Hades 2’s speedrunning community doesn’t actually have an “Any%” category — the leaderboard calls it Any Fear [1], and that’s not pedantic. It means the entire run is legal at Fear 0, which is exactly why routing and room skips matter more than raw damage output. Most content that says “any% speedrun” is borrowing vocabulary from other roguelikes without checking what Hades 2’s own leaderboard actually tracks.
This guide isn’t chasing the world record. The current Any Fear podium clusters in frame-perfect Route=Surface times you won’t reproduce on your second attempt [2]. It’s built around a realistic, repeatable target instead: a clean, unseeded run under 20 minutes, using the same room-skip logic and weapon picks the leaderboard runners rely on, minus the frame-perfect execution. If you haven’t cleared a full run yet, start with our complete Hades 2 guide first — this one assumes you already know the boon and combat basics.
Cross-referencing the current Any Fear podium against the community’s own routing document turned up something most weapon tier lists miss: of Hades 2’s six weapons, only three — Skull, Axe, and Flames — show up in the actual speedrun meta at all. Sister Blades and Witch’s Staff are both excellent weapons, but neither covers a role the top three don’t already do faster. That distinction drives most of the weapon advice below.
Quick Start: The 6-Step Sub-20 Route
- Salute the Oath of the Unseen and stay at Fear 0 for your first pace attempts — don’t add speed-focused Fear vows until you can already clear rooms cleanly.
- Pick Aspect of Charon on the Moonstone Axe if you’re new to the weapon pool — see the table below for why.
- Take your primary god’s keepsake in Region 1 to lock in your core boon, then switch to Fig Leaf for every region after.
- Prioritize rooms in this order: NPC encounter > Shop > Chaos Gate > any other non-menu room > everything else.
- Never take a side room in Tartarus or the Summit — every extra combat room increases the enemy count in every room that follows it.
- Swap to a damage keepsake (Gorgon Amulet, then White Antler) once your core boons are secured, and track in-game time — top right — not your wall clock.
Which Weapon Should You Speedrun With?
The three aspects that actually appear in Any Fear podium runs cover three different skill floors, not three equal options [2][4]. Match the pick to where you actually are, not where you want to be.
| Player Type | Recommended Aspect | Why | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|---|
| New to speedrunning | Aspect of Charon (Moonstone Axe, Zorephet) | Wide hitboxes and an Omega-attack loop that forgives imprecise positioning | Lower burst than Skull or Blades against single tough enemies |
| Casual, wants sub-20 without relearning combat | Aspect of Moros (Umbral Flames, Ygnium) | AoE-heavy kit clears standard rooms fast without frame-tight execution | Needs the Hecuba familiar for magick sustain; weaker vs. single high-HP targets |
| Hardcore, chasing a personal best | Aspect of Medea (Argent Skull, Revaal) | Highest damage ceiling on the current podium; dominates 1v1 boss DPS windows | Punishing — full commitment to the Omega attack/special loop, no room for spacing errors |
If you want the full breakdown of every weapon aspect outside the speedrun context, our weapon tier list covers general-purpose builds — this guide only ranks the three that save room-clear time.
Room Skip Conditions
Every technique below works for the same underlying reason: Hades 2’s UI layer and its simulation layer run on separate pause states. Opening a menu, picking up an item, or triggering an NPC interaction freezes the displayed run timer without freezing whatever was already resolving underneath it — a door unlocking, an enemy corpse despawning, a reward spawning in. That gap is where every skip in this table comes from.
| Skip Type | Where | Condition | Reliability |
|---|---|---|---|
| Codex Tech | Any room, on the last enemy’s death | Open the Book of Shadows fast enough — door unlocks and movement continue while the in-game timer stays paused [3] | High — mechanical skill, not RNG |
| Resource-gather pause | Any region | Pick up a gatherable right as it pauses the timer; doors still unlock underneath — a lotus flower pauses ~1s, chaos droplets ~0.1–0.25s [3] | High, but needs the right gatherable nearby |
| Fig Leaf room skip | Once per region, up to 3 per run | Passive keepsake effect — sometimes fails to trigger, known in the community as a “fig scam” [4] | Medium — RNG-gated |
| Chaos Gate | Erebus and other regions where gates appear | Take it instead of a normal door — skips an entire location, but the timer doesn’t pause and the gate room itself costs 2–5 seconds [4] | High value, but only if the alternate door isn’t a shop |
| NPC timer-pause (Nemesis, Artemis, Narcissus, Medea) | Region-specific, mostly once per run | Finish the encounter — the timer pauses while the reward or dialogue plays [4][5] | High once triggered; Medea can be force-spawned by dying 3x in the first Surface encounter |
| Asphodel time-skip | Oceanus / Mourning Fields only | Enter the interaction circle, then leave it and let the counter run to 0% instead of finishing it — no reward, but faster than fighting it out [4] | High — always available in that room type |
None of these individually looks large — a 1-second lotus pause, a 5-second Chaos Gate room — but a full Underworld route runs through roughly 25–30 rooms. Stack even a conservative 3–4 seconds saved per room from codex tech and resource-gather pausing alone, and that’s 90–120 seconds banked before you’ve touched a single “big” skip like Fig Leaf or a Chaos Gate. The room skips matter more in aggregate than any one of them looks like it should — which is also why frame-perfect codex tech is what actually separates the WR podium from everyone else, while a sub-20 target only needs you to catch it consistently, not perfectly.
Fear Vow and Keepsake Loadout for Speed
Vow of Frenzy — all enemies move and attack 20–40% faster — is the standard speed vow once you’re ready for it [4]. The trade-off is real: it makes every room more dangerous in exchange for faster kills, since enemies close distance and die sooner instead of stalling out combat. Add it only after you can already clear standard rooms without getting cornered; a death costs you the entire run, not a few seconds. Vow of Shadow is Underworld-only and skips killing the adds that spawn around the Shadow Spiller mini-boss — a small, low-risk time save with almost no combat cost attached [4].
For keepsake sequencing: your primary god’s keepsake in Region 1 locks in the core boon your build needs, Fig Leaf covers Region 2 onward for its compounding skip value, Gorgon Amulet in Region 3 pauses the timer while she finishes fights for you — use that window to loot and route — and White Antler in the final region is built around a roughly 30 HP setup that maximizes its damage bonus against Chronos or Typhon without needing to bait damage first [4][5]. Positioning near exit doors and walls while enemies spawn in also clusters them naturally for faster AoE clears — a small habit that adds up over dozens of rooms [5].
The Sub-20-Minute Time Budget
Twenty minutes is 1,200 seconds across four Underworld regions plus a boss gauntlet. Here’s a realistic per-region ceiling if the room-priority and skip logic above is actually working for you, not just present in theory.
| Region | Target Time | What Blows the Budget |
|---|---|---|
| Erebus | ~4–5 min | Fighting Zagreus here (too long for too little reward), over-rolling major reward doors |
| Oceanus | ~3–4 min | Skipping the Asphodel timer trick, spending wells on non-Ixion rolls |
| Mourning Fields | ~3–4 min | Getting a “slow Fields” 3+3 encounter layout and playing it flat-footed instead of Chaos-Gating one set |
| Tartarus + Chronos | ~4–5 min | Any side room — it compounds the enemy depth of every room that follows it |
That’s roughly 14–18 minutes of core routing, leaving a buffer before the 20-minute ceiling rather than requiring perfect execution to hit it. The Surface route follows the same room-priority logic across City of Ephyra, Rift of Thessaly, Mount Olympus, and the Summit, with its own quirks layered on top: Medea’s pity-spawn mechanic works there too, fighting Zagreus in the Rift of Thessaly mid-shop actually is worth it when the next location is a boat (it skips the entire multi-combat location), and Olympus splits its rooms into indoor/outdoor pools where launcher doors guarantee an outdoor room and a chance at Icarus or Aetos encounters [4]. The Summit itself has a fixed structure with no available skips — that stretch is pure execution, not routing.
The final fight matters as much as the routing leading into it. Stack as much damage as possible before Chronos’s second phase, then either phase him before his one-shot attack finishes, dodge it on read, block it with armor, or burn a defensive charge like The Lovers to eat it for free — any of those beats getting caught unprepared and burning a run over one mistimed dodge [4]. White Antler is what actually shortens this fight; without it, Chronos becomes the single biggest variable in whether your run lands under 20 minutes or drifts to 25.
Common Mistakes That Blow Your Pace
- Over-rolling major reward doors once your build is already set — a marginal upgrade isn’t worth the reroll time.
- Taking a Chaos Gate over a shop door. A shop pauses the timer and sells boons; a Chaos Gate does neither and still costs 2–5 seconds. Compare what you’re skipping, not just what you’re gaining [4].
- Treating Zagreus as always-skip or always-fight. Context matters — skip him in the Underworld, but consider fighting him on the Surface when he sets up a full location skip.
- Beelining past Charon’s Shop without checking your gold first. A shop you can’t afford wastes the room-priority slot you spent getting there — check your gold before committing to the “always prioritize shops” rule.
- Panic-deviating from your build after a “fig scam” or a missed Medea spawn. The skip rooms are a bonus layered on top of good decisions, not the foundation of a sub-20 run — losing one skip shouldn’t cost you your whole route plan.
FAQ
Is “Any%” actually the right term for a Hades 2 speedrun?
Not on the leaderboard itself — the category is called Any Fear, because the entire run is legal at Fear 0 [1]. “Any%” survives in casual conversation because speedrunning vocabulary crosses over from percentage-completion games, but if you’re searching the actual leaderboard, search “Any Fear.”
Should I use Vow of Frenzy on my first sub-20 attempt?
Only if you can already clear standard rooms cleanly without it. Frenzy trades safety for pace, and a death costs the entire run — adding it before your positioning is solid just means more resets, not a faster one.
Is Sister Blades or Witch’s Staff ever worth speedrunning?
They’re both viable for a fun fast clear, but neither appears in the current Any Fear podium’s weapon rotation [2][4]. Medea (Skull), Charon (Axe), and Moros (Flames) already cover the three roles — burst, safety, AoE — that actually save room-clear time. If you’re optimizing purely for pace, start with one of those three instead.
Do Chaos Gates always save time?
No — only when the alternate door isn’t a shop. A shop pauses the timer and hands you boons; a Chaos Gate skips a location but doesn’t pause anything, and the gate room itself still costs 2–5 seconds [4]. Weigh what you’re skipping against what you’re giving up before taking one.
How much time does Fig Leaf actually save across a full run?
Up to three room skips — one per region — each worth a full room’s combat and reward. The exact value varies with room type, but skipping even one combat-heavy encounter can save 30–60 seconds on its own; three skips compounding across a run is the single biggest passive time save available outside your weapon pick [4].
Verified against Hades II — Post-Launch Patch 2 — Hotfix 5 (July 28, 2026) [6][7], a bug-fix-only patch with no changes to Fear vows, keepsakes, or room-skip mechanics. The routing and aspect picks above should hold through the next content patch — re-check Fig Leaf and Chaos Gate behavior specifically after any update that touches boon or keepsake balance.
Sources
- “Hades 2” — Speedrun.com official game hub. https://www.speedrun.com/hades2
- Any Fear category leaderboard — Speedrun.com. https://www.speedrun.com/hades2?h=any-fear&x=wk6yjved
- “Codex Tech” — Speedrun.com Hades 2 Forums. https://www.speedrun.com/hades2/forums/dj8kc
- “Hades 2 – Introduction to Speedrunning” by PeterHatEater, credited to Boated’s guide — Mobalytics. https://mobalytics.gg/hades-2/guides/how-to-speedrun
- “Hades 2 Any% Speedrun Strat” — GameRant. https://gamerant.com/hades-2-how-to-speedrun/
- “Hades II – Post-Launch Patch 2 – Hotfix 5” — Steam News (Supergiant Games, official). https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1145350/view/667245252276389491
- “Hades 2 July 2026 update announced, patch notes” — Nintendo Everything. https://nintendoeverything.com/hades-2-july-2026-update-announced-patch-notes/
- “All Weapons In Hades 2” — Turtle Beach. https://www.turtlebeach.com/blog/all-weapons-in-hades-2
I've been playing video games for over 20 years, spanning everything from early PC titles to modern open-world games. I started Switchblade Gaming to publish the kind of accurate, well-researched guides I always wanted to find — built on primary sources, tested in-game, and kept up to date after patches. I currently focus on Minecraft and Pokémon GO.