Hades 2 received its second major update within the first month of its early access launch. The chunky Patch 2 features a slew of balance changes to shake up fan-favorite Weapon Aspects and Daedalus Hammer upgrades.
“Among the improvements in this patch, look for many new UI icons as well as weapon-related balance changes aimed at enhancing core combat and related choices,” developer Supergiant says in the patch notes. From what we gathered in our test run, placeholder icons for Keepsakes and other things are now replaced with proper art—and from what we have come to expect from Supergiant, they look fantastic.
To spruce up your runs, you can now encounter up to one additional Olympian each night, which means the cumulative Boon count in a run is now the same as in Hades 1. The fact you’re likely to find an extra Boon or another major reward in Erebus—the first region in the Underworld—means you will be a lot stronger earlier on in your runs. Death Defiance, too, got some major buffs, with Nemesis only offering a refill if you need it and an increased invulnerability period post-Defiance. And for those who are yet to rack up their first-ever run completion in Hades 2, Chronos is now less “patently unfair.”
On the weapon balancing front, Patch 2 touched all five Nocturnal Arms. While the majority are buffs, Supergiant has nerfed a handful of clearly overpowered choices—the chief of them being the Aspect of Momus.
- Witch’s Staff (Momus): reworked; each of your Omega Moves automatically fires several times in succession from where you use them.
“It’s definitely considerably less broken than before, but I think it’s for the best,” one said player in the patch notes Reddit thread. “Momus was only ever used for the increased special power, so making it an aspect actually worth using for its own merit is ultimately good for the game.”
Hexes of Selene also saw a number of buffs, mostly centered around lowering their Magicka-spend requirement. So, Hexes should be a lot more useful even if you are not building specifically for them. The only exception is Dark Side, which oddly takes more Magicka to cast now.
Daedalus Hammers saw a lot of underused upgrades cut from the game and several others reworked to be more potent. This should entail fewer undesirable choices when you pick up the Hammer in a run. “[I am] extremely happy they saw that some options were just plain worse and found cool ways to fix that,” one player said.
If you are waiting for Boon touchups to round off the reworked Weapon Aspects and Hammers though, they’re not part of this patch. The wait shouldn’t be much longer, though, with Supergiant promising “Boon updates in our next patch.”
You can head over to Steam to check out the full patch notes for the Hades 2 early access Patch 2.
