The Pitch-Black Stone waiting in Melinoë’s Training Grounds in Hades 2 gives Melinoë fun, new challenges put on by Chaos. There may be a war going on between the titans and the gods, but please be patient, Chaos wants to put Mel through the wringer.
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Hades 2: Complete Guide To The Oath Of The Unseen And Testaments
Oath Of The Unseen provides an extra challenge, making Melinoe’s survival more difficult in Hades 2.
Try out the adrenaline rush that is Hades speedrunning with the Trial of Haste: you have a five-minute time limit to complete the Fields of Mourning, equipped with the Witch’s Staff in the Aspect of Melinoë, Hermes’ Metallic Droplet, and a dazzling array of boons. This Trial becomes available once you unlock the Pitch-Black Stone and introduces the Vows of Fear into the mix.
Hades 2 is currently in early access. The information below may change over the course of the game’s development.
What Is The Vow of Time?
With its beautiful four-out-of-five eyes, the Trial of Haste is one of the more difficult Trials. It imposes the Vow of Time on your run, one of the Vows of Fear you can implement through the Oath of the Unseen. At Rank three, it gives you five minutes to complete each Region and best its boss fight – in this case, the Fields of Mourning and the Infernal Cerberus.
If the timer expires, you can continue fighting, but you will fail the trial. Five minutes is very doable but requires very quick thinking and a good understanding of the tools you’re working with. The timer begins when you enter the first room.
The in-game timer pauses during menus and selection screens, such as when choosing boons or when in dialogue, but keep an eye out! It still runs when you’re in the world, even when there’s no active combat.
What Is The Loadout?
The Trial of Haste starts you out with a beautiful build – there’s not much else you could need. Your entire loadout is focused on making you as fast as possible. The Witch’s Staff’s Aspect of Melinoë makes your Magick Channeling faster, as does your Keepsake, Hermes’ Metallic Droplet. The Metallic Droplet makes your movement, strikes, and Channeling faster.
As is usual with the Trials, if you have your weapons, keepsakes, or Arcana upgraded, those upgrades carry into the Pitch-Black Stone, so keep this in mind before taking this trial on.
Your single Arcana card, the Swift Runner, increases your Sprint speed, alongside Apollo’s Blinding Sprint boon, which also inflicts Daze. Dazzling Display also inflicts Daze with your Attacks, and Apollo’s Back Burner boon inflicts extra damage on Dazed foes when struck from behind. This helps with the “kill everything as fast as possible” part of speedrunning.
Daze gives afflicted foes a twenty percent chance to deal no damage. It’s a great add-on to any build.
Both the Extra Dose boon from Apollo and the Mirrored Thrasher improvement from the Daedalus Hammer make your Attacks hit twice (or give them a chance of doing so), though the Hammer takes Magick to do so. Luckily, you also start with Poseidon’s Fluid Gain boon, which materializes Spirit Bubbles whenever you hit with an Attack that restores your Magick when you run into them.
This build makes defeating enemies quickly easy–you hit hard and often. The more interesting part is the movement, as the Fields of Mourning require more travel than any other Region since you need to find each reward in each Location in order to instigate combat and progress. There’s a lot of running around here, and all of your improvements boosting your Sprint speed do a lot of work shaving off those seconds.
What Boons Are Best?
With a very solid starting build, there’s not much else that you need, but there are some boons that are going to make for great additions to your arsenal.
- Light Smite (Apollo): inflicts Revenge damage when you take damage, and inflicts Daze on ALL foes. This pairs incredibly with Back Burner and its extra damage against Dazed foes. Revenge damage is always a nice bonus, and especially in a timed challenge, can make a difference if it comes down to the wire.
- Hydraulic Might (Poseidon): makes your Attacks and Specials stronger for the first ten seconds of an Encounter.
- Saved Breath (Hermes): your Cast uses less Magick, which helps when your only method of regaining Magick is Fluid Gain.
- Nitro Boost (Hermes): makes your Sprint faster and gives you instances of ignored damage–old reliable, always a good choice, and especially good in a timed challenge.
Rewards In The Fields Of Mourning
The Fields of Mourning are unique in how rewards work: each Location has two to three big rewards (or one if it’s a miniboss), seen when you select which route you take, and a chance for a number of smaller rewards. Each big reward has its own combat, initiated when you try to interact with the reward, and smaller ones are usually surrounded by a few shades.
If you’re worried about the timer, don’t bother about the little rewards. They tend to be Gold Crowns, Ashes, or Psyche, with the occasional baby Centaur Heart.
If you happen to pass them, your boosted speed makes it easy to grab and go, but they’re rarely worth going out of your way for, and definitely not worth fighting for.
Notably, the clock keeps ticking while you decide which room to enter. If you’re unsure, pausing is always an option. Take note of your options, pause the game, and consider. If you ever have a moment of deliberation, it’s worth it to pause the game to stop the timer, especially if you’re not used to playing with a timer or speedrunning.
If you want to get invested, though, and play without pauses, get ready for some snap decisions. Have a mental list of things you want to prioritize–do you prefer Apollo or Poseidon boons, do you for sure want to avoid miniboss encounters–and use those to decide as soon as you see the paths to the next encounter. Despite its short timer, the Trial of Haste is pretty forgiving–since you start with such a strong build, you likely won’t ever feel like a decision in your pathing messed you up.
Fighting Infernal Cerberus
Your speed will be very useful here: Cerberus sends out large shockwaves and fireballs that you’ll want to dodge, drags himself around the field, and will burrow and erupt from the ground with explosive force. You need to keep up with him as he moves, as the Witch’s Staff with Extra Dose and Mirrored Thrasher is best at Attacks, but also stay mobile enough to avoid most of his area of effect attacks.
Just make sure you don’t waste too much time dodging–this is where that timer starts looking scary, and if you spend all your time running away from Cerberus’ attacks, you won’t be able to hit him yourself. If you picked up Light Smite, this is the encounter where it’ll be most useful. Now if you stick close to deal damage, even attacks against you will damage Infernal Cerberus.
About halfway through the fight, Infernal Cerberus will burrow underground, where you can’t attack him. He will reappear when you’ve defeated every reinforcement. It’s important to keep moving here and get rid of the reinforcements as fast as possible.
This is a good chance to make sure your Magick is replenished–there should be plenty of Spirit Bubbles floating around, so make sure to hit them as you chase after Cerberus’ summons.
Don’t waste a second! You should be near constantly slinging Attacks, Casts, and Hexes if you have them. Your speed makes it easy to maneuver around Cerberus, so try to stay behind him as much as possible. Not only will that protect you from some of his attacks, but it’ll grant you the damage bonus from Back Burner.
If there’s a fight to button mash through, it’s this one. If that timer gets too low, it’s a good time to forget things like ‘strategy’ and ‘thinking’ and to just revert back to that primal instinct to hit things bigger than you with a stick.
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Hades 2: How To Beat Infernal Cerberus
Infernal Cerberus is a brutal boss that you’ll have to overcome on your way to Chronos in Hades 2.