Let's Talk HADES (spoilers OK)

Bumping this now that the Xbox game passers are posting. I’ve played a lot over the past month on my switch. Got a sub 15 minute time with a very gimmicky fist build. (I used the aspect of gilgamesh’s extra dashes with poseidon’s tidal dash to just mash dash/and dash strikes. Probably had Athena’s divine strike).

I feel this is the type of game that really benefits from going online and reading the wiki. Oh well.

One of the things I don't like is how much the game can swing depending on the options the hammer gives you. For example I hate the bow, but that one run where I got the upgrade that took away the power shot I loved that run.

When I first played it I had more time and watched a lot of Youtube videos from Haelian’s twitch stream after I got my first win.

If we’re gonna get into gripes, I’d say that I dislike the traps/environmental/poison damage the most. It’s not interesting to me, and the poison especially can torpedo an otherwise good run, if it’s kinda late and you don’t notice it right away.

Ah_Pook wrote: Got my first win just now, which was nice. Hangover Blitz Disc kinda crushes a lot of the encounters, then Charged Shot + the shield upgrade that gives your charge special a timed attacj for 500% damage + possible crits on it too + Marked for high crit chance+ the Artemis Call all add up to some beefy burst damage vs bosses. The final boss still ate both my death defies lol.

Ah Pook @ah_pook23

I cleared my first run of Hades just now. Fun game :) #Hades #PS4share

16 Aug 2021 20:32

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Quoting over from the video games thread. My next run after this was a try at Heat 1 with the Demeter fists. Made it to Hades, but the Heat I took really destroyed me in area 4 (it was the one where every regular encounter has more enemies). The final rooms off each path in that biome savaged me with the extra mooks, and I made it to Hades with no death defies left. Still gave him a pretty good run at it.

Demeter fists were fun though. My main attack had Chill, so everything was severely slowed which was handy. I got the hammer that turned my Special into a charge nice for AOE and double damage, which combined nicely. Plus Crystal Beams seems like a wildly good Cast.

I mentioned it upthread, but I really like to mix in Athena, especially when using a melee weapon. Divine Dash or strike adds a lot to your survivability when using fists. Artemis on your special (Deadly Flourish) is great with the Demeter fists, especially if you get that explosive uppercut upgrade you mentioned.

I’ll also point out that I tend to go for almost every chaos portal that I see unless I’m really low on health. The bonuses stack with your normal Olympian boons and can be a great way to make a cast-heavy build work.

For anyone who was playing this back last xmas, any upgrades or changes from then to now? I never got a successful run but was close (something like 50 runs IIRC) but now I would have to rememorize all the upgrades and moves, ugh. I wonder if playing on the big screen would make it easier to see the enemy preparing for attacks, I think I played it exclusively handheld and that little screen probably doesn't do the game justice.

Probably too much to hope that a switch save would cross over to xbox, huh? Remember when you could get a code from an arcade game to "save" your progress???

quick question. Does the talking to everyone unlock things or can I just skip it? I really don't care about the plot and my gaming time is very limited. Basically weekend mornings before the kids get up.

mtagge wrote: quick question. Does the talking to everyone unlock things or can I just skip it? I really don't care about the plot and my gaming time is very limited. Basically weekend mornings before the kids get up.

The majority of things can be unlocked with the resources gained on runs.

Cthonic keys unlock weapons and mirror upgrades.

Once all weapons are unlocked, titan blood unlocks alternate aspects of your weapons. A couple weapons third hidden aspect (spear and sword jump to mind) do require you to talk to achilles and nyx. Some other ones happen in the field when you talk to certain gods or Asterius enough.

Gems and diamonds used at the house contractor open up a number of things, usually found in Work Orders.

However, all keepsakes require you to give someone a nectar which initiates a conversation. A few characters (Meg, Sisyphus, Thanatos, Achilles/patroclus, and Dusa) will give you Chthonic companions when you push these relationships far enough to give them Ambrosia. These are summonables similar to calling gods’ aid, usable a limited number of times per run. It’s perfectly possible to win without these, although they’re handy on higher heat (read: you’ve beaten Hades a bunch already) runs.

When it comes to the list of prophecies, pretty much anything that says reunite so and so or what not will require you to talk to people and/or improve relationships. There are only a few of these and at most they give you like 3-4 Ambrosia… which is used to unlock conversations/ chthonic companions.

TIL that each thing in the mirror is actually two things you can toggle between. Who knew? Permanent health upgrades are pretty helpful, and make the Cerberus collar seem less necessary!

I'm making it to Hades pretty much every run now on Heat 0 or 1, barring bad luck somewhere along the way. Haven't managed to kill him again yet, but it's just a matter of practice with the fight at this point. Kinda wish you could practice outside of a run, but whatever.

I’ve been having success from heat 5-10 with the bow with the following strategy.

1. Hera Bow. Load up casts into your shot for big damage.

2. Aphrodite’s keepsake. Get Crush Shot (cast boon) if possible. Heartbreak strike if the cast doesn’t show. Any poms of power should go to the cast boon.

3. If you don’t see Athena in Tartarus, use her keepsake for Asphodel. Hope for the dash or strike boon. (Assuming you did get crush shot).

4. Keep going for Aphro or Athena, looking for their duo boon, parting shot. It adds your backstab damage to casts.

5. Chaos- along the way, try to get boons that either add to cast % damage, extra casts, or backstab damage.

6. Athena’s Blinding Flash causes her abilities to make things take extra backstab damage.

7. Super magical christmas dreamland- if you can somehow also get Artemis’ Legendary, it adds two casts.

Even just steps 1 and 2 is a solid build, but if you get some of this other stuff rolling, you can be chunking down 2k damage at a time with your backstab shots.

I’m currently in a run that might see me getting to step 7, although I’ve had to settle for having aphro on the attack and Athena’s cast.

Edit: I ended up losing this run, on Heat 10. Mostly because I only had 150 health and died three times to trash in Elysium. Killed Theseus and Asterius very quickly, bought one death defy charge, then lost to Hades.

Hey I won a run again, this time with the sword (the Nemesis sword specifically) and a bunch of lightning/jolted stuff and Athena deflect stuff. Hades is a hard fight 0_0 made it to him with 3 death defies and 275hp, made it out with like 25hp. It's getting better though, again it's just practicing that specific fight now yknow.

After a win on heat 10 with my bow strategy, I thought, “why not crank it up to extreme measures 4, making even Hades harder?” Bad idea.

I was starting to have enough upgrades to make it to Hades. The first time I got punked by the trope of him regenerating to full health and got killed by what I thought was a cut-scene (he stood up and shot out a green wave).

Since I only have about four hours a week and it has reached the slow grind phase I looked in the settings and there is a "GOD MODE". So I turned it on for a 20% damage reduction. It seems it ramps up 2% each time. Nothing earth shattering, but hopefully it'll turn the game into less of a grind until everything unlocks.

I have to say I feel this is a game where you really need to go online and look up information from a wiki. What do I do with this thing I got from the Minotaur? What does rarity mean in terms of boons? How do I get Exit Wound to finish off that quest? How do I unlock the bottom row of the artifact cabinet? Why didn't a hammer appear this run? Why do some rooms only have a unique enemy? etc.

I get the appeal of wanting a wiki but to be honest a lot of the bits you’re complaining about were designed to be discovered by grinding the (intentionally) repetitive game loop and talking to people between runs and trying out new things all so you can start to identify the patterns yourself. I understand all too well how that may not be well aligned for someone with a limited amount of game time but it’s very much a hallmark of the genre.

I played a lot of this when it came out on Switch and this renaissance makes me want to revisit it now! I was at the stage where I was just grinding runs simply to unlock things which is generally when my interest in a game starts to wane.

I’m not sure which button it is on your console, but there is an in-game journal that answers some of these kinds of questions. Rarity colors just effectively give you a better version of that boon, with the exception of legendary and duos which are their own thing.