Hades (SuperGiant Games)

With regards to the bow: by default, it’s really bad in crowded situations because the Special doesn’t do that much damage, and the Attack can only hit several enemies if they’re lined up for piercing damage. Plus, both the Attack and the Special open you for hits since it takes a bit to fire.:

What makes combat easier in my opinion:

  • Get the Deadalus upgrade that will let the arrow bounce around and hit up to 3 additional enemies. This makes crowd control easier and also enables to hit enemies that are out of your line of sight. Combined with boons like the ones from Ares, Poseidon or Zeus, this allows for some decent damage.
  • Upgrade the Special with boons from Ares or Zeus. Base damage is low, but the boons will add to the punch.
  • Upgrade the Aspect of Chiron - that will result in all your Special arrows automatically seeking the most recent enemy hit by your Attack. That means all of them will hit that target. This works up to three times if executed right after an Attack. (After which the Special will return to its standard spread form until you hit an enemy with your Attack again.) This makes things a lot easier against normal enemies and bosses because after you hit an enemies with your Attack, you always get to fire up to three Specials while being able to to zip around and don’t care where the enemy is because those Specials will hit regardless. You’ll usually be able to keep distance and even hit successfully while standing behind an obstacle. Goes without saying that you definitely want to add a boon to your Special for extra effects.

As for the Poseidon combos, I’ve mentioned it previously: Upgrading the Attack or the Special depending on the weapon and then getting the Wall Slam boon, the Wave Slam boon and the Legendary that will shove enemies twice is going to turn you into an unstoppable beast against groups of enemies. Especially in Elysium and Styx, enemies always end up getting slammed against walls or other obstacles.

The latest update may have rebalanced the boon distribution though, so it might be more difficult (or nearly impossible) to get all of the above in one run.

I had a pair of good builds

-Rail with autoaim and Ares doom effect on primary + special with slow effect + cast with Dionysius replacement. I would throw the aoe slow, then the three wine bombs on top that would cause dot + light stun, then pewpew the rest. It was the easiest I played through Elysium.

-This one, still “in progress” (this is after killing Hydra).

It’s basically throw cast that makes a good amount of damage and at the same time deflect the enemy fire on its path (and potentially curses them), then hit them with the sword special with extra dmg + 2x dmg, that dislodges the cast stones and you can repeat gain.

I finally beat the Hydra and then made it to the next boss in Elysium. I lasted a while and got the guy down to around 25% and the other down to around 33%. It seemed like they can take a lot of damage because their bars moved very slowly. Got the 500 darkness to get another brig back from the dead ability.

Those (chaos?) pits that start that to appear where it makes things harder for a bit then get a boon - is it good to take some early ones to make the later run easier? I generally make it to the hydra now even if I only beat it for the first time today.

I haven’t really found the chaos boons to be worth the investment of health, but I’m not a top-tier player for sure.

It seems evident for me is best to pick the chaos gates on the first rooms, as it’s when the game is easy enough you can hold up with a curse for a few rooms. On the other hand Elysium with a curse sounds like a nice way to suffer.

Elsyium bosses are the highlight of the game in difficulty. The last level isn’t a new jump in difficulty, and even the last boss is just a bit harder than the Elysium boss.

I always ignore T until A is down. He’s slow and telegraphs his ranged attack, which you can occasionally even use to damage A, although mostly it’s not worth the risk to do so. Divide and conquer, and that way you don’t have a third thing to worry about when T starts getting god-crazy at 40% health.

What can make the Elysium boss fight tricky is if you rely a lot on directional attacks since T uses a shield to block a lot of those. Anything that’s multi-directional he can’t fully block, e.g. multiple shield thrown with the Aspect of Chaos (Aegis), the spear Special upon return and so on. And anything that has an area affect he can’t really block at all, e.g. Call of Demeter/Zeus/Dionysus/Zeus, Slicing Blade, Blade Dash, Thunder Dash and so on.

I definitely prefer to take them as early as possible because the curse effects are easier to handle then. Buffing the enemies’ health is easier to deal with when encountering fewer and weaker ones. Early on it’s also easier to not use your attack or special for a few rooms (due to damage penatly) since you haven’t upgraded either of those a lot by that point.

T walks away from you after retrieving his spear, though, making him vulnerable to directional attacks from the back afterwards. Thankfully, he likes to throw his spear a lot.

I got two hidden weapon aspects, all the normal ones and I got my first companion. But, I slowed a lot the pace I was playing it.

Companion?!

https://hades.gamepedia.com/Companions

It’s just a limited used ability.

im a noob whos only made it to hades once. but that time, it was definitely because i had the fire continuously hammer upgrade on the bow

My worst runs in Hades involved using the bow. How did you guys make it work? It’s slow, doesn’t offer protection like the shield, need to constantly move around to find position to aim, and weak ass damage for either Attack or Special. It was so tedious to play against T & A I sorta let myself get killed by them. The rifle is a way superior range weapon than the bow.

I actually just managed my first win with the bow. Managed to get a Zeus boon early on that dropped lightning on the special plus a hammer that turned the special into a larger fan of arrows. So every special was a rain of arrows and lightning. I pumped that up a few times and added a mod that increased the chance for lighting to strike two or three times per hit. I also added Athenas reflect dash for protect plus damage. The real kicker though was a heroic boon that put a reflect barrier around me that would soak up the first few hits of damage I would take. This would recharge every 20 seconds after it absorbed too much damage. So I was just running around with a shield on most of the time, spamming my special soaking everything in lightning damage. It was really effective and a lot of fun, didn’t even bother with the attack or cast.

Had written some Bow thoughts here.

If it’s all about beating the game with the Bow to get the goodies: another way to deal with the weapon would be by… ignoring it and fully focus on upgrading your Cast as your main way of dealing damage. There are some really effective combos for that.

With the bow I rely mostly on either the Hera or Chiron aspect for burst damage, and then kite in between. It’s slower (vs say, the sword) but pretty safe and reliable.

So… about the bow/Coronacht…

If you’re not a fan of that weapon, I highly recommend unlocking the Aspect of Rama as soon as you can. Made the weapon a lot easier for me.

One of the main challenges about the bow early on is the lack of crowd control because the Attack is slow and only hits one direction, while the Special is a spread, but rather weak - and firing both opens you up to enemy attacks due to the small delay.

Rama makes fighting groups easier without any Deadalus upgrades because Shared Pain lets you mark enemies with the Special, and for the next 7 seconds, all marked enemies will receive damage if your Attack hits an enemy - regardless of where they are. Also, the Special… my goodness. It’s not really spread anymore and it’ll focus on one enemy even across longer distances (while taking less time to execute than Attack), but if there are other enemies near the enemy you’re targeting, they’ll get hit, too. Kinda like the Electric Shot (Zeus).

If you apply Ares’s boon (Curse of Pain + Dire Misfortune) or Zeus’s (Thunder Flourish + Static Discharge), combat gets notably easier.

Unfortunately you don’t seem to have any control over when the hidden aspects get unlocked. I, for example, still don’t have that one. Titan Blood is the worst resource to have to grind in this game, I think.

Attempt 21, finally made it out of Hades. Used the rail gun with a Zeus upgrade to do chain lightning on attack, and I had the attack boosted to be faster. Now I think I’ll wait till the game is complete before I do another run.

I did around 50 runs, 2 successful exits only, in 30 hours. I decided to quit for now, and I will play another 10 hours when the 1.0 version releases.