Hades Beginners Guide

Getting Started with Hades

Hades is a roguelike dungeon crawler from Supergiant Games. You play as Zagreus trying to escape the Underworld. Each run lasts anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour depending on your skill and luck. The combat is fast, the styles are flexible, and the game does not hold your hand. This guide covers the practical stuff you actually need to know after your first few deaths. The core loop is straightforward. You pick a weapon, clear rooms, fight bosses, and die. Dying sends you back to the start, but you keep certain resources. Boons from Greek gods stack across runs if you unlock them. There are seven main weapons that start locked. The Shadow Blade is free from the beginning. The Twin Fists come after a few early runs. Everything else requires finding their omens scattered through the House of Hades. Here is the thing most guides do not tell you: the Pact of Punishment is where the game actually begins. Once you beat the final boss and see the credits, a menu appears on the title screen. That is the difficulty modifier system. Increasing chaos level makes enemies harder but rewards better boons and more resource drops. I hit chaos level four in my first week and died constantly. Switching to chaos level two while learning the weapon arts made everything click. The game is designed to be played at higher difficulties eventually, but there is no reason to rush it.

Weapon Arts and Movement Fundamentals

Movement matters more than damage output. The dash is your primary tool. It gives brief invincibility frames, which is how you survive most situations. Learn to dash through enemy attacks rather than blocking or dodging backward. The dash also cancels weapon attack animations, which lets you chain abilities faster. Each weapon has four aspects that change how it plays. The basic aspect works fine for your first twenty hours. After that, switching aspects completely changes the weapon. The Dawn Dusk variant on the Shield of Chaos makes you tankier but slower. The Celestial Aspect on the Stygian Blade turns it into a high-risk, high-reward option. Trying to master every aspect at once is a mistake. Pick one weapon, clear the game three times with it, then explore alternatives. The aggro system in this game is also something you need to understand early. Enemies lock onto whoever damages them most recently. If you are using a slow weapon like the Crown of Hel, kiting enemies into favorable positions is almost mandatory. Fast weapons like the Dual Blades let you stick to enemies more easily. Your weapon choice should match your comfort with positioning.

Boon Stacking and God Synergies

Boons come from the twelve Olympian gods plus Hades himself. Each boon has minor, major, and extreme tiers that unlock as you accumulate enough of that god's blessings. Two blessings from the same god trigger a boon offer. Three blessings trigger an ascended boon offer that only appears in the final chamber. God synergies are where builds get interesting. Poseidon and Artemis create frozen enemies that shatter on impact. This is one of the most consistent damage amplifiers in the game. Zeus and Athena give you a chance to attack twice when an enemy is frozen. Hades and Persephone create delayed explosions when enemies die. These combos matter more than raw damage stats on individual boons. I spent three runs trying to build a pure Aphrodite boomerang build because the pink boomerangs looked cool. The damage was terrible and I died repeatedly. Switching to include Dionysus for crowd control and Hades for execute damage made the build actually viable. The lesson here is that aesthetic appeal should never override practical synergy. Check the boon wiki before committing to a build direction.

Resources and Progression Outside Runs

Diamonds are the currency for upgrading permanent stats in the Mirror of Night. Mirror upgrades include health, dash distance, damage resistance, and curse resistance. Health and dash distance should be your first investments. Damage resistance matters less early on because positioning prevents most damage anyway. Curse resistance becomes relevant once you enable curses in the Pact of Punishment. Darkness fuels boons during a run. You collect it from defeated enemies and containers. The Mirror of Night upgrade that increases maximum darkness is valuable but not urgent. Nectar and ambrosia unlock character story events. Story events do not affect combat but they do reward boons and keys. Spending those keys at the House Contractor to unlock new weapons is worth doing early. Heat from the Pact of Punishment adds modifiers like increased enemy health or added curses. This is optional and you should ignore it until you have beaten the game at least once on normal difficulty. The game rewards patience here. Rushing into heat only slows your progress.

Common Mistakes Beginners Make

Spending all your gems on temporary boons instead of permanent upgrades is the most expensive mistake. Temporary boons only last one run. Permanent Mirror upgrades last forever. Never buy a potion with gems unless you are about to attempt the final boss without any other resources left. Another mistake is ignoring the resource gathering side of rooms. Every room with a container gives diamonds or darkness. Skipping containers to rush forward sounds efficient but slows you down over time. The time saved is negligible and the resource loss adds up across dozens of runs. The Titan Blood system is also misunderstood. Titan Blood unlocks weapon aspects. Most players focus on unlocking aspects for all seven weapons immediately. This spreads your progress too thin. Each aspect unlock costs one Titan Blood, and you gain them slowly. Unlocking two or three weapons fully before touching the rest is the more efficient path.

Where to Find a Hades Beginners Guide

The official Supergiant Games wiki at wiki.supergiantgames.com has complete boon databases and build calculators. The r/hades subreddit has active discussion and troubleshooting threads. Third-party sites like minimap.gg track boss locations and treasure maps. These resources are updated regularly and far more accurate than any single guide I could write here. The game itself includes a codex that tracks discovered entities, weapons, and boons. Opening it between runs is useful for reviewing what you have unlocked. The in-game journal is easy to skip but provides concrete information about mechanics you may not understand yet.

When Hades Does Not Work For You

Not every player enjoys the roguelike format. If you prefer long continuous campaigns with persistent progression, Hades may frustrate you. The permadeath mechanic means every run starts from zero in terms of run progress. You only keep meta-currency and story unlocks between runs. The game also demands pattern recognition and quick decision making. Players who struggle with real-time reflexes may find the later heat levels punishing even after learning mechanics. Playing on the easiest difficulty with no Pact of Punishment modifiers softens this considerably, but some combat encounters remain inherently challenging. If the run-based structure feels too repetitive after twenty or thirty hours, the endgame content is limited. New Game Plus adds harder enemies and new story content, but the core loop stays the same. The game shines brightest in its first fifty hours. Going beyond that requires seeking out self-imposed challenges or higher heat levels to maintain engagement.

Final Practical Notes

Keep a save file outside of runs for important story moments. The autosave can overwrite narrative progressions if you are not careful. Using the pause menu to check your boon selections before entering a boss chamber saves several deaths. Boss rooms are the only points of no return within a run. Charon's shop prices scale with the number of deaths you have accumulated. More deaths means higher prices. This is intentional design to punish repeated failure, but the cost increase is mild enough that it rarely matters on casual playthroughs. Focus on learning enemy patterns instead of saving coins. The soundtrack is worth listening to alone. Darren Korb composed every track and voice line. The audio design reinforces the pacing of combat and makes failed runs feel less tedious because you are still engaging with quality content. This is a small detail that affects the overall experience more than most players expect.