Nemesis is the only character in Hades 2 who changes your reward menu rather than your health bar. She does not fight you. She competes with you, buys things you wanted, and takes a chamber reward before you get to it.
And she runs three events that look similar and are not. One of them cannot cost you anything at all, and treating it like the others is how players waste their Hex.
The three events, by what is actually at stake
| Event | What she asks | If you win | If you lose |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wager Battle | Slay more enemies than her | You gain Gold Crowns | You lose Gold Crowns |
| DPS Check | Deal 1,000 damage in 5 seconds | Bigger reward | Still get a reward, smaller |
| Trade Offer | Buy a random item for Gold Crowns | — | You can decline freely |
This table is the entire page. Everything else is implication.
The Wager Battle is the one that matters
This is the only Nemesis event with a real downside. It is a kill race: more kills than her, you take Gold; fewer, she takes Gold off you. Because it is a race and not a damage check, the winning play is not your best single-target rotation — it is whatever clears the most bodies fastest. Area damage, chain effects, a Cast that sweeps a group, a Hex that pauses the room. If your build is a boss-killer with one enormous Omega hit, you are badly positioned for this event and should expect to pay.
The DPS Check has no lose state
1,000 damage in 5 seconds. That is 200 damage per second, which for most developed builds is a normal five seconds of combat — not a burst window.
The critical detail: you get a reward whether you pass or not, just less. There is no penalty, no lost Gold, no consequence beyond a smaller payout. So the instinct to dump a Hex or hold an Omega charge to guarantee the check is wrong twice over — you spend a resource you cannot get back in this room, to convert a small reward into a slightly bigger one.
Play the check with your normal rotation. If it lands, fine. If it does not, you lost a fraction of a room reward and kept your Hex for the Guardian.
The Trade Offer is a shop, not a test
She offers a random item for Gold Crowns and you can simply decline. The only judgement call is whether the item beats what you would buy at Charon, and since you cannot see Charon’s stock yet, the safe default on a good run is to decline anything that is not a Pom, a boon upgrade or a Hammer. On a run where your Gold is doing nothing, take it.
The other way she interferes
Beyond the events, Nemesis will pick a chamber reward for herself and buy an item at Charon’s shop, which removes options from your screen. She takes nothing you already hold — she just narrows the menu.
That has one concrete planning consequence: do not build a route assuming a specific reward will be on offer. If your run depends on a Pom appearing at the next shop, Nemesis can quietly delete that plan. Builds that need one specific pickup are fragile in exactly this way; builds that work with whatever appears are not.
The Evil Eye: the only keepsake that rewards losing
Give her a Nectar and you get the Evil Eye.
| Rank | Effect | How to reach it |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | +20% damage to the last foe that vanquished you | On acquisition |
| 2 | +25% | Clear 25 encounters with it equipped |
| 3 | +30% | Clear 50 encounters with it equipped |
| 4 | +40% | Only via the Demeter + Hera duo boon Cherished Heirloom |
Read the effect literally: it buffs your damage against the specific enemy that last killed you. Not against bosses in general. Not against the region. Against one named foe, and only while that foe is the one that ended your previous run.
That makes it the strangest keepsake in the game and, in a narrow way, one of the most useful:
- It is a boss-practice item. If Chronos has ended your last three nights, the Evil Eye is giving you a permanent damage bonus in exactly the fight you are trying to learn. Nothing else in the keepsake pool is that targeted.
- It is dead weight the moment you stop dying to that enemy. Kill the boss and the bonus points at a corpse. You should be swapping it out.
- The 40% is not grindable. Three ranks come from encounters; the fourth comes from a duo boon. Stop expecting it to appear after enough kills.
Compare that with the Knuckle Bones, which cuts a Guardian’s health and reduces incoming Guardian damage unconditionally. The Evil Eye is worse in the abstract and better in one very specific situation: you are stuck, and you are stuck on one thing.
Getting her to talk
Her gifting option does not open on first meeting. You have to exhaust her early rivalry dialogue first, and her conversation pool advances on returns to the Crossroads, not on cleared runs.
That is a small mercy and worth internalising: a night where you died in the second region still moved the Nemesis track forward. Losing is not wasted progress with her, it is the progress.
The short version
- Wager Battle — spend everything, this one takes your Gold.
- DPS Check — spend nothing, you get paid either way.
- Trade Offer — decline unless it is a Pom, an upgrade or a Hammer.
- Evil Eye — the right keepsake when one boss keeps ending you; the wrong one every other time.
- Don’t plan a route around a specific reward. She can remove it.
Related guides
- Best keepsakes tier list — where the Evil Eye ranks against the rest
- Odysseus guide — the other Crossroads keepsake that beats bosses
- Best gift — who deserves your Nectar first
- Romance guide — who is and is not romanceable
- Routes guide — planning a route when rewards are not guaranteed