Mirror of Night

"Within the Infinite Dark, Everything"

The Mirror of Night, located in Zagreus's room, was a gift from Nyx to Zagreus to aid him in his attempts to escape the underworld. It is one of the main meta progression systems in Hades.

Reflecting at the Mirror gives Zagreus the ability to spend Darkness gathered from the Underworld to improve his own abilities. However, many of the abilities are locked at first, each requiring a varying number of Chthonic Keys to unlock. After several escape attempts, the ability to refund spent Darkness for use on other abilities is unlocked. Refunding Darkness costs one Chthonic Key and refunds all Darkness spent in the Mirror of Night.

Each ability from the Mirror has two versions, one colored red and one colored green (the green talents are not available from the start—they will be unlocked following a conversation with Nyx after collecting a minimum of 300 ). Each version needs to be invested in separately. For example, spending Darkness on Shadow Presence does not upgrade Fiery Presence. Only one version of each ability can be active at a time, and they can be switched between freely while reflecting at the Mirror.

Totals
It takes a total of 65 Chthonic Keys to unlock all upgrades on the Mirror.

To unlock all non-Boon, non-Fated Authority upgrades requires 6,165 Darkness; including the Boon upgrades takes this total to 14,365 Darkness. Including Fated Authority and Fated Persuasion, the total required to max out the Mirror is 35,365 Darkness.

Fated Authority
One point of Fated Authority can be used to change a room's reward into any other item from its pool. Room rewards belong in two distinct item pools.

One pool consists of permanent resources, indicated by a blue laurel wreath on the door:


 * Chthonic Keys
 * Gemstones
 * Darkness
 * Nectar

The other consists of temporary (run-specific) resources, indicated by a golden laurel wreath around the door:


 * All Boons
 * Daedalus Hammers
 * Charon's Obol
 * Centaur Hearts
 * Poms of Power

Some rooms cannot be altered, nor can they be acquired through Fated Authority. These rooms are Charon's shops, friendly NPC encounters with Sisyphus, Eurydice and Patroclus, passageways through Underworld areas, and boss rooms. Infernal Gate rewards can be changed, however.


 * The encounter itself is not altered, so you cannot use Fated Authority to change a miniboss room with a skull marker into a regular room or vice versa.