Can You Beat Hades II With Only Uncharged Casts?

Rules:
Only Non Omega Casts/Spirits Can Damage Enemies.
That is all.
Apollo Cast Build:
Lucid Gain
Supernova
Solar Ring
Glorious Disaster(Duo Zeus)
and any other cast buffing boons you may come across
Thank you for watching, let me know any future challenge ideas you have in the comments below!
Thank you,
Jack

[@dreadnaught2306]

Everyone else may be here for the Hades 2 content. I'm here for the Daisy content.

[@JackOfAllGame]

Daisy is carrying this channel tbh

[@daniellemurnett2534]

On the topic of the Hades boon you were going for. Last Grasp. I admit the wording is ambiguous so I could be way off-base here, but I don't think the game is tracking how many times you've used Death Defiance, it's tracking how many you _don't_ have. To put it another way, I always interpreted it as it being based on how many "empty" Defiances you have. So Toula and the Lucky Tooth could increase the Last Grasp damage but not Echo or other refill type effects. I've done no testing though so this is just my guess based on the wording.

[@JackOfAllGame]

That is entirely possible, I may have to test that someday! I bet you're right though tbh

[@temtempo13]

Ha ha, thanks for the shoutout!! Glad you enjoyed the comments and the math. If you ever have some specific math you'd like me to give a shot at, definitely let me know. Nice idea with the Demeter route: I would have thought of Hephaestus or Hestia as more direct damage dealers, but the Demeter damage was actually solid, and bonus points to her for being able to activate the Origination debuff all on her own. (edit: Oh NO you didn't have the Origination arcana active... welp, all the more challenging, then.) I'd submit a bug report about the Frinos damage, it definitely starts at 10 and is supposed to be higher if you've leveled up that aspect of his bond. It says something about how rarely he actually hit anything that I've never heard anyone else comment on that: like I said elsewhere, I've only actually observed him actually inflicting damage when he just happens to land on Nemesis, procing her big obvious invincibility shield. (Terrible challenge idea: let Frinos be the finishing blow to each of the four Guardians. Which means figuring out a build that will let you get them as close to death as possible, and then stalling until you can get Frinos to land a few hits. Probably terrible because there wouldn't be anything particularly interesting about the encounters leading up to the Guardian, and now that Momus doesn't heal you anymore, stalling on Chronos will be really rough.) The Chaos Curse is ROUGH... good to know that his curses can't kill you, though, aside from the -500 HP penalty. And trying to fight in that tiny room while Hestia plays The Floor Is Lava, good lord. Love to see a run where the player manages to salvage it from an early rough patch, kudos to you for not quitting. As a headsup, Narcissus can also restore a lost Death Defiance: he has a "Life Savings" (great name) offering that only shows up if you've lost a DD, which gives you back a DD + a Deathcap. This is niche, but you also might want to have taken Hestia's Special instead of Natural Gas -- if Hades 2 works like Hades 1, there's a bias towards offering you boons that fill "unfilled slots" (Attack/Special/Cast/Sprint/Magick Restoration), and likewise, a bias against offering you a boon that overlaps a "filled slot," forcing a sacrifice. Using a "worthless" Boon selection to fill those slots might help you get a better Demeter boon later, since the Special slot will be taken, biasing your selection away from the Demeter Special and towards something else. I'd definitely give a Destiny video by you a try! I don't know for sure if I'd enjoy it (I don't know anything about Destiny, really, except that at one point there was going to be a Destiny crossover in Arknights that never seemed to materialize), but I like your commentary, so I'd give it a shot. Most difficult: Definitely Chronos as the hardest, then Eris, then Polyphemus right below her. Eris is way more variable: some builds wreck her, some builds struggle, and slipping up against her can annihilate your HP in no time at all. Polyphemus just always feels like a pain in the butt: between his kick-waves and that expanding slam attack he does when he's nearly dead, it's so hard not to keep taking damage against him here and there. After that, definitely Scylla. Cerberus isn't trivial, but I find you can get past most of his HP just by committing to standing near him as much as possible and constantly dashing through him. It's only at the very end, when he starts using his "temper tantrum" move, that it becomes really difficult, and even then, using your Cast to limit his movement helps a ton. Hecate feels basically free, I feel like I could beat her without either the Arcana or Boons at this point. Supergiant isn't afraid to give the player powerful tools, and it makes their games feel real good. I love it. Letting the player be powerful + letting them craft their own difficulty setting via Fear/Heat is basically my favorite approach to roguelike design. Excellent use of Doom music. Definitely the very best soundtrack, like no other ever was. It never occurred to me how funny the line "My forces are a numerous as grain of sands!" is in the context of him summoning a whole two guys to fight you. Do you have any idea how many grains of sands there are on a beach? Literally, dozens. Congrats on the win!! And you didn't even need Echo's Death Defiances in the end. 36 minute clear, too: again, despite the heavy restrictions you put on yourself, you could've survived one rank of the time limit vow, pretty cool to see. Something very random and funny: I thought your damage leaderboard numbers looked higher here than in previous runs, so I added it up vs. your Toula-only and your No-Attack runs, and what's wild is that your no-attacks run ended up showing 247,320 damage on the leaderboard, whereas this run has 247,390 damage showing: only 70 damage separating the two. (Meanwhile, the Toula run had far less damage showing? A mere 205,812? I wonder where that 42,000 additional damage went...) Thanks for the video!

[@JackOfAllGame]

I think Hestia would've been a really good option for this run as well, she'd have been solid if I got the right boons from her. I really just went with Demeter because it was my first thought lol. I definitely agree with your boss tier list, it seems pretty accurate to me - here's hoping they add some new bosses to the next content update As for the narcissus death defiance, I only realized he could drop me one after I took the wrong door lol I wasn't even thinking about it. And the Toula damage was likely due to me taking the express route the entire way during Tartarus. I wanted to get that run finished as quickly as possible whereas with the others I made a lot of pit stops for extra rooms and boons in Tartarus!

[@hopelane9773]

we are here for the hades content. And also your content is weirdly captivating.

[@JackOfAllGame]

Heard that, more Hades content on the way. Also yeah I feel the same way with other challenge run channels, for some reason I am absolutely captivated by them🤷‍♂️

[@spookiboys]

have you seen the balance patch? really cool stuff they added in some aspects. also i know you wanted that apollo boon in oceanus but honestly the situation you were in for that layer is the perfect use case for moros's engraved pin, since it can be used once every encounter. you can then purposely heal (if you are lower than the amount it restores) by letting the final enemy pop the pin and then ending the encounter easily ALSO gen 3 best games

[@JackOfAllGame]

Oh shoot no I've been playing destiny all week haha but I'm hopping back on Hades today to check it out! Also yes gen 3 best games - can confirm

[@davidawakim5473]

Another classic W, gonna have to try to get that Apollo Zues duo myself now!

[@JackOfAllGame]

Ayyy thank you, and yessir that duo boon is absolutely busted, I love it

[@slimesoda3956]

How have I not found this channel before. I salute you, fellow hades 2 addict🫡 Edit cause I just thought of a suggestion, a build where you see how low of a cool down you could get on Hephaestus attack would be cool to see.

[@JackOfAllGame]

That'd be a really cool thing to figure out, if you could get that low it'd be even stronger

[@wafu1494]

Loved the run and I love Daisy as well

[@2smallbros711]

Great run, love your content. Small optimization, I don’t know your arcana setup but there is an arcana that gives a 40% damage buff when an enemy is affected by two status effects. Demeter is a fun god because she inherently has two different status effects. I don’t remember the name but in hades 1 it was called privileged status.

[@JackOfAllGame]

Ohhhh yeah that would've been a good idea! I didn't have that active but I'll keep that in mind for any future status runs

[@spookiboys]

it's called origination! very useful

[@starfall0]

There is this high fear build I like where you get Zeus infusion, some source of blitz, Demeter cast and gale force. Once infused, the cast will deal 120 damage/sec proccing blitz every second. The no mana fear, the rarity punishing fear and the shield fear are freebies, they won't matter at all

[@JackOfAllGame]

Wow that sounds insane

[@noahmurphygordon1928]

I wonder how much faster it would be with the origination arcana. 50 percent more damage since the cyclone and freeze count as two separate curses

[@JackOfAllGame]

I didn't think of that, probably would've saved me a lot of time😅

[@destroything]

No scat, no cat, only cast

[@JackOfAllGame]

No sir, we don't do scat or cats - only casts

[@destroything]

@@JackOfAllGame precisely what i said

[@TenNieobecny]

Sprint only would be fun i think

[@JackOfAllGame]

Check out the Hades 2 without attacking video! It's actually sprint only haha

[@dreadnaught2306]

potentially very stupid run idea: take the arcana card that automatically charges up your hex, reset until you get Selene first room, and try to beat a run using only the hex

[@JackOfAllGame]

Oh dude

[@JackOfAllGame]

That's such a good idea, I love it

[@noahmurphygordon1928]

I would be really interested to see a full underworld run with Eris' keepsake, the discordant bell on the entire time

[@JackOfAllGame]

That'd be a fun run!