Tips for making the most out of your first few Hades 2 runs
Good advice even if you've played the first game
Hades 2 is like Hades but better, and you’ll likely pick up the sequel very quickly if you’re familiar with the original. That being said, there are plenty of things the games do differently from each other that are important to understand before you jump in.
Below, we've collected some big tips for your opening hours of Hades 2. Some of these serve as gentle reminders of how to make the most out of your time in the Hades games, and some are wholly new to Melinoë's journey to save her family from Chronos.
Focus on Ashes first
There is actually a ton of progression going on in Hades 2 even if you’re running the same roguelike paths over and over. Incantations, Keepsakes, Arcana, and your Nocturnal Arms (weapons) all evolve over time.
And they all require different resources to unlock. The easiest to get, Ashes, is also where you should focus first.
Have a goal in mind
All of those upgrades pull your attention in a lot of different directions at once, and it can be easy to lose sight of your next goal. I [Jeff] say this as someone who didn’t unlock the surface route for about three hours because I didn’t realize I’d already collected everything I needed.
Hopping in and doing a run just to see what you can find is all well and good (and anything you find will be useful), but knowing what you’re working toward will make it a much more enjoyable experience.
Mix and match your Arcana often
Arcana is the first way you’re going to be upgrading Melinoë — it’s why we said to start by focusing on Ashes — but it’s more complicated than just an upgrade tree. You’re always limited by your Grasp — how many points the cards you have active can be worth. And you’ll unlock cards far faster than you’ll upgrade your Grasp.
Sometimes, you’re going to have to abandon those early cards for more powerful cards — even if you’ve gotten used to their benefits. For example, the 5-point Excellence card improves the chances of finding more powerful Boons, and that’s probably more useful than the earliest cards like The Furies and The Sorceress.
Your Arcana is (well, should be) an evolving toolset that you revisit often.
Save your gifts for rare NPCs first
Giving Nectar as a gift is the primary way for you to improve your relationships with NPCs. You won’t be able to give a God or NPC Nectar the first time you run into them. But for most (all?) of them, the first time you give them a Nectar, they’ll give you a Keepsake — a passive item that can drastically improve your run.
The problem is that there’s a ton of NPCs. You will have way more interactions with characters you can gift Nectar per run than you'll collect Nectar to give. But progressing your relationship with characters is important not only for Keepsakes, but for side quests and story beats as well.
To ensure you can quickly get all of the Keepsakes in Hades 2 and begin a relationship with each character, you want to do two things. First, you want to always buy the Nectar from the merchant back at camp. You can do this before starting each run, and their supply gets replenished nightly, so you can always buy one.
Second, and most importantly, you want to make sure you hold onto at least one Nectar so you can gift it to rare event NPCs. While we would include the NPCs you can chat with in each area — like Arachne — these guys are usually pretty common, and you’ll likely run into them every other run or so. The real rare NPCs that you want to save Nectar for are the random chance event ones like Artemis, Heracles, Icarus, and more. These events are completely random, and you could go multiple runs without seeing one, so there’s nothing worse than finally running into one you don’t have the Keepsake for and not being able to give them anything.
Tend your garden
There’s a ton of upkeep and relationship-building to do in the Crossroads between runs and it’s tempting to rush through a lot of it.
One thing to not ignore, though, is your Soil Plots. You’ll unlock these with the Flourishing Soil Incantation pretty early on. These plots let you grow plants far more reliably than just finding them out in the world, so make sure it’s on your list of stops in the Crossroads. (You’ll have to unlock the Silver Spade Gathering Tool first, though.)
Always go for the Daedalus Hammer
Picking up another Boon is always the obvious choice in Hades 2, and will usually result in just a flat-out more powerful Melinoë. However, there are some cases where forgoing a Boon for another upgrade is better, and the Daedalus Hammer is the prime example of that.
Daedalus Hammers impact your weapon's functionality, adding a new wrinkle to how one of their abilities work for the rest of the run. This is a critical piece of tech in Hades 2, and can net you some absolutely wild bonuses. They're also great to get early on in your run, as a great change to your Attack might mean that you lean heavily into an Attack-focused build that run.
Alternate paths and weapons
I know earlier we said that you should go into runs with a goal on what to find — which, bonus tip, is made easier by pinning an incantation with Forget-Me-Not, which will alert you to the resources you need! — but it's also important to maintain variety.
Roguelites are repetitive by nature, and while Hades 2 does a really great job keeping things fresh, the runs can get long, so it's always a good idea to spice things up each run.
The two best ways to do this are by swapping your weapon and changing from the underworld route to the surface route or vice versa.
As far as the weapons go, I'd recommend you just take the featured weapon that will earn you bonus Bones (another currency) once you unlock that upgrade (it'll have a reddish glow around it in the armory). If you mostly adhere to the featured weapon, you should avoid getting too bored with one of them.
For the routes, I like to swap between them each run unless I'm going for a specific goal. If you're really pushing to beat Chronos, spamming the underworld until it happens is actually the best thing to do, as you want to build that muscle memory up on the boss. But if you're just working on a few different Incantations and collecting resources to grow stronger, it's a great idea to bop back and forth just to maintain that variety.
Explore the boss arenas before you leave
When you defeat a boss (which the game calls a Guardian, by the way), you'll be able to freely roam around their arena.
First, you want to make sure you grab the rare resource you earned for your kill. All Guardians have one, and you'll need a bunch for high-level incantations. But second, you want to look around for any resources that may have appeared inside.
Without spoilers, I'd make sure you take an especially good look around the arenas of any final bosses in a run before you move on. You may find some interesting interactions that are important to the game's overall story.
