Hades 2: Psyche and Grasp Explained

If Ashes in Hades 2 are the equivalent of Darkness in the first Hades game Psyche is somehow also the equivalent of Darkness as well. To elaborate, in the first Hades game, you would spend Darkness to invest (and activate) different passive and active buffs to Zagreus. This could be effects like giving him extra charges of Death Defiance to getting multiple Dashes, as long as you had the Darkness you could activate it.

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In Hades 2, at least in the Early Access version of the game, activating the equivalent mechanic AKA Arcana Cards is sort of broken into two different systems. One, you need to have the Arcana Card unlocked, this is where Ashes are typically spent. But two, you also need the have the proper amount of unused Grasp to activate that card. So, let’s go over exactly what the Grasp system is in Hades 2 and how Psyche plays into it.

Grasp, Psyche, & The Altar Of Ash

How They All Work Alongside Each Other

When you start Hades 2, Melinoe has a pretty small amount of Grasp of Arcana at her disposal. You’ll do your first run, return to Crossroad, and likely interact with the Altar of Ashes on your way out to your next run. In this menu, you’ll notice that Melinoe has a counter/meter under her portrait on the right-hand side of this screen. This is her Grasp Meter, and it denotes how many ‘points’ she has to use towards activating different purchased Arcana Cards through her understanding of the arcane.

For example, if you have a 3-cost, a 2-cost, and a 5-cost Arcana Card that you want to all have active at the same time, you’ll need to have 10 Grasp free. If you don’t have enough Grasp, you won’t be able to activate the card. There is one type of card that doesn’t follow this rule though, and those are the cards that cost 0 Grasp. Once unlocked, these cards actually have a requirement in their description that you’ll need to meet, and once you do the card will auto-activate itself.

Increasing Your Grasp

How You Actually Increase Your Total Grasp Amount

After learning how Grasp works, most of you are probably wondering ‘But how do I actually increase my Grasp so that I can have more Arcana Cards active at one time?’ and that’s a good question. This is where Psyche comes in. Psyche is the resource Hades 2 uses to upgrade the number of Grasp you have to allocate.

Each upgrade (seems) to increase your Grasp by 1 point, and the upgrades demand increasing amounts of Psyche the more you invest in them. Right now, in our save file, we’re about at 28 Grasp, and upgrading it again is going to cost us about 350 Psyche to go from 28 to 29 Grasp, so it really starts to get up there in price.

Disclaimer:
The images & table in the next section do spoil some mid to late-game gameplay mechanics of
Hades 2.

Collecting Psyche

All The Ways You Can Go About Farming It

Okay, so then how does one get more Psyche? Well, like Ash, there are a number of different ways but the default method most of you will rely on is getting Psyche through clearing Encounters. Typically, when you’re shown previews of the next room’s rewards, you’ll sometimes be offered Psyche, and if you aren’t than it’ll be offering rooms that grant Bones or Ash instead.

Getting Psyche as a room Reward gives you a solid +10 amount of it, though that will take quite a while to build up enough for a Grasp Upgrade in the mid to late-game, as long as you’re only using this method. Thankfully, as we said earlier, there are multiple methods to obtain Psyche, and these are:

Method	Description	Explanation
Method 1	Charon’s Shop	Just like with Ash, you’ll be able to purchase Psyche from Charon’s Shop Rooms, if he’s offering it. Typically it’ll cost about 50 Gold.
Method 2	Wretched Broker	After making a certain amount of progress in Hades 2, you’ll unlock an incantation that, when performed, summons a Broker to Crossroad. This merchant Shade offers all sorts of different resources in exchange for Bones, with Psyche being one of them. Typically, for about 30 Bones, he’ll give 5 Psyche.
Method 3	Sunken Treasures Boon	This was a Boon you could also be offered in Hades 1, and it’s the Sunken Treasure Boon that Poseidon offers. When you grab it, a predetermined amount of different resources are dropped, with Psyche having the chance to be one of them.
Method 4	Charon’s Well	Once you unlock Charon’s Wells through an Incantation, you’ll find them from time to time during a run. When you interact with them, these Wells offer different buffs or resources for you, but only if you pay Gold in exchange. Among these buffs/resources, one that gives you differing amounts of Psyche can appear.
Method 5	Altar of Hermes	Much like Charon’s Well, you can eventually unlock an Altar for Hermes through an Incantation that allows him to deliver you all sorts of items after you clear a certain number of Encounters (or pay extra Gold to have it delivered immediately). Psyche is, again, one of the items he can offer.
Method 6	Tablet of Peace	Among the different Gathering Tools you can craft in Hades 2, there’s one that’s a bit of an outlier. Melinoe can craft a super-special pickaxe, shovel, and fishing rod, but she can also craft a ‘tablet of peace’. Using this Tablet to Compel specific Shades you can find during your runs and succeeding at the subsequent minigame grants Melinoe some Psyche as well, typically 30 but sometimes this can go up to 50 depending on the difficulty of the minigame.
Method 7	Specific NPCs	On each level both below and above ground, Melinoe can run into rooms that don’t have any enemies in them, but instead have a specific NPC that offers different services. We don’t want to spoil who these NPCs are or what they do, but just know that the one on the second floor down and third floor down can give Psyche if the proper option is picked.
Method 8	Charon’s Gold Rewards Service	Lastly, Charon offers multiple ways to gain Psyche, and one of them is through his smuggling services in Crossroad. Essentially, if you interact with the open bag sitting on the pier next to the Broker (after unlocking this feature), you can spend 2 Obol Points cards to have Charon deliver 80 Psyche after 40 of Encounters.

So, as you can see, there are actually a ton of ways to get Psyche outside of just farming them as room rewards. So, while it may initially appear as if the amount the game is asking for per Grasp upgrade is a bit ridiculous, once you start making use of all these methods at once, your stockpile of Psyche will grow exponentially.