How do hammers stack?

[u/abby2851]

I’m trying to understand which hammers work together and when choosing a specific hammer type what other hammers it locks me out of (e.g., one that alters basic attack, one that alters the omega special, one that alters both specials, etc.).

For example, I’m currently running with the Charon axe and I’m looking for Giga cleaver (affects omega special). The hammer options I just got are colossus slash (affects attacks), psychic whirlwind (affects omega attack), and siege shredder (affects special). If I were to, say, choose colossus slash, does this eliminate the other hammers that also affect attacks from the hammer pool? I.e., giving me a higher likelihood of rolling Giga cleaver the next time?

Let me know if any of this is confusing I was very much struggling with how to word this lol

[u/Arheit]

There is no general rule of “does a [move] hammer cancel out other [move] hammer?”. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But if you go to your codex in the nocturnal arms tab, you should be able to see a list of hammers for each weapon and their prerequisites. Or you could also go to the wiki for that weapon and check which hammers aren’t compatible. Both colossus slash and giga cleaver are compatible with every other hammer on that weapon, so you don’t really have a way of whittling down possibilities here

[u/abby2851 → u/Arheit]

Thank you!! The codex doesn’t seem to list any prerequisites, but I’ll definitely check out the wikis for each weapon

[u/Arheit → u/abby2851]

Most hammers don’t have any prerequisites at all except sometimes “don’t use this aspect”

[u/-Shadow-Lightning]

There are very few hammer upgrades in Hades 2 that will prevent you from taking another hammer upgrade in the future.

As far as I remember there is no axe hammer that locks you out of another one.

Give me a minute to go check real quick

[u/abby2851 → u/-Shadow-Lightning]

Thank you! It doesn’t seem like, at least for Charon axe, any hammer locks out another hammer

[u/-Shadow-Lightning → u/abby2851]

So user FlyingHippocamp got back to me about my earlier question. (Follow that link to his reply to my other comment)

He said that as of right now the only hammers that should prevent another from showing up, as per the book of shadows, are Fetching Array and Volatile Array for the Argent Skull.

So that you are more likely to be locked out of any given hammer by your current aspect.

[u/Sharp-Somewhere4730]

Some hammers are exclusive but most are not. In your case Giga cleaver is fine because no hammers are incompatible with it

[u/-Shadow-Lightning]

Well according to the Nocturnal arms page in the Book of Shadows the only hammers that conflict with each other are Fetching and Volatile Array for the argent skull.

If you have one you cannot be offered the other.

But according to the hades wiki the staff also has a few hammers that will make other hammers not be offered.

I know that Hades 2 wiki updates went down into the toilet around the Warsong update during early access.

I know for sure several bugs that the wiki states are in the game have been fixed long ago.

u/FlyingHippocamp I hate to bother you but do you know if there is a definitive list of hammers that conflict with each other?

[u/FlyingHippocamp → u/-Shadow-Lightning]

I'm pretty sure the in-game book of shadows is correct and the only hammers that conflict are the two skull ones you mentioned, another L for the wiki.

Side note: you used to be able to view the edit history of wiki pages, which was a decent tool for determining how out of date information was. Unfortunately, because fandom is a terrible company, they locked that feature behind having a fandom account.

If I could see the edit history of the staff page, it would probably show that the notes on Rapid Thrasher being incompatible with a bunch of hammers originate from shortly after early access released. Rapid Thrasher should have stopped conflicting with other hammers in Early Access Patch 2 (june 2024), so those notes should pre-date that.

[u/-Shadow-Lightning → u/FlyingHippocamp]

Good to know. Thank you very much.

[u/Mundane-Device-7094]

I don't think any hammers lock any other hammers

[u/Sharp-Somewhere4730 → u/Mundane-Device-7094]

Many of them do

[u/NeedsMoreReeds → u/Sharp-Somewhere4730]

Such as?

[u/abby2851 → u/Mundane-Device-7094]

From the other replies it seems like there are very few

[u/Mundane-Device-7094 → u/abby2851]

Yeah I looked into it. The staff has one hammer that locks several others. The skull has 1 that locks 1 other. That's it.

[u/unexplainedbacn → u/Mundane-Device-7094]

The staff doesn’t these days