#HADES by Supergiant Games

1 messages · Page 5 of 1

bold palm
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Just look at icarus

blazing shale
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Chronos is kind of a dick tbf

cobalt shard
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yeah for sure

tacit tapir
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Kind of a dick is just the basic requirement for being an Olympian though

bold palm
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He isn't but yes

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Same family

violet latch
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From the conversations, one gathers that making things better for the mortals is, for Chronos, a side effect, rather then much actual intent.

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The same can be said about the Olympians, though, and one gets the sense that this may be the real conflict Mel is going to end up facing.

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(Noted exception in Dionysus, but he's got other problems, like being completely ineffective.)

cobalt shard
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guh 32 heat Hades is brutal

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I had a run yesterday that 100% would have won if the game had decided to give me the power of gay men

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I'd lost two defiances by Elysium but still got Hades to phase two

cobalt shard
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why does this game have 49 achievements but not one for getting all the skelly statues

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they went out of their way to not have an even 50

cobalt shard
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so we know that in Hades 2 Zagreus, Nyx, Hypnos, Cerberus, and Hades all got captured/incapacitated by Cronos

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do we know what happened to the rest of the underworld characters?

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i don't remember if there was any mention of what happened to Thanatos or the Furies

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presumably Achilles, Patroclus, and Skelly are all laying low out of Cronos' attention

tacit tapir
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...Are you joking, or have not played Hades 2?

cobalt shard
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wdym?

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i know the main reason achilles hasn't shown up yet is that his role is filled by odysseus, and skelly's role is filled by schelemus

tacit tapir
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... Schelemus IS skelly ya nerd

cobalt shard
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huh, that's a cute theory

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idk how much the game supports it

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skelly is a silly little guy and schelemus was one of the greatest warriors of all humankind

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clearly they couldn't possibly be the same guy

tacit tapir
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TBH I don't think we've seen the upper realms of Hades

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I'd assume that most of the people there are just chilling

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Minotaur/etc

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If they're not interested in leaving elysium, it's probably not any different than it was under Hades

dawn musk
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Alecto and Tisiphone's whereabouts are unknown, presumably still doing their jobs on their own

placid thistle
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do we know what, if anything, is going on there?

tacit tapir
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I don't think so

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We sneak under it through oceania

cobalt shard
blazing shale
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New upate is out I think

turbid sparrow
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Oh fuck yeah, EXTREME MEASURES

blazing shale
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||Dora's memories can now be reclaimed||

cobalt shard
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YOOO BOULDY IS BACK TO SAVE THE DAY??

turbid sparrow
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Hexes buffed as well?

cobalt shard
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the healing one always felt so much better than the rest imo, especially with the right upgrades

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or the one that makes you invincible while active, if you had the build to keep it active the majority of the time

turbid sparrow
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Fully agree healing was the only that felt worth it

cobalt shard
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hey, do you think my Specials are doing enough damage?

image.png
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gods i wish bonuses in hades were multiplicative instead of additive 😔

rose holly
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I’ve been kinda avoiding info on hades 2 because I can’t run it on my current computer

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But I had to dip in here to say good LORD

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that trailer has me excited as anything

upper saffron
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I'm on console so I'm still playing hades 1 till 2 comes out

pulsar swallow
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Multiplicative scaling is how you plant timebombs under the waterline of your balance boat

bold palm
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Ugh, I still hate eris

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and they've changed the hestia boon so you can't cheese her

paper spire
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How'd they change it? I liked that one even for noncheesy reasons

bold palm
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I think it leaves a trail of fire behind you and you take little to no damage from burning

bold palm
dawn musk
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Aww

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Would be nice if she just negates burning outright

bold palm
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Eris just kinda sucks to fight

fresh nebula
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Lol, loose 80% of your HP never you didn't have lightning fast reflexes

bold palm
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You want to try this sentence again?

cobalt shard
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so, the hades 2 boss upgrades are significantly more of a difficulty increase than the hades 1 ones were

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i have not unlocked the area 4 ones yet, but from the little i've seen online i am quite sure i will never beat either

fresh nebula
cobalt shard
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is it just me or is the vow of rivals Eris easier than the original

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though I suppose it's accurate to ||how the aspects were|| in Hades 1

cobalt shard
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the thing has been done

image.png
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beating hades 2 32 heat felt quite a bit easier than hades 1 tbh

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largely due to how overtuned the melinoe staff is at the moment

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and also there are easier heat options in hades 2

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i decided to use steam's new recording feature to save the 32 heat run for posterity, but i got hit by the extremely slow telegraphed instakill attack twice and am too ashamed to upload it bugged out and deleted the video

dawn musk
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I didn'y expect them to change the torches that much

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They're weird but feels a little more cohesive than the old torches

fresh nebula
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How have they changed?

bold palm
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THWAK

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clanking my way into the throne room ready to piledrive Chronos into the dirt

bold palm
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Final fit check

image.png
blazing shale
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Nice

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My dresses always get shredded before too.long

dawn musk
# fresh nebula How have they changed?

The attack is changed so you fire two little shots then fire a big wave that costs mana in a sequence. The special makes a small flame that orbits you, and the omega makes two that have a wider orbit

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So you have to be a little tighter with controlling your spacing because otherwise your omega special wouldn't hit much

upper saffron
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Is hades 2 even coming to console 1 day?

cobalt shard
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of course

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but consoles don't do early access

paper spire
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Update's real fun but the age-old problem still exists

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Stop making attacks incredibly dull red circles that get lost under the MOUNTAIN of spell effects

paper spire
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Whoever decided ||Poison|| needed to make a resurgence was incorrect actually

upper saffron
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Idc if it's years from now

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I still have hades to keep me occupied

paper spire
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The Next Update is 1.0 supposedly so it can't be tooooo far off, but they do like to polish things a while

upper saffron
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Ah

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I still have hades 1 to finish really. For as much as you can really finish it

paper spire
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Surely it has to run out of new dialogue eventually

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But it was always a treat when some random combo of boons or whatnot brought up some new commentary

upper saffron
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Well I still have to grow closer for the plan to unfold n such and I haven't like bought all the house contractor stuff and I haven't gotten all the statues n whatever so there's that todo

paper spire
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I'm still trying to figure out how to find ||Ares||(not quite a spoiler was in the last trailer, and, well, also is just a guy), don't wanna look anything up

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also the new Circe aspect for the staff kind of rips

bold palm
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Oh yeah big fan of the circe stuff

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And ares is a bit of a late thing so don't worry just keep going

paper spire
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also EM Scylla: a gift, mana from heaven

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EM ||Prometheus|| a sinner's curse

cobalt shard
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this is a pretty good breakdown of the EM bosses

SPOILER_image-2.png
bold palm
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I finally managed to defeat ||Typhon||

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I actually managed it twice

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I found that the DOOM trinket is pretty strong

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at the very least gets you several long seconds of relentless violence

paper spire
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Also managed to defeat him

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Turns out using the piggybank to roll the Judgement Card off the first boss and then having every single arcana activated and ultra-ranked is rather empowering

fresh nebula
cobalt shard
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I think it's fine in the very specific limited context they use it

bold palm
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I loved using dionysis stuff tho

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I loved doing nasty things

dawn musk
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Circe's aspect is fun

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Double Zeus cast

light coral
paper spire
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Yeaaah the Satyr poison and I suppose it's used sparingly enough here but did it need to be

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also late to the party but OGH, Narcissus/Echo soundtracks

worthy anchor
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I hate the poison, especially because the healing fountains randomly turn off.

I've lost two dds in one fight because I had to run all over the arena trying to find the one fountain I could heal from.

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Took more damage from that poison than anything else.

trail lance
cobalt shard
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yeah that's true the fountains turning off is 100% bullshit

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that fight is definitely the part of the new update I've seen the most complaints about, so I think it's pretty likely to get nerfed

worthy anchor
fresh nebula
paper spire
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They really, really, really need to update the visuals on enemy tornado attacks

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Every single enemy that has one fucking SUCKS

turbid sparrow
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this hades update

paper spire
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( should prob spoiler maybe )

turbid sparrow
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hades boss update

SPOILER_vow-of-rivals-3-basically-v0-blnjvp92lo8f1.webp
cobalt shard
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a dataminer found an unused bit of code that seems to reveal the plan for the ending

SPOILER_c4mzfh0ecw8f1.png
worthy anchor
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I love that, because it's such an obvious troll ^^

paper spire
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Oh Polyphemus, why does your theme only ramp up as you are about to die v-v

dawn musk
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The hidden aspect of the axe is fun

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You can still control your movement in the attack so you can shimmy a little to stay out of enemy range

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The bonk is incredible with Raki

cobalt shard
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it's crazy how it has a single hammer upgrade that's the normal two best hammer upgrades combined

paper spire
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I'd pay infinite money to have them get rid of ||Prometheus||' stupid memory game

placid thistle
cobalt shard
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the hammer that makes your attacks only be the big slow attack, and the one that makes the big slow attack hit twice

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i haven't messed around with the spin hammers, though now that i think about it i'm sure you could do something very broken with them if you got the right build

placid thistle
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yeah the spin hammers are the ones i use whenever I want to Just Fucking Win Instantly

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because you become a horrific whirlwind of infinite death

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playing a path of exile build

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because you just cast your ability and then run between packs

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and then they all die and you do it again

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i will look at the heavy swing one though

cobalt shard
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doing 1500 damage per attack is pretty good

dawn musk
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I love being able to layer my offense with multiple things

paper spire
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I haven't been able to get the fangs for the Staff aspect in like four runs topside

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Just will not spawn

dawn musk
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Bring Gale with you?

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Are the fangs the pickup or the mining resource?

paper spire
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I think mining but I'm uncertain

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I could/should look it up properly but just kept going 'surely this time'

dawn musk
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Push comes to shove do a few Chaos trials then feed the treats to your familiars I guess, for better odds

bold palm
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Fangs are pickup

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I believe it's obsidian that is the mining one

paper spire
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ahh strange, i've had gale even

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tbf it's weird up there

dawn musk
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Probably gotta feed Gale treats for better odds

worthy anchor
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Adamant is mining, fangs are pickup

bold palm
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Adamant that's it

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But yeah fangs are just around

paper spire
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attack visibility, i'm begging you, Hades, please

cobalt shard
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?

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it does a very good job of making every attack visible imo

cobalt shard
dawn musk
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Nergal is stupid fun lmao

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Enemies spawning in to a looming Melinoe

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The way you can still move around at the start of the attack really adds to the weapon's flow. You're slow but you don't feel anemic

bold palm
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I'm really enjoying the staff secret one too

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I'm a big aoe enjoyer

dawn musk
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The staves are disgustingly safe

blazing shale
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I like the Wand hidden aspect

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Granted its pretty OP

dawn musk
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I'm not too used to it yet

fresh nebula
blazing shale
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Turns the game into Vampire Survivors

fresh nebula
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So it just auto attacks?

dawn musk
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Yep

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It powers up your rush boon

bold palm
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Also gives you some auto attacks when you run around

blazing shale
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yeah it's auto attacks and you have two specials taht just rotate around you all the time

paper spire
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Did an Air Quality/Demeter Cast thing with Circe by mostly-accident and that really just evaporates stuff, golly

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Still miss the old visual for Apollo Cast but i understand the change v-v

dawn musk
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Circe is pretty busted with Raki

blazing shale
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What's the best Axe build atm?

dawn musk
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I like Single Strike Nergal

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Either Apollo or Aphrodite on attack, then just bonk

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Hestia, Hephaestus, Aphrodite, and Apollo can all buff your attack further

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Hestia can improve crowd-clearing further with Flash Fry

bold palm
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I quite enjoy Zeus boon on Nergal Axe

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because you give everyone around you Blitz with the first hit, and then landing a second hit triggers it all at once

bold palm
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Oh boy

image.png
dawn musk
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Oh wow

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Discordant Bell run let's go

hot wren
paper spire
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Melinoë now can greet Frinos while he is in the Training Grounds, as with the other Animal Familiars

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Thankgoodness

turbid sparrow
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Final patch before 1.0, should be this year then

violet latch
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Y'know I really appreciate the game's commitment to continuity in rivals 2 when ||Eris gets the aspect of lucifer, and immediately discovers that it sucks and gets dunked straight to hell||

dawn musk
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Hidden aspect axe double dash-strike hammer is fucking insane actually

blazing shale
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Why is Rival Polyphemus so hard

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who thought Poison was a good idea

fresh nebula
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I dunno! They thought it was a good idea in Hades 1 too, and it was one of my least favorite things with what it did to your play patterns etc

dawn musk
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Huh

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I ended up not struggling that much with him?

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Well I have only fought him once

violet latch
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The trick to him is to just give him a little bit of distance and immediately leap to healing off the poison

cobalt shard
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the key thing with the bosses is just, treat them like dark souls

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watch them carefully and make your #1 priority dodging everything safely, and only attack when you're sure you have an opening

dawn musk
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Yeah I wasn't super aggressive with him

blazing shale
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Admittedly I found him a lot easier after I stopped using Frenzy :V

dawn musk
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Lmao

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I will never be able to pick Frenzy with my shitty ass reaction time

blazing shale
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what are the "best" fear modifiers anyways?

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e.g. the easiest

cobalt shard
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two levels of time are pretty free

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the one that gives armored enemies perks is very very good for how much fear it gives you

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Denial is arguably an upside as long as you're careful not to get forced into a bad sacrifice boon

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the one that makes enemies be from the next area is also pretty free

worthy anchor
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I also think that more enemies is usually pretty free - the regular encounters aren't usually where I struggle, so.

dawn musk
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Unless it's Olympus enemies

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The sentries are annoying

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And Typhon's spawns can be rather fucked up

rose holly
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Do u guys think Eris is gonna be smoochable in the full game

dusty storm
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hoping

worthy anchor
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Definitely

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||She is romanceable already, actually.||

rose holly
dawn musk
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Hel skull is so fun

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Special to give Hitch to the whole room, then attack with Bouncing Skull and Chain Lightning

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Just crowd deletion

prime inlet
solar cloud
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So did the shit with SAG AFTRA get resolved??

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Because the last I heard they were gonna lose a lot of talent over it and then idk, it feels like it got memory holed

boreal vale
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it was one voice actor and I'm guessing it got quietly resolved

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as part of the general sag-aftra negotiations

solar cloud
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Oh ok cool lol

trail lance
placid thistle
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was this because they were part of the strike or because they weren't?

violet latch
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Because they were.

placid thistle
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oh, that's pretty grody of sg then

violet latch
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Correct me if I'm wrong on this, but my understanding is that Athena's voice actor was part of SAG-AFTRA, and had to leave the game to support the strike because the rest of the production wasn't unionized.

But the reason the rest of the production isn't unionized is because several of the voice-actors are playing dual-roles in supergiant as game devs and voice actors and couldn't work around the SAG-AFTRA rules which are for dedicated voice actors.

placid thistle
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i see

boreal vale
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yes that's basically it

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sag-aftra rules require all work you do to be in union shops

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but for example darren korb is like 4 different roles at Supergiant and 2 of them could bring him into conflict with sag-aftra rules

trail lance
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the strike as it occurred was, uh, complicated. SAG-AFTRA was making some very heavy demands to multiple companies that would have required that Supergiant Games to recast all voice actors to union actors or otherwise be unable to do any voices in future content updates.

boreal vale
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in order to comply with sag's initial stance supergiant would have had to unionize all their voice acting cast, including the double-role types

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this isn't to say that this isn't exactly how it's supposed to work but like, supergiant is in a real weird position and can't really afford to unionize over 1 VA if the rest of the cast doesn't want to

trail lance
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For various reasons, a union should not force you to join it to participate in the industry, the least of which is "your union dues are now more like extortion"

prime timber
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One of my complaints with SAG-AFTRA is things like where they demand that all the actors or voice actors be aprt of the union for a project, which does raise its nasty head from time to time and serves to make getting into the industry just a little bit of a pain.

boreal vale
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similarly SAG created a ton of issues for productions with cast members not in the US

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because SAG is screen actors guild of AMERICA

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so what do you do if your cast is half american and half british or something

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the british actors don't want to join SAG

prime timber
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If I recall correctly, britain has its own union for that.

boreal vale
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yeah and there's reciprocity on some items

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but VAs are in a weird spot on that too

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like for example, I'm not absolving mihoyo of misbehavior here, they're shady folk, but the clash for their voice actors was largely because they have an international voice cast

trail lance
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among other restrictions demanded is a limit on how often non-union VAs could participate in these projects, per lifetime. IIRC, anyways.

boreal vale
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I'm sure they also didn't want to unionize period but nobody made it easier

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yes

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specifically union VAs can only share a project with non-union VAs like 3 times ever

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oh, and there's also the question of what counts as a "project"

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for something like a live service game

trail lance
boreal vale
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if your VAs partially unionize in season 2 of your live service game, is that a new project or does that extend from the first?

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basically there was a combination of resistance to unionization from corporates (bad) and also sag-aftra made it a godawful mess for VAs specifically (also bad)

trail lance
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it was not particularly helped that the demands were a buried lede, and SAG's public stance was that this was about anti-AI clauses (for obvious reasons, the company who manages the VAs for Mihoyo already has a anti-AI clause)

prime timber
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In short, just sort of a thankless decision to have to make.

trail lance
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Additional complexity: the union VAs were actually never supposed to be working on these projects.

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it's just that video game VA work was essentially overlooked by SAG and participation was never punished.

prime timber
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I do enjoy that the reason I know about some of the complexities of union VA work is because of Hazbin Hotel, where the pilot cast got all phased out.

boreal vale
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and on the other side SAG never really considered any of the realities of voice acting work as opposed to physical acting work

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and thus tried to apply rules that make no sense

trail lance
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and then suddenly SAG started paying attention at some point

Athena's old voice actor, IIRC, also got in on the uh, offense. Or was it her husband?

One of your fellow voice actors turning out to be all for requiring a complete overhaul of your voice work was not a happy instance for SG. I imagine her coworkers really did not want to work with her at all after that regardless of how negotiations would have turned out. As Hades 2 is likely to continue to have content updates after 1.0 like Hades 1, a demand like that basically would have meant that either they all joined the union (which is much more complicated than you'd imagine, see above, "darren korb is like 4 different roles at Supergiant and 2 of them could bring him into conflict with sag-aftra rules") or stopped voicing the character and hire an outside VA.

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But also, SAG-AFTRA is a very... Weird union from what I know.

prime timber
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Quite.

trail lance
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That is why this particular instance is not as straightforward as it seems.

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Much more standard unions would not have run into this problem.

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but in this particular case, I don't think anybody at supergiant games preferred the idea of a single coworker telling them to upend their entire company or hire outside voice work.

so, Athena was recast entirely in the last major update, because it was clear the old VA no longer wished to keep those bridges unburnt.

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Unionizing should be a positive act. That is the point, to improve your job protections, keep your job, and keep the company from trodding on you. but SAG is weird, apparently.

trail lance
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Okay, on the actual Hades 2 topic: the new VA is trying really hard to sound like the old Athena. There's still some noticeable differences, but I actually didn't catch that something seemed weird until a few lines in.

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So it's not as sudden of a jump if you've been playing the early access updates before.

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Or, well, if you're going straight from Hades 1 into Hades 2 1.0.

fresh nebula
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In the same way charities go toxic when they stop being about the cause, and start being about the charity operation itself staying in existence

hot wren
blazing shale
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Hades 2 is out btw

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Didn't see some fanfare but today is the release day

cobalt shard
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oh lordy the achievement notifications are coming in

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they're not stopping

cobalt shard
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... honestly I'm surprised it never occurred to me that the way we'd stop Chronos permanently is to ||time travel and stop him from ever getting reborn in the first place||

cobalt shard
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wait Doom keepsake deactivates Strength?!?

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why

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I just picked it for the final zone without realizing that

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why do they want this keepsake to be so trash

prime inlet
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gotta love it

blazing shale
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I got an achievement barrage as well

placid thistle
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looking at my achievements

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i just fucking realized

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50 hours in and i've still literally never seen the third familiar

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i wonder if this save is just permanently fucked out of getting any familiars past toula

paper spire
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Nawh it took me ages for them to show up as well, think it was just a 'choosing the wrong door at the wrong time' type of thing, or just too many up/downs.. idek

cobalt shard
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the third familiar showed up for me ages ago, and I've pet her a bunch, but I have no idea how to recruit her

proven orchid
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so we're definitely getting a full scylla album at some point right

SPOILER_2025091.JPG
cobalt shard
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ok the ||prometheus+heracles duo|| feels like it has way more health than it used to

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i had a really good run where i was melting everything with crazy dps, and when i got to them they just had so much health that they wore me down

west widget
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Man, melee builds feel really rough. Got extreme luck with aphro close buff purple and mythic Demeter attack by first zone and still died to Hecate. Even basic ranged builds fekt easier

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Only done like a dozen runs and I’ve already got to zone 4

proven orchid
cobalt shard
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beat it fairly easily the next try, not sure if it was better build or skill issue

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chat do i have enough uses

image.png
fresh nebula
west widget
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Pretty early, only a few hours

cobalt shard
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...were the discord moderators in the credits of hades 1?

image.png
cobalt shard
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why'd they make this image so cunty

SPOILER_image.png
cobalt shard
placid thistle
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i wish i liked more weapons than just the axe

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and kind of the staff & skulls

blazing shale
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The staff feels a bit weaker now

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That or im suddenly not as good with it as i was

cobalt shard
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aspect of melinoe staff is still very silly

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just stand there pressing special and picking off everything with your railgun

blazing shale
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Gotcha, must just be rusty then

cobalt shard
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the weapons definitely feel a lot more balanced to me than they were in hades 1

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sword, shield, and knuckles all felt so gimmicky and dependent on getting a specific hammer/boon

placid thistle
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oh, I basically only used sword and bow in 1

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they were the only ones that felt good to me

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sword's ability to slide while striking is something that imo every fucking weapon should've had

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because it was your intro and then it made everything else feel drastically worse without the smoothness

cobalt shard
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the damage just always felt really subpar to me

placid thistle
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i never felt that next to most weapons, i think because every weapon's damage feels subpar next to uh

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chiron and hera bows

cobalt shard
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fair enough

west widget
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How do I get adamantine for the final weapon?

turbid sparrow
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Think you mine it from Olympus

west widget
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ah, thought so, ||I've still got to figure out how to prevent the curse which I assume needs you to beat chronos. I've got to phase 2 but haven't won yet||

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I thought the blades were bad but my blades attack build got me the furthest yet, super high damage but really high risk

cobalt shard
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nah you just ||bear it and to on the surface long enough to get a curse undoing recipe||

blazing shale
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I like the Morrigan Aspect for the blades

quaint vault
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Dude this game is so good, theres so much, its always fun, its more Hades and Hades is goated

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Having a fucking BLAST

paper spire
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And the art and the soundtrack and the Dora's funny little paws

fresh nebula
west widget
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I got zeus lightning, aphro attack, and hephastus cast

west widget
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I really like chaos’s design here

fresh nebula
#

It's good stuff!

queen narwhal
#

(ending spoilers) ||The end is kinda dog shit compared to the first game. ||

cobalt shard
#

I wouldn't say it's that bad

#

but the premise of the game does definitely leave less room for ||a satisfying ending||

prime inlet
#

FINALLY

#

||BESTED TYPHON||

cobalt shard
#

aphrodite really is the athena of this game

#

just so many of the best boons in the game on one god

west widget
#

huh, I really like aphro in 1 but haven't been hugely impressed by her in 2 so far. She's the best for dedicated melee builds and has some good oes like spiritual affirmation but many of the other health ones are very win more, and given how much trouble guardian 3 gives me

cobalt shard
#

passively giving all nearby enemies -30% damage while regenerating your mana is imo the single strongest boon in the game; it gets even better if you get the bonus damage on Weak enemies; the one that heals you after every room if you're not too damaged is super convenient for survivability; the unconditional bonus damage with a bonus if you're above a health threshold is never bad; the 20% bonus max health and magic is also always really good

blazing shale
#

The Aphrodite attack buffs are also really good on some of the Arms

#

Like the Black Coat or the Knives

west widget
#

definetly the best for knives attack builds

prime inlet
#

i thought aphrodite was best for the axe

west widget
#

melee builds really like it yeah, axe builds and knives attk really like it since you're up close almost all the time, although axe special cast builds get less out of it

#

I don't have the cloak yet though

cobalt shard
#

I like Apollo with axe

#

it's an honorary ranged weapon with how you can everything on screen with your attacks

#

also does anyone have any clue how to get the ||soot||?

#

I feel like I've done nearly everything but have no clue where to get it

light coral
cobalt shard
#

ah, i've gone through there three times but he has stubbornly refused to show up

#

thank you 👍

fresh nebula
#

I still feel like the top route does way too much damage

fresh nebula
#

Eeey, Typhon down on my first attmept vs him

#

and ofc this time i never dropped a single death defiance -.-

#

Poor bosses were just eternally on fire

west widget
#

got so close to beating chronos with a atk staff burn build but chocked and took a bunch of hits I shouldn't have

placid thistle
#

okay, getting more into the game and trying to do scylla EM

#

this is

#

really tough

#

there are so many giant circles and projectiles

#

any tips on managing everything?

turbid sparrow
#

Focus the tentacles then the drummer is how I usually do it and then just the drumer for normal fights

placid thistle
#

yeah, problem is scylla and the waterspouts in the corner

#

making it hard to get to roxy

turbid sparrow
#

I mean casts help for either stopping her or just laying on the damage for the drummer

placid thistle
#

oh, does the cast fuckery actually work on bosses?

#

i never felt like it did

turbid sparrow
#

I thought it did at least for some of them?

placid thistle
#

it might

turbid sparrow
#

Also moon hexs have a few post buff that are just nutty for stationary bosses that help

prime inlet
#

do the bosses feel easier compared to early access, to anyone else?

placid thistle
#

ough, finally

SPOILER_image.png
#

this was way too stacked a run to have so much trouble

#

even with no mana regen

#

god i am ass at these fucking games

cobalt shard
#

it is so messed up that they added achievements for getting the first two statues, but no achievement for getting the hard one

#

i guess they wanted to avoid having a single achievement be too hard since there's a "got all other achievements" one?

#

but it's not unreasonably hard imo

dawn musk
# cobalt shard passively giving all nearby enemies -30% damage while regenerating your mana is ...

Her Gain boon is not that strong in my opinion. As a Gain boon it's pretty sub-par as you never gain enough to offset your expenditure if you're running a dedicated Omega build (not to mention channeling Omega turns off your regen so it has even less up time) . Its main purpose is Origination to me, and Weak expires very quickly so unless you're in the thick of it like 90% of the time it won't benefit you as much as other Gain boons.

cobalt shard
#

-30% damage from melee attacks is an insane bonus for one boon

#

i've found a lot of my successful builds don't care about magic at all, and when they do, ~8 a second is generally enough

#

standing still to channel attacks just isn't often worth it unless you have some really nutty synergy going on

dawn musk
#

But it's a good defensive boon

#

Personally tend to favor Zeus, Hestia, and Poseidon myself. Subscribed to the ideal of killing enemies faster is the same as having more health

cobalt shard
#

yeah, a +30% damage dealt increase would logically be about equivalent to a -30% damage taken reduction. But aside from your core attack boon and certain legendaries, the most direct increase a boon gives you is +15% damage

#

and because they don't stack multipliers properly, "+15% damage" is probably going to effectively be like 7%, since you'll have a ton of other multipliers to your attack already

#

while you don't have nearly as many defensive multipliers, so that's not a factor for Weak

dawn musk
#

+15% to the attack, on top of the bullshit that are your dash and cast

#

And then Scorch, Hitch, and Blitz let you deal extra damage on top, so a lot of extra damage

cobalt shard
#

i'm not sure i understand what you're talking about?

#

scorch and blitz come as alternatives to other sources of damage; you can have an attack do +100% damage or ~20 scorch damage, it's not like they're in addition to other stuff

#

i meant the most bonus a boon passively universally gives you for basically everything is around 15%, either from apollo or aphrodite's one

#

while glamour gain gives you a 30% bonus to survivability against a big majority of attacks without really having any downside besides subpar mana, if you have a build that cares about it

dawn musk
#

Scorch and Blitz lets your other core attack deal damage without you actively using it

#

Like I can't use my attack and special at the same time, but if I have Scorch, Blitz, Hitch, or even Wound with its support boons on the one I use less, I am effectively dealing damage with that attack even if I am not using it

#

Since it lets me apply a status effect that lingers as I use my other attack, while my other attack can stack another status on top or just go with raw damage from Apollo or Aphrodite

#

Okay lmao I got distracted from talking about Weak

placid thistle
#

yippee, run 100 and i still don't have raki

#

i think maybe supergiant should stop making extremely rare rng rooms have extremely important events

placid thistle
#

dingus statues complete

SPOILER_image.png
west widget
fresh nebula
#

Just be REALLY fat

#

with the strength card

#

and it doesnt actually matter what happens

prime inlet
#

real

#

strength is so good

fresh nebula
#

but functionallyy at it's base, it means every point of hp and healing you get is worth 1.4 hp

#

The damage increase i'm less certain of, because i have no idea how hades 2 stacks it's multipliers together

dawn musk
cobalt shard
#

random thought: hades 2 doesn't have any original characters, like hades 1 did with skelly and dusa

dawn musk
#

The staff double attack works best with Hestia's Gain, I think. Even at common it can easily keep up with just one pom, and it can regen through your channeling

dawn musk
placid thistle
#

shoutouts to 500/480 with Strength, 50% weak, hera restore, and brave face

image.png image.png
#

genuinely just indestructible

#

very silly facetank ||typhon|| forever build

#

oh yeah, and also poseidon heal hex

#

they really made hexes better

placid thistle
#

i love when homer just fucking loses it

image.png
#

like "bro what the fuck do you expect me to narrate about this tomfoolery?"

cobalt shard
#

ok so the ||hades|| keepsake in hades 2 is absolutely the best one in the series

#

the fact that its effect lasts the entire run just from equipping it zone 1 is crazy

light coral
cobalt shard
#

it ||prevents you from using any rerolls, but makes you start with a random one of the boons hades gives you, and makes every boon you get automatically start with +3 levels (at max keepsake rank)||

light coral
#

that seems insane woah

trim briar
placid thistle
#

is dusa not supposed to be just "medusa but basically an OC"

fresh nebula
#

(I love me some rereolls and i think they grant you a ton of power)

#

Though getting to unequp those two very expensive grasp things is pretty great

#

Also, ugh, i'm hitting the same issue i did with hades 1 on this game: It's so fucking Grindy. Plot moving foward bieng locked behind 20 minute runs getsd pretty tiring, at least for me

#

(And the game is hard on my wrists. not as bad as hades 1 was, but it's still a factor)

cobalt shard
#

also didn't medusa fuck? i could swear i remember reading that medusa fucked

dawn musk
#

Medusa fucked or was raped by Poseidon. Dusa herself is ace

cobalt shard
#

god

#

kudos for supergiant to making their games so based, because "woman was raped and therefore she is now a repugnant irredeemable monster" is just the worst plot point of all time and makes me never want to engage with greek mythology

placid thistle
#

okay, i don't think i like ||anubis|| staff, because it's kind of ass at the very beginning and then it's one trillion procs go as you get to spend all of your time dodging without ever really having to dedicate time to offense

image.png
#

or

#

it feels good to use, but i don't think it is especially healthy

#

too many on-hits

cobalt shard
#

(why are you on 21 heat with minimum timer though)

placid thistle
#

minimum timer?

cobalt shard
#

minimum level of the timer condition

placid thistle
#

oh, i wasn't

#

that was 7 minutes, not 9

#

it was just my first run with the aspect

#

so i was testing it

#

to see if i liked it

#

and 5 min/floor is uncomfy

#

even at low heat

#

if only just because of erebus

cobalt shard
#

huh i really need to get some sleep. i guess my brain just saw "oh that's a lot of time left, it must be the most lenient timer."

placid thistle
#

lmao

#

in fairness, 7/floor is pretty lenient

#

i don't think i've literally ever run out of time

#

except with t3 timer

#

also, do you have any idea when you unlock EM4?

#

i assumed it would be after selene says "ah shit EM4 is gonna be impossible"

cobalt shard
#

after you beat both EM3

placid thistle
#

but it never popped

cobalt shard
#

i did a few months ago, i don't remember there being extra conditions

placid thistle
#

wack

#

maybe i need to prog story more?

#

i haven't finished yet

cobalt shard
#

isn't there a cauldron recipe you need to do to unlock level 4

placid thistle
#

there was for level 2 and 3 as well

#

but t4 hasn't shown up

cobalt shard
#

yeah my only guess would be that they've since added a requirement of beating the story

placid thistle
#

alas

dawn musk
#

Doing a fresh run of Hades 2 reminded me how much health the enemies had compared to the staff's attacks

fresh nebula
#

Sigh, all the way to chronos and fucked up his one hit kill mechanic

#

no death defiances because strength

dawn musk
#

Lmao, happened to me last time too

#

Got too greedy

west widget
#

That’s his opener right?

warm cedar
#

I got Hades 2 yesterday and it is very very good

#

I am currently working on boss 2

#

I've got two failed attempts on her

paper spire
#

truly a boss of all time

#

whichever genius decided the accent i thank you

turbid sparrow
quaint vault
#

Second route final boss spoilers ||Typhon not having a health bar is doing me so dirty.||

warm cedar
#

I had to lose to Hecate twice so I'm hoping third time's the charm

cobalt shard
#

and with more than a thousand healing stockpiled :)

fresh nebula
west widget
#

I've gotten close but haven't beat chronos yet

#

had a staff burn build that got close but choked. He pulled the move that darkens the room outside the center and I blue screen trying to figur eout what that would do and missed him doing a charge, not to mention getting hit way too many times phase 2 despite a nearly flawless phase 1. Got him down so close too

fresh nebula
#

Whenever he darkens the room you just need to avoid the edge of the delineation

cobalt shard
#

so like

#

what i do now

image.png
#

do i just keep doing runs hoping the game gives me some check for progression

cobalt shard
#

oh i guess there's chaos trials

fresh nebula
#

Well, color me impressed

quaint vault
#

Also, I dunno if we're discussing romance options but:

||1. Icarus
2. Eris
3. Moros
4. Nem||

trail lance
#

Vaguely on the ending: ||…Seeing so many places not like the ending makes me feel weird for actually liking the ending||

cobalt shard
#

it just feels contrived imo

trail lance
#

||Not like I'm begging for someone to share my opinion, just feels weird for me to think the ending makes a lot of sense and was fairly foreshadowed, and then it turns out I'm insane||

quaint vault
trail lance
placid thistle
cobalt shard
#

||in Hades 1, Hades has a clear established personality as an antagonist. You can clearly see his development as you slowly get through to him that he should open up a little and put in the work to re-form the family. The reasoning for why you should keep doing runs to test security and prevent the Olympians from getting suspicious is also reasonable enough. in Hades 2, through vague unexplained Time Shenanigans, Chronos essentially gets replaced with a completely separate personality so all of his existing characterization is just gone. The explanation that you need to keep doing runs to prevent the possibilities of him having existed feels pretty bizarre, but they obviously did need some justification for letting you keep playing.||

placid thistle
#

||she set everything up, but the agency of "her decision to finish things" was removed||

trail lance
#

||But yeah, you have to permanently kill the father of all monsters first. Hell of a 'didn't do anything'||

quaint vault
trail lance
placid thistle
#

||i haven't finished everything yet, so i wouldn't know||

cobalt shard
#

i never saw agency as an issue with it, the character writing just feels really shallow, especially compared to the first game

trail lance
#

||Also the game is filled with denial of or leaving behind vengeance from many of the characters. It appears to be a theme.||

trail lance
quaint vault
#

||Like I just think the first game didnt have the greatest ending either. I just thought the character writing was the strongest part. And thats still true in this game||

trail lance
#

||Though I guess I might just be a sucker for troubled redemptions and characters experiencing another life, so, maybe I'm just too biased to find it bad writing.||

trail lance
quaint vault
#

||the fact that Nemesis starts off horrible and mean to you is a clue that maybe retribution is not in the cards||

trail lance
#

||Dora straight up goes "nah, I'm not going to go after the gods for shit from ages ago, I'm not that kind of person".

Zag has his doubts about killing Chronos from the start of the plan.||

#

||And so far none of the gods are, again, the least bit happy with this arrangement.||

#

||but I also got a weird piece of dialogue from Prometheus earlier on my first post-game run up…||

quaint vault
#

also, most importantly… ||Chronos is kind of right!!! The gods ARE being assholes to mortals!||

trail lance
#

||something about "chronos is no longer himself… or rather, is."

Which is very "please say more Prometheus, what the fuck do you mean"||

trail lance
#

||the golden age thing wasn't made up by Supergiant games. That's actually part of Greek myth.||

placid thistle
#

yeah mel's uh

#

a pretty weak character imo

cobalt shard
# quaint vault also, most importantly… ||Chronos is kind of right!!! The gods ARE being asshole...

even more importantly...||that is never addressed. Throughout early access I was sure the story would go on to have Melinoe and Hecate learn to make peace with Chronos, so they would get the olympians to be better to mortals and he would release everyone he kidnapped. But instead Chronos' personality trait gets swapped from "arrogant" to "kind" and it doesn't seem like the mortal situation changes at all.||

#

with ending 1 at least

#

still praying to the rng gods to let me advance more of ||the required bonds||

trail lance
# placid thistle a pretty weak character imo

||Mel is consistently someone who is wrong about the situation she and others are in, being blinded by vengeance. I don't think that's weak writing, I think that's intentional. She praises the Olympians even as she hears of what they have done. You're not supposed to assume she's correct.||

trail lance
placid thistle
#

or

#

sorry, i finished a thought i didn't start

trail lance
#

Are you stating spoilers or

placid thistle
#

||she never changes, as far as i've seen||

cobalt shard
quaint vault
#

this is not that tho ||this is Zag going back in time to stop him from ever becoming a villain||

placid thistle
#

||her assumptions are never corrected||

trail lance
#

||but again, haven't finished the epilogue, so||

placid thistle
#

same

#

but it's still pretty shallow, as serval's said

cobalt shard
trail lance
#

||girl is so blind you'd think helping icarus took her eyes instead||

#

||honestly my two hopes for the epilogue is 1. Mel gets an opportunity to experience the possibility-dream herself, 2. The other shoe drops and she finally gets some deeper perspective||

#

||but I otherwise like the ending setup, I don't see much wrong with it so far.||

quaint vault
trail lance
#

||The achievement for the epilogue is called "Golden Age" so I'm hoping for at least the second thing||

#

||but only Time will tell||

cobalt shard
# trail lance ||yeah "security specialist" was… uh. Well, very contrived way to keep hades 1 g...

i wouldn't say so. It is a big thing in greek myth that the underworld is absolutely impossible to escape from without hades permission, so when someone does escape from it 20 times, he would want to address it.
also there is a very real interpretation that "security specialist" isn't actually benefitting anything, but Hades realizes that Zagreus was miserable doing office work, so he can accept his domain getting ransacked if it provides an outlet for his son to be happy.

#

it definitely makes more sense to me than ||generally indicating the concept of Time Shenanigans that are somehow stopped by repeating the problem infinitely||

trail lance
cobalt shard
#

i've looked up how to progress the true ending quest, and it doesn't seem like there's much consensus on what exactly the triggers are

trail lance
quaint vault
placid thistle
#

||mel's constant disregard of prometheus, herakles, hecate herself saying don't blindly trust me, and a pile of other characters is just...frustrating||

cobalt shard
#

odysseus apparently has ||three more knuckle bone interactions after the cyclops, which is going to be obnoxious||

trail lance
#

||but I haven't heard the game explain more fully yet.||

trail lance
quaint vault
#

Also cant wait for a Hades 3 where you play as Hades himself fighting to get his family back from gods of other pantheons.

cobalt shard
#

nah i'm pretty confident supergiant has the restraint to stop at 2

placid thistle
#

honestly i hope they don't, just so we get uh

#

a better continuation lmao

quaint vault
placid thistle
#

i'm pretty sad about a lot of the characterization in this game

quaint vault
#

What characterization? It seemed pretty great to me

#

Other than Mel i suppose

placid thistle
#

mostly just mel's interactions again

#

and because she's the focal character, you see a lot more of em

#

i did like a lot of the other characters interacting with each other, though

trail lance
#

||also among the funnier things from the ending is that a few runs before while gathering z-dust for the ritual, I got a line from Mel telling a bold-faced lie about "I'm actually from the future, here to change your fate by making you change your ways".

Very on the nose, Supergiant.||

quaint vault
#

I thought Nem couldve been a little less agressively rude and Moros to have been a little more strongly characterized as a weirdo but thats nitpicks

#

Eris and Icarus are perfect

placid thistle
#

eris was perfectly characterized, which made me dislike her

#

correct character decision

trail lance
#

Tbh I don't see much issue with the actual characterization of the side characters, ||just feel like they don't have much change back on Mel||

placid thistle
#

least favorite archetype because they remind me of a couple people i wish i'd never had to know

#

smug, untouchable, and an asshole

quaint vault
#

Eris softens up in a very fun way though

placid thistle
#

there's definitely interesting stuff going on with eris's backstory, but i have zero interesting in engaging with her

quaint vault
#

Where her own ||smugness gets to her||

placid thistle
#

she changes a bit, but

#

not nearly enough

#

and not by nearly enough people

#

hopefully the epilogue stuff uh

#

changes my opinion

trail lance
#

||Dora goes through an entire experience of relearning her past, works through it, and accepts it, to the point where Prometheus commends her for having a stronger soul than him to not let it destroy her friendship with Mel.

Even up until just about the last hot springs scene, Mel is like "how could the gods do such a terrible thing, this is completely unexpected??? anyways do you want to seek vengeance. I like vengeance, I'd recommend it to anyone."||

worthy anchor
#

Yeah, I gotta agree with most of this. I certainly found the ending to be less impactful than the one in H1.
Triumphantly ||returning the Queen of the Underworld, finally going in throught the front door, while In The Blood is going?|| Much better than this ending.
Particularly because I think ||Apollo's singing is pretty bad|| - I thought that was part of the setup for showing that the gods are really not all that amazing.

trail lance
#

||Mel, please, learn to broaden your worldview. I know you were raised for vengeance and all but||

trail lance
worthy anchor
#

And so far, that's really the big plot thread that seems dropped for me:
The gods suck. There's lots of evidence, plenty of stories, the enemies do have a point about that. And then, in the ending, the narrator says ||that going forward, the gods were kinder to mortals||. Why? What? Where's that coming from?

trail lance
#

But also opinion I guess

trail lance
worthy anchor
#

The song is saved by the other performers, but imo it doesn't hold a candle to In the Blood.

worthy anchor
trail lance
#

||thus that has not actually happened yet in the story, and presumably it's part of the epilogue ending, but homer is waxing poetic a touch early||

worthy anchor
#

which is a weird choice, no?

trail lance
#

I guess it is. ||But it's a weird ending.||

worthy anchor
#

oh, and also: ||Hypnos.|| Like... it's foreshadowed that that's a red herring and not actually relevant, but it's just a joke. Nothing more. Mel even lampshades it in her reaction!
A funny one, true, but... really disappointing, after that much build-up and three different incantations and all.

trail lance
#

ah, heck, I haven't finished that, shouldn't have checked that

worthy anchor
# trail lance I guess it is. ||But it's a weird ending.||

Yeah, I suppose. Most of it I thought was fine. I think there was plenty of setup, and I don't have a problem with ||Zag's actions and the time travel shenanigans|| - I'm used to that kind of story!
It's a bit abrupt, still, but not too much. The excuse to keep it going seems mostly fine... ||Except for Ephyra and Thessaly. Those need to be time variants too, otherwise we're just keeping the mortals in an eternal war! How's that okay?!||

#

Sorry! 😬

trail lance
#

Overall I like the ending and hope that the details foreshadowed thus far go somewhere in the epilogue. Hopefully it will be worth the while.

worthy anchor
#

Agreed.

placid thistle
worthy anchor
#

If you want details: ||Nope. You go even deeper into his dream and learn that to wake him up... you need to say "Wake up". Which you promptly do, he wakes up, has an adorable illustration, is a bit confused as to how you've grown and where he is, and rushes off to the House of Hades because he's late for his job! Melinoë even reacts with "wait, that's it?"||

placid thistle
#

that's

#

so fucking lame

#

ugh

#

i was really hoping it wouldn't be

fresh nebula
#

lol

fresh nebula
#

It's very funny to me people think Eternity and Aspect of Artemis are weak/awkard

#

I dont think they realize just how insanley strong Crit dagger gets

#

and how good having "I am imrpevious nigh on command" is

#

Just fuckin crit things for 4.7k (this is not a joke, poor Typhon)

quaint vault
#

I think the only really “weak” rewards are stuff like Heaven Strike on an attack that hits a bunch.

fresh nebula
#

Heaven strike is blitz right? That's actually kinda cracked with daggers

#

because you just constnatly trigger and reapply it

#

though for my money, the way to go to snap aretmis daggers in half is Hestia -> Demeter.

quaint vault
#

Like on the wands or the dagger. Just a big dps nerf compared to the straight +70% upgrade

#

Yeah but Blitz doesnt stack. So a lot of your attacks just arent getting upgraded in any way

fresh nebula
#

Eh, i dunno, you can trigger things real fast

#

there's ways to make it shine

#

Perosnalyl though i'm just all in on Hestia Daggers

#

becvause you stack scorch so fast

quaint vault
#

Blitz is the only debuff I kind of groan when I get on my main attack. Its fantastic on a secondary you use only occassionaly/set and forget (like torches special) but youre losing on on a lot of damage if its on your main

fresh nebula
#

I now want to do a blitz focused run just to prove youi wrong XD

worthy anchor
#

Yeah, my experience is more like Penguin's - Blitz is great

#

I'm not a huge fan of wounds and cling-clang on a quick attack

#

both of those have too long cooldowns for that imo

placid thistle
#

at least ares provides actual % damage

fresh nebula
#

Wounds just doesnt provide enough %damage imho. You really want ares for his support stuff - mana gain, knives in casts, etc

#

though the big booms on axe wounds is nice

fresh nebula
#

and your damage goes crazy, because you constnatly apply and then almost instnatly trigger blitz, then reapply it

#

which also keeps orignaiton up constnatly if you have ah alfway decent build

#

and i'm doing this on 12 vow, so you know, not exaclty pulling my punches

placid thistle
#

as in 12 fear?

#

isn't that super low?

quaint vault
#

Higher than Ive ever gone

prime inlet
#

i had a really good run with blitz main and heat ring. Got the hestia zeus duo that made blitz deal heat

placid thistle
quaint vault
#

No

placid thistle
#

wack

quaint vault
#

Rude

placid thistle
#

???

quaint vault
#

I typically play on the bare minimum I need to get new stuff

quaint vault
# placid thistle ???

You called me wack, why are you confused? Thats kinda rude! Im not offended but thats not nice!

fresh nebula
# placid thistle ???

It was rude, even if unintnetional.

I've only slowly been increasing fear because past a certain point, i just don't enjoy pumping the diffuclty in the game, and pumping hte diffuclty directly fights with completing the story beats

#

Well, that worked nicely

placid thistle
quaint vault
fresh nebula
#

It was if nothing esle, educational for me

#

I'd say the thing with Blitz is it's a rich-get-richer

#

the better your dps, the better the dps it gives

fresh nebula
#

Huh

#

I found a oneshot i had no idea about in the Chronos fight

#

that's obnoxious

fresh nebula
#

Aspect of Nergal is satisfingly Unga Bunga

oblique geode
#

Uuuuugh I hate fighting ||Prometheus||

#

Fuck it, turning on God mod purely for the surface

quaint vault
#

||Prometheus|| is prolly the hardest boss in the game.

blazing shale
#

Agreed

#

The Surface path in general feels a lot harder as well

quaint vault
#

It definitely is, but the difficulty spikes hard at ||prometheus.||

blazing shale
#

Yeah

fresh nebula
#

The surface feels really overtuned on damage. Especially in Olympus

nocturne sonnet
#

imho

fresh nebula
nocturne sonnet
#

What're you running?

#

Usually

paper spire
#

||Typhon|| cranking out like 60+ damage per hit doesn't help

#

The Summit in general

fresh nebula
#

Or weapons?

nocturne sonnet
#

Weapons, yeah

fresh nebula
#

Usually I do Artemis Daggers, because they are very safe and punch hard if you abuse the parries

#

The crit boost is global, so you can do shit like get freezer burn, and then trigger it with the crit boost up to hit a boss for 4.7k easy

#

I'm also fucking around with Aspect of Nergal because smashing things is therapeutic

nocturne sonnet
#

Makes sense!

fresh nebula
#

Staff can do some really good work too. I've never been able to make the black coat feel great for me

#

Skulls can do some broken shit, but I find the play pattern for said broken shit really boring

nocturne sonnet
#

Black Coat with the Selene Aspect spamming the Omega Special with on-hit effects goes hard

#

Zeus, Poseidon specials both pop off

cobalt shard
#

reasonably proud of this

2025102.JPG
#

honestly i probably could've turned up Vow of Rivals even more, considering how one-sided the final fight ended up being

fresh nebula
fresh nebula
cobalt shard
#

i wonder if max heat will be possible in this game

#

i know someone did it before they added vow of rivals

cobalt shard
#

not as absolutely insane as it was for hades 1 (i'm not sure if anything in gaming ever will be), but still super impressive

#

wait what

#

you can dash i-frame the damage from timer running out???

fresh nebula
#

nergal axe is so fucking hilarious

fresh nebula
cobalt shard
#

just bonk away and outheal everything

fresh nebula
#

but jusst going Apollo/Hestia/Aphro gives you so much sustain and hilarity

#

(lots of passive dodge, apollo axe is always good, daze as anotehr layer o defence)

cobalt shard
#

hermes boon, Hermes trinket, a certain hammer, probably something else I'm forgetting

fresh nebula
#

Right, iknew there were other atk speed sources out there

fresh nebula
#

Credits rolled

nocturne sonnet
#

Credits also rolled

fresh nebula
#

This is from the perspective of a guy who beat the 1.0 game with max heat

#

so he's really looking at survaiblity, damage output, and saftey for a weapon

#

(which is why he rates some of the sister blades so poorly - his arguments do make sense there)

#

Defitnely better than the average tier video though, because you can see why he's rating things, and he talks through, and he actually talks up each weapon, even the stuff he doesnt like

cobalt shard
#

another high fear run down; i feel like 46 is probably approaching the upper limit of what i'm capable of

2025103.JPG
#

the funniest part of the run: ||I had just maxed my Nemesis bond, and had sex with her during the run, so she gave me 20 armor, which ended up saving me against Hecate. idk if she gives 20 armor every run from now on or if it was just a one-time thing, but it would be very funny if it was a one-time thing.||

west widget
#

Man surface is brutal

west widget
#

I was like a hit away from winning and straight up though I'd beaten chronos then realized I had lost agh

warm cedar
#

Reached the end boss for the first time but died on his second phase

prime timber
#

Beat ||Typhon|| for the first time today. Turns out becoming a Strength tank at the non-existant fear level works really well.

SPOILER_07bd48e7971338f75d46a4ec2ce017f7.png
west widget
#

the black coat is fun, haven't figured out its omega moves yet though
also, are omega moves affected by buffs to the respective move? like attack and omega attack?

prime timber
#

Yes they are!

fresh nebula
#

Yes they are, if it's a boon

#

If it's a hammer, it varies, and stuff that says attack is sometimes attack only (usually stuff to do with destroying armor)

west widget
#

I feel like they're too much visual noise in some fights. Chronos in particular can be really difficult to read with all your attacks and him being some colo from a debuff (especially burn or freeze)

fresh nebula
cobalt shard
#

i think Hades 1 but with all the mechanics of Hades 2 would be literally the perfect video game

violet latch
paper spire
#

Theseus' VA was truly perfect

fresh nebula
#

I do not like unrivaled Prometheus. Goddamn waste of a fun fight

#

(that is, base Prometheus is very fun, and unrivaled is just stupid and frustrating)

warm cedar
#

I got my first Chronos clear today!

#

Only took me two attempts, which is neat

placid thistle
#

congrats

warm cedar
#

Really liking this game so far

#

Have suspicions about where the story is going

#

I should probably focus on fighting Prometheus now I guess

#

Get a clear off of him.

west widget
#

Ugh two man I suck at games

fresh nebula
#

Oh, fuck off hades 2. I killed Unrivavled Promethus and Hercaluse, but it let herc do one last swing of damage and killed me

leaden moat
warm cedar
#

It was something like three for Hecate, four or five for the sirens, two for the beast, and two for Chronos

leaden moat
#

Sick, I've never lost to hecate since I started yesterday but the game keeps giving me the. Eris, don't win too fast special

warm cedar
#

I think I got Eris on the second try, but it helped a lot that almost all of her moves are Adamant Rail moves from Hades 1 so I recognized how she's playing :D

west widget
#

I got eris and polyphemos on first, but I've had scuffed fights with both since

#

sirens feel like the underground boss I'm least consistent with, I've done perfect beasts but his huge damage means slightly off runs can have big repurcusions to your hp

ember atlas
#

so if you intentionally take hits in the guardian encounters, you can save yourself from that

west widget
#

Wait theres stuff to cause Erie to spawn? I thought it was just the first time you reach each new area

ember atlas
#

for others - holliday isn't talking about the Eris fight, they're talking about the "eris shows up and hits you with "woe, what if you took 100% increased damage"" effect

#

it only shows up on the first couple runs on a save file and only if you're doing too well, as an attempt to prevent you from clearing the main storyline before you've actually met any of the cast. it's been ages since i played a fresh file, but I think it's something like the first 15 runs? where eris shows up at the end of each biome if you're above 50%+ HP, and gives you a debuff that says "+5% damage taken per room cleared"

#

it's something like runs 1-5 she'll show up from the oceanus entrance on, 6-10 she'll show up in the asphodel entrance, and 11-15 she'll show up in the tartarus entrance. i don't know if she does the same for the surface, i'm not 100% sure on the surface unlock requirements and if it's even possible to unlock that within the first 15 runs

west widget
#

Oh huh I got almost all of those
Still can’t beat bloodybchronos though

leaden moat
#

First time about to fight chronos just pulled the hades legendary in the room b4

bold palm
#

A full family mollywhopping

bold palm
#

Two second recharge on the Nergal axe.

image.png
#

Getting high off the beatdown, that's some real hammer blow

warm cedar
#

I should play around with Hephaestus as primary offense more

#

Seems really good with no investment on stuff you use occasionally, and absolutely amazing with heavy investment on stuff with heavy investment

#

With very little in between

bold palm
#

Pretty much

#

I also got the hammer that turned it into the first big swing over and over but hit twice

#

which meant it pretty much always landed with an explosion due to the slow swing

#

just BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM over and over

fresh nebula
#

If you get heph's legendary Nergal axe only needs 4 hits to activate berserk

#

This is pretty silly

bold palm
#

If I could only take Heph stuff I would

#

I love Heph

cobalt shard
#

for how balanced the weapon aspects are compared to the first game, it's kind of weird how unbalanced the hexes are imo

#

there's one that lets you heal over 1,000 HP in one fight, or one that gives you functionally infinite armor if you can spend 15 mana a second...or one that makes you jump up and do 200 damage. or one that makes a single enemy do a little damage for a few seconds.

placid thistle
#

I've never found balancing to be a strength of Hades in general ngl

cobalt shard
#

yeah, but for the most part I'd say it's better in 2 than 1

placid thistle
#

yeah

#

definitely

warm cedar
#

I don’t think balance has ever been a particularly high priority

#

There’s clearly been things here and there they adjusted for that reason, and sometimes those things were mistakes

#

But in general I think there’s more interest in compelling play than balance

cobalt shard
#

having more than one or two of the many options be viable is important to make the gameplay compelling

ember atlas
#

the upgraded versions of the hexes are all about as good as each other, the exception being night bloom lmao

#

there's absolutely some weaker ones, but especially with godsents they get a lot more even

#

the only hex i think i personally dislike is lunar ray - since it requires you to channel the whole thing unless you roll the right purple upgrade

#

the rest are instants or have full iframes

#

my actual main complaint w hexes would be how not viable they are at higher fear, though thats more of a complaint about magic spam builds in general

placid thistle
#

which one is night bloom?

ember atlas
#

raise slain enemy

placid thistle
#

ah

#

yuck

ember atlas
#

its not horrible, and it can actually be pretty neat w the fear for shadow servants on (you get better guys to kill in mini boss encounters). i don't think it does too much tho lol

placid thistle
#

it's always so flaccid

#

for me

ember atlas
#

i got last hit on unrivaled chronos with it once

#

but i think that was the only hit it got

cobalt shard
#

imo, being functionally invincible is better than increasing your damage output by like 4%

ember atlas
#

dunno. 9 moon waters will not save you if you don't know the unrivaled chronos fight

#

and im not sure its any better than getting hestia's cruise missiel

placid thistle
#

moon water is also significantly less valuable when you have vow of scars

ember atlas
#

also true. i think moon water specifically is very good for beginners, because it doesn't add any new complications to your build - it's just more hp

#

but it's mediocre for the same reason using DDs vs. strength isn't really worth it - you're getting a lot of extra hp at the cost of spending a considerably longer amount of time fighting

#

because unless you're REALLY maxing your hp, you're not face tanking bosses well anyway

placid thistle
#

well, DDs also get a lot better at high fear

#

both for scars reasons and for punishment reasons

#

since now like

ember atlas
#

high fear runs almost always run strength into moros for safety iirc

placid thistle
#

every random hit from cerberus deals like 50 damage

#

even through strength

ember atlas
#

DD is gotten from athena if need be

#

well actually i guess like 62 fear runs probably use DD, but i think at like 32-40 or so you still use strength

leaden moat
#

i just threw with a pretty great build on my 3rd chronos attempt 😭

west widget
#

Cerberus hits like a truck yeah
I’ve done him hit less but not with consistency and a bad fight hurts hard

leaden moat
#

i actually was doing hella damage and had everything lined up to win just got hit by every scythe twohit for some reason just totally blew it

dawn musk
fresh nebula
#

The one I find bad is the dark side hex, as it's damage is abysmal which makes it's invincibility a wash

dawn musk
#

It's probably stronger with the boon that lets it drop Omega cast for free

ember atlas
#

its not great, but its around as useful as wolf howl there

ember atlas
#

presumably with the +500 on first hit & just resummoning it a lot?

fresh nebula
ember atlas
#

ah, fair. spear satyrs do put up crazy numbers

dawn musk
#

Also very good for Typhon

fresh nebula
#

It feels like baseline it should be using your special and attack boons, but those are upgrades, possibly purple upgrades too?

Lots of weird choices.

Tbh, I suspect the balance of the game leans to much towards the hardcore players in some respects. It's not as bad as say, Deadcells, but I can't look at stuff like the unrivaled bosses in this and go oh, yeah, these are good designs.

dawn musk
#

And if you res the hourglass in Chronos phase 2 they can heal you

fresh nebula
#

(I also find it very noticable how much the best players rag on eternity, which almost certainly means they've got the reflexes to not need it (

ember atlas
#

ah, i think all of the unrivaled bosses are great fights - the most annoying one to me is polyphemous but he's early + easy enough i'ts not a big deal

fresh nebula
#

Or just shit like a skull enemy spawning underneath you and attacking before it's even finished it's summoning animations

dawn musk
#

I didn't know that's a thing

ember atlas
#

it's not

fresh nebula
#

It absolutely is, I've seen it happen several times

dawn musk
#

I think the worst unrivaled fight is Scylla, just too much shit on the screen

ember atlas
#

with frenzy 2 you are forced to react and avoid to the actual circles themselves

#

but you always have enough time to dash out before a skull spawns if you're on top of it otherwise

dawn musk
#

Well between Scylla and Cerberus

ember atlas
fresh nebula
ember atlas
#

rivals chrono p3 is just objectively not playable unless you're willing to play the "how's your reaction time"

#

and if you don't like that, that's fine, you can turn on the other 3 rivals fights or just none of em lol

fresh nebula
dawn musk
ember atlas
#

it doesn't? you just need to see him

dawn musk
#

Not that noisy

west widget
#

visual noise I pressume?

dawn musk
#

Yeah

fresh nebula
#

Yeah, visual noise

ember atlas
#

no, you just need to see him

west widget
#

yeah I think h2 has an issue there
especially chronos himself with how his thin body makes reading whichattack he's using annoying at times

ember atlas
#

I know for sure that's the case, i didn't realize how I was supposed to trigger it so I googled -> did a rivals run -> suicided to prometheus to go back and instantly get that

fresh nebula
#

Huh, okay, I rescind that complaint then

ember atlas
#

it says some shit like "he wants to see you prevail on a fearful night", so I did a bunch of super high fear runs w/o rivals, and had to google what the actual condition was when those wins didn't unlock it

#

atp i've maxed out everybody but athena & echo - athena because they added like 10 new dialogue lines in 1.0 and she's rare enough in olympus that it took me ages to get through them all

fresh nebula
#

She spawns regularly for me, but I run strength

ember atlas
#

i had finished the post-game epilogue and i was getting "now that you've got the macguffin, you can beat typhon, i know it" lines :(

fresh nebula
#

It's actually pretty obvious when she's going to spawn you get waves with way too many enemies in the room

ember atlas
#

i do too, but she's very rare still - it's like a 1/4 ish chance per biome for any given NPC encounter

fresh nebula
#

(this is without using her keepsake to force it)

#

Huh. I would have estimated 50% for get

#

Her*

ember atlas
#

nope, not even close - it's also scaled bc she, like a lot of the NPC spawns, can only happen on non-menu rooms

fresh nebula
#

I'm still annoyed at the unrivaled fights and don't like how they're designed, but that fits more into my issues with how Hades handles difficulty, and that's not a unique to hades complaint - I do not like pick your own difficulty designs, and consider them to be fairly flawed (offloads decision making to the player, distorts feedback gained from the player base, creates an immense possibility space. There's also treadmill issues with meta progression, but that's a different argument... And one I've mostly lost. Lots of people like treadmill designs, it's frustrating

fresh nebula
ember atlas
#

so poms, boons, hammers, stars, etc. can't trigger it

#

she'll only spawn for metaprogression reward / hp / mana rooms basically

#

i believe artemis has the same requirements, and so might icarus? i'm not 100% sure. i don't think heracles has that requirement

fresh nebula
#

Huh. That.. does not seem right

ember atlas
#

if you force athena she'll spawn wherever, ofc

fresh nebula
#

I'm fairly certain I've gotten Artemis in boon rooms at least

ember atlas
#

you probably used artificer or something - to the best of my knowledge that's been the case since she was added, and i know it's still relevant for strategy on high fear runs (for timer)

fresh nebula
#

No, I don't run artificer

ember atlas
#

i think athena would have been fine dialogue-wise if i'd played through it semi normally, but since she had a total of 11 runs for me to beat the game (only 5 of which were surface runs) in 1.0, i think her dialogues just got really bunched up. hades 1 had the same problem ages after release (w.r.t. a couple dialogues being stale by the time you got em), so they might silently tweak it a little, they might not lol

#

it's a moot point since after that i learned athena's dialogues can trigger when summoned via keepsake, so you can suicide spawn her in room 1 in erebus to clear enough dialogue to unlock her affinity anyway

west widget
#

Got my first chronos kill
Felt hollow like from my meta progress rather than skill

#

Still struggling to get through Olympus consistently, those harpies and machine gun robots shred me

bold palm
#

the harpies are rough

#

the dive attack always breaks my ankles

#

Grats on the first chronos kill though!

#

Shatter his fingies

west widget
#

They can come from offscreen to catch you out too

fresh nebula
west widget
#

Especially when you get multiple armoured ones doing it at the same time, super hard to find safe spots and stray shots can do a ton

fresh nebula
#

Yeah. I don't find the balance in this great, and I blame that on the build your own difficulty system (as it creates an effectively exponential game space of possibilities to explore, and it's very very hard to understand for the average player how these will interact, as numerous of them are effectively multiplicative)

bold palm
#

Just before Chronos, dressed to god damn kill

image.png
ember atlas
#

woooo

bold palm
#

.... did not know there was an achievement literally called "dressed to kill"

#

I also have 300 armour and I'm doing 20% of it as extra damage thanks to my main man Hephy-G

#

kicked his ass, still dressed to impress

#

big up my spider lady and hephy-g

fresh nebula
#

Very nice work

bold palm
#

Who do you think is the best god boon to put on the ||shiva blessing on the mecha-arms? The one with the bouncy special|| I'm tempted by both Aphrodite and Hera

dawn musk
bold palm
#

Apollo IS good yeah I forgot about him

#

playing "dodge the sun" with the enemies

#

Oooo part of me is tempted to try ares

#

Having a big wound splashing area might be real useful

#

I love Hephy but I feel his special would be a waste on it, It would enhance the first hit but then nothing else. I like Aphrodite because it encourages you to stand near the enemy, which helps for the special thing it does, and you can get a cool hammer upgrade that makes you explode for extra damage if you're standing in the attack

west widget
dawn musk
#

Ares is a funny god to me

#

A lot of his core boons need support to get really strong

bold palm
#

I decided that this run I was going to show up dressed in my ass kicking outfit and gun down grandpa where he stood.

west widget
#

ranged weapons definetly feel better for safety, melee is very high risk and without the right build won't really have the damage to compensate, even if I really enjoy them. The game feels built for ranged in many ways

bold palm
#

Also I haven't really had a chance to mess around with Ares. It feels like unless you really concentrate on his bonuses he doesn't give you much. I tend to concentrate on the little orbs he can drop that make you stronger and give bonuses but I should try other builds.

#

I've had some wonderful work with the axes, and I love the daggers, but the game basically gives you certain times you can act in melee, but if you pull away, being able to spam ranged stuff keeps you active. Where just strong melee stuff you have to disengage and wait your turn

west widget
#

aphro axe/thanatos with both demeter casts was my first chronos kill, very fun build

bold palm
#

I love sometimes just piling everything onto a cast

#

specially if I can get Hestia's boon that shoots it out at range

west widget
#

yeah that one is fun, hestia has some very good boons

bold palm
#

I had a nice mix of Hestia's boon to shoot it out, Hera's boon on the actual cast so it hitched everyone, then Apollo's expander with his mana regen which is the one where it gives you mana after your cast goes away.

#

It was whizard time motherfucker

west widget
#

one of my favorite magick boons, poseidon and demeter are also really good.
Aphro is mixed since if you're running a super mag hungry build its not great but the weakness aura is great.
zeus's is just meh? its a one use refill which isn't great, while hephaestus needs you to do something you don't want to happen, especially in later areas.
I can't remember what the others give

dawn musk
dawn musk
bold palm
#

Hera's is still "run out then freeze some of your mana pool and get it back"

#

Or whatever the proper word for it is

dawn musk
#

Hera fully restores if you run out of mana but reduces your maximum for the encounter each time, very good for Omega spamming

dawn musk
bold palm
#

thassit

dawn musk
#

Lmao it's kinda funny Ares's status effect suffers from the same problem in both games, they both have a hard cooldown you can't get around (unless you have Merciful End)

ember atlas
#

ares wounds is great in this game

west widget
#

hestia was the one I was talking about first yeah

bold palm
#

It might be that I'm not running into Zeus so much any more but I find it interesting he's got less of the "power for devotion" thing he had in the beta, where you primed a lot but got some really strong abilities.

ember atlas
#

it's not a super bad cooldown considering it's crazy good damage output, especially with high % scaling

dawn musk
#

Ooh really

bold palm
#

Oh good boss killer then?

#

Nice, good to know

dawn musk
#

It's just 50 power so I might have overlooked it

bold palm
#

Riker what would you put on the ||bouncy Shiva special attack||?

#

Like which god

ember atlas
#

yeah, that's a good case for it - esp the non omega special

bold palm
#

Apollo is also great

#

Because it's a case of "here comes the sun~ do do doodoo~" while the explosion rains in

dawn musk
#

Zeus with Arc Flash could also work

#

You'll be applying and popping Blitz repeatedly

bold palm
#

I kinda want to Until death Do we part some spirits with Hera

west widget
#

The chain lightning in hades1 was absurd in some weapons, doesn’t feel as good here without supporting skills

dawn musk
#

Huh, I find them pretty strong in Hades 2

west widget
#

Another part is that knife is the best for atk speed and that means high risk melee

bold palm
#

Scorch on that special is okay, like it's great to apply it on mass, but scorch is better if you can hit fast and repeatedly

#

It's mid, but still a good chunk of damage

dawn musk
#

My fave thing to do with Scorch is pairing it with Hitch

#

Making a web of pain

bold palm
#

Hitch and Hephy can be a funny mix

#

because you run past some people, attach them all, then hit one of them so hard they all explode

ember atlas
#

apollo is good if you actually want it for the big damage, but that works just as well if not better on the attack (and i don't think i'd put it on both, probably, unless you want the legendary)

#

hera is also really good, as is demeter, because their curses benefit a lot from the big fuck-off aoe

#

i genuinely don't think it has a "bad" option outside of the obvious poseidon/aphrodite

#

you can really say the same about any of the "big aoes" in this game - apollo, demeter, hera are the obvious ones but basically everything works fine

#

i also think its worth considering the attack as much as the special, lol, that hits like a truck

bold palm
#

I'd even argue that Aphrodite is good on it, as it's one of the few abilities it encourages you to stand in close to your enemies, and you can get a hammer upgrade that gives you an extra AoE around you when you're standing in it. So even Aphrodite is good for it.

#

It's more dangerous but that's what weak is for

dawn musk
#

Does her regen work through that hammer?

oblique geode
#

I used to be terrible at all the bosses except Scylla

bold palm
west widget
#

Had my first ||typhon|| fight. I think it went well, got to what I assume is phase 2