Highlights
- Conquering the maximum difficulty in Hades was considered statistically improbable, but speedrunner AngeL1C recently beat it after 51 attempts.
- The Pact of Punishment in Hades allows players to increase the difficulty with different conditions, such as increased enemy health and new boss mechanics.
- RNG plays a significant role in Hades, making it extremely challenging to complete a 64 Heat run.
Hades has seen its most difficult challenge conquered, an achievement that, while possible, was long considered statistically improbable. It was just last week when another Hades content creator detailed why the game had never been beaten at the maximum difficulty, only for it to be finally bested.
It is a stereotype of the rogue-like genre that defeating the final boss of an attempt is only the beginning and Hades is no exception. The Pact of Punishment unlocks after the first successful break out from the Underworld and offers a variety of options by which players can incrementally increase the difficulty. These are referred to as Conditions, and each one is worth a certain amount of Heat, a value that represents the general difficulty of any particular run. For example, Calisthenics Program increases the health of enemies and Extreme Measures introduces new boss mechanics. As many (or as few) Conditions as desired may be applied, but the player stops being rewarded (on Normal Mode) at 20 Heat. The maximum level of Heat is, theoretically, 63.
But then there is Hell Mode, an option that can be selected upon beginning a new save game that immediately unlocks the Pact of Punishment and includes an additional Condition, culminating in the true maximum of 64 Heat. The player is unable to heal, has their upgrades restricted, is forced to endure another phase in the final fight and those limitations do not even scratch the surface of the challenge. Furthermore, no two runs are the same in Hades, meaning that RNG plays an unimaginably significant factor. It was just last week that Haelian, a rogue-like content creator, went into detail about just how difficult completing a 64 Heat run is.
He explained that the Condition which adds a timer to the game, that drains five points of health every second if it runs out, means that there is just a single viable combination of Boons - the upgrades that Zagreus receives from the gods - to do enough damage in the available time. Because of RNG, there is a 0.0147% chance of any given run being mathematically plausible, never mind possible. That translates to a potentially successful run approximately every 83 hours.
And yet, AngeL1C, a prominent speed and challenge runner who was mere seconds away from victory last year, succeeded after only 51 minutes of attempts. As she notes in the description of her video, the luck required for everything to line up so perfectly is incalculable and, even so, she was a single hit away from defeat against Hades' final boss. She recently completed an unseeded but modded version of 64 Heat, meaning that the RNG is ostensibly eliminated, which is considered legal within the community. But an unseeded, unmodded clear was always the dream and the Hades crown has at last been claimed.
Hades is available now on PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
