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Hades is out now, holy heck
- Thread starter Mogri
- Start date
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- Tags
- bad dads hades hades nuts
karzac
(he/him)
Try slowing down a bit. It's easy to get distracted and get too aggressive, but most attacks are quite slow and telegraphed and easy to dodge.
Here's some things that finally got me through to the end:
- Buying all 3 Death Defiance from the mirror. If you're having more trouble getting to bosses than bosses themselves, then instead you could buy Stubborn Defiance and respec to DD later
- Get Skelly's keepsake if you haven't yet
- Get the renovation that lets you swap keepsakes in-between underworld regions
- Other keepsake that was important: Eurydice (NPC in Asphodel)
- Honestly, just getting enough Darkness to max out Death Defiance and the starting health bonus is a pretty big boost
As someone who's only been playing for a week, the later Mirror upgrades have been super helpful. Family Favorite gives you a flat damage boost just for picking up more boons, though I'd need someone better at the game to tell me if Privileged Status is better. Olympian Favor and Gods' Legacy have made it easier to get stronger boons, which combined with extra damage translates directly into having an easier time getting farther into the game. My first clear was on Thursday, and I've gotten two more so far, but every run since then has at least gotten up to Hades himself.
Egarwaen
(He/Him)
I actually disagree with this! I really struggled with early runs trying to operate on this advice, but for a bad player like myself, you need a healthy buffer to get through Elysium. There's just so many ways to take tons and tons of damage there, often before you even noticed that something's gone wrong. And frankly, you get tons of boons anyway, so picking a centaur heart when given a boon or centaur heart choice isn't going to hurt you provided you're not prioritizing, say, gold over boons.
Yeah, unlock all the weapons, max death defiance, and then focus on learning what works for you. Also buy all three fountain renovations; you're not guaranteed to find them during a run, but a full heal and a bunch of coins once per strata is super nice.
The absolute 100% most important thing is to never, ever skip a Hammer. You only get two per run!
Also, always go for the NPC rooms (circular icon with an !). It took me a while to work out it was different from the Obol icon!
This is especially important in Elysium, where that room can replenish your Defiances if you've used them already.
karzac
(he/him)
You're only allowed to take two Hammers, but you will be offered more than two if you skip the first one. I see a lot of people really focusing on never skipping Hammers and I honestly find it way overblown. Yes, they're good and it's especially nice to find one early in Tartarus because it can make the shape of your build very clear early on, but getting one later can be much less useful, especially if you've already got a strong sense of your build. Some hammers can absolutely wreck certain builds. I've often taken a Hermes boon or another god over a hammer, if there's something I'm really angling for.
R.R. Bigman
Coolest Guy
I found out after forty hours that you need to keep giving folks Nectar to increase friendship levels. I thought just once per person for their keepsake was enough, but you need the S.Links to be higher if you want to initiate the sidequests.
Egarwaen
(He/Him)
The Asphodel one is pretty great too, since she can upgrade your boons rarities or levels, or give you an increased chance of finding rarer boons, all of which are a big help going into Elysium.
That's a good point! For me, though - again, someone who isn't very good at this game - it took me a while to realize that Hammers were rare and important, so "never skip a Hammer" was good advice for getting me to think about how to fit them into a build.
I typically skip Anvils though (only Charon shop purchase finds so far for me, at least); removing a random hammer boon and then adding two random ones on top is on paper a good thing, but a lot of hammer boons radically change the behavior of weapons which isn't always to your benefit.
Yeah, the only time I take an anvil is when I have a hammer that I don't particularly like or need, like one or both of my hammers didn't give me what I wanted or would actually use. And even then I have to be feeling lucky.
Also, what's this about getting more than 2 hammers if you skip the first one...?
I tend to always grab the hammers since they upgrade the weapon in ways that greatly affect your build and playstyle. Like, I never really did the spear's spin-move until I got an anvil, then another, making it much better.
I think the main thing about hammers is that some of them are almost brokenly good, though. The bow's "4 more arrows fired in your special" is amazing, but even amazing-er on Chiron. The "+3 to arrow's base damage for each successive hit" is really good for shotgun-special builds, but insanely powerful for Chiron. And the two of them can stack if you get really lucky, in which case, You Win.
Or the rail's "launch 3 bombs in quick succession" hammer. Especially for the 4th aspect, that hammer is so ridiculously strong. Or let's say you don't like charging shots - spear and bow have a pretty powerful "flurry shot" where you hold the attack button to win. Your main attacks chaining to multiple targets on Bow can be good, or depending on your attack boon, it can be a huge deal. Etc etc etc.
Hammers. They're Good.
If you have a hammer door and take a different choice you can get another hammer door later.
The limit is that you can only actually get one total hammer from Tartarus + Asphodel and one from Elysium; after you've taken those you won't see more hammer rooms in those areas.
Dang, I suspected that's how the hammer doors worked but wasn't sure, and I had a run once where it was a choice between a double boon room and hammer and went with the hammer (I'm pretty sure that was one of my winning runs so it was fine, but still).
Also true! I just honed in on Elysium specifically since that's where Madhair said he was getting stuck.
I've only ever taken the "level up four boons" from the Asphodel room, is there any reason I should be taking the other choices?
I routinely take the "your next 3 boons get upgraded rarity" because for some reason when I find her room, it's always been on runs where I'm relatively boon-lite at the time. I also highly favor boon rarity right now too.
Some boons get very little on level up.
Denn
(him)
In my opinion Elysium is the most dangerous floor mainly due to all the armor the enemies have.
While it's not strictly required, I wholly recommend picking up any Daedalus Hammer upgrades that boost damage against armor (I believe each weapon has one). Unless I'm going for a specialized build (or my raw DPS is at ludicrous levels), that's always my first choice. Since it's a hammer upgrade though, you can't guarantee you'll find it though.
There's also a Well of Charon item for boosting armor damage, but it's much less significant. It can help in a less-than-stellar run.
While it's not strictly required, I wholly recommend picking up any Daedalus Hammer upgrades that boost damage against armor (I believe each weapon has one). Unless I'm going for a specialized build (or my raw DPS is at ludicrous levels), that's always my first choice. Since it's a hammer upgrade though, you can't guarantee you'll find it though.
There's also a Well of Charon item for boosting armor damage, but it's much less significant. It can help in a less-than-stellar run.
That's actually the one I take the least, for this reason: there are other, relatively common ways to level up your boons (poms of power, and a post-credits keepsake), but there are few ways to guarantee increased rarity on future boons (certainly not three at once), and no other ways at all to increase the rarity of something you already have. If you have exactly the boon you want on attack, it might be worth the gamble to get its rarity up - you could get an Epic boon on your main skills up to Heroic. You'll have to see how lucky you feel, and how many boons you have that might dilute the pot. The "next three boons" thing is also very good, especially if you haven't managed to fill all your core boons yet, since that gets you a lot of rare and epic boons to choose from shortly thereafter.
Don't get me wrong, leveling isn't bad, though. 4 poms are nothing to sneeze at, even if they are random. But I go for the rarity ones because their effects are, well, rarer.
Another nice benefit of 3 increased boon rarities I inadvertently ran into last night: after getting it I ran into 1 or 2 Aphrodite choices and opted not to go with it because I already had the only boon I wanted from her, so I essentially "stocked" that rarity upgrade for stuff I actually wanted (and eventually used it up for Hermes, where rarity is much stronger compared to other gods since you can't level up Hermes boons).
karzac
(he/him)
There actually is one other way of increasing rarity of a boon you already have Demeter's Rare Crop boon) but it's pretty risky.
Oh, right! You have to get it pretty early though, or you run the risk of downgrading. Also I was under the impression that would only raise boons to epic, but it seems that it can in fact take them to Heroic, so, hell yeah!
I have now escaped with every weapon. I'm warming up to the gun after that successful run because I got 2 really good hammer combos: Cluster Bomb and Targeting System. That kind of turned it into this weird close range weapon because firing off the special right next to an enemy stacked all 5 of the bombs close together. Combined with some passives that increase damage to undamaged enemies and I was easily doing more damage with my special than the normal attack, despite using Hestia aspect and Zeus strike the whole time too.
Nice! I successfully got back-to-back spear and sword escapes yesterday, now it's just the bow that's left for me.
With the Chiron bow, I'm thinking Ares on attack to start since Doom is basically free damage there. Maybe Dionysus or Demeter on special? I'll try some things today.
Does anyone have a strong opinion about whether Privileged Status or Family Favorite is better? I've been using Family Favorite, but now that I have a slightly better understanding of what makes an effective build I'm wondering if I should switch.
With the Chiron bow, I'm thinking Ares on attack to start since Doom is basically free damage there. Maybe Dionysus or Demeter on special? I'll try some things today.
Does anyone have a strong opinion about whether Privileged Status or Family Favorite is better? I've been using Family Favorite, but now that I have a slightly better understanding of what makes an effective build I'm wondering if I should switch.
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I tried using Zeus special with that and it did not work the way I expected it to, so when I run it again I would go with either of your choices on special. It was still fine with Zeus, but definitely not the "optimal" pick for that aspect.
I still use Family Favorite because of the off-chance where I end up with a build that can't effectively make use of status effects. Admittedly that will come up more or less often depending on what weapon/aspect you're using. But for example I think I would probably switch to Privileged Status in the future if I was using gun or bow, whereas on my Poseidon aspect Sword clear last night, it would have been a completely dead talent because I used zero status effects.