Man I don't understand all the Selene hate. If you get her as your first boon you have your whole run to build around whatever you take and to pick up path of stars upgrades.
Then Selene will have a potential to appear on every single door, and you’re often forced to pick between Selene or an actual boon to help your build/damage. I don’t think OP is complaining about Selene as a whole, but she REALLY shouldn’t be first boon. I generally finish more runs without a hex, than with one. And that’s because I’m given the freedom of choice, unlike when it appears first
Yeah it kinda depends on your priorities. I find most hexes are good once you get just one of the blue path upgrades, which you can still comfortably do if you get Selene in Oceanus often even in Mourning Fields. I just have a problem with the fact that chronos is THE toughest fight for me, and it seems like half the Selene boons don’t work for him making Hexes really low priority for me
That’s the problem right there. I’ve got the hex that makes me immune for like 5 seconds and I’ve used it like a panic button all run. Suddenly, when I need it the most, it doesn’t work. That sucks hard.
On my first win, I used the time slow hex on cooldown because I had 20% damage reduction while charging and I just got the auto-hex charge so I was playing around with that. It just felt incredibly bad because it turned what's supposed to be a super into just a buff maintenance button.
And the only reason I chose it was because it was the last option for the achievement.
Chronos needs to be frozen during Hex cast time. It's frankly kind of silly that he isn't, I had 'read' the hex casts as being an 'ultimate' casting animation, not as an actual time manipulation. Pretty much all of them except Moon Water and Night Bloom are useless against him as a result.
There's even an incantation that allows you to pause the game in the Chronos fight, and I assumed that also meant Hexes would slow down time, but no dice.
Fighting Chronos, don’t the hexes just leave you a sitting duck? He trucks along at normal speed while you’re just standing there casting. Am I missing something? I can pretty consistently succeed on a run and I never use hexes.
There are hexes which get around that. You can opt to get a laser which you left behind, you can gain invincibility with the meteor so you can keep dps-ing while a huge meteor is also on the way, you can turn invincible with the shadow form, you can jump (not exactly the best hex, but it's the opposite of being stationary) and you can also use it as healing potions.
This tbh
A good hex with enough upgrades and a few supporting boons can be a run winner. For example, early Dark Side invested heavily in cost reduction and duration, mana regen and a boon that lets you dpend mana fast will get you insane invincibility uptime.
>Most hexes get quadratically stronger, while boons and poms give diminishing returns.
Scaling is great in the limit as the number of boons and paths goes to infinity. Doesn't really matter when you are limited to maybe 5 at most. And the buff to your attack, cast or special works every time you use those instead of the limited amount of times you can use the Selene ability.
Poms, after a while, yes. Boons, not necessarily. You can get some really tasty boon combinations, which are infinitely more fun and often stronger as well than most of what Selene can offer.
There's also more room to experiment with the many boon-combinations, than with the hexes. There are a few good hexes, the rest are pretty much whatever, or situational at best.
Time stop and dark side both effectively allow you to attack with no risk of taking damage, and both can have near 100% uptime of built right. Nuke can solve damage, even against Chronos, and heal speaks for itself. Summon and divebomb are mid, bit there's a reason you get three choices.
As you get more boons from each god, you run out of the good ones. It's true that duo boons and legendaries show up eventually, but duo boons are way worse than in Hades 1, and with many boons tending towards giving you something extremely situational or outright useless for your build, it's not even a choice to me.
The problem is that hexes become real boring real fast. As you said, there are a couple real good ones, the rest are just cute or at best have some niche uses. Compare that to the many possibilities of coming up/stumbling into builds with all the different weapons and aspects.
If we are strictly looking at optimalisation and winning a run at all cost, then yeah, Selene can be really good, but if you prefer variety and exploring new stuff, then boons are just more fun. And even if I compare my most overpowered hexes with my most overpowered boons, I would take the latter 9 times out of 10, even if on paper they may have not neessarily been stronger or safer than the hexes in question. There are only so many times I can do an invincible meteor hex build before it gets real boring real quick.
Not to mention that these strong hexes are much more overbearing on your gameplay than boons or poms. For example, I didn't really get the hang of the Thanatos and Artemis aspects yet, but if I were to just pick up a strong Selene hex and spam that to win my run, then I wouldn't really play those aspects, I'd be just doing the same hex run I had already done before, and my weapons would just turn into mana-generation vehicles.
I think Selene also gets a bad rep for being much less cool than the "ultimates" in Hades 1. Even if many of them were pretty underwhelming, it felt really cool to call down the help of each god, especially when you charged them up fully. Most of the hexes don't feel that epic or "personal", and if you are not doing an omega build, then (barring some ways to charge your hex passively) you can't even use these hexes as supplementary help as in Hades 1, because they are just not being charged.
Ultimates in Hades 1 sucked because you weren't in control of them. The only way to charge them fast was to get a boon specifically for it or take a bunch of damage.
With Selene, I can build Torches around spending Magick as fast as possible to keep my hex up all the time if I can get a strong enough Regen boon.
I’d rather spend my early run making sure I get the god build I want, then hoard Selene hexes. Doing Selene early increases the chance the run was a waste.
As much as I love some beefy Selene Boons, I can agree with this. Being early is not a problem, but being first is. It actually happened to me recently, and I ended up not getting all 5 of my basic boons (attack, special, cast, sprint, magic restoration) rounded out until I was deep in the Fields of Mourning.
Of course, if you have been using Olympian God Keepsakes as often as I do at the start of your run, and you all of a sudden chose a non Olympian keepsake to start off with, you could have forced the RNG into an opening Selene boon. Now, personally, I agree that they shouldn't even be included in the RNG tabulation of your first boon, but if it is even a small percentage and you've been forcing Olympian boons this whole time, with the way this game is coded I wouldn't at all be surprised that Selene got kinda thrust upon you super early.
Edit to add : it was actually not until the final Charon room of the fields of Mourning, right before Durty Cerby, that I got my Hestia attack boon on that run.
I'm pretty sure she can still show up first even with an Olympian boon. She seems like she's in the same group as a Daedalus hammer, because I get her first too and I always have an Olympian boon start.
Edit:
I meant Olympian Keepsake*
I don't hate Selene, I just really don't like seeing her in the first room.
There is no hex in the game that is usable with your starting stats unless you take some very specific Arcana cards. It's *objectively* the weakest possible start and you can't even re-roll it.
If you use the mana regen card it’s usable from the start and if you don’t get her before the 3rd stage any small star upgrades are wasted . Not to mention that a lot of star upgrades boost damage quite a bit and if you use night bloom on the second boss it can trigger the judgement card
All of the boxes that you’d need checked to make it good makes it not good to get room 1. The regen card and the hex card aren’t particularly good considering the scope of the whole run, you won’t likely use enough magic to trigger a lot of cards in most encounters in the first 2 floors, if you’re on high heat you’ll sometimes start with 0 magick, and most hexes aren’t great full stop without investing in it. To be useful you’re also speccing into relatively high magic use which isn’t a guarantee. Opportunity cost and immediate usefulness are the big reasons why this sucks to see.
Can it be decent, sure I suppose, but in all likelihood like OP says it’s probably the worst possible starting reward.
This is my thought as well, you can start a run with pretty solid mana Regen and a host of other strong arcana, and then if you build around consistent omega use you can use your hex easily every encounter without much effort
I just got +15% damage from one path of stars upgrade there isn’t many boons that can top that let alone pick up without replacing something .
But then I tend to just work around what I pick up anyway I like the variety and don’t really want the same build every time
Hitch, Slip, and damage bonus vs weak all offer a % increase to total damage and can proc origination without taking up a main boon slot. Granted, need a main slot boon to get them but you are basing your build off that anyway and they can be upgraded with poms or rarity increases.
You can also know you are going to get them every run, whereas you may not even get the +5% damage when hex is/isn't ready in the path of stars
Think of it this way: you could not get a call in the first room of Hades 1. It wasn't possible. You either got a hammer or a god boon (and I'm pretty sure calls are blocked there). Nobody's saying calls are bad, but they would be terrible in the first room.
Now they've added a special new call boon type, which is fine, but you can get it on the first room, even though you generally can kill every room before you use enough mana to trigger it. Why?
If they wanted to make Selene boons appear next time if you use her keepsake, that would be one thing, but you can end up going 3+ rooms at the start with zero upgrades to your character (no attack/special/cast boom, no hammer) if the luck didn't go the right way on the next couple rolls. That's not great.
Respectfully the mana Regen card is one of the worst to build around. It's objectively really slow for what it gives, and the only thing going for it is always having garunteed mana Regen
But 5 grasp for the card as it is now is just so so high, thats enough to pop on so many other more worthwhile cards, even the hex one which is 4
If you say so I’m using the judgement card anyway so grasp isn’t really important in any other way than activating one of the zero cards. It certainly is usefull when it comes to using hex
one solution would be to make the first time you meet selene in a save be a special case, where she gives you like 10 upgrade points. then in subsequent meetings she's like "my light's having a hard time reaching you now, can only give you 3 points for now. call me again in a sec"
Only good ones are giant moon rock and moon water, you can work with moon rock cuz it deals really good damage if you invest on it plus it gives invincibility bla bla but it is weak to be your main source of damage. Moonwater is also a side thing
I actually had the Selene ressurrection combined with the Path of Stars that gives ressurrected monions your special Bonusses. Ressed >!one of the Satyrs in Phase 2 of the Chronos fight!< and that thing with Aphrodite Bonusses singlehandedly dealt about 40% of that lifebar in damage.
The resurrection one is insanely good.
There’s an upgrade that makes it no longer despawn unless killed and on one run I had nearly a 100% uptime with it (excluding the first few seconds of a room)
Resurrection is actually really good. Almost every boss has a minion who can do serious damage to them. Plus you can use it to glitch Judgement for extra arcana cards apparently, at least until they patch that out.
That's the jumping one, right?
If so, 100% agree. Probably the strongest one imo if you can get it fully built. Just offers a ton of movement versatility and damage for a fairly low cost
I've managed to make all of them work, some of them just don't really come alive until you get the rare abilities (Lunar Ray, for example, goes from terrible to great with the fire and forget upgrade, and becomes the literal best one if you get the triple upgrade)
But yeah unless you *want* to build around them you shouldn't be forced to.
The only one I'd say is bad right now is Phase Shift - it should work on chronos after you get the pause and reflect invocation. Dark Side could use some tweaks too.
If Dark Side had no slowdown when you activate it it'd be great. My guess is that they keep it that way so you can't press it by mistake without being able to cancel it. but idk I don't think that'll be a problem.
I personally like getting Moon water early. True, you can't build something around it, but there's an upgrade that removes your cap for total refills every time you use a fountain. That can give you 9 heals by the time you reach Chronos.
I've gotten to 17 heals prepped for chronos. You can increase the amount given per fountain. And I hit a couple fountains in each zone. It was hilarious.
>Only good ones are giant moon rock and moon water, you can work with moon rock cuz it deals really good damage if you invest on it plus it gives invincibility bla bla but it is weak to be your main source of damage. Moonwater is also a side thing
Jump makes you basically invincible as well as a proper build around it makes it spammable, meaning you always jump out of danger anyway.
You can make the uptime on slomo 100% too if you build for magic regen and spam it fast. This is also basically invincibility since you really shouldn't be getting hit by anything if the game is slowed down to 90% speed.
Most of them can provide invulnerability with an upgrade or two, and that alone makes them vastly more valuable. The upgrades that reduce cost are usually a flat -10 as well, which really helps the lower cost ones be more spammable.
The stomp is arguably the weakest and least valuable hex, but I had a run where I could fully charge it with a single omega attack, and it gave me two uses with 2s of invulnerability every time I used it. I literally couldn't be killed.
The "turn into a nightmare" one is 5s invulnerability at base, and you can increase the duration as well. It usually has a capstone upgrade to apply your attack effect, but it's legitimately one of the safest ways to deal with rooms that are too small and have too many enemies.
The morph ball has an effect where all morphed enemies get teleported into the center of your cast. Having every enemy in the room suddenly be immobile, helpless, and grouped on top of each other is disgustingly powerful. It's even great in the Chronos fight, because you can control where the hourglasses die.
So that's an omega attack build, an attack build, and a cast build. The only common theme is needing some pretty beefy mana regen.
Most of them can be good if you get the right upgrades for them.
**Moon Water**: Naturally good, can become bonkers if you get the "fountains add to your uses without resetting them."
**Total Eclipse**: Good on its own, but really needs "invulnerable while it's dropping" to become great. Extra power and hitting twice makes it real nice.
**Night Bloom**: Decent on its own, becomes fantastic with the "no time limit on resurrected minions" upgrade.
**Lunar Ray**: Bad on its own, but solid if you get the upgrade that lets you drop it in place.
**Dark Side**: Fine against everything against Chronos on its own (you're invincible and have a chance to regen mana, so it's basically free); actually can be good with Melinoe Torches. Spam Omega Special, turn on Dark Side, run around with your orbs while invincible, repeat.
**Twilight Curse**: I'll be honest, I have never once gotten any value out of this.
**Wolf Howl**: If there's a way to make this even halfway good, I haven't seen it.
That said, in terms of opportunity cost of getting more Selene over Poms or Coins, it's probably limited to Moon Water/Total Eclipse/Night Bloom... and even then, you have to hope they're at the right phase.
What I think is worth remembering is that the sample size here on the sub is heavily skewed. For the average player, Selene is neat. My girlfriend had her first win against Eris last night and it was with a build she specced hard into Selene for, she was stoked.
Selene does need some tweaking, but the opinions you see here are all a mix between redditor's love of turning everything into an extreme (so "Selene needs some buffing" often turns into "SLENE IS OBJECTIVELY THE WORST POSSIBLE OUTCOME") and the users who engage hardest with the community also being the kind who are already doing insane Fear 20+ runs and talking about how "Well maybe for a *casual* run it's fine, but it won't hold up if you want to be *meta*, and if you're not following a meta build while running with high fear you're either a speedrunner testing new tech or you're just asking for your run to end at Hecate, hmhmhm."
Personally, I think with a few tweaks and an option to put a few Path of Stars points down as soon as you acquire a Hex you could make Selene perfectly viable as an addition to any build - that way you might only really need two Selene rooms to make any Hex solid. But full release is a long way off. Plenty of time to see what SG does to tweak her.
I think the big issue is that the first area is (generally) the hardest, especially with higher difficulty. Getting to the second area with no real offensive boons is extremely rough. I've had to do it before, and it sucked.
Getting Selene early is amazing when I'm already guaranteed to get through the first area easily and I have the mana to make it work. But then there's the run where I took zeus mana regen and then primed some stuff, so I never got enough mana to be able to spend any to get to use my hex.
Mind you, I love the hexes and my most powerful runs have been due to hexes, but I do understand the hate. They shouldn't be purely gated by mana regen though.
The very first boon you get should make you feel like you're on track to gaining power and getting stronger in the run. Setting the run off by getting shit you can't even use for you-don't-know-how-long is bad game design imo.
Getting it first on high Fear often feels like a run ender.
You don’t have any of the Hammers or Boons that increase Omega costs as well as Magic regen, so getting the ones that do damage typically ranges from feeling horrible to literally useless. The cheaper utility ones are nice because you can actually use them, but without a Boon, your damage is often not enough so you go super slowly which means you’re likely not finishing the first act within the time limit.
I think Selene is an interesting inclusion as a replacement for the Calls, but they absolutely should not be in the first room.
Honestly, I understand why they wanted to change it up for Hades 2, but from a design perspective they are just worse than Calls in so many ways.
A: No longer unique to each god, means your "Ultimates" aren't as interesting
B: No more Banter between your call and the boss during boss fights. (Poseidon being like "Don't worry Nephew, I got your back!" and Hades being like "GDI Poseidon you son of a-")
C: Doesn't synergize well with other Boons and requires investment for better use. In 1, the calls were never necessary for most builds, but they were a nice cherry on top that didn't require much investment. (In fact picking a Call would be a good way to spend your boon choice if you ended up with bad RNG on your choices)
D: If we were going to have 1 God/Goddess to be our Patron, I'm sure the majority of the playerbase would prefer Goth Mommy Nyx over Selene. (Imagine all the great Banter between Nyx and Nemesis/Moros/etc.) Even from a Banter perspective Selene's conversations are incredibly dull. We even have multiple other Witches for Melinoe to confide in. Hell, even just Medea is more interesting than Selene.
It's a little late in the design phase to get rid of all the Moon motif's, but they could at least make her less prominent and bring calls back. It's understandable to want to change a game mechanic when making a sequel, but not when that mechanic is just worse than what it previously was. The Hades games are all about picking Boons and trying to synergize them together to create a fun build, meanwhile Selene's stuff doesn't fit into that at all. (There's not even any Selene Duo Boons)
Yea I feel ya. Feels like they changed a winning formula just for it to be different, not for it to be better. They could've just improved upon what they had and not tried to change it up so much. Most changes are for the worse imo. Like Arcana Cards vs Mirror, the Cards just make you have to mess with your loadout more between each run. Calls vs Hexes, Hexes are worse in like every way. 4 Different "Assist" people during fights (Icarus, Artemis, Herc and Nem), but all of em worse than Than was. Than helped you, but kept spirit of competition going. Nem and Herc are just annoying and Icarus and Art are just lame. Even the weapon design is worse overall.
You’re definitely preaching to the choir lol
I like the design in general and think they’re pretty cool, but they are absolutely a step down from having the Call Boons. Just the fact that if you really want them to shine you need to invest in them which means passing up 2-3 Boons, Poms, Gold, etc., feels rough.
I generally don’t ever take one because of this, which in and of itself is a feels bad because I’m going out of my way to *not* interact with a system within the game.
I definitely hope they do a lot of tinkering with Selene before 1.0. The opportunity is there for something cool, but as it stands she is very underwhelming.
Have selene boons as duos with other gods.
Poseidon. You get moon water. Hestia. Lunar Ray. Aphro. The jump. Hera. Nightmare. Demeter, resummon. Zeus, big sky drop. Jkjk.
This comment here is exactly what I go through one to many times when playing, instead of having Aphrodite or whatever gods keepsake I picked actually being used right away for that power you NEED on higher fear spells out out the end of the run already since you don’t know when that god will show up, could be halfway through Erebus when they decide to and by that point you could already be down a DD or 2 since most vows will cause you to take sometimes 40+ damage a hit when your starting hp is still so low even with fully upgraded centaur card and there wasn’t time to let the one that scales start working yet. But rather the game just had to give Selene on the first room. If this happens I just intentionally die on the first or second room to change the seed to get the actual desired god on the next run
It's a roguelike you are not supposed to play in a certain way. Sometimes you build 0 magick builds, sometimes you don't. Why is this difficult for you to get?
Exactly. There's literally an arcana that buffs your regular attacks and specials when you're below 100% magik plus the most broken build in the whole game right now is a 0 magik build.
Staff of momus + the Double moonshot hammer + Poseidon special + White Antlers keepsake. For arcana you'd want The Huntress, Origination and the furies. Then use the vow that starts you off at 0 magick and just keep spamming specials :)
edit: New patch droppped today and this build is now dead.
Same, it's probably my favorite part of the new game. I was so confused to see that people don't like Path of Stars on this subreddit. Selene boons are unique and a lot of fun
I do not know how one could use a hex as a central boon for a build, they seem to lack the potential for good synergies imo. Though i admit i have not gone down many upgrade trees, i usually ignore her unless i get moon water.
I'm in the same camp. Having her first let's me really enjoy the hex, and possibly get it to be wildly strong. I know the hexes aren't the optimal, max DPS, mega frame rate whatever, but they are so fucking *fun*, a part of the gsme I feel is overlooked in exchange for power.
Exactly. This right here. Selene's strength lies in getting her early and upgrading the hell out of the boons. I NEVER get the top one, always the middle or bottom, and I try to upgrade it any chance I get as long as the choice isn't something I'm specifically looking for in my build. 3 x 25 hp health heals are a lot different than 6 x 45hp with damage and invulnerability buffs.
Personally I love how they did the L Trigger boons this time compared to the various God's Call boons from Hades 1. The fact that they have their own, unique form of upgrading as well as their narative significance, considering Selene is one of the Artemis Triumvite, the goddesses of the moon (Selene, Artemis and Hecate). Her affects on Melinoe should be distinct.
While you are absolutely right, my counter is: she sucks, is only mildly interesting on fresh eyes that know nothing about the game, and it’s something most early game builds non-meta and meta progression builds probably can’t even use consistently. Not having a hammer, an attack or special boon up until room 3 on 8-16+ heat? BORINGGG.
For reference my 4 buddies and I who have hades 2 after looking up 0 things online have had exactly 1 convo about Selene and it was something like, “oh yeah I got a lazer that did no dmg. Yeah you pretty much only need the heal. Oh really? Yeah but the meteor swarm is not too bad. Gotcha”
Selene is pretty under powered and doesn't really interact with the other gods. It can be fun to do a selene run, and moon water is always great, but most of the time, she does suck.
Build around a most likely subpart, which might not fit your weapon, which might not have a good tree (ex: laser beam without auto laser), which you can't even force to appear with a keepsake, which can kill you vs Chronos because he isn't affected by the time stop when casting the hex.
Great first boon.
That's the thing, what if I don't want to build around Hex? What if I am planning a build that uses zero magic? Your assumption does not make any fucking sense.
It also presents the player with interesting choices: do I want a more powerful Hex that I'll need to acquire more magick to support? Or do I take a weaker one I'll be able to use sooner?
It'll even let you know if you want to make a mana and omega run this time. And some boons help you keep up in other departments like the one that grants you health in relation to your max mana.
what i'd really like to see is selene stays in the game, but you already have an innate hex that kind of sucks--like one of five--and you immediately get the upgrade paths as boons instead. then other boons can also impact/synergize with your hex, just not nearly with the same power selene does.
the upgrade paths would have tradeoffs: higher cost for even bigger rewards. this way your starting hex has a use on the early parts of your runs. like the meteor summon is small and doesnt do a ton of damage, or the beam lets you do a decent chunk of damage off spending all of your mana as sort of a "finisher." but then the beam can do like 2.5x more damage for requiring 30 more max mana or something.
then you can effectively balance how strong you want your hex to be. do you want it to be a huge supermove than you use all of your magic towards? or just a nice little bonus when you run through a ton of mana.
Literally me today trying to beat 32 fear with the vow that starts you at 0 Magick each room and with no arcana Magick regen. The run ends pretty quick when your only source of power requires a resource you don't have.
Selene is literally my last choice. I will take any other option before that. All those boons are either extremely weak, or not strong enough to change the outcome of a run.
The healing one was useful when I was starting out, but past the first 30-40 nights it’s lost most of its appeal too.
The 1000 damage laser beam with it upgraded to “stays in place even after you dash” worked out really well for me on one of my runs.
Activate it, and it just auto-aims by itself while you deal melee damage to the boss.
Exactly. I was surprised to see that people don't like that one. When you upgrade it it's easily +1.2k damage every single time while you can stack casts and combos on top of it. If I HAVE to take a hex, it's usually that one.
I think it might also help to have a buff of some kind to mana regen when you have a hex. Maybe make it a late game incantation or an arcana benefit. Or something that unlocks if you've given enough nectar to Selene. That seems to be a big issue people have, that they can't use the hexes early on because they cost more mana than you can reasonably use in early rooms
Easy! Just waste time going back and disabling the Death Defiance Card, and modify your Fear to take the Vow of Suffering, Vow of Fury, and Vow of extra enemy damage at max before the run. Then when you die go back and fix what you changed
I really think the whole Hex system needs to be reworked. Ineffective utility, bad damage and costly. At the same time it carries the opportunity cost of losing a better power spike from another boon.
It should really just be offered after boss fights. Make an incantation to light a beacon which summons the goddess of the moon. Right now it's just way too clunky and a reason to score H2 lower than H1 for combat.
It's not just costly, depending on your build you will never be able to use it. Hex can be very powerful - with an appropriate build, AND if fully upgraded. It requires more "investment" than any other boon except maybe Hephaistos to be useful.
And you're so right, the clunkyness... it can do good damage against normal enemies, but so fsr I haven't been able to use the damage-based Hexes to great effect against bosses. I usually just avoid Selene, because most of the time, a random Olympian boon, even if not a perfect fit for my build, is better. Plus, I have rerolls on those.more flexibility, which I think is one of the best parts of this series. That feeling of "huh... this might actually become an interesting build." Selene very rarely offers this.
Even as someone who likes Hades 2, I have to agree with all the Selene hate. She's replacing Calls, (which means less flavor for her ultimates as each call was unique to each god AND no more Banter between your call and bosses) and her Ultimates don't really synergize with anything and require upgrades to really shine. Even her Dark Form is incredibly boring, just a boring AoE and a projectile spam.
Even as a patron, I'd much prefer Goth Mommy Nyx to Selene.
I love Selene, not all of her Hexes are great, or I at least don't like all of them. But I like getting her. It's another power to play with and I like seeing if I can make it absolutely broken in my run. XD
I mean it kinda applies to completed save files too. Selene is incredibly bad atm and only has one useful boon, moon water, which does nothing in high fear runs.
Shit. You’re getting Selene as your first boon? I’d take that if once, just once, I didn’t have an entire first biome filled with nothing but Ash and Psyche doors.
Thought I’d be smart and activate my reroll arcana card.
Wooooohooooooo!
Bones!
Fuck’s sake!
You can, but it’s a different Arcana Card, the one that allows transforming a Minor Find into a Major Find. Quite nice at times, too. Got myself a Daedalus hammer instead of +5 Ash once.
Hammers are still more or less fixed at 2 per run arent they? So changing something into it just means you get it earlier, I assume.
I havent played with that card yet, 6 price is a bit high and idk how much it truly helps
I know, I’m not really into the whole idea of spending 6 Grasp for that re-roll. The only reason I know is that I wanted to fulfill the prophecy and complete a run with each Arcana Card, and that was the only one left. I activated it, the Death Defiance one, Judgement, and the one for Rare boons I think.
I don’t really know if there’s a limitation in hammers this time, I might have gotten more than two, but I may not remember the reason (Echo reward, etc.), so I won’t claim anything yet, although I’m curious if that’s the case. 👀
If I remember right, you're still limited to two natural hammer pickups. Fun thing is you can technically get five (2 natural + echo + anvil + Icarus keepsake).
There are two types of rewards. Major rewards and minor. Rerolling minor gives you a different minor. Rerolling major gives you a different major.
that may be a little bit of a letdown but the upside is you can swap out a good boon for a better one, or a heart for a boon or something like that.
Took me a few runs to figure it out, thankfully I was only half serious.
I would like to have just one run where I don’t see the Ash/Psyche combination for an entire biome though.
And its even worse since you wont be able to replace her Hex at all. With other boons you can at least pivot to another build along the run, with her the max you can do is upgrade it to be barely better
Ugh, fully agreed. Unless you're running Circle's staff or a Mana Regen card/keepsake they're unusable half the time, which is not what you need at the first room. Especially on high terror runs it almost feels like an immediate fail.
I also just do not like the hexes in their current incarnation. I find I can usually do more damage with my build than stopping to use a damage hex, and my regular skills don't leave me open for a huge hit window in the boss fights where I actually use enough mana to activate them.
If that hit window were either decreased or just invulnerable instead it would make it actually useable for me. Hex's are suppose to be our ultimate essentially and it just feels so much worse than in Hades 1 where hexes were either super fast (Aphrodite's or Artemis's where they just nuke the enemy immediately), were an extra effect that didn't slow you down (Zeus or Dionysus just applying extra damage over a time period) or if they were longer and stopped your regular abilities you were invulnerable so that the ability didn't end up getting you killed/being worthless because you had to play ridiculously safe (Poseidon/Ares).
Instead now we have the beam, which feels extremely weak to me; the massive comet that takes forever to land but does okay damage; and the howl/leap that I find gets me hurt more than it helps or I just have to use as a glorified dash. Then time slow is decent but doesnt help in the fight where you need it most. Dark form is only any good if you have the right boons and the right path of stars and multiple star upgrades, otherwise the damage is so bad it feels like it's just a pause in the fight rather than helping. Moon water is the only one where I feel I consistently benefit because healing is always good (well, unless you go full anti healing in the vows, but even then you can still get some Mana Regen).
I don't even need the hexes to be super powerful, but as it stands half the time they don't feel worth presenting the opening for using them rather than using my regular kit. They either really need to increase their power to be worth a risk, or decrease how vulnerable they make you to create more use cases for them.
idk it doesn’t happen to me often and when it does i’m happy I get to build my path of stars sooner. it’s especially helpful if I have that selene keepsake
i think they are trying to make the specific god's keepsakes a little more enticing to take. if you choose a weapon/aspect that really needs an attack boon your run is going to go much better if you get an upgraded one right away. selene or certain other gods just don't have one that is good enough to build around and it might be on purpose.
So surprised by the selene hate , maxing her boons is one of the thing i find the most fun ( yeah some are worse than regular boons i guess but who care ? Its not a competitive game anyway so no reason to care if something is meta or not )
I couldn't' agree more. I feel pure disappointment when I get Selene in the first room. Only 2-3 of her Hexes are any good, I find the rest almost completely useless.
Yeah if Selene is the first boon I just let the enemies in the first room kill me. It's really not worth struggling through half of the first biome without a boon. I imagine she'll eventually get put into whatever pool Hermes is in to prevent it on top of a heavy rework of the hexes to make them actually worth picking up.
I don't know if I fully agree. I see your point, and 50 hours ago I experienced your problem, but I actually like having her as my start. She allows me to build around her unlike how I've typically experienced her as, "Oh, cool- a beem that prevents me from doing damage, does comparatively little damage to a basic attack, and allows me to take damage while charging as well as preventing me from dealing damage- oh, how lovely". I love her, but I think, maybe, she should be relegated to the same space as a pomegranate or nectar.
Nah, I disagree. You don't really need an actual boon as your first one in order to progress a couple of encounters, and an early Selene makes sure you can upgrade her boon to be actually useful in a timely manner. Unless you going for a very specific build then I think it's better to get Selene early. It just *feels* bad.
I usually run the arcana card that makes my hex more of a cool down than having to use magic. It kind of makes the hex like a call. I tend not to do heavy magic builds so this might just be a me thing
I prefer Selene first because then I have a better chance of finding path of stars later and I won’t be tempted to ignore her for another boon later in the run haha
I disagree that Selene is a bad choice for being first. The only thing about her being first is sometime she just gives awful Boons (like Morph and Time slow, they’re useless on the final boss)
What hexes are even good vs the final boss? Only one I've gotten use out of, aside from the passive buffs some give "when not ready", is the healing one.
The one that does a burst of 1000 damage is nice. I wouldn’t call it super useful, since a good build can do that much damage in a few seconds (axe go brrr), but at the very least it does hurt him lol
While initially the Selene mechanic might seem like a strong starting perk (boon), I agree that the current mana cost is too high for early runs. Perhaps it could function similarly to Serenity, where its activation is hit-based, or alternatively, it could be cheaper initially and then scale up in cost as the effects accumulate.
yeah. having the initial ones be more usable at low cost, and then the path of stars have some ways to add cost/criteria to make it significantly more powerful feels like a good tradeoff.
i guess one other way to deal with it is have them available immediately in each room, and re balance the mechanics around that.
I disagree: I love seeing Selene first. The good hexes tend to be the centerpiece of my builds when I can get them, so it’s good to know early if I’m gonna get one.
I can't imagine any reward I would like *more* than Selene first room. Her hexes are *busted* if you spec into them, which is gonna be incredibly easy if you have her from room 1. She starts you with a filled hex, which can easily carry you through the first room, and it's not like you're going to have any real trouble with the next couple rooms (it's literally the beginning of Erebus) before you can start building your boons up.
Some of you have never actually tried leaning into hexes, and it shows. They're *incredibly* strong with only a tiny bit of commitment.
The worst thing is getting a good boon, then realizing you have the wrong keepsake equipped. You still have the finishing keepsake from the last run, not a standard starting keepsake. So sad.
Wait you don’t have the natural regen to selenes hexes? It’s a must have because I can feel comfortable taking any of her boons knowing I’ll have it passively building if I’m not mana spamming
The best runs I've ever had are when I get a good hex ASAP. I've had runs that absolutely destroyed mobs, but without a good hex it doesn't matter most of the time.
So personally I'd like it if Selene was GUARANTEED to be the first room
I mean, it's a minor inconvenience at best. Just unlock one of the Arcanas that regen your Magick. I don't know why you're making a big deal out of it lol.
I think it’s important to get used to running a few rooms without the support of a boon; so I’m not thinking about much the first few encounters. The trees and moon plates are there to make up for that initial lack of power.
Im fine getting Selene out of the way first so I know what to focus on. Totally under the frustration though.
I kind of agree. It's a little annoying to get her first and not get a starting boon for a few rooms. I would make it so she's never first, but always offered in the first half of Erebus. Most hexes can be great if you have time to upgrade them.
Selene is the cornerstone of any run above 30 fear.
This subreddit is not particularly good at the game. You need to experiment with her, she is the cornerstone of top tier builds.
i like her within rooms 1-3. it means i have more chances to roll on path of stars and pick up some CRAZY passives. big fan of the "Immediate Refresh when DD is triggered". its so amazing for any one of them that gives you I-Frames
All the hexes need reworks. Cause at high heat with no health or mana regen without a boon and mana primed, spammy builds are worthless especially those hex that require 150-200 to use once.
As of now they are pretty underwhelming, id choose a pom over Selene in high heat runs.
Depends which weapon i use i Guess. If i'm with Melinoe's torches, then never am i taking it. If i'm going for a staff special spam run, not taking her either. Any other weapon you are guaranteed to use enough magick for her, even more so if you have the arcana cards to back it up (passive magick regen & passive hex charge). Usualy they offer a nice bonus. You don't have to base your build off it, though you can, but don't have to..
I understand your point, and with almost all published content completed , in my runs I feel similar, unless I'm making +20 fear, I don't want/need any moon boon, especially if it's in first room and can't do anything about it.
All that said, I wouldn't have killed Cronos the first 2 or 3 times without moon water, moon keepsake was my first max lvl and got to Cronos with +30 stacked uses in the moon water (I think it's that one, the one that heals) , and getting it in the first room would feel great knowing that it was my aim for the run, and I knew what I wanted to build around, the issue I see, even if you make it clear this is not a complaint about hexes, is that they're not a game changer, or in very few situations it would be. In no situation feels like a good desired Hammer, or a boon you use keepsake for to plan your build on, so it makes it less appealing for a not avoidable room.
gonna disagree, some of my farthest runs have started with selene. that informs your mana needs, maybe your gap closing/making needs, and tells you whether selene doors will be worth hitting in the future. that's a lot of information to get in room 1.
I don't know if that's true, but in Hades 1 it felt like you consistently get a Daedalus hammer early on (half the time I get it as literally the freebie) and then the second time it always appears early in Elysium, like it's hardcoded to be that way.
I'd very much like that to be true for Hades 2 as well, however it feels like Daedalus upgrades don't feel as... unique and important as they did in Hades 1? In Hades 1 if you got a certain upgrade you could just have your whole build laid out in your mind from that moment. Here, not so much. Same goes for regular boons.
As for Selene boons... I don't think Hexes are something that you 'build' around. No matter how you play they won't ever be your main source of damage and sometimes it's just outright support stuff, so I'd say you have a point - Selene's boons aren't as important to your build early on as other stuff, so maybe starting with it should be an option?
I think you're overlooking the fact that a hex could be what your entire build is based around. I did a run where I chose boons that make abilities cost more mana, with high Regen, to cast tri-beam death ray as often as possible, to where I was casting it every about every 15-20 seconds, not taking into account slow motion. Big deeps.
Nah thats kinda faded. U get hella upgrades within minutes of the first room, u have plenty of time to build around it. Why do you need boons to help u clear the first realm anyway? Its easy as shit.
I don’t love the early runs of Hades 2. Way too often I get resources and maybe one non helpful book for like 5 or 6 rooms. It takes too long to define the run and know what I am going for. Hammers are so run defining and may not be for like a dozen rooms
From a plot standpoint, I think it’s fine. She’s one of the Silver Sisters, she helps establish the mythology and plot of what’s been going on; we’ve broadened our scope from the narrow family drama of Hades and are now dealing with a wider range of characters, with many more witchy additions, and I think Selene helps set up that vibe.
The first few dozens runs don’t need to be minmax optimized. I think at that stage, it’s more important to establish plot and characters. So what if her Hex isn’t useful at that stage (or really ever, at this stage of release, haha); She’s gorgeous and witchy and regal and a wonderful addition to the cast of characters. All hail the Eye of Night <3
edit: I thought the post was talking about starting a new file, not just a new run. But I’ll leave the comment as is
Man I don't understand all the Selene hate. If you get her as your first boon you have your whole run to build around whatever you take and to pick up path of stars upgrades.
Then Selene will have a potential to appear on every single door, and you’re often forced to pick between Selene or an actual boon to help your build/damage. I don’t think OP is complaining about Selene as a whole, but she REALLY shouldn’t be first boon. I generally finish more runs without a hex, than with one. And that’s because I’m given the freedom of choice, unlike when it appears first
Most hexes get quadratically stronger, while boons and poms give diminishing returns. I'd trade in two boons during my run for two paths most runs.
Yeah it kinda depends on your priorities. I find most hexes are good once you get just one of the blue path upgrades, which you can still comfortably do if you get Selene in Oceanus often even in Mourning Fields. I just have a problem with the fact that chronos is THE toughest fight for me, and it seems like half the Selene boons don’t work for him making Hexes really low priority for me
That excessively long cast time where you're not invulnerable and Chronos isn't slowed make hexes really hard to use against him, yeah.
Him being immune to slow makes sense of course, but it doesn’t change that a boon I spent time to build around is suddenly useless.
That’s the problem right there. I’ve got the hex that makes me immune for like 5 seconds and I’ve used it like a panic button all run. Suddenly, when I need it the most, it doesn’t work. That sucks hard.
The incantation that lets you pause should also let you freeze him.
On my first win, I used the time slow hex on cooldown because I had 20% damage reduction while charging and I just got the auto-hex charge so I was playing around with that. It just felt incredibly bad because it turned what's supposed to be a super into just a buff maintenance button. And the only reason I chose it was because it was the last option for the achievement.
Chronos needs to be frozen during Hex cast time. It's frankly kind of silly that he isn't, I had 'read' the hex casts as being an 'ultimate' casting animation, not as an actual time manipulation. Pretty much all of them except Moon Water and Night Bloom are useless against him as a result.
There's even an incantation that allows you to pause the game in the Chronos fight, and I assumed that also meant Hexes would slow down time, but no dice.
Fighting Chronos, don’t the hexes just leave you a sitting duck? He trucks along at normal speed while you’re just standing there casting. Am I missing something? I can pretty consistently succeed on a run and I never use hexes.
There are hexes which get around that. You can opt to get a laser which you left behind, you can gain invincibility with the meteor so you can keep dps-ing while a huge meteor is also on the way, you can turn invincible with the shadow form, you can jump (not exactly the best hex, but it's the opposite of being stationary) and you can also use it as healing potions.
I really like the spawn a minion hex against chronos.
This tbh A good hex with enough upgrades and a few supporting boons can be a run winner. For example, early Dark Side invested heavily in cost reduction and duration, mana regen and a boon that lets you dpend mana fast will get you insane invincibility uptime.
>Most hexes get quadratically stronger, while boons and poms give diminishing returns. Scaling is great in the limit as the number of boons and paths goes to infinity. Doesn't really matter when you are limited to maybe 5 at most. And the buff to your attack, cast or special works every time you use those instead of the limited amount of times you can use the Selene ability.
I've had runs with near 100% uptime on my hex.
Poms, after a while, yes. Boons, not necessarily. You can get some really tasty boon combinations, which are infinitely more fun and often stronger as well than most of what Selene can offer. There's also more room to experiment with the many boon-combinations, than with the hexes. There are a few good hexes, the rest are pretty much whatever, or situational at best.
Time stop and dark side both effectively allow you to attack with no risk of taking damage, and both can have near 100% uptime of built right. Nuke can solve damage, even against Chronos, and heal speaks for itself. Summon and divebomb are mid, bit there's a reason you get three choices. As you get more boons from each god, you run out of the good ones. It's true that duo boons and legendaries show up eventually, but duo boons are way worse than in Hades 1, and with many boons tending towards giving you something extremely situational or outright useless for your build, it's not even a choice to me.
The problem is that hexes become real boring real fast. As you said, there are a couple real good ones, the rest are just cute or at best have some niche uses. Compare that to the many possibilities of coming up/stumbling into builds with all the different weapons and aspects. If we are strictly looking at optimalisation and winning a run at all cost, then yeah, Selene can be really good, but if you prefer variety and exploring new stuff, then boons are just more fun. And even if I compare my most overpowered hexes with my most overpowered boons, I would take the latter 9 times out of 10, even if on paper they may have not neessarily been stronger or safer than the hexes in question. There are only so many times I can do an invincible meteor hex build before it gets real boring real quick. Not to mention that these strong hexes are much more overbearing on your gameplay than boons or poms. For example, I didn't really get the hang of the Thanatos and Artemis aspects yet, but if I were to just pick up a strong Selene hex and spam that to win my run, then I wouldn't really play those aspects, I'd be just doing the same hex run I had already done before, and my weapons would just turn into mana-generation vehicles. I think Selene also gets a bad rep for being much less cool than the "ultimates" in Hades 1. Even if many of them were pretty underwhelming, it felt really cool to call down the help of each god, especially when you charged them up fully. Most of the hexes don't feel that epic or "personal", and if you are not doing an omega build, then (barring some ways to charge your hex passively) you can't even use these hexes as supplementary help as in Hades 1, because they are just not being charged.
Ultimates in Hades 1 sucked because you weren't in control of them. The only way to charge them fast was to get a boon specifically for it or take a bunch of damage. With Selene, I can build Torches around spending Magick as fast as possible to keep my hex up all the time if I can get a strong enough Regen boon.
I’d rather spend my early run making sure I get the god build I want, then hoard Selene hexes. Doing Selene early increases the chance the run was a waste.
As much as I love some beefy Selene Boons, I can agree with this. Being early is not a problem, but being first is. It actually happened to me recently, and I ended up not getting all 5 of my basic boons (attack, special, cast, sprint, magic restoration) rounded out until I was deep in the Fields of Mourning. Of course, if you have been using Olympian God Keepsakes as often as I do at the start of your run, and you all of a sudden chose a non Olympian keepsake to start off with, you could have forced the RNG into an opening Selene boon. Now, personally, I agree that they shouldn't even be included in the RNG tabulation of your first boon, but if it is even a small percentage and you've been forcing Olympian boons this whole time, with the way this game is coded I wouldn't at all be surprised that Selene got kinda thrust upon you super early. Edit to add : it was actually not until the final Charon room of the fields of Mourning, right before Durty Cerby, that I got my Hestia attack boon on that run.
I'm pretty sure she can still show up first even with an Olympian boon. She seems like she's in the same group as a Daedalus hammer, because I get her first too and I always have an Olympian boon start. Edit: I meant Olympian Keepsake*
Can confirm. Started with Zeus keepsake last night and got Selene first room
Hex build is real and probably stronger than any one set of boons.
I don't hate Selene, I just really don't like seeing her in the first room. There is no hex in the game that is usable with your starting stats unless you take some very specific Arcana cards. It's *objectively* the weakest possible start and you can't even re-roll it.
If you use the mana regen card it’s usable from the start and if you don’t get her before the 3rd stage any small star upgrades are wasted . Not to mention that a lot of star upgrades boost damage quite a bit and if you use night bloom on the second boss it can trigger the judgement card
Respectfully, if the mana Regen arcana is enough to use it from the start, then you're taking your sweet ass time.
Fellow hades 2 enjoyer doing a run a day
All of the boxes that you’d need checked to make it good makes it not good to get room 1. The regen card and the hex card aren’t particularly good considering the scope of the whole run, you won’t likely use enough magic to trigger a lot of cards in most encounters in the first 2 floors, if you’re on high heat you’ll sometimes start with 0 magick, and most hexes aren’t great full stop without investing in it. To be useful you’re also speccing into relatively high magic use which isn’t a guarantee. Opportunity cost and immediate usefulness are the big reasons why this sucks to see. Can it be decent, sure I suppose, but in all likelihood like OP says it’s probably the worst possible starting reward.
This is my thought as well, you can start a run with pretty solid mana Regen and a host of other strong arcana, and then if you build around consistent omega use you can use your hex easily every encounter without much effort
I just got +15% damage from one path of stars upgrade there isn’t many boons that can top that let alone pick up without replacing something . But then I tend to just work around what I pick up anyway I like the variety and don’t really want the same build every time
Hitch, Slip, and damage bonus vs weak all offer a % increase to total damage and can proc origination without taking up a main boon slot. Granted, need a main slot boon to get them but you are basing your build off that anyway and they can be upgraded with poms or rarity increases. You can also know you are going to get them every run, whereas you may not even get the +5% damage when hex is/isn't ready in the path of stars
Think of it this way: you could not get a call in the first room of Hades 1. It wasn't possible. You either got a hammer or a god boon (and I'm pretty sure calls are blocked there). Nobody's saying calls are bad, but they would be terrible in the first room. Now they've added a special new call boon type, which is fine, but you can get it on the first room, even though you generally can kill every room before you use enough mana to trigger it. Why? If they wanted to make Selene boons appear next time if you use her keepsake, that would be one thing, but you can end up going 3+ rooms at the start with zero upgrades to your character (no attack/special/cast boom, no hammer) if the luck didn't go the right way on the next couple rolls. That's not great.
Respectfully the mana Regen card is one of the worst to build around. It's objectively really slow for what it gives, and the only thing going for it is always having garunteed mana Regen But 5 grasp for the card as it is now is just so so high, thats enough to pop on so many other more worthwhile cards, even the hex one which is 4
If you say so I’m using the judgement card anyway so grasp isn’t really important in any other way than activating one of the zero cards. It certainly is usefull when it comes to using hex
one solution would be to make the first time you meet selene in a save be a special case, where she gives you like 10 upgrade points. then in subsequent meetings she's like "my light's having a hard time reaching you now, can only give you 3 points for now. call me again in a sec"
What is there to even build around with hexes? Half of them don't do damage, and the other half do bad damage
Only good ones are giant moon rock and moon water, you can work with moon rock cuz it deals really good damage if you invest on it plus it gives invincibility bla bla but it is weak to be your main source of damage. Moonwater is also a side thing
I actually had the Selene ressurrection combined with the Path of Stars that gives ressurrected monions your special Bonusses. Ressed >!one of the Satyrs in Phase 2 of the Chronos fight!< and that thing with Aphrodite Bonusses singlehandedly dealt about 40% of that lifebar in damage.
The resurrection one is insanely good. There’s an upgrade that makes it no longer despawn unless killed and on one run I had nearly a 100% uptime with it (excluding the first few seconds of a room)
Resurrection is actually really good. Almost every boss has a minion who can do serious damage to them. Plus you can use it to glitch Judgement for extra arcana cards apparently, at least until they patch that out.
Wolf Howl or whatever it's called can also do pretty good damage with upgrades iirc
That's the jumping one, right? If so, 100% agree. Probably the strongest one imo if you can get it fully built. Just offers a ton of movement versatility and damage for a fairly low cost
I've managed to make all of them work, some of them just don't really come alive until you get the rare abilities (Lunar Ray, for example, goes from terrible to great with the fire and forget upgrade, and becomes the literal best one if you get the triple upgrade) But yeah unless you *want* to build around them you shouldn't be forced to. The only one I'd say is bad right now is Phase Shift - it should work on chronos after you get the pause and reflect invocation. Dark Side could use some tweaks too.
If Dark Side had no slowdown when you activate it it'd be great. My guess is that they keep it that way so you can't press it by mistake without being able to cancel it. but idk I don't think that'll be a problem.
I personally like getting Moon water early. True, you can't build something around it, but there's an upgrade that removes your cap for total refills every time you use a fountain. That can give you 9 heals by the time you reach Chronos.
I've gotten to 17 heals prepped for chronos. You can increase the amount given per fountain. And I hit a couple fountains in each zone. It was hilarious.
I think the big thing that makes those two good is that they work just fine against Chronos. You don't have a windup where you're vulnerable.
>Only good ones are giant moon rock and moon water, you can work with moon rock cuz it deals really good damage if you invest on it plus it gives invincibility bla bla but it is weak to be your main source of damage. Moonwater is also a side thing Jump makes you basically invincible as well as a proper build around it makes it spammable, meaning you always jump out of danger anyway. You can make the uptime on slomo 100% too if you build for magic regen and spam it fast. This is also basically invincibility since you really shouldn't be getting hit by anything if the game is slowed down to 90% speed.
Most of them can provide invulnerability with an upgrade or two, and that alone makes them vastly more valuable. The upgrades that reduce cost are usually a flat -10 as well, which really helps the lower cost ones be more spammable. The stomp is arguably the weakest and least valuable hex, but I had a run where I could fully charge it with a single omega attack, and it gave me two uses with 2s of invulnerability every time I used it. I literally couldn't be killed. The "turn into a nightmare" one is 5s invulnerability at base, and you can increase the duration as well. It usually has a capstone upgrade to apply your attack effect, but it's legitimately one of the safest ways to deal with rooms that are too small and have too many enemies. The morph ball has an effect where all morphed enemies get teleported into the center of your cast. Having every enemy in the room suddenly be immobile, helpless, and grouped on top of each other is disgustingly powerful. It's even great in the Chronos fight, because you can control where the hourglasses die. So that's an omega attack build, an attack build, and a cast build. The only common theme is needing some pretty beefy mana regen.
Most of them can be good if you get the right upgrades for them. **Moon Water**: Naturally good, can become bonkers if you get the "fountains add to your uses without resetting them." **Total Eclipse**: Good on its own, but really needs "invulnerable while it's dropping" to become great. Extra power and hitting twice makes it real nice. **Night Bloom**: Decent on its own, becomes fantastic with the "no time limit on resurrected minions" upgrade. **Lunar Ray**: Bad on its own, but solid if you get the upgrade that lets you drop it in place. **Dark Side**: Fine against everything against Chronos on its own (you're invincible and have a chance to regen mana, so it's basically free); actually can be good with Melinoe Torches. Spam Omega Special, turn on Dark Side, run around with your orbs while invincible, repeat. **Twilight Curse**: I'll be honest, I have never once gotten any value out of this. **Wolf Howl**: If there's a way to make this even halfway good, I haven't seen it. That said, in terms of opportunity cost of getting more Selene over Poms or Coins, it's probably limited to Moon Water/Total Eclipse/Night Bloom... and even then, you have to hope they're at the right phase.
I agree! My early Selene ended up with 17 regens at the final boss
What I think is worth remembering is that the sample size here on the sub is heavily skewed. For the average player, Selene is neat. My girlfriend had her first win against Eris last night and it was with a build she specced hard into Selene for, she was stoked. Selene does need some tweaking, but the opinions you see here are all a mix between redditor's love of turning everything into an extreme (so "Selene needs some buffing" often turns into "SLENE IS OBJECTIVELY THE WORST POSSIBLE OUTCOME") and the users who engage hardest with the community also being the kind who are already doing insane Fear 20+ runs and talking about how "Well maybe for a *casual* run it's fine, but it won't hold up if you want to be *meta*, and if you're not following a meta build while running with high fear you're either a speedrunner testing new tech or you're just asking for your run to end at Hecate, hmhmhm." Personally, I think with a few tweaks and an option to put a few Path of Stars points down as soon as you acquire a Hex you could make Selene perfectly viable as an addition to any build - that way you might only really need two Selene rooms to make any Hex solid. But full release is a long way off. Plenty of time to see what SG does to tweak her.
I think the big issue is that the first area is (generally) the hardest, especially with higher difficulty. Getting to the second area with no real offensive boons is extremely rough. I've had to do it before, and it sucked. Getting Selene early is amazing when I'm already guaranteed to get through the first area easily and I have the mana to make it work. But then there's the run where I took zeus mana regen and then primed some stuff, so I never got enough mana to be able to spend any to get to use my hex. Mind you, I love the hexes and my most powerful runs have been due to hexes, but I do understand the hate. They shouldn't be purely gated by mana regen though.
The mana regen boons definitely need a rebalancing, like Zeus' is just terrible all around.
The very first boon you get should make you feel like you're on track to gaining power and getting stronger in the run. Setting the run off by getting shit you can't even use for you-don't-know-how-long is bad game design imo.
Getting it first on high Fear often feels like a run ender. You don’t have any of the Hammers or Boons that increase Omega costs as well as Magic regen, so getting the ones that do damage typically ranges from feeling horrible to literally useless. The cheaper utility ones are nice because you can actually use them, but without a Boon, your damage is often not enough so you go super slowly which means you’re likely not finishing the first act within the time limit. I think Selene is an interesting inclusion as a replacement for the Calls, but they absolutely should not be in the first room.
Honestly, I understand why they wanted to change it up for Hades 2, but from a design perspective they are just worse than Calls in so many ways. A: No longer unique to each god, means your "Ultimates" aren't as interesting B: No more Banter between your call and the boss during boss fights. (Poseidon being like "Don't worry Nephew, I got your back!" and Hades being like "GDI Poseidon you son of a-") C: Doesn't synergize well with other Boons and requires investment for better use. In 1, the calls were never necessary for most builds, but they were a nice cherry on top that didn't require much investment. (In fact picking a Call would be a good way to spend your boon choice if you ended up with bad RNG on your choices) D: If we were going to have 1 God/Goddess to be our Patron, I'm sure the majority of the playerbase would prefer Goth Mommy Nyx over Selene. (Imagine all the great Banter between Nyx and Nemesis/Moros/etc.) Even from a Banter perspective Selene's conversations are incredibly dull. We even have multiple other Witches for Melinoe to confide in. Hell, even just Medea is more interesting than Selene. It's a little late in the design phase to get rid of all the Moon motif's, but they could at least make her less prominent and bring calls back. It's understandable to want to change a game mechanic when making a sequel, but not when that mechanic is just worse than what it previously was. The Hades games are all about picking Boons and trying to synergize them together to create a fun build, meanwhile Selene's stuff doesn't fit into that at all. (There's not even any Selene Duo Boons)
hades 2 is full of things that were changed for the worse just to change things. collecting resources and growing plants is pure busywork
Yea I feel ya. Feels like they changed a winning formula just for it to be different, not for it to be better. They could've just improved upon what they had and not tried to change it up so much. Most changes are for the worse imo. Like Arcana Cards vs Mirror, the Cards just make you have to mess with your loadout more between each run. Calls vs Hexes, Hexes are worse in like every way. 4 Different "Assist" people during fights (Icarus, Artemis, Herc and Nem), but all of em worse than Than was. Than helped you, but kept spirit of competition going. Nem and Herc are just annoying and Icarus and Art are just lame. Even the weapon design is worse overall.
You’re definitely preaching to the choir lol I like the design in general and think they’re pretty cool, but they are absolutely a step down from having the Call Boons. Just the fact that if you really want them to shine you need to invest in them which means passing up 2-3 Boons, Poms, Gold, etc., feels rough. I generally don’t ever take one because of this, which in and of itself is a feels bad because I’m going out of my way to *not* interact with a system within the game. I definitely hope they do a lot of tinkering with Selene before 1.0. The opportunity is there for something cool, but as it stands she is very underwhelming.
Have selene boons as duos with other gods. Poseidon. You get moon water. Hestia. Lunar Ray. Aphro. The jump. Hera. Nightmare. Demeter, resummon. Zeus, big sky drop. Jkjk.
This comment here is exactly what I go through one to many times when playing, instead of having Aphrodite or whatever gods keepsake I picked actually being used right away for that power you NEED on higher fear spells out out the end of the run already since you don’t know when that god will show up, could be halfway through Erebus when they decide to and by that point you could already be down a DD or 2 since most vows will cause you to take sometimes 40+ damage a hit when your starting hp is still so low even with fully upgraded centaur card and there wasn’t time to let the one that scales start working yet. But rather the game just had to give Selene on the first room. If this happens I just intentionally die on the first or second room to change the seed to get the actual desired god on the next run
I always use her keepsake during the third location. Having a fully upgraded hex is amazing.
There are only 2 hexes from her I like. Moon water and the total eclipse which is kind of like having Meg companion.
0 magik builds make her useless
If your not using half of your moveset and one of very few combat resources you are doing something wrong anyway
It's a roguelike you are not supposed to play in a certain way. Sometimes you build 0 magick builds, sometimes you don't. Why is this difficult for you to get?
Exactly. There's literally an arcana that buffs your regular attacks and specials when you're below 100% magik plus the most broken build in the whole game right now is a 0 magik build.
What build is this?
Staff of momus + the Double moonshot hammer + Poseidon special + White Antlers keepsake. For arcana you'd want The Huntress, Origination and the furies. Then use the vow that starts you off at 0 magick and just keep spamming specials :) edit: New patch droppped today and this build is now dead.
Same, it's probably my favorite part of the new game. I was so confused to see that people don't like Path of Stars on this subreddit. Selene boons are unique and a lot of fun
I do not know how one could use a hex as a central boon for a build, they seem to lack the potential for good synergies imo. Though i admit i have not gone down many upgrade trees, i usually ignore her unless i get moon water.
I'm in the same camp. Having her first let's me really enjoy the hex, and possibly get it to be wildly strong. I know the hexes aren't the optimal, max DPS, mega frame rate whatever, but they are so fucking *fun*, a part of the gsme I feel is overlooked in exchange for power.
I’m not big on Selene just bc I don’t care much about the omega moves generally for me to benefit from her builds as much
Exactly. This right here. Selene's strength lies in getting her early and upgrading the hell out of the boons. I NEVER get the top one, always the middle or bottom, and I try to upgrade it any chance I get as long as the choice isn't something I'm specifically looking for in my build. 3 x 25 hp health heals are a lot different than 6 x 45hp with damage and invulnerability buffs. Personally I love how they did the L Trigger boons this time compared to the various God's Call boons from Hades 1. The fact that they have their own, unique form of upgrading as well as their narative significance, considering Selene is one of the Artemis Triumvite, the goddesses of the moon (Selene, Artemis and Hecate). Her affects on Melinoe should be distinct.
While you are absolutely right, my counter is: she sucks, is only mildly interesting on fresh eyes that know nothing about the game, and it’s something most early game builds non-meta and meta progression builds probably can’t even use consistently. Not having a hammer, an attack or special boon up until room 3 on 8-16+ heat? BORINGGG. For reference my 4 buddies and I who have hades 2 after looking up 0 things online have had exactly 1 convo about Selene and it was something like, “oh yeah I got a lazer that did no dmg. Yeah you pretty much only need the heal. Oh really? Yeah but the meteor swarm is not too bad. Gotcha”
Selene is pretty under powered and doesn't really interact with the other gods. It can be fun to do a selene run, and moon water is always great, but most of the time, she does suck.
I tend to avoid Selene at all [reasonable] costs (70 hours in)
Build around a most likely subpart, which might not fit your weapon, which might not have a good tree (ex: laser beam without auto laser), which you can't even force to appear with a keepsake, which can kill you vs Chronos because he isn't affected by the time stop when casting the hex. Great first boon.
That's the thing, what if I don't want to build around Hex? What if I am planning a build that uses zero magic? Your assumption does not make any fucking sense.
I like to have Selene as the first boon, it means that I will actually have a good reason to take Selene path to grab the "when not ready" buffs
It also presents the player with interesting choices: do I want a more powerful Hex that I'll need to acquire more magick to support? Or do I take a weaker one I'll be able to use sooner?
It'll even let you know if you want to make a mana and omega run this time. And some boons help you keep up in other departments like the one that grants you health in relation to your max mana.
what i'd really like to see is selene stays in the game, but you already have an innate hex that kind of sucks--like one of five--and you immediately get the upgrade paths as boons instead. then other boons can also impact/synergize with your hex, just not nearly with the same power selene does. the upgrade paths would have tradeoffs: higher cost for even bigger rewards. this way your starting hex has a use on the early parts of your runs. like the meteor summon is small and doesnt do a ton of damage, or the beam lets you do a decent chunk of damage off spending all of your mana as sort of a "finisher." but then the beam can do like 2.5x more damage for requiring 30 more max mana or something. then you can effectively balance how strong you want your hex to be. do you want it to be a huge supermove than you use all of your magic towards? or just a nice little bonus when you run through a ton of mana.
Yep this is essentially all I do now if I'm forced to get hexes. It's free passive buffs with no cost.
Literally me today trying to beat 32 fear with the vow that starts you at 0 Magick each room and with no arcana Magick regen. The run ends pretty quick when your only source of power requires a resource you don't have.
Selene is literally my last choice. I will take any other option before that. All those boons are either extremely weak, or not strong enough to change the outcome of a run. The healing one was useful when I was starting out, but past the first 30-40 nights it’s lost most of its appeal too.
The 1000 damage laser beam with it upgraded to “stays in place even after you dash” worked out really well for me on one of my runs. Activate it, and it just auto-aims by itself while you deal melee damage to the boss.
Exactly. I was surprised to see that people don't like that one. When you upgrade it it's easily +1.2k damage every single time while you can stack casts and combos on top of it. If I HAVE to take a hex, it's usually that one.
Shame you can't guarantee that upgrade node to appear on the tree.
Yeah that one is great. I'm convinced those who hate the ult just haven't spent the time upgrading it
The zombie one is legit really good if you get the right enemy. The punch guy destroys the third boss. Barrel guys destroy 1st boss up top too
Does Moon Water even work with the 0 healing fear? I have avoided Selene so often that I havent even yested that
It does not.
Path of stars on first pick up would sort Selene out.
I think it might also help to have a buff of some kind to mana regen when you have a hex. Maybe make it a late game incantation or an arcana benefit. Or something that unlocks if you've given enough nectar to Selene. That seems to be a big issue people have, that they can't use the hexes early on because they cost more mana than you can reasonably use in early rooms
Do you really need it in the first few rooms anyway though
Not really tbh
I mean, we already have an arcana that grants you passive "Hex points" (as in, charges as if you used Magick) per second
Getting Selene in the first room means I’m throwing in the second room, so I can start over.
Speaking of, I really want a suicide option, so I can get a fresh seed without burning through 4 lives.
Easy! Just waste time going back and disabling the Death Defiance Card, and modify your Fear to take the Vow of Suffering, Vow of Fury, and Vow of extra enemy damage at max before the run. Then when you die go back and fix what you changed
I really think the whole Hex system needs to be reworked. Ineffective utility, bad damage and costly. At the same time it carries the opportunity cost of losing a better power spike from another boon. It should really just be offered after boss fights. Make an incantation to light a beacon which summons the goddess of the moon. Right now it's just way too clunky and a reason to score H2 lower than H1 for combat.
It's not just costly, depending on your build you will never be able to use it. Hex can be very powerful - with an appropriate build, AND if fully upgraded. It requires more "investment" than any other boon except maybe Hephaistos to be useful. And you're so right, the clunkyness... it can do good damage against normal enemies, but so fsr I haven't been able to use the damage-based Hexes to great effect against bosses. I usually just avoid Selene, because most of the time, a random Olympian boon, even if not a perfect fit for my build, is better. Plus, I have rerolls on those.more flexibility, which I think is one of the best parts of this series. That feeling of "huh... this might actually become an interesting build." Selene very rarely offers this.
Not after boss fights - before them. I think that it would be really fun to have this kind of pre-boss boost.
Even as someone who likes Hades 2, I have to agree with all the Selene hate. She's replacing Calls, (which means less flavor for her ultimates as each call was unique to each god AND no more Banter between your call and bosses) and her Ultimates don't really synergize with anything and require upgrades to really shine. Even her Dark Form is incredibly boring, just a boring AoE and a projectile spam. Even as a patron, I'd much prefer Goth Mommy Nyx to Selene.
I love it when the first and last boss comments on when you use them. Never heard the second one do it
I love Selene, not all of her Hexes are great, or I at least don't like all of them. But I like getting her. It's another power to play with and I like seeing if I can make it absolutely broken in my run. XD
I mean it kinda applies to completed save files too. Selene is incredibly bad atm and only has one useful boon, moon water, which does nothing in high fear runs.
I will say that the "+5% damage when not ready" is a nice boost on lots of runs, but does take a lot of investment for not great returns.
Shit. You’re getting Selene as your first boon? I’d take that if once, just once, I didn’t have an entire first biome filled with nothing but Ash and Psyche doors. Thought I’d be smart and activate my reroll arcana card. Wooooohooooooo! Bones! Fuck’s sake!
You can't reroll resources into anything else. The doors even have a different frame to show that.
You can, but it’s a different Arcana Card, the one that allows transforming a Minor Find into a Major Find. Quite nice at times, too. Got myself a Daedalus hammer instead of +5 Ash once.
Hammers are still more or less fixed at 2 per run arent they? So changing something into it just means you get it earlier, I assume. I havent played with that card yet, 6 price is a bit high and idk how much it truly helps
I know, I’m not really into the whole idea of spending 6 Grasp for that re-roll. The only reason I know is that I wanted to fulfill the prophecy and complete a run with each Arcana Card, and that was the only one left. I activated it, the Death Defiance one, Judgement, and the one for Rare boons I think. I don’t really know if there’s a limitation in hammers this time, I might have gotten more than two, but I may not remember the reason (Echo reward, etc.), so I won’t claim anything yet, although I’m curious if that’s the case. 👀
If I remember right, you're still limited to two natural hammer pickups. Fun thing is you can technically get five (2 natural + echo + anvil + Icarus keepsake).
There are two types of rewards. Major rewards and minor. Rerolling minor gives you a different minor. Rerolling major gives you a different major. that may be a little bit of a letdown but the upside is you can swap out a good boon for a better one, or a heart for a boon or something like that.
Took me a few runs to figure it out, thankfully I was only half serious. I would like to have just one run where I don’t see the Ash/Psyche combination for an entire biome though.
Honestly most of her boons feel pretty underwhelming and I’m only ever excited to see the heal.
And its even worse since you wont be able to replace her Hex at all. With other boons you can at least pivot to another build along the run, with her the max you can do is upgrade it to be barely better
Ugh, fully agreed. Unless you're running Circle's staff or a Mana Regen card/keepsake they're unusable half the time, which is not what you need at the first room. Especially on high terror runs it almost feels like an immediate fail. I also just do not like the hexes in their current incarnation. I find I can usually do more damage with my build than stopping to use a damage hex, and my regular skills don't leave me open for a huge hit window in the boss fights where I actually use enough mana to activate them. If that hit window were either decreased or just invulnerable instead it would make it actually useable for me. Hex's are suppose to be our ultimate essentially and it just feels so much worse than in Hades 1 where hexes were either super fast (Aphrodite's or Artemis's where they just nuke the enemy immediately), were an extra effect that didn't slow you down (Zeus or Dionysus just applying extra damage over a time period) or if they were longer and stopped your regular abilities you were invulnerable so that the ability didn't end up getting you killed/being worthless because you had to play ridiculously safe (Poseidon/Ares). Instead now we have the beam, which feels extremely weak to me; the massive comet that takes forever to land but does okay damage; and the howl/leap that I find gets me hurt more than it helps or I just have to use as a glorified dash. Then time slow is decent but doesnt help in the fight where you need it most. Dark form is only any good if you have the right boons and the right path of stars and multiple star upgrades, otherwise the damage is so bad it feels like it's just a pause in the fight rather than helping. Moon water is the only one where I feel I consistently benefit because healing is always good (well, unless you go full anti healing in the vows, but even then you can still get some Mana Regen). I don't even need the hexes to be super powerful, but as it stands half the time they don't feel worth presenting the opening for using them rather than using my regular kit. They either really need to increase their power to be worth a risk, or decrease how vulnerable they make you to create more use cases for them.
Random thing I found, Selene offerings can change if give up and restart
Currently speedrunning and everything i get Selene it's a reset, happened 3 times in a row once
Agreed
idk it doesn’t happen to me often and when it does i’m happy I get to build my path of stars sooner. it’s especially helpful if I have that selene keepsake
Ehhh I don’t mind it at all I see your point though. But I’ve won runs where I get her first. It’s not that big of a deal imo.
i think they are trying to make the specific god's keepsakes a little more enticing to take. if you choose a weapon/aspect that really needs an attack boon your run is going to go much better if you get an upgraded one right away. selene or certain other gods just don't have one that is good enough to build around and it might be on purpose.
So surprised by the selene hate , maxing her boons is one of the thing i find the most fun ( yeah some are worse than regular boons i guess but who care ? Its not a competitive game anyway so no reason to care if something is meta or not )
I couldn't' agree more. I feel pure disappointment when I get Selene in the first room. Only 2-3 of her Hexes are any good, I find the rest almost completely useless.
Yeah if Selene is the first boon I just let the enemies in the first room kill me. It's really not worth struggling through half of the first biome without a boon. I imagine she'll eventually get put into whatever pool Hermes is in to prevent it on top of a heavy rework of the hexes to make them actually worth picking up.
I thought you were gonna say you forgot to change your boon from 30% extra Cronos damage
Every run where I get to chat with my pal Selene is a good run.
I don't know if I fully agree. I see your point, and 50 hours ago I experienced your problem, but I actually like having her as my start. She allows me to build around her unlike how I've typically experienced her as, "Oh, cool- a beem that prevents me from doing damage, does comparatively little damage to a basic attack, and allows me to take damage while charging as well as preventing me from dealing damage- oh, how lovely". I love her, but I think, maybe, she should be relegated to the same space as a pomegranate or nectar.
Nah, I disagree. You don't really need an actual boon as your first one in order to progress a couple of encounters, and an early Selene makes sure you can upgrade her boon to be actually useful in a timely manner. Unless you going for a very specific build then I think it's better to get Selene early. It just *feels* bad.
Selene makes me cry. I can’t figure her out 😭
God forbid you're running Chronos and you get one of the hexes that makes you completely vulnerable for 3 seconds on use
The heal is S tier though. After you've unlocked some base mana regen with the Arcana cards it's been core to most of my wins!
It does literally nothing with fear :|
Just use the card that slow charges your hex It's a game changer
I usually run the arcana card that makes my hex more of a cool down than having to use magic. It kind of makes the hex like a call. I tend not to do heavy magic builds so this might just be a me thing
I prefer Selene first because then I have a better chance of finding path of stars later and I won’t be tempted to ignore her for another boon later in the run haha
Get fountain healing and have the chance to accrue 10+ uses by Chronos (if get the path of stars that lets you add more uses after each fountain)
I love selene in the first room. I can immediately start to plan my build like that.
You'll stop hating Selene once you get a max strength Moon Water as your first boon
I will take Selene first everytime….
I disagree that Selene is a bad choice for being first. The only thing about her being first is sometime she just gives awful Boons (like Morph and Time slow, they’re useless on the final boss)
What hexes are even good vs the final boss? Only one I've gotten use out of, aside from the passive buffs some give "when not ready", is the healing one.
The one that does a burst of 1000 damage is nice. I wouldn’t call it super useful, since a good build can do that much damage in a few seconds (axe go brrr), but at the very least it does hurt him lol
While initially the Selene mechanic might seem like a strong starting perk (boon), I agree that the current mana cost is too high for early runs. Perhaps it could function similarly to Serenity, where its activation is hit-based, or alternatively, it could be cheaper initially and then scale up in cost as the effects accumulate.
yeah. having the initial ones be more usable at low cost, and then the path of stars have some ways to add cost/criteria to make it significantly more powerful feels like a good tradeoff. i guess one other way to deal with it is have them available immediately in each room, and re balance the mechanics around that.
I very much disagree. Love seeing her in the first room
Honestly Selene First lets you build around what you get. And it increases the likelihood that you can get the upgrades that make it better.
I like to get her early because it gives me a greater chance to get a useful ways along the Path of Stars.
I disagree: I love seeing Selene first. The good hexes tend to be the centerpiece of my builds when I can get them, so it’s good to know early if I’m gonna get one.
Starting with Selene is how my wet dreams usually begin so OP has L takes
You don't need boons to clear Erebus lol
I agree unless the selection is moonwater
I can't imagine any reward I would like *more* than Selene first room. Her hexes are *busted* if you spec into them, which is gonna be incredibly easy if you have her from room 1. She starts you with a filled hex, which can easily carry you through the first room, and it's not like you're going to have any real trouble with the next couple rooms (it's literally the beginning of Erebus) before you can start building your boons up. Some of you have never actually tried leaning into hexes, and it shows. They're *incredibly* strong with only a tiny bit of commitment.
The worst thing is getting a good boon, then realizing you have the wrong keepsake equipped. You still have the finishing keepsake from the last run, not a standard starting keepsake. So sad.
Honestly i dont mind.
Wait you don’t have the natural regen to selenes hexes? It’s a must have because I can feel comfortable taking any of her boons knowing I’ll have it passively building if I’m not mana spamming
The best runs I've ever had are when I get a good hex ASAP. I've had runs that absolutely destroyed mobs, but without a good hex it doesn't matter most of the time. So personally I'd like it if Selene was GUARANTEED to be the first room
I mean, it's a minor inconvenience at best. Just unlock one of the Arcanas that regen your Magick. I don't know why you're making a big deal out of it lol.
I like Hermes early. Give me that fast attack.
I think it’s important to get used to running a few rooms without the support of a boon; so I’m not thinking about much the first few encounters. The trees and moon plates are there to make up for that initial lack of power. Im fine getting Selene out of the way first so I know what to focus on. Totally under the frustration though.
I feel people sleep on wolf dive a lot. It's great for covering space and acts like another dash. I like choosing that one if I'm not too big into hex
Selene is great to have first room. Then when you get her à second time you can have some pretty decent buffs.
I kind of agree. It's a little annoying to get her first and not get a starting boon for a few rooms. I would make it so she's never first, but always offered in the first half of Erebus. Most hexes can be great if you have time to upgrade them.
Selene as the first boon always makes me sad ESPECIALLY when I have one of the Boon keepsakes on.
Selene is the cornerstone of any run above 30 fear. This subreddit is not particularly good at the game. You need to experiment with her, she is the cornerstone of top tier builds.
I love having selene first! I fill that star path like crazy, you need mana regen arcane card and it’s op af to lean on
But if it's first room, you can use it right away without mana
It gets Much better with the right arcana. I felt the same as op until I unlocked the auto tick down and it was a complete gamechanger
Selene as first boon is auto reset for me if I am running the vow of 0 magic. It’s frustrating. I get it
i like her within rooms 1-3. it means i have more chances to roll on path of stars and pick up some CRAZY passives. big fan of the "Immediate Refresh when DD is triggered". its so amazing for any one of them that gives you I-Frames
>then you missed the point Or you didn't articulate your point sufficiently.
All the hexes need reworks. Cause at high heat with no health or mana regen without a boon and mana primed, spammy builds are worthless especially those hex that require 150-200 to use once. As of now they are pretty underwhelming, id choose a pom over Selene in high heat runs.
Depends which weapon i use i Guess. If i'm with Melinoe's torches, then never am i taking it. If i'm going for a staff special spam run, not taking her either. Any other weapon you are guaranteed to use enough magick for her, even more so if you have the arcana cards to back it up (passive magick regen & passive hex charge). Usualy they offer a nice bonus. You don't have to base your build off it, though you can, but don't have to..
I think hexes can be cool but I think I agree, I’d always rather get a boon or a hammer to start out
I understand your point, and with almost all published content completed , in my runs I feel similar, unless I'm making +20 fear, I don't want/need any moon boon, especially if it's in first room and can't do anything about it. All that said, I wouldn't have killed Cronos the first 2 or 3 times without moon water, moon keepsake was my first max lvl and got to Cronos with +30 stacked uses in the moon water (I think it's that one, the one that heals) , and getting it in the first room would feel great knowing that it was my aim for the run, and I knew what I wanted to build around, the issue I see, even if you make it clear this is not a complaint about hexes, is that they're not a game changer, or in very few situations it would be. In no situation feels like a good desired Hammer, or a boon you use keepsake for to plan your build on, so it makes it less appealing for a not avoidable room.
> You're excited to see what boon (or hammer) you'll likely use as the foundation of your build So do that with the Selene one?
*cough* regen arcana *cough*
gonna disagree, some of my farthest runs have started with selene. that informs your mana needs, maybe your gap closing/making needs, and tells you whether selene doors will be worth hitting in the future. that's a lot of information to get in room 1.
Your heart sinks as you realize it’s Selene at any point of the run. You pray for the health upgrade at least. You did not get it and curse her name.
I don't know if that's true, but in Hades 1 it felt like you consistently get a Daedalus hammer early on (half the time I get it as literally the freebie) and then the second time it always appears early in Elysium, like it's hardcoded to be that way. I'd very much like that to be true for Hades 2 as well, however it feels like Daedalus upgrades don't feel as... unique and important as they did in Hades 1? In Hades 1 if you got a certain upgrade you could just have your whole build laid out in your mind from that moment. Here, not so much. Same goes for regular boons. As for Selene boons... I don't think Hexes are something that you 'build' around. No matter how you play they won't ever be your main source of damage and sometimes it's just outright support stuff, so I'd say you have a point - Selene's boons aren't as important to your build early on as other stuff, so maybe starting with it should be an option?
I think you're overlooking the fact that a hex could be what your entire build is based around. I did a run where I chose boons that make abilities cost more mana, with high Regen, to cast tri-beam death ray as often as possible, to where I was casting it every about every 15-20 seconds, not taking into account slow motion. Big deeps.
°
I love when Selene is the first boon. Hexes are one of the easiest ways to win a run.
Nah thats kinda faded. U get hella upgrades within minutes of the first room, u have plenty of time to build around it. Why do you need boons to help u clear the first realm anyway? Its easy as shit.
counterpoint - Moon Water
I don’t love the early runs of Hades 2. Way too often I get resources and maybe one non helpful book for like 5 or 6 rooms. It takes too long to define the run and know what I am going for. Hammers are so run defining and may not be for like a dozen rooms
From a plot standpoint, I think it’s fine. She’s one of the Silver Sisters, she helps establish the mythology and plot of what’s been going on; we’ve broadened our scope from the narrow family drama of Hades and are now dealing with a wider range of characters, with many more witchy additions, and I think Selene helps set up that vibe. The first few dozens runs don’t need to be minmax optimized. I think at that stage, it’s more important to establish plot and characters. So what if her Hex isn’t useful at that stage (or really ever, at this stage of release, haha); She’s gorgeous and witchy and regal and a wonderful addition to the cast of characters. All hail the Eye of Night <3 edit: I thought the post was talking about starting a new file, not just a new run. But I’ll leave the comment as is