The Crossroads is where everything between runs happens. You spend resources, unlock mechanics, talk to NPCs, and manage systems that slowly expand what’s possible in future attempts. It’s not as visually dense as the House of Hades from the first game, but it serves the same function: staging ground, upgrade hub, and narrative anchor.
New players often ignore the Crossroads or treat it like a menu screen. They grab whatever upgrades look useful, skip conversations, and jump straight into the next run. That approach works for the first few hours, but it bottlenecks progression. Some unlocks are gated behind specific NPC interactions. Others require incantations that won’t appear until you’ve completed prerequisites you didn’t know existed. The Crossroads rewards attention, and spending five minutes here after each run saves hours of confusion later.
The Altar and Upgrade Priorities
The altar is your main upgrade hub. You spend psyche here to unlock permanent buffs that carry across all runs. Early upgrades focus on survivability: extra death defiances, increased starting health, and better healing from fountains. These are foundational. If you’re dying before reaching the third biome, survivability upgrades fix that faster than better boons will.
After survivability, prioritize upgrades that expand your options. Adding more gods to the boon pool gives you more flexibility during runs. Increasing the number of boons offered per chamber means you’re less likely to get stuck with gods that don’t fit your build. These upgrades don’t make individual runs stronger, but they make every run smoother by reducing RNG frustration.
Damage upgrades come later. Increased attack power, faster omega charge times, and stronger critical hits all matter, but they matter less if you’re not surviving long enough to use them. Players who rush damage upgrades without shoring up their baseline often hit walls where they can clear rooms quickly but die to bosses because they don’t have enough health or defiances left.
One thing the game doesn’t explain well: some altar upgrades unlock conditionally. You won’t see certain options until you’ve completed specific incantations or reached certain milestones. If you’re looking for a specific upgrade and it’s not appearing, check your incantation list. You’re probably missing a prerequisite.
Incantations and Resource Management
Incantations are how you unlock new mechanics, areas, and systems. You gather resources during runs, bring them back to the Crossroads, and spend them on incantations that expand the game. Some incantations add new gods. Others unlock weapon aspects or open access to new biomes. A few just add cosmetic options or lore entries.
The incantation list is long, and it’s not always obvious which ones matter. Early on, focus on incantations that add mechanical depth. Unlocking new gods expands your boon pool. Unlocking weapon aspects gives you more tools to experiment with. Unlocking access to new areas means more resources per run and access to unique rewards.
Resources for incantations come from specific sources. Cinder drops from enemies and chests. Moly grows in certain biomes. Psyche comes from completing encounters. Ash, seeds, and lotus come from your garden or environmental pickups. The game doesn’t explain where resources come from, so you’ll spend runs gathering materials without knowing if you’re farming the right biome.
One pattern that helps: if an incantation requires a resource you’ve never seen, it’s probably gated behind a biome you haven’t reached yet. Don’t waste time farming early areas for materials that don’t drop there. Push deeper, explore new regions, and the resources will start appearing.
Some incantations have prerequisites. You can’t unlock weapon aspects until you’ve unlocked the weapons themselves. You can’t add certain gods until you’ve completed their introductory quests. The incantation menu shows prerequisites when you hover over locked entries, but it’s easy to miss if you’re not reading carefully.
NPC Interactions and Quest Progression
NPCs in the Crossroads offer quests, lore, and occasionally unlock new mechanics. Some characters appear immediately. Others show up after you’ve reached specific milestones or completed certain incantations. Talking to everyone after each run ensures you’re not missing quest triggers.
Conversations unlock in stages. You’ll exhaust a character’s dialogue, run a few attempts, and then they’ll have new lines when you return. Some quests require you to give specific items. Others require you to reach certain areas or defeat specific enemies. The game doesn’t track quests in a journal, so you’ll need to remember what characters ask for.
Certain NPCs unlock mechanical benefits. One character lets you reset your boon choices mid-run. Another offers alternate upgrade paths for weapons. A third provides access to rare resources. These aren’t optional interactions. If you’re not talking to NPCs regularly, you’re missing systems that make runs easier.
One thing that caught me off guard: some NPC quests lock you out of other options temporarily. If you’re working on a quest for one character, another character’s quest might not progress until the first one is finished. This isn’t common, but it happens enough that it’s worth knowing. If someone’s dialogue stops updating, check if you have an active quest with someone else.
The Training Grounds
The training grounds let you practice combat without risking a real run. You can test weapons, experiment with builds, and learn enemy patterns in a controlled environment. It’s tucked in a corner of the Crossroads, and the game never forces you to use it.
New players should spend time here. The training grounds let you try every weapon without committing resources to unlocking aspects. You can see how the Sister Blades feel compared to the Moonstone Axe without needing to waste a full run figuring out which one clicks. You can practice dash timing, test omega move ranges, and get a feel for positioning without enemies punishing mistakes.
The training grounds also let you spawn specific enemy types. If you’re struggling with a particular enemy pattern, you can practice against it until the timing becomes muscle memory. This is especially useful for enemies that only appear in later biomes. You won’t see them often during normal runs, so practicing against them here saves lives later.
One limitation: you can’t test boons in the training grounds. You’re stuck with base weapon stats, which means you can’t experiment with synergy or see how specific gods change combat flow. For that, you need real runs. But for pure mechanical practice, the training grounds are useful.
The Garden and Passive Progression
Your garden sits near the edge of the Crossroads, and it’s easy to walk past it without noticing. You plant seeds, wait for them to grow, and harvest resources that feed into crafting and incantations. It’s passive progression that costs almost nothing to maintain.
Seeds drop during runs or come from specific NPC interactions. Different seeds produce different resources. Some grow quickly, others take multiple runs to mature. You can plant multiple seeds at once, but garden space is limited until you unlock expansions through incantations.
The resources you harvest feed into systems that unlock permanent buffs. Certain crafting recipes require materials that only come from the garden. If you’re ignoring it, you’re gating yourself out of upgrades that don’t have alternate unlock paths.
Watering plants speeds up growth, but watering costs nectar, which is a resource you’ll also need for NPC interactions. Early on, don’t waste nectar on watering. Just plant seeds and let them grow naturally. Once you have excess nectar, you can optimize growth times.
One thing that helps: plant seeds immediately after every run. Don’t wait until you have specific seeds or until you’ve researched which plants are optimal. Just plant whatever you have, and harvest when you return. Passive progression compounds over time, and starting early means you’ll have stockpiles of materials when you actually need them.
Managing Time Between Runs
The Crossroads can feel overwhelming if you’re trying to do everything after each run. You’ll want to talk to every NPC, check every incantation, plant seeds, upgrade at the altar, and test weapons in the training grounds. That’s too much, and it slows your momentum.
Instead, prioritize based on what’s blocking you. If you’re dying to a specific boss, upgrade survivability first. If you’re struggling with build variety, unlock new gods. If you have resources sitting unused, spend them on incantations that expand mechanics. Everything else can wait.
NPCs can be talked to in batches. You don’t need to exhaust every conversation after every run. Talk to one or two characters, start your next attempt, and cycle through the rest over time. Quest progression will happen naturally as long as you’re checking in occasionally.
The same applies to incantations. You don’t need to complete every available incantation before moving on. Pick one or two that unlock mechanics you care about, gather the resources, and complete them. The rest will still be there later.
Spending too much time in the Crossroads between runs kills pacing. The game rewards repetition, and the more runs you complete, the faster you’ll unlock systems and resources. Five quick runs with minimal Crossroads time often progress you further than two slow runs where you spend ten minutes managing upgrades.
If you’re looking for a more detailed breakdown of how long-term systems tie together, the full hades 2 guide covers incantation priorities and resource farming routes. But the Crossroads itself is simple: spend what you have, unlock what you need, and get back into runs. Overthinking it wastes time.
