Links to Chthonic Conversations Index and Collection. Spoilers for optional, endgame cosmetic content. Potential spoilers in comments.

Intro (why to do darkness farming runs; what the post covers)

Meta currency is incredibly important in Hades, due to the incredibly powerful meta progression with the mirror, weapon aspects, keepsakes, and work orders. How much you need the different meta currencies depends wholly on how experienced you are and how much time you have on that save file. Really new file, like under 10 runs? You probably still need keys and nectar for important unlocks and keepsakes, in addition to gems for work orders and darkness for crucial talents.

Struggling for your first clear? Titan Blood is the main holdup now; depending on how long you've been struggling, you likely have a lot of darkness and a nearly maxed mirror now. On the other hand, if you've played a lot before and are on a new file (which I've done a lot), you probably get plenty of bounties but are more stuck on darkness. Similarly, if you're in the endgame grinding for Resource Director ranks, you pretty much just need darkness.

That's where darkness farming runs come into play. As outlined above, many players won't have much of a need for these types of runs, but other players will have done/will do many. This post is specifically about darkness (and gemstones if you need them ig) farming, as farming bounties really comes down to raising the heat and winning runs. Nectar and keys both run out of gameplay-affecting uses pretty soon after early game and are also difficult to directly farm besides just fishing, so I won't bother talking about them.

General Run Outline

There are quite a few things to keep in mind with a darkness farming run, perhaps more than it seems. First, obvious run setup things. Use no heat (or any heat you've cleared) on the Dark Thirst weapon. Equip the Shady companion, as it straight-up gives you darkness, but don't use it until Styx to maximize payout. Use Poseidon keepsake in Tartarus to get Ocean's Bounty (increases darkness gains) ASAP. Sunken Treasure (gives you darkness and other stuff) is also nice, and I'm pretty sure you can get it multiple times in the same run. Take every Chaos gate you see and reroll for the chance to see "Eclipse" boons (increases darkness gains). Chaos keepsake helps with rarity for these boons, so using it in Asphodel and Elysium is solid. Check every Infernal Trove for darkness.

Optionally, you can adjust your mirror to help with the run. Dark Regeneration becomes much more useful when you're getting massive chunks of darkness as well as smaller amounts from Bouldy drops as well as troves and chambers. Speaking of which, you can switch off of Dark Foresight (gives you more gold laurel rewards at the expense of blue laurel rewards like darkness), but it depends on how comfortable you are with your ability to clear, and whether the slight increase in darkness is worth the risk and the runtime increase to you. I personally don't, but it can definitely go either way. You can also take Dionysus keepsake in Asphodel to try for the Exclusive Access duo to guarantee epic Eclipse boons from Chaos, but it's generally not very impactful it that even happens at all.

Everything Else

Here's u/StabbyMcKniferson getting 1782 darkness from the final reward alone.

This and this are u/JeremiahTuffelpie getting 1400 from the final reward.

Feel free to share your high scores in the comments below! I would also be interested in people coming up with rough darkness-per-minutes scores by recording before and after run darkness counts and dividing by runtime, but that's definitely more effort. It is a more interesting (and useful!) metric imo, though it also obviously takes player speed/skill into account. Still the best metric to compare an individual player's darkness farming runs against each other.

But, what do you think about this topic? Have you ever done a darkness farming run? If so, what's the most you've ever gotten? Do you wish the Resource Director upgrades were cheaper, or are they right in being massive sums for endgame, cosmetic content? Give me your thoughts down below!