ProvokingTheFates

Provoking the Fates

Tired of getting ashes for an altar that's already fully upgraded? Got more bones than all of Tartarus? Tell the Fates that you don't want their scraps anymore! Upgrade your room rewards with the Provoking the Fates mod! A Hades II mod that upgrades minor reward doors into Boons, Hammers, Centaur Hearts, and more! But be warned. The Fates don't take kindly to rejection.

Unlocking the Mechanic

The provocation mechanic doesn't kick in the moment you install the mod. To enable it:

• Defeat Chronos at least once. This unlocks the Oath of the Unseen in vanilla and makes the incantation visible in the Cauldron.
• Visit Hecate's cauldron in the Crossroads and cast Provoke the Fates (costs 3 Marble + 2 Shaderot).

Until you do, doors behave exactly like vanilla.

Prefer to skip the ritual? Set RequireIncantation = false in r2modman's config editor and the mechanic activates from the first run.

How It Works

When you approach a door offering a minor reward (Bones, Ash, Nectar), a secondary prompt appears:

Hold Interact to Provoke the Fates

A short tap uses the door normally. Hold for ProvokeHoldSeconds seconds (default 0.5) and a selection menu opens with three random options drawn from the reward pool. Close and reopen the menu to reroll.

The pool holds nine reward types, grouped into three Fear tiers:

| Tier | Greed | Options | What it delivers |

|------|-------|---------|------------------|

| 1 | ×1 | Gold | 200 drachmas |

| 1 | ×1 | Centaur Heart | +50 Max Health |

| 1 | ×1 | Magick | +60 Max Magick |

| 2 | ×2 | Pomegranate | Level up one existing boon |

| 2 | ×2 | Boon | Standard God Boon |

| 2 | ×2 | Hex | Selene Hex / Night Boon |

| 2 | ×2 | Hermes Boon | Boon of Hermes |

| 3 | ×3 | Enhanced Boon | Rarity-boosted God Boon (Rare+/Epic/Heroic/Duo) |

| 3 | ×3 | Daedalus Hammer | Hammer upgrade (bypasses the vanilla run limit) |

Options that require an unlock are hidden until you meet the vanilla prerequisite. Hex needs Selene unlocked; Hermes Boon needs you to have picked up a Hermes boon at least once in a prior run; Pomegranate needs at least one upgradeable boon. Anything whose Fear cost exceeds your remaining vow room is hidden too. When nothing fits, the Fates turn you away.

The same prompt also appears on the Mourning Fields pickups (Bones, Ashes, Nectar) that stand in for doors in that biome. Fields pickups only offer Boon / Enhanced Boon / Hammer (the minor-resource rewards don't fit the cage flow).

Transient Fear

Provocations are never free. Their price is Transient Fear: random Oath of the Unseen vow ranks that hang over the next few fights before fading.

Each provocation's Fear cost is Cost_ + ceil(n × GreedMultiplier_), where n is a shared counter that advances on every pick of any type. With default settings (Cost_ = 0), the first three provocations at Tier 1 / 2 / 3 charge 1 / 2 / 3, then 2 / 4 / 6, then 3 / 6 / 9 Fear. Mixing tiers lets you steer between cheap and steep.

Provoke vs The Enchantress

If you've equipped The Enchantress Arcana card (Circe), you already know the trick of swapping a door's reward: spend a Reroll token and the door's icon shuffles to a different reward of roughly the same tier. That's a sideways shuffle. A Bones door might become Ash, an Ash door might become Nectar.

Provoking the Fates pushes in a different direction. Instead of trading a Reroll token for a same-tier swap, you trade Transient Fear to upgrade the door. A minor reward door becomes a Boon, Hammer, Hex, Hermes Boon, or any of the nine richer rewards in the pool.

The two stack and don't interfere. Re-roll a door first and provoke the result, or provoke first and re-roll the result. Provoking never consumes a Reroll token; re-rolling never consumes Fear.

Configuration

All values are configurable via r2modman's config editor. Each reward type has four knobs (Cost_, GreedMultiplier_, Duration_, Weight_) for the nine types: RegularBoon, EnhancedBoon, Hammer, Gold, CentaurHeart, Magick, Pom, Selen