just enjoy the game. dont think too deeply. It's about replaying again n agin and learning new builds. choose a weapon, choose a god keepsake, and try to complete the run. failed change god or weapon. that's it. Hope you enjoy it ✌️

a lot of dash strike, merciful end ares athena duo is completely game breaking, don't be afraid to die

Athena dash.

Collect keys at the start so that you can unlock more options on the mirror of night and also collect darkness to afford the upgrades. Get the second dash, purchase extra death defiances (DD), thick skin and privileged status.

By the time you do this you should have a pretty good grasp of what you should be doing and take it from there.

Have fun and good luck!

There's no such thing as being late for Hades

(Me still playing and Platinuming 100% Hades years later)

It is not similiar to nightreign, as nightreign has you moving freely across the map while Hades has you having a predetermined path with different types of variables. Hades has only one character but 6 weapons but all play differently. The between run progression is also bigger with Hades.

Gather keys and purple stones in the beginning. It’s useful to unlock more and increase the skills in the mirror in your room. Then also gather the orange filters that can be used for gifts to the gods. Give one to each god and get their keystone which allow you to have some additional skills and also to define your built based on boons. Each god keystone makes sure you will get that’s gods boons next level. These two are the most useful I think. I. The beginning you have to farm the above to make the game easier later on. No reason to try to reach the end at the beginning the game is built in a way to make you stronger the more you play.

Play and have fun! Focus on the ressouces needed to get permanent upgrades while getting to grips with the game and go for full clears at about 15-20 runs

Focus on Keys and Nectar early on.

Best source of Darkness is Treasure Troves (unlocked via the Contractor) and beating bosses youve already beaten, not Room rewards.

Best source of Gems is Treasure Troves.

Also dont be afraid to buy Darkness and Gems from Charon/Wells early on.

Buy the Fated List of Minor Prophecies from the Contractor ASAP.

Give Nectar to Cerberus and Skelly first, as their Keepsakes are really good early on when you don't have a lot of Mirror stuff powered up yet.

Experiment with different builds on different weapons to figure out what works, a big part of this games "skill" is figuring out how to out builds together and what powers work best with what weapons.

This gives you a bunch of tips and game knowledge!

Give a gift to Athena and equip it to get her boons more often. Deflecting will allow you to get steadily used to the controls while not taking damage. Her dash in particular is broken for first time players

I’m pretty sure SGG have somehow managed to infuse the pure addictive essence of crack cocaine into their game.

Well either that or they have just made a well polished game that they put many hours of love, blood, sweat and tears into while also respecting the players of their games.

It’s probably the second one but the first one sounds more insane and funny.

Also congrats on beating redacted a few times already. Here are some links that should be able to help you understand the game better.

Leereamsnyder’s Hades 1 Build Guide!

Widely considered the Hades 1 Bible(jokingly but for good reasons). It is one of, if not the best Hades 1 guide out there.

Here is an old comment of mine going over the mirror options and my opinion on them in extensive detail.

YT: Haelian’s O to 32 Heat Guide. This video explains the Pact Of Punishment, really well in the first few minutes of the video.

YT: Haelian analyzes player data to determine how to beat 32 Heat.

Banana’s 32 Heat Guide. Banana’s guide has a section on working your way up to 32 Heat so it’s still useful even at low Heat.

Leereamsnyder on clearing 32 Heat W/ All Aspects.

Leereamsnyder on how to handle Tight Dead Line.

How to unlock all hidden weapon aspects in Hades 1

Use them now, use them later or never use them. These are just tools I’ve given you that you can use if you so wish.

Also one more thing before I go. This sub is usually pretty chill and it’s rather helpful as well. So don’t be afraid to ask questions.

Usually you will get at least a few answers within the first hour to day of posting.

Good luck, have fun and always remember,

THERE IS NO ESCAPE!!! EVIL LAUGHTER!!!

I don't think I'm going to quit playing until Hades 2 comes out on the Switch.

EXACTLY. THIS GAME IS MY NEW ADDICTION. Although I got carpal tunnel and have to take a break from it, how will I survive??

Zeus is something you rarely want on your main damaging strike, but can be a ton of damage if you put it on a secondary strike. Omega special on torches, special on skulls (especially medea), special on coat, special on axe, stuff like that. It can also be a great primary source of damage with romantic spark, but that’s more complicated to set up.

For Hera, hitch in general is one of the best statuses in the game when you can apply it consistently, and born gain is the best magick regen in the game in almost every situation. Her cast is pretty good to pick up to just put it on an AOE and spread damage around everybody there, and her percentages are not bad. Not as good as Apollo, but having a curse can help activate origination for an extra 50% damage. Her secondary boons built around rarity can be pretty good, and fine line is also damn strong in an omega spam build, but rousing reception is definitely goofy. Her duo with Zeus can also be super strong for either side depending on your build.

Heph’s armor is super good, and his blasts are ridiculous if you can get them going, but that’s requires good rarity and poms and secondary Heph boons and duo boons and so much so it can definitely be hard to get going. Prioritizing Apollo, Poseidon, Hestia, and Demeter in that order to supplement the blasts can make them really strong, but it definitely takes a lot of

Also yeah Ares is in a weird place and I hope he gets some kind of buff before 1.0

Aphrodite is a generic good god for weapons that want to get in close. Has strong damage, extra tankiness due to weakness, and some solid secondary effects that boost your damage.

Apollo is pretty similar to Aphrodite as a generic good god in that he provides solid damage, some extra tankiness from his status curse, and some multipliers on his secondary boons. The playstyle is different though because while Aphrodite wants you to get in close, Apollo lets you space enemies more due to his bonus range and his damage buff working even when you're not close.

Ares is a very strong supporting god and works with basically every build. Unlike most gods which primarily give additive bonuses, Ares has two sources of multiplicative scaling: attack speed from plasma as well as his 200% mechanic from Grievous Blow (giga strong boon btw) and Mutual Destruction. Yes, the two 200% damage boons are true multiplicative scaling that works on any source of damage, which if you know how Hades math works will really make you appreciate how strong they are. You typically don't want to take Wounds on your primary damage button but it's excellent to put on your secondary damage button because the flat +50 every few seconds is more valuable on the button you're not spamming. Plus taking wounds opens up Grievous Blow, which as mentioned before is a ridiculously strong boon.

Demeter is also a very strong supporting god that can be fit into basically every build. Unlike Ares, Demeter is a defensive supporting god, but having her in your god pool is really helpful at making you not die. Her best boon is Arctic Ring (massive instant AoE CC for dealing with regular encounters) which is huge for not dying, especially valuable as regular enemies get harder and harder on higher fear. Snow Queen is the other boon that is typically looked for from Demeter, as one free block per room can add up to a LOT of HP saved on higher fear when enemies are scarier. Her other boons are hit or miss depending on the build you are going for (sometimes Weed Killer is great and other times it does absolutely nothing, for example), and you usually don't want her attack/special that much because Arctic Ring is broken and freeze effects don't stack.

Hephaestus is the other very strong defensive supporting god, along side Demeter. Trusty Shield is similar to Snow Queen in that it blocks an instance of damage per room. And Security System also gives you effectively free hits at the start of each encounter. His blasts are typically a bit too resource intensive to commit to (they can be fun if you do commit to them but the build is inconsistent), but his cast is quite good if you find him early, as it does an unusually high amount of damage for a cast boon and that base damage is quite good for the first 2 or so biomes.

Hera is a strong god in general, arguably one of the strongest. Hitch is a very useful status effect and helps a lot with room clear (which becomes increasing more relevant at higher fears). Outside of her boons just giving you solid percentage multipliers, Hitch is basically a multiplicative damage increase if you spread it around. Hitting one enemy and having the damage hitch onto another means you deal 130% of the damage. But say you have five enemies all hitched together, now hitting one enemy and splashing 30% onto the other four is effectively 220% damage. Born Gain is a broken boon for super magick hungry builds, which is another reason that you might want to take Hera (those builds usually have Hera start just because of how valuable Born Gain is) and her secondary boons aren't too bad either.

Hestia does good damage on multi-hitting weapons. You're understanding Scorch correctly in terms of how it works. It used to suck but it got buffed a lot in this patch and its damage is actually quite good. You can get supporting boons to boost its damage and also do room clear patterns where you stack enough scorch on an enemy and then switch targets, letting the first enemy just naturally die to burn damage.

Poseidon is the other multi-hit god. You usually only want him on weapons with the potential to hit quickly, but he offers solid damage to those weapons (a lot better than Air Quality). It is also worth noting that he is a great supporting god for cast builds, as Geyser Spout is a LOT of damage.

Zeus is broken. Air Quality is a mediocre boon though. It has its uses but the things it applies to are surprisingly little because it only happens after any other damage boosts are already applied. The real source of Zeus's strength is how powerful Blitz is. It has very high base damage (scales well with both rarity and with poms), making it a strong option to take on your secondary button for most weapons. You can then focus on a play pattern of something like "press special to apply blitz -> do some attacks to trigger blitz", which is surprisingly strong. Some weapons can even apply and trigger blitz very quickly in short succession, which makes it even stronger. It also has multiplicative scaling with Double Strike, and sometimes you have a Zeus + Hera build and you luck into Kings Ransom to giga charge both your Blitz + Double Strike and you do so, so much damage.

In general I would separate gods into the following categories:

• Primary Button Gods: Aphrodite, Apollo, Hera
• Primary Button Gods (Multi-Hit): Hestia, Poseidon
• Secondary Button Gods: Ares, Zeus
• Defensive Gods: Demeter, Hephaestus

Primary button is the button you press most often (typically attack), secondary button is the other attack button (typically special). Also keep in mind that just because a god like Zeus is on your secondary button doesn't mean he is worse than a primary button god. When you have Blitz it's usually a HUGE portion of your damage. It's just that you typically prefer to put Blitz on your secondary button if given the choice.

I've found Scorch to be utterly bonkers with Aphrodite's duo boon with Hestia. Not causing scorch to overwrite itself, paired with a fast-hitting delivery method, can cause you to melt pretty much anything in your way.

Just get Glamor Gain and fire away!

I've been addicted to Ares' attack boon on Thanatos axe, and just getting that 200% damage chance as well as all andbany damage increases possible - I run Judgment arcana with Origination/boon-alter dice and Strength

Got me thinking I should put Ares on special and Apollo/Aphro on attack now...

Heph blasts build towards all his blast duos with Hestia, Apollo, Poseidon, or Demeter in roughly that order. Also he’s like Cookie Monster but for Poms you can’t get enough. Well, he can when the boon’s cooldown is at 2 seconds.

A high-rarity Blitz is basically never bad with global damage boosts (Furies, Origination). It scales loony with rarity and extremely well with Poms. Either main it or throw it on a move you’re working in regularly.

Same thing with Ares. Throw it on an off-hand move you’re willing to work in. His Wounds tier-2 Grievous Blow gives everything you do a chance at double damage. It’s great. Otherwise maining Ares is best on moves with damage boosts built-in to take advantage of the added power from applying Wounds. Think Medea, Moros, blades hammers with gigantic percentages.

Poseidon and Hestia are best on fast-hitting stuff, as you’ve intuited.

You’re over-valuing Air Quality; you can’t always get 5 air boons with your god pool and with global damage boosts and rarity/poms Poseidon waves will exceed 50 per splash. AQ is mostly for making Static Shock or Demeter Gusts silly strong.

Your understanding of Scorch is correct: you apply the number on the boon per strike, it ticks down at 100 scorch per second. The damage actually inflicted is increased by global damage boosts that are active at the time. Her boon Pyro Technique speeds up the consumption rate and accordingly the damage. You can do hit-and-run or just hit stuff it’s good damage. Good duos with Aphro and Demeter.

Lots of duos are good to build towards. Romantic Spark (Aphro-Zeus) is great. Zeus has a great duo with Ares and ok ones with Poseidon and Hestia and a silly one with Hera. Poseidon-Ares is solid. Ares has good blades duos with Apollo and Heph. Demeter-Ares is bananas on big Omega cast aspects (Circe, especially Momus, Supay????, Charon).

Athena's Divine Dash is amazing and you should always go for it.

Keep moving, talk to everyone, give away nectar often as possible, and there are more skills on your mirror than you probably realize (hint: left side of the skill theres a toggle button)

Don’t get discouraged over dying a lot. You will get stronger and smarter as the runs will get longer. The boons will get better.

Not to mention, the story gets better and better. Have fun dying!

You are invulnerable when dashing, so with proper timing your can dash straight trough danger.

This only works when you are just dashing, if you dash-strike you can be hit.

Concentrate on getting Keys! and enjoy, this game is awesome

I think its part skill issue and the bosses being a bit too strong. The strategies that we used for their previous forms don't work as great with them like rushing Unrivaled Prometheus would just kill you ASAP. My tips would be to plan your run knowing what you're up against and use all the broken things at your disposal (scorch is bonkers now) Good luck!

Make sure you have upgraded all the arcana cards and your weapon aspects and keepsakes - that's your baseline

Then make sure you have a build in mind when starting a run and try to aim for it.

And then it's just pure skill and learning boss moves.

Aside from the more specific advice folks have given: Be patient with yourself and give yourself some grace with the learning curve.

It's easy to forget a year into EA, but we all struggled with the bosses in their Rival-Free form for the first few weeks after they were initially released as well. While the identity of the bosses themselves are largely unchanged in their rivaled form, in terms of attack patterns and strategies you're basically looking at 8 new bosses to learn at once.

It's going to take time to memorize and adapt your play style accordingly, let alone doing so on a consistent basis. And honestly, that's not an indictment of player skill or even boss difficulty - it's just the reality of having effectively doubled the boss pool AND having done so all at once instead of staggering them across multiple updates like they did with the Surface bosses.

Give yourself time to learn and practice without getting to frustrated by a self imposed timeline of when you 'should' have it down by. It's a LOT to take in at once, give yourself some grace and keep your head clear enough that it's more likely to stick.

My only gripe is for Rivals 3 Underworld, like how can you even dodge or block in the first stage alone

Polyphemus : Play patiently, keep distance between you and the boss, and only rush in when you know it's safe. Also, Medea only has a few patterns, you'll get used to them over time

Eris : Stay close and play aggressively, go behind her when she prepares her laser. Try to pop the bombs with your attacks during her phase transitions.

Hecate : When she activates dark side, you can get a couple hits in but you need to get away quickly or you'll get hit by her attack spam. It can deal a ton of damage if you're not careful, definitely her most dangerous move.

Scylla : There's a lot going on, but staying mobile will naturally make you evade a lot of the projectiles. You can kinda run laps around the arena and hit whatever is close.

This is a stupid take. The game is in early access. Now is exactly the time not to shut up and give the developer feedback on what doesn't feel good for you and what you'd like improved. It's good that people are complaining. It's good that there's dialogue. Hades II will be good because of people complaining, not in spite of it.

Which is also to say — it’s not impossible. I use my cast in hades 1 maybe once every 5 runs, and I’m almost through every character arc. Sure, it took me longer but the game works well when you learn how to use what you’re good at at maximum efficiency. Same with hades 2

I've literally seen "I can't pause on the last boss? What if an EMERGENCY happens in those exact three minutes? Then I'll LOSE the run! That's an hour WASTED!"

Half of this community hates playing Hades lol.

Completely agree.

There are amazing synergies and now on my 20 or 30th run, honestly not sure, I have amazing builds almost every run.

Also, some of this comes down to "git gud" too. Memorizing attack patterns is always key in these game.

Honestly after just a few fights with Chronos I've practically already memorized his moveset.

It probably because those people think that since the game is in early access, they assumed it would be the “you blow throw everything and melt bosses” kinda unbalanced and hoped they would get a power fantasy kick out of it.

That or they’re too used to being maxed out powerful in hades 1 and aren’t used to being back to square 1

Yeah luckily I stayed away from online hades since the beta was out, as soon as I finished the content available I checked online and it just doesn't make sense.

Speaking of, how do you upgrade those? Haven't beaten the final boss yet so maybe that's why I can't?

Edit: nevermind, just googled how. Man I've done like 30 runs by now and wiped on the last boss 4 times, thinking that id unlock those upgrades after.

For all the people that are blind like me, in the arcana screen you can click on Mel's portrait to spend psyche there to increase your limit.

Why are people coming here having played for 10 hours thinking they can tell everyone what "needs to be fixed"

Because is more frustrating than fun after 10 hours (even for a fan of both the predecessor and the genre in general) that in itself is valuable feedback. I currently do not enjoy hades 2, despite its genuinely phenomenal production value.

The onboarding experience for a game is very, very important. And what many peoples expect out of roguelikes is tinkering with builds and new options that unlock from run to run. The pace of unlocking new features is really, really slow, mostly due to a needlessly wide array of meta-ressources.

Boon-Rooms are far too rare. I love playing with builds. I love winning with OP builds. I love losing with trash builds I tried to get going. Doing something ridicolous with jank builds is probably my favorite passtime in both roguelikes and survivors-games.

However, getting 3 boons by the time you hit the siren fight, one of those being mana-generation, one a worthless loot-related boon offered by poseidon or healing-related boon offered by aphrodite and the third one being the only boon that actually affects your damage/playstyle is... not engaging. And that still happening at the 8 hour mark is not good for the onboarding experience.

They 100% are looking at the sub; assuming that this early access is anything like Hades I they watched streamers and read just about every online forum where the game was discussed. Like, they have people whose job it is to just do that and organize the feedback.

But they're also good at designing games, so I trust they will be able to get which parts of the criticism are legitimate (or, rather, what underlying issues the parts that the critics *think* are broken actually reveal, people are basically never right about *why* they don't like something, but as a creator you always listen to *if* they don't like something) and what is not.

Very good game, shame I'm absolutely dog shit at it.

It's so fucking good. They absolutely crushed it. It's probably my #1 or #2 game recommendation of the last decade.

Supergiant is one of a couple devs that I’ll give money to in early access, they’ve proven time and time again that my money is well spent on their games. This one took everything good about the first game and turned it up to 13. They bring out the best in the voice talent (seriously compare Mel and Neyrelle in D4) and the writing is as good as ever.

I haven’t been able to go back to the first game because this one is just strictly better