Risk of Rain 2 Hexes: All 14 Ranked by Which to Pick Up

The catch nobody explains in the pickup prompt: once a Hex is in your bag, you can't pick which one leaves. So the ranking below is about one moment, the "pick it up?" confirmation.

Screenshot: Hallowed Concepts Dev Diary #2, official Risk of Rain YouTube channel (0:47)

All 14 Risk of Rain 2 Hexes at a glance

Effects are what each Hex actually does at one stack, per its own page on the Risk of Rain 2 Wiki, listed from safest to most dangerous. For eight of the 14, the wiki notes that the in-game description is wrong, and the table uses the wiki's corrected numbers. "Our call" is our editorial ranking, built from those numbers and from player reports; we haven't run each Hex ourselves.

Hallowed Concepts is a $14.99 DLC on Steam, so all of this needs the expansion. If you're new to it, our Hallowed Concepts overview covers what else it added.

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Take them: Patience, Mimicry, Strife, Misfortune

Hex of Patience. It only bites when you stand outside the Teleporter's radius, starting at 1% of max health and multiplying by 12.5% for every 10 seconds you stay out. The wiki notes it hits your allies as well, so tell your co-op group before you grab it. Player GOOPREALM5000 called it "basically just a free ticket to a Hallowed item."

Hex of Mimicry. A Mimic about every 54.5 seconds sounds bad until you remember what Mimics drop. The in-game text says 60 seconds, but the wiki measures 54.5 at one stack, and the first Mimic shows up as soon as you pick the Hex up. The wiki lists Mimics as a source of Ethereal items, which last until the end of the stage. Each extra stack makes Mimics spawn faster and gives them 10% more to all stats, so one copy is the sweet spot.

Hex of Strife. The Teleporter gets one Shrine of the Mountain effect per stack, "without the extra rewards." The dev diary sold it as "No bonus item, just bonus pain in the shape of bigger, badder bosses." It's only felt during the Teleporter event, which makes it one of the more predictable Hexes. Our interactables guide explains what a Mountain Shrine does to the boss wave.

Hex of Misfortune. A coin flip for one random debuff whenever you use an interactable, and a guaranteed debuff when a Shrine of Chance fails. You control the timing, so open chests when nothing is shooting at you.

Screenshot: Hallowed Concepts Dev Diary #2, official Risk of Rain YouTube channel (1:02)

Take with care: Haunting, Blindness, Leaping, Famine, Acceleration

Hex of Haunting. Every 48 seconds at one stack (the in-game text says 60), a Poltergeist haunts an interactable, which floats and gets thrown at you. Most of the time it breaks on stray fire. Not always: one Acolyte player was one-shot when a haunted Shrine of Chance landed on top of them.

Hex of Blindness. Vision drops to 100m, and the second stack halves it again. One stack is manageable. Player Bynnh0j even found an upside, since "the teleporter particle effect still shows through the veil." The dev diary footage at 1:29 shows how dark the rest of the stage goes.

Hex of Leaping. The in-game text says each jump is 25% lower, but the wiki says the 25% comes off jump speed, which lowers jump height by about 36% after one jump and about 75% after four in a row. The penalty fades over 6 seconds, and you take fall damage from shorter drops while it lasts. Our read: it costs you most when you chain jumps to reach a ledge or a chest.

Hex of Famine. All healing is cut by about 28.6% at one stack (the in-game text says 40%), and further stacks add less each time, so healing never drops to zero. It's a small cost on a damage build and a real one on a build that lives on healing items like Harvester's Scythe. Player Myrvoid thinks it's "basically meaningless" on Acolyte with N'kuhana's Favor; we haven't tested that, so read her build guide on how her healing works before you trust it.

Hex of Acceleration. The ground gets slippery and your acceleration drops by about 28.6% (the in-game text says 40%). The wiki adds that the slippery ground cuts it further on top of that, which appears to leave about 18% of normal acceleration on the ground. TheFirstAifos calls it "often nothing", then adds that it "sucks extremely bad" on Railgunner, whose shots push her backwards. A Reddit post with more than 1,100 upvotes is titled "PSA, Hex of Acceleration and Mul-T don't mix well."

Screenshot: Hallowed Concepts Dev Diary #2, official Risk of Rain YouTube channel (1:29)

Leave on the ground: Pain, Rain, Ossification, Loss, Greed

Hex of Pain. The in-game text says 30% off your maximum health, but the wiki puts one stack at 23.1%, and 37.5% at two, because it stacks hyperbolically. The first copy also removes one-shot protection entirely. Player Myrvoid notes "HP ones on Rex are particularly bad."

Hex of Rain. The in-game text says difficulty up 25% per stack, but the wiki says only the time-based part of difficulty speeds up, by 25% per stack (less per stack in multiplayer), and that applies retroactively from the run timer. Late in a run, when you're already strong, it's survivable. Early, it's the Hex that turns a normal run into an Eclipse run you didn't sign up for.

Hex of Ossification. Each kill hands every enemy within 30m a barrier equal to the dead enemy's full health. TheFirstAifos sums it up: "If you get it late game, it's inconsequential, but if you get it before then it slows things down by a ton."

Hex of Loss. Every 30 seconds, 10% of your item types become disabled, with the first batch going dark 3 seconds after pickup rather than after 30. On a big inventory that's a lot of items not working at any given time. We'd only take it for the 10-Hex challenge.

Hex of Greed. Every 15 seconds, three enemies get a copy of one of your items. Trash mobs die before it matters. Bosses don't, which is Snivyland's point: they "can often live long enough were they steal a critical mass of items." That's why it sits last.

GODEEPER: The 11 Hallowed items these Hexes pay for, ranked with the rest of the item pool: Risk of Rain 2 Item Tier List 2026: Best Items for Every Run →

Where Risk of Rain 2 Hexes come from

Three sources, all from the wiki:

• Concept Reliquary. A free container that drops one random Hex, each of the 14 equally likely (about 7.1%).
• Hand of Death at a Hallowed Shrine. It drops 3 Hexes per player, random from all 14, and anyone can pick them up. Using it closes the Hand of Life at that shrine.
• The Anima Harvester in Soulbound Threshold (our stages guide covers how to get there). When its second phase starts, each player gets 3 Hexes from Blindness, Famine, Acceleration, Leaping and, rarely, Pain.

Every pickup asks you to confirm. Say no and the Hex stays on the ground until the next Teleporter starts charging, when it's destroyed. Hexes can't be scrapped, so the prompt is your only filter.

When to cash in at the Hallowed Shrine

This is the part that matters more than any ranking. The Hand of Life drains your Hexes one at a time "until 7 have been taken or the player runs out. The amount cannot be chosen." Which Hex goes is random, weighted by how many copies you hold.

The payout depends on the count:

So don't touch the Hand of Life with three Hexes. Once a Hex or Page has been in play, a Hallowed Shrine shows up after every later Teleporter event, so you can carry them a stage longer and cash in at five or more.

Ten Hexes for Against All Odds

The Steam achievement asks you to "complete a run while holding 10 Hexes." That flips the ranking: Rain and Pain stay bad, but you'll take whatever the Hand of Death drops. Our Hallowed Concepts skins guide has the route, and the Mithrix guide covers the final fight you'll be doing with ten curses on.

GODEEPER: Picking a survivor who shrugs off Pain or Acceleration? Risk of Rain 2 Best Survivors: 20 Picks and Builds →

What players are saying

The biggest Hex thread on r/riskofrain, "How bad each Hex is", has 146 comments and 984 points, and players in it don't agree on much beyond Blindness being worse at two stacks.

On Mimicry, lastchanceblu warns that Mimics "will eat you when you open them, usually stealing a few items as you break free. This is fine as they will be given back when you kill them... except when they occasionally burrow and leave the stage almost immediately after you break free" (comment).

PalaskunDylan pushes back on Misfortune's reputation: "Misfortune is not that bad, I would even say that it one of the most tame hexes" (comment).

On Haunting, SubstantialCod4499 wrote that "The haunted object will instantly die to any incidental damage that goes out." Nahrikkon replied with the counterexample: "i got oneshot as acolyte because a haunted shrine of chance landed directly on top of me" (thread).

Our take

Hexes work because the choice is up front. The Risk of Rain team put it this way in Dev Diary #2: "The two tiers are tied at the hip, in order to get the unique benefits of the Hallowed items, you'll have to endure the pain and suffering of the Hexes." The design is fair once you know two rules the game doesn't spell out: you can't pick which Hex leaves, and four or fewer barely pay.

Our rule: grab the four "Take" Hexes freely, take the middle five when your survivor doesn't care about them, and say no to the last five unless you're farming the achievement. Then wait for five before you touch the Hand of Life.

How we checked this

We haven't played Hallowed Concepts, so this ranking is an editorial call, not a test log. On October 26, 2026 we read the Risk of Rain 2 Wiki's Items page (Hex section), its Hallowed Shrine and Concept Reliquary pages, and Gearbox's launch notes, June 25 dev diary and October 14 hotfix on Steam. On October 29 we read each Hex's own wiki page and replaced in-game descriptions with the wiki's corrected numbers where they differ. The hotfix didn't touch any Hex. We watched Dev Diary #2 and took frames at 0:47 (Hexes on an altar), 1:02 (Hex of Strife pickup text) and 1:29 (Hex of Blindness). The dev diary said 10 Hexes in June; the game shipped with 14. Player quotes come from r/riskofrain threads posted October 14 to 20.

Related reading

• Risk of Rain 2 Item Tier List 2026: Best Items for Every Run
• Risk of Rain 2 Hallowed Concepts Skins: All 20 Unlocks
• Risk of Rain 2 Interactables: Shrines, Printers, Scrappers
• Risk of Rain 2 Acolyte and Enforcer: Every Skill and Unlock
• Risk of Rain 2 Complete Guide: Survivors, Items, Bosses

References

• Risk of Rain 2: Hallowed Concepts on Steam: Gearbox Software, 2K Games
• Risk of Rain 2 on Steam: Hopoo Games, Gearbox Publishing
• Risk of Rain: Hallowed Concepts is Available Now!: Steam launch notes, October 8, 2026
• Hallowed Concepts Dev Diary #2: Steam, June 25, 2026
• Hallowed Concepts Hotfix: Steam, October 14, 2026
• Risk of Rain 2 global achievements: Steam, accessed October 26, 2026
• Items, Hallowed Shrine, Concept Reliquary: Risk of Rain 2 Wiki
• Hex pages: Mimicry, Haunting, Leaping, Famine, Acceleration, Pain, Rain, Loss: Risk of Rain 2 Wiki
• Hallowed Concepts Dev Diary #2 video: Risk of Rain on YouTube
• r/riskofrain: community subreddit