The Mirror of Night is basically the Hades equivalent of a skill tree in a traditional RPG. As you progress through the realms of the Underworld on any given Hades run, you’ll often come across a currency called Darkness, which can be spent on a variety of skills in the House of Hades.

In order to make sure you get the maximum amount of bang for your buck, we’ve taken the liberty of putting together a comprehensive guide collecting all of the best Mirror of Night upgrades in Hades.

If you want to know even more about the game, be sure to check out our complete Hades guide and walkthrough.

Hades Mirror of Night Best Upgrades — How To Get Darkness

In order to purchase upgrades from Nyx’s Mirror of Night, you’ll need money — which, in the Underworld, is literal Darkness, because of course it is.

Hades

You generally earn Darkness by selecting it as a chamber reward before moving on to the next room. It’s a tear-shaped purple crystal and is very distinct from the colourful gems, emphatically key-like Chthonic Keys, and the bottle of Nectar that clearly looks exactly like honey. As a result, Darkness is very difficult to miss — in order to earn it, however, you’ll need to successfully clear the chamber it’s a reward for. Once you’ve done that, you can collect your Darkness and leg it to safety, happily richer than before.

You also get Darkness for defeating bosses multiple times with the same weapon on the same Heat setting — if you’re unsure what that means, you can check out our Erebus Gate guide, which breaks down the Heat gauge in Hades.

Hades Mirror of Night Best Upgrades — What Are The Best Upgrades?

The best Mirror of Night upgrade in Hades, without a shadow of a doubt, is Death Defiance. It basically gives you another life so that even if your HP drops to zero, you’ll be resurrected at half-health. You can have up to four Death Defiances for any given run, and you can even replenish lost ones mid-run if you’re lucky.

The first Death Defiance is a steal at only 30 Darkness, but the second and third ones are 500 and 1000 Darkness, respectively, resulting in a total of 1530 Darkness for all three Death Defiances from the Mirror of Night. The fourth Death Defiance comes from Skelly’s keepsake, the Lucky Tooth, which you get for gifting him a bottle of Nectar.

Related: Hades Has Now Sold Over 1 Million Copies

Greater Reflex is also a must-buy — it provides you with an additional Dash and is only 50 Darkness. Boiling Blood, meanwhile, has five separate ranks, each of which stacks +10% damage against foes with Cast shards lodged in them — something that goes incredibly well with Artemis’ Exit Wounds Boon, which we included in our Hades best builds guide. It only costs 250 Darkness to max out the fifth rank of Boiling Blood.

Hades Mirror of Night

Infernal Soul is definitely worth your while, too — it has two ranks, costing 20 and 80 Darkness, respectively, which both add one extra Cast shard to Zagreus’ ammo. If you want to get the most out of Cast boons and the aforementioned Boiling Blood buff, you’ll definitely want as many shards as possible.

Maxing out Deep Pockets is also a good idea, as it allows you to start every single run with 100 obols — that’s two-thirds of a Boon from Charon before you’ve even seen an enemy. Thick Skin, meanwhile, increases your total health, which means you can become a tank with HP-increasing builds like the Stygian Blade with Aspect of Arthur, or not be too at risk with HP-draining builds like the Eternal Spear with Aspect of Guan Yu.

Still, Death Defiance is the most important skill on the whole Mirror of Night without a doubt. After that, I’d go:

  • Greater Reflex (available immediately)
  • Thick Skin (third Mirror of Night section, unlocked with 10 Chthonic Keys)
  • Infernal Soul (second Mirror of Night section, unlocked with 5 Chthonic Keys)
  • Boiling Blood (second Mirror of Night section, unlocked with 5 Chthonic Keys)
  • Deep Pockets (third Mirror of Night section, unlocked with 10 Chthonic Keys)

Death Defiance, like Greater Reflex, is available immediately as soon as you unlock the Mirror of Night from Nyx. Because the first one is so cheap at just 30 Darkness, it should 100% be your very first purchase.

The rest of the skills, which do everything from increasing the chance of finding rare Boons, to increasing damage dealt from behind, are all pretty good. However, Death Defiance and the five listed above are the best by a significant margin. Regardless, you’ll max out the Mirror of Night pretty quickly in Hades — I’ve had every skill maxed out since about my 50th run, which is admittedly quite a lot, but anyone who has played Hades will probably understand when I saw it's one of the most replayable games of all time.

Hades Mirror of Night Best Upgrades — How To Reset The Mirror Of Night

If you’re ever worried that you’ve spent your Darkness poorly, don’t worry — just like lower rungs of the Mirror of Night are unlocked with Chthonic Keys, you can use one Chthonic Key to regain all of your Darkness. And as we said in our Hades tips and tricks guide, Chthonic Keys are easy to come by.

Obviously you lose your current skills by resetting the Mirror of Night, but you can just buy the ones you want to keep back at their original price, while pumping the Darkness you get back from skills you’re not happy with into other areas — a lot of people do this after finally racking up enough Darkness to get that third and final Death Defiance.

And there you have it — be sure to focus on Death Defiance, and be smart with the rest of your Darkness. Ultimately, it’s up to you which skills you go for, but coming from someone who has played a lot of Hades, it’s a good idea to prioritize investing in the best Mirror of Night upgrades as early as possible.

Darkness isn’t the only thing you can use to increase your power in Hades, however — if you truly want to max out your potential, you should read up on how to get more Titan Blood in Hades, which will enable you to upgrade your weapons into much more powerful versions of themselves.

There's more to Hades than the Mirror of Night, though, so be sure to also check out our full tier list of Hades Duo Boons, our Hades Erebus Gate guide, our guide on how to farm Titan Blood in Hades, our Hades tips and tricks guide, our guide on how to save in Hades, and our handy Hades best builds guide.

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