I didn’t even know there was a god mode until just now. Good to see it.
As for how I beat Hades, it was all about planning for the end from the start. Over 30+ runs I leveled up the permanent upgrades and also my skills to the point where most of the game was easy no matter what abilities I chose. I could beat the bone hydra with any random set of abilities, so don’t worry about that.
Instead every ability choice I had I was only thinking about Hades. I need range attacks so that even though I stay far away from him to dodge the circle attack, I can still do damage. Also, Hades is one guy. I need attacks that increase damage to a single target not AoE. Doom effect is great. The bow aspect that lets me load cast crystals into a single shot is great. The call that makes you temporarily invincible is great for getting in close and wailing on him for a brief period.
The final steps were to conserve all my gold on the run as long as possible for that last shop. Conserve all my resurrection abilities for Hades, don’t die to anything else. And in the Hades fight, play very conservatively. Attack from afar when it’s completely safe. Otherwise, just keep dodging and surviving. Especially dodge the big circle wave that comes out of him. Also, when he’s invisible, actually pay attention to the footsteps in the snow so you know where he is.
Once I got good enough to get to the final boss reliably with really any loadout, every single decision I made on the way was framed in terms of fighting the bosses, particularly the final boss.
Yup, this is the way to do it, and the way I have consistently succeeded.
At least until high enough heat, from what I understand. Like, there’s apparently a point at which it’s better to use Stubborn Defiance instead of Death Defiance because at some point your heat options disable your ability to heal, and so Stubborn becomes literally your only healing option. Some choices become about surviving the run to Hades, because by the time you’re at 50 heat or whatever you’re probably just running on autopilot in that fight.
not sure if anyone here has checked out Fuser, the most recent harmonix game, but I think I’m kind of into it? The game itself appears to be a remix of the tech from Dropmix, but as far as toys go, it’s pretty fun. My only concern is that while the tech is super fun to muck around in, I feel like they haven’t really nailed the game half of it.
Late to the Hades discourse but I think it’s really smart how Supergiant creates rewards structures around using every single scrap of content they create so that you actually try new things
First escape at attempt 21. I’m now 2 for 4 for taking down Hades. First was with GUN thanks to Art’s crit boost + hammer upgrade that lets you fire 3x mortars with Dem/Dio spell and Hermes boon that lest you cast extra fast. I could dump out 600+ damage in a sec and then escape. Next was Cursed Blade (-60% HP but heal on attack) with boosted Athena’s Call and a boon (I think Zeus?) that gave you god gauge when you took damage. I could play super poorly until my gauge was full and then got 9 sec of invincible life gain attacks.
That said I think my favorite weapon is the Aegis. Having ranged, blocking, and knockback all inherent to the kit lets you build almost anything based on your boons. The only weapon I can’t figure out is the spear. Super aggressive but no matter what I do I feel like it never has enough DPS once you get to Elysium.
Spear DPS is in the dash attack, IMO. Daedelus boon that makes it hit 3x plus the Artemis boon that increases your dash-attack damage, and then also the Artemis boon that makes your Attack do more damage and crit. The dash-attack benefits from the Attack boon. Then Athena on the dash and spam until you win.
If you can unlock the Hades aspect for the spear, that’s my personal favorite. Either Poseidon or Aphrodite on the attack, and Daedalus boons for the spin attack (there are 3, any one of them helps a ton). I just cleared heat 6 with that spear, and something like 12 of my 22 clears [edit: actually it’s 11 of 26, I checked] are with the spear. Be mindful that Punishing Sweep does not benefit from its own damage buff, though.
The special can put out some good damage when combined with Zeus boons and the Daedelus hammer that makes it strike a bunch of targets or the one that gives it +50% damage and crit on return. Make sure you stick with the backstab mirror talent. That one also pairs well with Artemis special.
I also try to avoid the casts that take away your ability to embed the bloodstone (Demeter, Ares, and Dionysus). They can be very powerful but you have to build around them, and I’d rather roll with a reliable 50% damage buff, particularly for weapons like the spear which have higher base damage.
same, apparently there’s a very good Zeus boon that makes lightning strike around dropped bloodstones but I’ve never seen it.
The more I play the more I think Demeter has the best boons. Increasing damage dealt when you have no bloodstones and giving enemies DoTs when they are all frozen is nuts against bosses
I continued following my policy of only buying a game if I’m gong to immediately install and play it. Heaven’s Vault was a game on my wish list, it was on sale, and I was in a gaming mood. I bought it, installed it, and played it immediately.
Maybe do a show on this one day, but here’s a quick summary. Much along the lines of CloudPunk, this is a JRPG without the combat. You just go around from place to place talking to people and such. I don’t think it’s possible to fail or game over, but you can get different outcomes and story lines based on your decision making. Lots of choices have permanent consequences, you have to replay the whole game to make a different choice.
Also much like cloudpunk the different areas you walk around in are separated by a real time transportation element. Same thing as the boat in Wind Waker. While there are positive aspects to this part of the game, it is perhaps the one bad part. The flying/sailing is not challenging, it’s just time consuming. There is not a lot to keep you interested visually while doing it. You can occasionally find random tiny ruins along the side of the rivers, but that’s not that exciting. Thankfully the game lets you fast travel along routes you’ve already taken. They do, however, play a lot of dialogue during sailing to keep your attention, so I recommend only using it sparingly on the first playthrough. On repeat playthroughs, use it constantly to shave several hours off the playtime.
The most notable thing about this game is the written language puzzle solving element. It’s very hard to describe it, other than that it is excellent and compelling. It actually was maybe the number one thing making me play this game, and perhaps also the number one reason to replay it. Read about it here:
And my favorite thing about this game again, brings me back to Zelda. If I’m not mistaken, I believe it was in Twilight Princess where you find an ancient Hyrulian/Triforce temple. I remember because when I found that place in that game I got very strong feelings of archaeological fantasy. All alone you have discovered some incredible long lost and significant place. You learn world-shattering secrets from what you find there. Things nobody else alive knows. The things you find usuallypertain to a terrible secret of space, usually involving precursor civilizations.
Every single place you go in Heaven’s Vault gives those vibes. It’s just those vibes for hours on end. Chef’s kiss.
Maybe it did, but from my experience, it takes way shorter to queue up for a game of Teamfight Tactics than League of Legends (likely due to genre difference but TFT seems to still have quite a player base). Also, TFT’s new update is way better. The past versions I’ve played had some of the lamest strategies I’ve ever seen in gaming and now it feels like there’s at least a little more diversity in the gameplay.
I’ve been burning through Dyson Sphere Program, which is factorio but you can/have to get resources from other planets and solar systems.
It scratches the same itch but lacks a lot of quality of life features that would make it shine.
Also, it seems like it could be really easy to mess up travelling from planet to planet and end up in interstellar space with a really hard time ahead of you trying to get back home.
Stellaris has so much content to mess with just in vanilla base game at this point (they’re quite good about updating/adding features to base game with the paid DLC). Once you start picking up DLC it goes even further and theres all sorts of bonkers mods.
If you do go CK, just hop into CK3, obviously not a crazy feature rich as CK2 but also its just way more playable across the board and has a lot of the best expansion features from CK2 in the base game.
