Icarus is a Daedalus Hammer with a personality attached. Every invention he offers is a Hammer-shaped effect — an area blast, a Power buff, a Magick tax — and the keepsake he hands you is, literally, a Hammer.
That reframes the choice. You are not picking a boon from a god. You are deciding whether to spend a slot you already filled.
Where he shows up
| Detail | Value |
|---|---|
| Route | Surface only |
| Region | Rift of Thessaly |
| Trigger | Random, during warship encounters |
| Announcement | “Death From Above” title card |
| What he does in the fight | Bombs the enemies for you |
| What you get after | One invention |
The bombing run is free damage and it is genuinely helpful on the warship rooms, which are cramped and full of bodies. Do not treat the encounter as a shop and ignore the fight — he is thinning the room for you while you clear it.
The inventions, ranked by what they cost you
The one that costs nothing: Hazard Boom
Every Cast blasts the area after 4 seconds for 500 damage to foes, and 20 to you.
Two things make this the best pick:
- It does not touch your Attack or Special slot. It adds a property to Casts.
- The 20 self-damage only applies if you are inside the blast. Four seconds is a long time. The tooltip is written ambiguously enough that players assume the damage is unavoidable; it is not. Cast, walk out, collect 500 damage on everything in the circle.
500 damage for 20 health, avoidable, on every cast, is the best ratio any invention offers. It is also the reason the Rift’s tight rooms stop being a problem — those encounters are built around clustered enemies, and a 500-damage circle deletes clusters.
The one that pays on a timer: Supply Chain
Every 5 encounters cleared: 10 healing and 3 Pom Slices.
Work the arithmetic on a full route. Thirty encounters is six procs — 60 healing and 18 Pom Slices, spread across the run. That is a large amount of free levelling on your core boons, and it requires you to do nothing except keep playing.
The catch is that it is a slow burn and it is worthless if you are already at the end of the route. Take it early in Thessaly, skip it if you are one room from the Guardian.
The one that is fine but taxed: Explosive Intent
Omega moves also deal 50 damage in an area around the foes they hit, at +10 Magick per Omega.
Fifty area damage on every Omega is real value in a room-clear build, and the 10 Magick is a modest tax if your regeneration is sorted. It is the middle option: no slot conflict, no self-damage, but no 500 either.
The two that can downgrade your build
Ingenious Strike primes 20 Magick on entering a location to give Attacks +10 Power. Ingenious Flourish primes 40 Magick for Specials +20 Power.
Both of them occupy the same slot your Attack or Special boon lives in. By the time you reach Thessaly — the second-to-last surface region — you almost certainly already have a boon there, and a god’s boon at Rare or Epic is usually worth more than a flat Power bump. Taking either one can therefore be a downgrade that also costs you Magick every single room.
They exist for the case where you are running a bare Attack or Special slot, which happens on a bad draft. That is the only case worth considering them.
Two further inventions — Protective Coating and Volatile Coating — appear on the wiki with names but no published values, alongside Full Service. If one of those is on offer and you have no numbers to compare, the safe instinct is the same as above: anything that touches Attack or Special is a slot decision, anything that adds a property to Casts or Dash is free.
The keepsake is a free Hammer
The Experimental Hammer grants one random Daedalus Hammer upgrade for a limited number of encounters — 10 at rank 1, rising to 30 at the top rank.
This is quietly one of the more useful keepsakes in the game, because Hammers are the scarcest upgrade in Hades 2. You get a set number of Hammer rooms per route, the upgrades are transformative, and there is no other way to buy one. The Experimental Hammer is that way:
- It is random, so you cannot plan a build around a specific Hammer. Take it when your build works with any Hammer rather than needing one.
- It expires, which matters at the end of a route — the timer keeps running whether or not the Hammer is doing anything.
- It stacks with your real Hammers, so a run that already found two can effectively carry three.
The one caveat: because the roll is random, it can hand you the Hammer that conflicts with your aspect. Check what you got before you build around it.
Getting him to talk, and the keepsake name mess
Icarus’s affinity gauge is one of the most locked in the game. It does not open until you have seen the True Ending, and then it needs 6 Nectar, 2 Bath Salts, 2 Twin Lures and 2 Ambrosia, plus two conversations specifically about his flying. His cap is 14.
So this is a post-game project. If you are mid-story and wondering why he will not take gifts beyond the first Nectar, that is why.
One source’s affinity table lists his keepsake as the Silver Wheel, which is Hecate’s keepsake and has nothing to do with him. The keepsake table that lists every character names the Experimental Hammer, which is also the only entry that matches what he actually gives you. Treat the Silver Wheel listing as an error.
The short version
- Take Hazard Boom unless you already have it. 500 damage per cast, avoidable self-damage.
- Take Supply Chain early, skip it late.
- Avoid Ingenious Strike and Ingenious Flourish unless the slot is empty — they cost Magick every room and can be a downgrade.
- Equip the Experimental Hammer when any Hammer helps and none is required.
- Do not expect to gift him before the True Ending.
Related guides
- Best hammers — every Daedalus upgrade and which ones are traps
- Best boons tier list — how the inventions compare to god boons
- Keepsakes guide — ranks, swapping and the display case
- Circe staff build — a Cast-heavy shell that wants Hazard Boom
- Routes guide — where the Rift of Thessaly sits on the surface route