you already got one this biome.
Trial and Hermes count encounters for min depth instead of rooms, number is 8 (not confident on the exact things that count for this and if there’s a weird offset too).
I sincerely hope this was helpful. Good luck to you!
Does meeting the conditions for the second instance of a reward before you collected the first instance mean that reward effectively has double weight until you collect one instance of it, or are you only eligible for the first instance of a reward until you collect it?
Thanks!
Just thinking out loud: The Ephyra Hub bag only has 10 items, and most of those go into the initial setup, so it would seem really easy to trigger a refill there. And Tartarus can effectively only have 6 if you have two hammers and a hex, so doable with a lot of dice.