u/Gay_Banana180

To clarify, what I mean is if they were implemented like they were in Hades 1, with 5 core boons, corresponding secondary boons and duo boons, and a legendary.

Athena and Artemis would still be percentage based, while Dio would have an on hit effect.

What I'm unsure about is what curses they would have. Athena's curse in Hades 1 is Exposed, which is backstab damage and that's covered by Apollo already. Dio's Hangover is a damage per tick which is the same as Scorch. Artemis is the only unique one here with Marked giving extra crit chance.

Then what would their casts be? Athena already has Mental Block, Dio has Tipsy Shot, but what would a cast boon from Artemis look like? Easy Shot but better?

As for their magick regen boons, maybe with Dio you have to stay in his fog, with Athena you regenerate magick after deflecting stuff, and with Artmis you regenerate magick everytime you crit.

I have no idea what secondary, duo boons and legendaries they would have. What do yall think?

By now, there have already been plenty of discussions about how Hades 2 is basically a perfect aside game from the story, about how many of its plots don't have a satisfying conclusion. Many people have also attempted to fix the story, and I want to take a stab at it, specifically because I already like the pre 1.0 release theory that Hypnos will help Mel put Chronos and Typhon into eternal sleep. I just could not think of a way until now to reconcile that with good guy Chronos because I genuinely like that character as well.

First, I will outline the problematic story beats. Again, many of you have already seen these discussion, so feel free to skip this part if you're tired of another "Hades 2 story is bad" post.

1. Chronos's redemption.

Even with the story fix in patch 1, the Olympians being fine with Chronos working with them feels weird. Remember, patch 1 made it so that everyone in the Underworld remembers the "good possibility" with Chronos, but Hades says these memories did not reach Olympus.

And it's not that it doesn't make sense. They're tired of war (except Ares), so any opportunity to end it would be welcomed. It's just that a line or two between Mel, Zeus and Hera about potentially sparing Chronos would help the story transition. Speaking of which, this neatly transitions to the next problem

2. Why does Mel need to talk to Zeus and Hera again?

As the story stands currently, Mel defeats Typhon and goes to the Palace of Zeus. She then, just kinda walk around awkwardly. There is no story progression. Zeus just kinda go "Can you fix our problems pls" to which Mel says "I'm workin' on it".

There is a bit of dialogue about how without Mel, they are considering a weapon made by Heph that would destroy Olympus and the surrounding countryside, burying Typhon. But nothing came out of this plot and later Heph reveals that he didn't have any such weapon and was just appeasing his parents by saying he does. So that's unsatisfying.

3. Mel going to destroy alternate possibilities things could've gone wrong is...convuluted.

Nemesis's response to Mel's spiel about alternate possibilities sums it best: "I don't get it".

https://preview.redd.it/rki3et5oa2fh1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=410f6d00619d70a0a3824e9b5a79e3f0a4f09375

Furthermore, everything has to stay the same because it's a roguelike, so the suffering and fighting continues. For example, the game claims Cerberus is just playing around in the mud, but you still collect his tears after fighting him.

4. Hecate is Mel

So Hecate got sent back to the beginning of time. She decides to bide her time, waits until Mel is born, rescues Mel and trains Mel so Mel herself can go back in time before Chronos strike and get Zag to stop him...Why didn't Hecate just stop Chronos herself if she already knows what happens? I guess you could say Hecate is old (which is what Chronos says) but that's just boring.

5. Echo, Dora and Hypnos

Again, many people have already expressed displeasure at these characters's story conclusion so I won't repeat it. I will say though, personally I don't lump Arachne into because I feel like it had pathos. Arachne was unsure if she wants to grovel under Athena or not, and only decided during her confrontation with Athena. It had a climax and a conclusion, which I feel like Echo and Dora didn't get. Hypnos was just a gag. At least he gave us Dream Dives in patch 2.

So what do we do with this? I propose the following change:

As before, Hecate swore vengence on Chronos and curse him so hard that she gets sent back in time.

1st Change:

Hecate could not kill Chronos without the guidance of another headmistress, and she is unable to free her family. She decides to battle Chronos night after night to keep him trapped in the Underworld. Here, the weapon proposed by the Olympians is real, and with Hecate occupied, they destroy Olympus to bury Typhon and flee Greece. Thousands of years passes and Hecate is still fighting Chronos. The twist is that this is what the Fates wanted. It's their twisted way of getting rid of the gods. In this timeline, Chronos never captured the Fates

So how does Hecate travel back? With the aid of Chaos, who dislikes the Fates's design. They gave Hecate the incantation, making her think it will kill Chronos. Instead, it sends her back in time, and in this version, Chronos comes back with her. This is the second change.

2nd Change:

Having spent thousands of years fighting, and even more years in the void at the beginning of Time, Hecate and Chronos comes to an understanding, and will work together in secret to make a better world. This also resolves the question of "How does the world exist before time (Chronos) was born" which the game brought up but then handwaves away. Here, it's because a different Chronos existed.

As for the reason why they don't just solve the events of the game before it happens, it's because the Fates would not allow time travel to interfere with their design. Hecate and good guy Chronos is under Chaos's protection, which means they don't immediately get smited by the Fates, but they have to influence things from the shadows rather than directly. That is until good guy Chronos manages to capture the Fates with Chaos's aid. Bad guy Chronos doen't trick Chaos into anything.

3rd Change:

Most of the game still plays out the same way, with Mel still growing up with contempt for Chronos because Hecate subconsciously hates him still even though she's secretly working with him. The change is that the shadowy Chronos that appears in Erebus is the good Chronos that time travelled back, rather than the evil one. He appears as a mysterious ally to endear to Mel even though Hecate tells him to stay away. Mel still figures it out eventually and blows up at him but that's just good story drama. She calms down once she realizes he's a different Chronos, and questions why Hecate never told her about him. I.e, more juicy drama.

Mel still goes to Olympus, but she has to convince the Olympians to not blow up the mountain and the countryside.

4th Change:

The most major change is the one everyone theorized before the game released. Mel wakes Hypnos up (by yelling "Wake up!" at him) and he helps her put Chronos and Typhon into an eternal, shared dream (and maybe Prometheus can just enter the dream because he likes to aurafarm to Mel). Everyone is right that this is the best way to justify the roguelike gameplay loop.

Mel still has to start from Erebus and Ephyra to keep bad Chronos in his dream from getting sus, but her allies can enter the dream with her to aid her. And now, we also get good guy Chronos, without the waking world having to suffer just so Mel can eliminate vague possibilities. Most importantly, you don't have to fight actual Cerberus anymore, it's just a dream version.

5th Change:

With Echo, I think just make it so that she can speak fully whenever she want, without needing Ambrosia from Mel (important bit), but she chooses not to, in order to provide therapy or smt.

With Dora, instead of her being fine opening the box after a hotspring cutscene, have Mel be unable to console her. Mel demands Prometheus gives Dora closure and he agrees. Dora reluctantly agrees to let Mel summon her via the Ghost Onion, just like with Odysseus. The twist is that unlike with Odysseus where Mel is a bystander to his conversations, Prometheus turns Mel into the subject of questioning, using Dora to confirm everything he's saying is true.

In Hades 1, Achilles would not let you progress his quest until either you finished Orpheus's or Sisyphus's quest, so I'd like make it so you can't progress Dora's until you finished Odysseus's. That way it sets up a false expectation for Mel bringing Dora's keepsake to Prometheus.

https://preview.redd.it/9xv6f14cn2fh1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=83feea21105f8dbbcfa0f0df19535121c2efbb0a

Mel comes out of it reluctantly agreeing with Prometheus and vowing to right the wrongs of the gods. To finish off Dora's quest, Mel heeds her request that the gods would just leave humanity alone. This will also add as stuff for Mel to convince the Olympians of when she sees them directly:

"Either you decide to blow up your mountain home, or I fix your problem entirely. With the condition that you still grant me boons as I enter Chronos and Typhon's dream, and that you no longer interfere with mortal lives".

6th Change:

So far, I haven't mentioned anything about Mel experiencing a better past, so that's sad. I will instead append that as a reward for finding the Fates in the epilogue. Mel still fulfills the same conditions to find the Fates as in the current game.

But in this version, Mel tells the Fates off, knowing they intended for Hecate and Chronos to fight eternally in the original timeline (of this rewrite, not the game). Chaos, now satisfied that the Fates are gone, rewards Mel and her family with memories of a better past.

TL;DR: Mel lives up to her namesake of "Agent of Change". The war truly ends with Typhon and bad guy Chronos asleep while we still get good guy Chronos because that guy is funny is as hell.

I formally ask the community for a list of meme builds to put on my random roulette wheel. Naturally these are hyper-specific builds that require rerolls, so no playing under Fate's Whims.

The 2 builds I've tried so far are:

• Cook and Book: Getting Burning Desire, Island Getaway and Glamour Gain (Pyro Technique is recommended). Apply Scorch once and run away. Watch your enemies burn.
• Insert KYS lightning guy here: Apply the Gorgon Amulet in Erebus to get Stalwart Stand. Drop the DD in every chamber. Get Last Gasp in Tartarus. The global damage boost at the end should be roughly +400%

I welcome more meme worthy suggestions.

So Halandil Fang is staying in the city as a Schemer. People already mentioned how House Halovar is gonna come after his ass, but I'm not too worried about that tbh. Those tend to be social encounters that Hal can talk his way out of.

What I'm terrified of however, is Termina coming after Hal's ass. He was there when Termina took Lady Comoray as host. No doubt she will come after Hal in order to determine where Bolaire is. She definitely has Detect Thoughts too.

As mentioned in the Cooldown, Brennan doesn't like killing players due to bad dice rolls, so Hal will still get some agency to save himself, but it might be at a great cost similar to Wic's encounter with Primus (which is the context of Brennan saying the above)

So Mara revealed a couple of interesting things about the ritual in this episode.

Previously, we thought that the Cloak was only looking for psychopomp items from each Shaper, of which they and our players already have three: the Font of Gavzidra, the Stone of Nightsong, the Coffin of Olbalad; and we thought they needed four more items from the remainding Shapers.

However, we learned in this episode that creating a single connection to each Shaper's afterlife require three bridges via three items. I.e, we need 21 items in total. For each ritual, we need: a psychopomp item, the specific god-killing weapon to be reshaped into a plowshare and an anchor of the opposite energy to stabilize the ritual. The Stone of Nightsong was already used as an anchor for the Azgra ritual. So our heroes will need another psychopomp for the Sylandri ritual.

We also learned some interesting lore about choosing the anchor. A couple episodes ago in Cooldown, we learned what the consort of each shapers are:

• Azgra (Killed by 7 Pariah Blades) - Queen of Demons
• Rauwyn (Killed by 6 Panto Masks) - Father of Winds
• Sylandri (Killed by the Last Arrow) - The Fey King
• Ilumi (Killed by Unknown) - Father of Waves
• Trozhna (Killed by Unknown) - Mother of Earth
• Tansul (Killed by ? Staves of Night) - Mother of Fire
• Omra (Killed by Unknown) - No consort

Specifically, in the latest episode, Mara said that because the Shapers can't create, their domain had to be given to them. It was stated that Azgra received his domain from the Queen of Demons, that the Dying Fields was carved out of the Pit. As a result, the Stone of Nightsong was the anchor because Faerie was the opposite of the Pit (also stated by Mara).

Now, I admittedly didn't like this at first because I'm used to the cosmology of: Fiend - Celestial, Feywild - Shadowfell. Even Brennan keeps mentioning that necromantic energy is anathema to fey energy (Doors to Faerie closing due to necromantic energy, Thimble feeling like shit while half in the Tenebral Reaches), but apparently for the purpose of these rituals, demonic energy is opposite to fey energy instead of necromantic? I guess there's some sort of parallel going on between the Queen of Demons and the Fey King. Regardless, that doesn't bother me that much.

What does bother me though, is that Mara said for the next ritual for Rauwyn (of which the psychopomp item is the Coffin, the god-killing weapon was Termina, but now is Bolaire), the opposing anchor item has to be demonic. If we can assume each Shaper got their domain from their consort, Rauwyn's domain came from the Father of Winds. How is demonic energy the opposite of the element wind?

Another interesting thing about this is that, Omra is the only Shaper who did not take a consort, and did not shape existing creatures into Beastfolks, but rather, awakened animals. Omra seems to be the only Shaper who didn't really do any shaping. And if we follow the rule of each domain needing an opposite anchor, then Omra's afterlife wouldn't have any.

So maybe instead of splitting the 7 afterlives into pairs of opposites (because then one afterlife is left out), it's going around in a circle instead. Azgra's afterlife was demonic and needed fey energy to stabilize. Rauwyn's afterlife, the Piper's Down, is windy (?) and needs demonic energy to stabilize. And then whichever afterlife we stabilize next will need a windy artifact to stabilize. We keep going until it completes the circle with Sylandri's afterlife last. This way, it makes sense why fey energy is opposite to necomantic energy, but was used to stabilize an afterlife made from demonic energy. Faeire isn't opposite to the Pit, and Brennan as Mara just misspoke. It's just going around in a circle.

P/s: the order of this seems to be the first Shaper that was struck down (Azgra), to the last Shaper that was struck down (Sylandri). A post from months ago had a really good observation that Azgra needed seven blades to be killed, Rauwyn needed six masks, and Sylandri only needed one arrow. This seems to indicate our order of operation. It would be good to pay attention to how many Staves of Night were needed to kill Tansul.