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.

Changelog

All notable changes to Hades II Boon Advisor are documented here.

[0.2.0] - 2026-09-25

Added

• Added validated Intermediate Sister Blades Melinoë, Morrigan Meta and Black Coat Melinoë profiles.
• Added explainable Hammer recommendations for the approved v0.2 showcase.
• Added safe full, partial and none ranking states when offered choices are not fully covered.
• Added metadata-only four-phase Keepsake plans for the three active profiles.
• Added canonical profile generation, Registry projection checks and strict mechanics equivalence tests.
• Added transactional install, update, rollback, uninstall and package validation tooling.
• Added human-controlled DEV validation evidence and release-grade offline regression coverage.

Changed

• Expanded automatic profile resolution across weapon, Aspect and owned-run evidence, with safe ambiguity and unsupported fallbacks.
• Added explainable slot conflicts, replacement handling, aspect interactions, Hammer priorities and conservative status/Origination coverage.
• Added French and English labels for ranking states, incomplete analysis, conflicts, build reasons and discouraged recommendations.
• Reconciled the 118-row v0.2 Registry audit against canonical profiles and verified runtime identifiers; documentary conditions remain non-executable.
• Updated public documentation and runtime testing guidance to distinguish published v0.1.2 behavior from the unreleased v0.2 candidate.

Fixed

• Corrected base Ares Attack evaluation so it does not depend on Grievous Blow or an unproven Wounds branch.
• Preserved unknown choices as unevaluated instead of assigning speculative ranks or scores.
• Fixed negative build recommendations being shown with the same positive label as core/build reasons.

Notes

• The compact build-status interface, Duos, Hermes and Poms guidance remain future work.
• This candidate does not change gameplay, RNG, offers, damage, saves or player choice.

[0.1.2] - 2026-09-23

Changed

• Added a public disclosure of substantial OpenAI ChatGPT and Codex assistance during development.
• Clarified the maintainer's role in requirements, decisions, reviews, and in-game validation.
• Updated release metadata from 0.1.1 to 0.1.2.
• No runtime logic or gameplay changes relative to tag v0.1.1.

[0.1.1] - 2026-09-23

Changed

• BUILD_PROFILE = "auto" became the default mode.
• Automatic profile resolution uses the weapon, Aspect, and current run state.
• Owned Boons are the primary evidence when multiple profiles are compatible.
• Validated autoSignals can distinguish profiles at the start of a run before a distinctive Boon is owned.
• Explicit starter, intermediate, and morrigan_meta selections remain available as overrides.

Fixed

• Removed the implicit Melinoë Intermediate profile that could be applied to another Aspect.
• Fixed automatic resolution of the Morrigan profile.
• A compatible but unresolved profile now shows PROFIL À CHOISIR instead of PROFIL NON PRIS EN CHARGE.
• Truly unsupported weapons and Aspects continue to show PROFIL NON PRIS EN CHARGE.
• Automatic resolution can leave ambiguity later in a run once owned Boons identify a profile uniquely.

[0.1.0] - 2026-09-23

Added

• Detection of Olympian Boon choices.
• Read-only current-run state capture.
• Explainable scoring engine.
• User interface on the Boon choice screen.
• Sister Blades / Aspect of Melinoë profiles.
• Sister Blades / Aspect of Morrigan profile.
• Status and Origination handling.
• Conditional requiresAnyOwned and requiresAllOwned rules.
• Canonical JSON data and deterministic Lua profile generation.
• Lua 5.2 test suite.
• Windows PowerShell 5.1 validation.
• Canonical/runtime equivalence tests.
• Staging and profile-switch validation.
• UI polish: visual hierarchy, analysis states, compact reasons, and edge cases.
• Compatibility Gate: Hades II patch validation, critical anchors, and internal project consistency.