Transcription
Hello friends and lovers. My name is Halen. I am here to help you get good at Hades 2.
So, this video is going to mostly be for people who just started Hades 2 or are about to start Hades 2 but need a little bit of guidance, basically. Don't worry, I won't show any footage of any final bosses or anything like that, but there may be some very minor spoilers around certain upgrades, namely the Arcana cards.
Okay, I don't like to fool around, so let's just jump into the first big tip, which is about combat and how to use the cast properly. If you played Hades 1, one of the big differences in Hades 2 is how the cast works. Now, when using the cast, you drop a big circle on the ground that ensnares enemies. Now, let me emphasize something here. The cast ensnares enemies so that you can keep them at arm's length since Mel only has one dash at a time. Now, the game does tell you this early on, but I think this was a big adjustment for me personally, so I think it would be helpful to be reminded of that and just really emphasize it. You can also spend that time charging up an Omega move from the other side of the cast. But speaking of Omega moves, you should know that the game allows you to drop your cast while you're in the middle of charging most Omegas, which means you don't need to stop what you're doing to just drop a cast.
But let's talk a little bit more about cast in the boons you could or maybe should put on it before we move on. Certain cast boons are going to feel better than others, which should be no surprise, but if you're new to the game, it's hard to tell which ones will work best, of course. Here are my top three for a new player. And first and foremost, it has to be Demeter's freezing cast. The freeze effect will be a huge game changer when you're still learning the game and in particular the enemies. And while you can get the freeze effect on your attack or special as well, it feels extra nice on the cast so you can easily plop it onto a group of enemies. Literally freezing them in place even for a couple of seconds is just so, so helpful. I do think that freeze may fall off a little bit for you eventually as you get to know the enemies and just want more damage instead, but I think it is really vital early on for making progress.
My next cast boon pick is Smolder Ring from Hestia because Scorch is actually really quite strong and being able to apply it in a large area via the cast to a bunch of enemies is going to feel great. Scorch also has some nice follow-up boons to boost its power further, namely Pyro Technique and Freezer Burn if you're able to grab them. Lastly, I think that Zeus's Storming is just a great simple damage-dealing boon. Keep in mind though, it only hits one enemy at a time and therefore doesn't have an area of effect, but that doesn't stop it from being one of the better cast boons out there.
All right, that's enough about cast, so let's move on to something outside of combat: resources. Let me give a basic breakdown of the first resources you'll find and what they'll be used for. Ash is mostly for unlocking Arcana cards early on, and Bones are for exchanging for other resources once you have the Wretched Broker unlocked. Nectar, just like in Hades 1, is for gifting to other characters so that you can get their keepsakes and advance relationships. And Psyche is for increasing your Grasp so that you may equip more Arcana cards. Do not miss how you can increase your Grasp on the right side of the Arcana card screen.
Now, there are way more resources than just these, and there are way more uses than I just listed for them, but I think this is a good index for when you're starting out. So, I would say that you'll want to mostly choose doors with Ash on them for your first few runs. But, if Psyche gets offered, you should always take it since it's tougher to get. Now, don't forget to pick up any herbs or other resources and rims as you go. You'll need all of these for different incantations and such. Incantations, just to be clear, are larger scale unlocks from Hecate's Cauldron and what advance your progress the most. There are a ton of incantations to get through, but my best advice is to just keep playing and keep in mind what resources you're looking for.
While we're at it, you should always talk to any NPCs that have new dialogue, which is marked with an exclamation point over their head. There are some side quests and important story beats that are locked behind dialogue, so just make sure you talk to everyone whenever you can.
Next, let's talk about Arcana cards so that you can make the most of the Ash that you'll be spending. So, I got a straightforward priority for which cards to activate. I think you start with only the Sorceress available. So, obviously you'll need that, but then I would just do Wayward Sun, then The Furies, then Persistence, and then Death after that, in particular. There's a good mix of damage and sustainability, but it's probably obvious that you'll want to get some Death Defiances as early as possible. These cards also equate to 10 Grasp, which works out for now. But once you've unlocked a couple more Grasp, I'd grab The Huntress next. Meanwhile, cards like Eternity, The Messenger, and Swiftrunner are pretty low priority for now, and you probably won't really want to use them very much.
After that, I would consider getting The Centaur next, even though you can't activate the effect yet. The reason being that the card to the right of it will be our very next top priority: Origination. The bonus global damage from having two curses on enemies will feel like night and a day. So definitely don't wait to grab it. I think that's a good start to the Arcana cards, and eventually you'll find an incantation that will allow you to upgrade them as well, but that won't be for a while. I'll have another video dedicated to discussing Arcana loadouts for the later game. Check the description for it if you're looking for more details about these cards.
Now, let's get back to discussing combat a bit more for a second. I got one nice tip for you. While you're stuck using just the staff, you can use the special pretty much immediately after an attack to increase your damage output instead of just spamming one or the other. So, what I do is I slide my thumb across the controller to continuously use the attack into the special, back to back. You can also do a dash attack into a special in a similar fashion, which allows you to be more mobile during combat.
So, precious. Oh, who's your good boy? We love you, Grumpy. Yes, we do. You're a precious little boy.
Now, you might have seen this term being thrown around on some boons, which is Power, which is a new mechanic for Hades 2. The simplest explanation is that Power is base damage. So, the higher your base damage is, the more helpful, say, Aphrodite's Attack or Special boon will be since the percent you gain from her will multiply your base damage. If you have a lot of percent increases already, you'll want to prioritize Power. But if you already have a high base damage while using, say, Aspect of Mel for the axe, you'll want to prioritize percent increases instead.
By the way, yes, you can dodge the Sheep-a-ball from Hecate. It just requires some careful timing with your dashes. As you can see here, if you do get transformed, you are able to attack and dodge while changed, although it's not very effective. One thing you can do is strike the trees to try and kill the witches on the other side more efficiently. Also, when Hecate splits, there are a couple of small tricks to determine the real Hecate without having to hit her to find out. First and foremost is by using the audio. If Hecate speaks after splitting, the audio will only come from the real Hecate. This means if you're using headphones, you can use the stereo sound to determine where the voice is coming from. The real Hecate will also maintain any status effects you had already applied to her from beforehand, such as Scorch.
Okay, next we got keepsakes to discuss and where you should prioritize those precious Nectars you've been gathering. Personally, I really like Odysseus's keepsake Knuckle Bones as a general-purpose tool against bosses early on. But you also can't go wrong with Skelly's Lucky Tooth, which is just an additional Death Defiance. I would grab at least those two keepsakes and maybe Moros's keepsake after you meet him and then just focus on getting all of the Olympian God keepsakes after that. The God keepsakes are just as powerful in Hades 2 as they were in Hades 1, if not even better. They work more reliably in forcing a boon from a god and also allow you to increase the rarity of the first boon from the respective god you take. There's also another bonus that after gifting every Olympian god at least once, you'll be offered a new incantation at the Cauldron that allows you to unlock the Codex, which simply lets you look at all of the boons whenever you want.
All right. Now, there's one very major and important hurdle that we haven't discussed yet, which only affects new players to Hades 2, and that is Aerys. Aerys is a huge pain in the ass for new players, basically, not just because she makes the game strictly harder, but she's also kind of complicated on how her blessing works. So, let's try to explain this. When you first start out in Hades 2, the character Aerys will appear at the start of the second zone in your first three runs if you get there. She will then give you the Blessing of Strife, which makes you take 20% more damage and increases by 5% for each encounter after. Now, after your first three runs, whether you win or lose, she will then only appear at the start of the third zone instead with the same debuff and for only the next three runs as well. Then the same pattern is repeated for the fourth zone. Eventually, after around 10 run attempts, she won't appear at all, leaving you to complete your runs like normal. I've met a lot of players who didn't even know that Aerys existed, so don't feel bad for not seeing her. It seems to me that Aerys is just there to provide an additional challenge for seasoned players starting a new save, but also to stop new players from just plowing through and getting a win too quickly. Of course, it is still possible to beat the game on your first run, but the recommended builds for it are quite narrow and probably not something we should get into in this video.
Now, there is one more trick to being able to skip seeing Aerys, and that's if you have less than 50% health and no Death Defiances after defeating a boss right before you're supposed to see her, she will not appear. However, she will instead appear after the next boss, unless you repeat the same thing of having less than 50% health and no Death Defiances.
All right, we're on to our last section here, which is discussing some beginner builds. This might be a bit more subjective, I'll admit. So, I'd definitely love to hear what has worked well for you while you were still new to the game. Now, the biggest thing I'd like to try to hammer home is that Blitz and Scorch are very powerful effects. So, having Zeus's Attack or Special to apply Blitz coupled with, say, Hestia's Cast is just a great overall combo. It also unlocks the potential to get their duo Thermal Dynamics, which is top tier. Boons like Pyro Technique to make the Scorch tick harder and Double Strike to give your Blitz a chance to trigger twice are phenomenal to add to this. The best part about this is that the weapon and aspect you're using kind of just doesn't matter. It works no matter what.
But let's talk about some weapon-specific things now. So let's say you just want to do a dagger run. So while you're stuck just using the base daggers with no aspects, I'd probably recommend aiming for either Poseidon or Hestia's Attack. Scorch and Splash are what we call on-hit effects, which benefit more from a fast-hitting weapon like the dagger. So you'll get more bang for your buck than just using, say, Aphrodite's Attack. If you chose Poseidon's Attack, you can try to aim for his legendary Long Term. Or if you chose Hestia Attack, you could aim for Pyro Technique or Freezer Burn again as well.
For the Torches, it kind of depends what kind of hammers you get offered early on. But I still think grabbing Zeus's Attack and just holding down the attack button works surprisingly well. Hestia's magic regen works great with this weapon since you'll be using a lot of regular attacks with the occasional Omega. Also, boons like Ocean Swell work really well here since you're letting loose Omegas so frequently and that additional on-hit effect is just actually really nice.
And lastly, for the Axe, I think Apollo or Aphrodite work really well on the Attack. I wouldn't really bother considering using the Special at all for the Axe for now. So, just focus on the Attack and Whirlwind side of things. The extra range from Apollo does actually help a lot and can technically lead to his legendary boon, but I know that won't be easy when you're still new. Still, I would focus on charging up a Whirlwind between boss phases and while enemies are spawning in chambers. Also, you can use a dash after charging the Omega to get it started in a new place, allowing you to stay a bit more mobile.
All right, that's it for my beginner tips for Hades 2. Let me know what you think, and if you got any questions or if you got any tips of your own to share with everyone, make sure you let us know down in the comments. Also, I got lots more guides and maybe like tier lists planned for Hades 2, so make sure you hit like and subscribe or whatever people ask for nowadays. But also, let me know if you need help with anything in particular and I'll try to answer you or maybe prioritize some potential videos for it. But yeah, thank you so much for watching and death to Kronos.
Hello, handsome. Hello. Who's a sleepy boy? Where the grumpy is. Hello. Will you come here? No. Precious. We love you, Grumpy.
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