by I’ve caught Hades and the truth is that I’ve hit a tremendous vice, the truth is that the game has surprised me, especially considering that entry I underestimated it (I don’t know very well why) and I have run into a game which seems incredible to me.
The fact is that as always, we have to amortize the tremendous vices that I have stuck to this indie and therefore guides are coming for the blog. We will start with what is usually the first post of almost all the games to which I start to make a guide, the tips for beginners , where I will also tell you some tricks that will help you in your game.
Let’s start by talking a little about its genre: The Roguelike.
WHAT IS A ROGUELIKE?
A Roguelike is a video game genre in which there are two central pillars:
- Permanent death : No checkpoints or save points, if you die you will start from the beginning. Sometimes you will lose absolutely all your progress, but usually you keep a few things, I’ll explain that below.
- Procedural generation : Term that sounds very cool that basically means that the levels, objects that appear, enemies… etc, are generated randomly (they are not screens already decided in a certain order, but rather they are generated based on various factors and therefore each game is unique).
At first it may sound a bit strange, but it is a genre that I personally love and that is tremendously addictive.
WHAT DO WE LOSE WHEN WE DIE AND WHAT DO WE KEEP?
Let’s start with the things we will lose when we die:
- Our progress in the levels of the game: There are several levels , each time it will be more difficult to advance and others; but when we die, we will always have to start over from the beginning.
- The Coins: Which are called Charon’s Pence. Total can only be used within levels; which implies that you have to spend them yes or yes before you die or it will be a waste.
- The Blessings of Gods : Some improvements in our skills that the gods will give us while we play. We will also lose the level increases of these.
- Weapon improvements: Typical improvements of the different weapons in the game , in this case they are obtained through the Daedalus Hammer, they are enhancers that we can acquire in our games.
- Centaur Hearts: Some hearts that we will find that will expand our health.
And this will be what we keep , which will help us to progress a bit:
- Darkness: Some purple tears that will help us to improve some attributes of our character, we can do it in the Mirror of Night in our room (which is in what would be the base of the game). We will not lose the mirror improvements either.
- Chthonic Keys: They will allow us to unlock new weapons, new attribute improvements for the mirror or to reset our attributes. Highly recommended to collect piles at the beginning.
- Blood of Titan : An item that we will obtain by defeating the billet bosses of the game. We will get one for each billet boss that we defeat for the first time with each of the weapons in the game. That is to say that if I kill the same boss twice with the Sword, the second time I won’t get the Titan’s Blood; but if the second time I kill him with the Spear, then yes. This item is used to unlock skins (they are like variants of each weapon with different effects) of weapons.
- Gems : They will allow us to obtain improvements for the base that will also benefit us in certain aspects of the game, in addition to the fact that we will be able to unlock new rooms with new functionalities and others.
- Nectar : A drink that the gods love and that we can give it to them when we see them (when they give us blessings and that). We can also give them to various NPCs in the game. Every time you give a character a Nectar, it will give you a memory, which is a kind of passive effect that we will have in our game that will improve as we use more.
I leave you here a more detailed guide on the Permanent Items of Hades , how to get them and what they are all for.
THE DIFFERENT ROOMS AND DOOR SYMBOLS
When entering a room and finishing it, we will have to access the next one, the thing is that sometimes we will have more than one door to choose from . You will quickly realize that there are symbols on the doors, these tell us what we will find in the rooms in question, so choose wisely.
The trick is to know well what you will find with each symbol:
- Symbol of a God: Be it a lightning bolt symbolizing Zeus, a blue Poseidon trident, a red Ares trident… over time you will learn them all, they are quite intuitive. When entering one of these rooms and passing it, the God in question will appear to offer us his blessings that you already know improve skills and others.
- Symbol of «coin with an exclamation»: By passing the room we will obtain Charon’s Obols.
- Gems symbol: We will get gems when we overcome it.
- Symbol of a hammer: A Hammer of Daedalus will appear after passing the room and therefore we can improve the weapon.
- Purple tear symbol: We will obtain Darkness.
- Symbol of a heart: We will obtain a Centaur Heart, remember that this will increase our health. Here be careful, if the heart is bright pink, Aphrodite will appear in its place to give us blessings.
- Grenade symbol (the fruit): It looks more like a red bomb and a piece of pizza, but hey… A Power Grenade will appear, which is what allows us to improve the blessings.
- Symbol of a key: We will get a Chthonic Key at the end.
- Blood Symbol: A boss will appear and we will get Titan’s Blood, keep in mind again that since we can only get this item the first time we defeat the boss with each weapon, we will only see the symbol the first time.
- Symbol of a bag of money with a skull: We will find Charon, who is a seller.
- Symbol of an exclamation like with gems around: We will find a character who will give us objects or improvements (it changes in each level of the Underworld).
- Symbol of a bottle with yellow liquid: We will obtain Nectar.
I think I have not left any, if so, leave me a comment!
HOW DO I HEAL IN HADES?
Since death is permanent in Hades, one of our priorities will be to stay alive; something that I already told you will not be easy, so here are a few tips to restore health:
- On very rare occasions, enemies will drop items that will heal you, so keep an eye out for that.
- Check the rooms you go through very well since you will very often find a kind of cauldron called Charon’s Well in which we can often heal ourselves if we have enough money (Charon’s Obols), so the money is going to sink into this game.
- If we run into Charon’s shop (symbol of a bag of money and a skull on the door) he will sometimes also have objects that heal us, but again you will have to pay for it with Obols.
- In the Mirror of the Night we can improve an attribute called «Chthonic Vitality» that will make us heal a little every time we enter a new room, the healing will rise as we increase its level, it comes from luxury.
- Again in the mirror we have another very interesting improvable attribute: Mortal Challenge, it is amazing since when we die we will come back to life (with 5o of life), but this will only happen once for each time we have improved it and for each game (come on, at level 1 you will only resurrect once per game). The first upgrade is easy to get, but the second upgrade already costs Darkness cloth.
- If you unlock the infamous chests again at the Dwelling Contractor, you will sometimes be able to restore health. The thing is that these chests will give you something in exchange for overcoming a challenge, and these are usually complicated, one of the possible rewards is restoring health.
WHAT WEAPON DO I CHOOSE?
As I have already mentioned, you can unlock different weapons in Hades and you may have a question about which one you should take with you. My advice is that you get used to all of them since we will obtain great benefits by changing weapons :
- Before starting each game, you will see that one of the weapons will have a dark purple aura. That means that if you take that weapon in question, you will get more Darkness in your game and that will go a long way to improve your character with the permanent improvements and others.
- In addition to this, as I have already told you, we can only get one «Blood of Titan» for each first time we kill a billet boss and for each weapon we use. This item is tremendously valuable and therefore it is in your best interest to kill all bosses with all weapons.
But leaving this aside… seriously, I highly recommend that you do it. A very good weapon to start with (and to finish too, but you understand me) is the shield since we can attack multiple enemies from a distance without much effort (unlike the bow, which is more complicated to use) and we can also cover ourselves to block damage, which on more than one occasion will save your skin.
GETTING STARTED TIPS
At the beginning, focus on collecting all the non-missable objects you can (especially Chthonic Keys and Darkness), unlock the shield to equip it and as soon as you meet Ares, give him a Nectar to obtain his memory.
By equipping it you will make it extremely likely that Ares will be the first god that appears to give us his blessings, this interests you to acquire the blessing that makes your special attack (the one to throw the shield) cause Doom in the enemies, which basically is that after a little time (1 second? something like that) after hitting them (keep in mind that the shield hits from a distance and multiple enemies) they will take a lot of damage. Come on, you’ll do tremendous damage, at a distance and you won’t even have to bother aiming like you do with the bow, this trick comes in handy.
That yes, to the one that you catch more the roll to the game, I recommend the subject to you to be changing of weapon, that is going to spread more to you. This is just to learn, or well… you do what you want, obviously, I only advise hahaha.
