There are a variety of boons available to you in Hades. These are powers provided to you by the 10 Greek gods willing to assist Prince Zagreus escape the underworld. Each of the boons has a different focus. For example, Ares’ boons can inflict Doom on your enemies, whereas Zeus focuses mostly on hitting your foes with chain lightning attacks. The type of boons you want to use depends on what initial choices you have at the start of the game, what weapon you use, and your personal playstyle.
Each of the boons has a chance of being normal, rare, or epic, and the increasing rarities provide additional benefits to your attacks. With 10 gods granting you powers, they each offer you 13 boons, which racks up to over 130 choices. That’s a lot, so we’re not going to focus on them all, mostly on our favorites. Also, with this guide, we’re going to focus on the standard boons you can pick-up in the game, not to the duo or legendary ones.
Athena’s Aid (Athena)
Athena’s status effect is called Deflect, and it bounces attacks away from you. If they’re a ranged attack, they return to the sender. With Athena’s Aid, you become Invulnerable and Deflect all attacks, which is always good use in the middle of a boss fight if you need a break to rethink your strategy or need a few seconds to attack the boss without worry. Plus, if you deflect enough attacks back, the boss might kill themselves.
Curse of Agony (Ares)
The Curse of Agony is all-around excellent choice. Your attacks inflict Doom on your enemies, which does a burst of damage to them every second. The more you attack your enemies, the more damage you do over time to them, making it easier to do away with them to focus on the others around you. It’s a straightforward and simple boon with great effects, and Ares’ Doom is always an excellent choice to have on any run.
Electric Shot (Zeus)
Your ranged attack, your Cast, becomes a burst of chain lightning that bounces between foes. The starting level of this ability is five and has a range of 720. The stronger you make this boon, the more bounces it can go. Almost any of Zeus’ boons are good when fighting enemies standing next to each other. But there’s something great about dashing away from a group of enemies and firing at them from a range to destroy a cluster of them with a single hit.
Nourished Soul (Demeter)
While you can only obtain Demeter’s boons after completing the game, hers are extremely helpful and make the game far easier, especially at greater difficulties. With Nourished Soul, all healing effects become more potent by 30 percent, at that’s at the common rarity, and you restore 30 percent of your health when you pick it up. It’s an excellent boon to have with almost any build as it boosts the rarest thing you have the game: restoring your health.
Passion Dash (Aphrodite)
The Passion Dash is another basic boon you can use on almost any run in the game. When you dash, the area you land does damage and inflicts Weak on your enemies. An enemy with Weak deals 30% less damage for at least three seconds, which is always good to stack on enemies that you’re rushing towards. It’s a good way to get closer to enemies with fear of every hit cutting your life in half. The more enemies with Weak, the more reckless you can be.
Pressure Points (Artemis)
With this boon, any damage you inflict on an enemy has the chance to be a critical hit. However, while the chance to hit a critical is extremely low, given it’s on nearly everything you do while fighting, that’s pretty decent. It’s a great option to have, even if you don’t plan on grabbing any of Artemis’ boons during a run. It works with nearly everything, so it never hurts to have this in your arsenal.
Quick Favor (Hermes)
Hermes’ boons primarily focus on what type of build and the other boons you already have. For example, Swift Strike increases your attack speed, which is great if you have boons that stack with your basic strike. However, Swift Flourish might be better because it makes your Special speed faster, increasing the boons associated with that. You want to consider the boons and the weapon you already have when picking any of Hermes’ choices. Still, Quick Favor is always a good one to have, especially if you have any of the other gods’ Calls, as it automatically charges that bar for you during an escape attempt.
Static Discharge (Zeus)
With this boon, your lightning attacks make an enemy Jolted. The Jolted status effect makes the attacker’s next attack self-inflict lightning damage to them, and they harm others around them. Couple this with Electric Shot, or any of Zeus’ other boons, and you can see foes dying far away from you without too much attention by you, or, at least, it makes them far weaker for you when you do have to fight them.
Trippy Shot (Dionysus)
Want to keep your distance even more? Now, when you send out your Cast it bursts into Festive Fog, which impairs the movement of enemies inside of it. If you have other boons of Dionysus’ that deal hangover to foes inside of Festive Fog, it’s even more powerful. You can use this boon in a variety of builds, and even by itself, the Festive Fog movement impairment is pretty helpful, especially if you send our Cast, and then dash into it to fight a horde of enemies waiting for you to strike.
