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To this day, I'm still doing this run with Natural Selection. I'm still aiming to get 6-7 Legendary boons in a run but in the Underworld. In the surface, 5 is the possible you can get.

another banger per usual

wow new anvil ring looks great!

i did my job and liked the video!!

I feel like Natural Selection works better when you just screw around and stumble into the god-tier boons it gives you rather than trying to build a very precise run around it. Trivia time! _Drakons_ are the original idea of dragons within Western civilization, but don't look that much like their later, more famous Medieval incarnations. Greece doesn't have any native dangerous lizards or crocodilians, nor even giant turtles, but it does have venomous snakes, especially vipers, that could be quite dangerous before the days of anti-venom. So Ancient Greek Drakons were often fire-breathing or highly venomous gigantic _serpents_, rather than being based on dinosaurs, monitor lizards, large predatory turtles or crocodiles. Classic examples include the Colchian Drakon that guarded the Golden Fleece Medea gives to you as her (now-cursed) keepsake The Blackened Fleece, the Ismenian Drakon slain by Cadmus and the two sea Drakons sent by the Greek-aligned gods to kill a Trojan who discovered the secret of Odysseus' Trojan Horse plan before the Greeks could spring the trap. While some of them were merely gigantic serpents who had strong venom or breathed fire (or both), some Drakons would lay down other precedents of dragon lore that would be carried into later adaptations by other European nations or incorporated into their own dragon myths. The Greeks were the very first to have many-headed dragons in their myths. The infamous Lernaean Hydra that Zag fights in the first game was a variation on a Drakon that had seven to nine heads, but could regrow two heads whenever one was slain. It also had poisoned blood that burned like agonizing fire and was fatal to anything not divine. Heracles killed the Hydra by having his cousin cauterize the necks of the Hydra after he cut the heads off, then crushed the final, invincible head under a giant boulder. The hundred-headed Ladon, the Drakon that guarded the Hesperides apple trees where Eris gets her Golden Apples from, takes the many heads idea to an extreme. Together with the Colchian Drakon, Ladon also set the standard for the idea of dragons guarding hoards of wealth. In the case of Drakons, however, they guarded wealth because they were set there by Gods as divine guardians, not because of their inner greed (which was a more Central European myth in origin). Drakons were also the first type of dragon to have wings. Helios, the Sun God counterpart to Selune who drives the Chariot of the Sun, had a chariot pulled by winged Drakons. He gave this chariot to Medea to help her escape from Jason and the Thebeans once she had killed her own children and Jason's wife-to-be in order to spite him for immediately ditching her when they reached mainland Greece. The infamous Typhon, father of monsters and divine enemy of Olympus created by Gaia to overthrow Zeus, was said to have a humanoid torso but the wings, fangs and tail of a dragon. As in later Western myths, these wings were bat wings affixed to a reptilian creature. However, Typhon himself was not considered a proper Drakon but rather an amalgam of many monstrous qualities, so he isn't an exact example. Although they are often slain, just like their Western counterparts, unlike their Western counterparts they are very rarely slain by heroes. Jason does not slay the Colchian Drakon but instead has to resort to asking Medea to conjure up a magical sleeping potion and step around it. In some versions of Heracles' labour to take the Golden Apples, he is unable to slay the Drakon Ladon and must ask the Titan Atlas to grab the apples for him while he holds up the sky. Others have him using the poisoned blood of the Hydra in order to kill Ladon, unable to do it directly. Said Hydra was not fully slain by Heracles, but instead pinned for ever under a giant rock. Cadmus did slay a Drakon in his own myth, but only after it had killed two other heroes travelling with him and at a personal penalty. The Drakon that Cadmus had slain was sacred to Ares, so he demanded Cadmus labour for eight years in penance for killing it. This is because Drakons were not mere monsters in Greek myth but sacred manifestations of the will of specific Gods, and mortals and even demigods very rarely are able to defy the Gods without consequence. Drakons were guardians, protectors or agents of the divinity, and so only a divinity was seen as fit to kill them without consequence. This is why Mel berates them for siding with Chronos in Hades II--they were seen as agents of the Gods rather than immoral stains upon their creation, so submitting to Chronos' will makes them traitors to their divine masters (including her). This is very distinct from West and Central European myth, where folk heroes often kill dragons using wit or good luck and it is considered a moral obligation for knights to attempt to slay dragons if they appear in service to God's will. But in Ancient Greece's myths the Gods were typically the ones who dealt with Drakons when they appear. Zeus famously battled Typhon and buried him under a rock, just like his son Heracles did to the last invincible head of the Hydra. Hera sent a Drakon to kill Leto, Apollo's mother, and in revenge Apollo chased down the Drakon (sometimes called Python and sometimes called Delphyne) and slew them at the site that would later become his temple, the Oracle at Delphi. Lastly, the Snake-Giants lobbed a Drakon at Olympus during their assault on the mountain, just like the Drakons aiding Chronos in Hades II. Athena responded by backhanding it with her shield so hard it became a constellation, Draco, which we still use in navigation and astronomy to this day. In light of this, Mel's own ability to slay Drakons is hardly surprising. She's empowered by the will of her fellow Gods and is herself 7/8ths divine, so striking them down is well within her ability. Of course, even the Gods struggled to battle them sometimes, with every God but Zeus fleeing Typhon during his attack on Olympus and the Snake-Giant invasion being an entire war (the Gigantomachy) between the Gods and more of Gaia's draconic children. Thus, while Mel certainly can kill Drakons, them being late-game enemies and minibosses makes sense considering that it's rarely depicted as being _easy...

Taking sea star then not getting the hermes heart ;-; sea stars got nothing good to dupe with natural selection

I remember people hating on natural selection at launch I always thought it was kinda sick Also Heph vfx were the best part of the update change my mind

Guess Foolish is not eating 😂

Thanks for the video mate :) Been waiting for this run for a while.

Been waiting on a new vid for minute thanks boaty

Weird how seething marauder stopped working on the omegas when you took psychic whirlwind

I got it randomly during the city a couple of days back and that run ended up with me getting FOUR LEGENDARIES and 4 more duos😭

this is secretly another beautiful heph run

natural selection run but like for real this time and not found randomly in olympus? i thought i would never see the day lol

Thanks daddy

Morning

How are you able to do dash attacks back to back with the axe? Makes the whole weapon feel a lot faster since we don't have double dash

1 WOOOT

Fig leaf is such a scam 😣

12:36 "I am the one who spins."

Why tf my peanits hard

This is gunna sound weird af but do you live in Burbank, I swear my neighbor sounds just like you (I can hear him from the hallway when I walk my dogs at night)

Bœne

I saw you and haelian play this, and I've been addicted ever since. It's such a fun game

People can survive 3 weeks without food foolish will be fine guys

Man didn't think you guys knew each other 😂 really great duo lol

got boated blushing in the thumbnail. 😂

Boatish content 💦💦💦

Beautiful thumbnail

hey, i helped make that thumbnail!

10, 000 likes or Foolish doesn't get to eat this week

General advice for Eos, it seems to work best (at least for speed) with the death card and alternating o attacks/o special basically playing it like a budget moros. Also triple commet with zeus special where you go o attack spam specials gets really insane. Really wish it gets a tiny buff

I think we shouldn't have so many gods without a curse outright. in H1 most gods had a curse in the attack, special and some had in the cast too. I feel in H2 it's harder to apply debuffs for orig. apollo and aphrodite should have daze and weak by default IMO

Yeah dude with the updated axe special I find myself playing it kinda like Zag's sword loops in Hades 1 fresh file speedruns (dash strike - turn around single attack - special - repeat). I find it a lot more fun now even if blocking is objectively the better mechanic. 15:01 Static Shock all day every day. Guaranteed solid damage with room clearing properties. Killer Current is definitely stronger at bossing, but with regular mobs is a bit awkward to take advantage of it. Double Strike is kinda underwhelming in this game unless you can rarify/pom it to at least 30%, and then it becomes the best choice lol

I don't know if I m mistaken but slippery slope says your pos waves(here cast) always apply slip. The % is the extra damage slip does. So it should give origination all the time with blitz.

I think a lot of people are undestimating posedien. Especially now that suffering is no longer a thing I feel its much better. The flourish imo works really well on a lot of wepaons (the common pos flourish doubles the basic axe special's damage), flood control is on par with trusty without suffering, and early sea star or oceans bounty can really just grow your value so much. obv it has duds but so does heph. it also plays really really well with rarity increases via getting and selling bridal or rare crop

boated u actually weaved around the gold pots in the olympus entry room im-

I'm happy to keep certain boons as broken as they were in release state for Hades 1. Pressure Points and Divine Dash are like old friends at this point--I don't want to seem them changed because the devs are playing whack-a-mole with nerfs. Trivia time! Athena mentions many times in Hades I and II that Zeus is her father, but while she is proud of her relationship to him in the present, their relationship wasn't always so smooth and loving. There are two accounts of Athena's birth in Greek myth, one of which makes Zeus out to be a genius and the other of which makes him out to be a tyrant even worse than Chronos. In the first version, Zeus created Athena out of pure thought itself. He conceived of her independently as a manifestation of divine wisdom that would be able to solve problems even the other Olympians could not, a genius beyond his own abilities who he formed as a conceptual idea in his head into the form of a growing person. There, she grew inside of his forehead as if it were a womb and slowly formed from a vague idea of a wise counselor to a fully-formed person living inside Zeus' skull. In order to escape and be born into the world, Athena took the spear and shield Zeus had imagined her holding and banged them together, giving Zeus such a splitting headache that he literally ordered one of the other Olympians (Prometheus, Heph, Ares, Hermes, etc--I most commonly hear Heph) to split his head open to make it stop. When said deity split Zeus' head, out came Athena, already ready to assume divine duties as a goddess of wisdom and thought composed from thoughts. The other version of the myth has it that Zeus fathered Athena with the Goddess of Council and Insight, Metis. In this telling, the Fates told Zeus that if he ever lay with Metis they would birth a child that would surpass him in wisdom and another that would surpass him in strength. To prevent this from happening, after he had sex with Metis he devoured her the way Chronos devoured him and his siblings as a child. Unlike him and his siblings, Metis had been a loyal advisor and ally to him prior to this point and was even the one who gave him the poison he needed to free his siblings from Chronos. She did nothing to deserve this horrific fate, but Zeus ate her alive anyway out of the same paranoia that toppled Chronos himself. Fortunately, Metis, like Zeus' siblings inside Chronos' body was not actually killed, but instead worked her way into Zeus' mind from his stomach. She was already pregnant with one of the prophesized children, and she raised said child inside of Zeus' forehead. As in the other version, eventually Athena grew into an adult inside of Zeus' forehead, and when she was ready to use them Metis equipped her with the same spear and shield she used to torment Zeus into freeing her that she used in the first version. Unlike in the first version, Athena's birth was not a celebration of Zeus' wisdom and insight but a tense affair where it was unclear if Athena would make war on Olympus or not. In both versions Zeus worried Athena would become more powerful than him and rise up against him, but in both versions his worries were completely in vain. Rather than choosing a violent rebellion against her father, Athena answered his fear and paranoia towards her with unapologetic familial love. Athena was ever the dutiful daughter, not a threat to Zeus' reign but a complement to Olympus' efforts to keep the cosmos in balance and the universe as good of a place for Gaia's children to live as possible. Athena, being as wise as she was, recognized that the Olympians' reign was far more stable, tolerant and fair than the Titans' reign had been and was unwilling to plunge the world into chaos to try to rebuild the system from the ground up. Further, she also simply loved her father and wanted to honour him and cement his legacy rather than destroy it in favour of her own. Zeus soon realized his daughter was not a threat to his throne or his family but instead a worthy heir to his kingdom who earned her place as a central figure in the Olympian pantheon. In time, Athena became famous not just as a talented Olympian but as Zeus' favourite daughter and choice for heir should anything happen to him. Ares even (correctly) accuses him of this favouritism in the Illiad. As for what happened to Metis? Everyone promptly forgot about her, including her own daughter. She was assimilated into Zeus' being as his conscience. Athena didn't even care her mother had been devoured and transformed into a voice in the back of her father's head, she just chose to honour her father as head of the family out of piety and duty to him anyway. For very obvious reasons I think Hades probably operates under the assumption that the first version is the one within their games' continuity. Frankly, I very much hope this is the case. Hesiod, the author of the second version, is the same guy who wrote about how Zeus had created women like Pandora to be a source of new evils for the human race that would keep them under Olympus' control. Bluntly, even by the deeply sexist standards of the time he comes across as having terrifying levels of unresolved misogyny he probably should have worked out before putting forth an epic compilation of the origins of Olympus and the universe itself. The first version, meanwhile, is an older treatment that existed in Pre-Hellenic Greece and is core to foundational texts like Homer's epics. I think that Hades II is trying to strike a balance, but ultimately will come down more on the side of the earlier myths. They use figures like Arachne and Echo to show the evils the Gods are capable of, but they still paint Chronos as unambiguously more evil, abusive and controlling than Zeus is to give us a reason to _want_ to go on Mel's quest to defeat the Titan of Time. A Zeus who does the same things Chronos does but to his own allies as well as his unborn children is worse than Chronos in every way, so why would we want to play a game propping up his regime? I also happen to like Athena and think she would be much less sympathetic as a character if she were honouring her father at the expense of her devoured and assimilated mother. Instead, the idea that she has one parent and loves that parent unconditionally despite his early attempts to repress and control her finally ends the cycle of abuse that started with Oranos and carried on through Chronos down to Zeus. It makes a better capstone on the story of Olympus' founding and makes playing the game more fun, so, until I'm told otherwise it's the version I think the game will follow.

never thought of using the axe special for blitz, that was a cool run 😁

boated

I've only had double Athena once due to a lucky Echo offering me last night's boons over again.

man, did you dislike that they removed the block mechanic from the axe? i know that the cloat has it but it doesn't feel as good, lol

17:20 just don’t get hit

just found your channel. New player - really appreciate the playthroughs! Looks like you play on KBM, and everyone I've seen uses a controller except for me. Just curious if there are any tips/settings that are important to playing w kbm where movement is slightly more limited.

Sorry if you've said this before, but do you have a favorite weapon in terms of playstyle?

Cleared 32 fear surface for the first time purely for my last statue, hated every second of it and I hate you for making it look so easy 🫠

GG! Yeah I've got to get back into Axe runs. Math time: 13:51 double strike = 0.1*180=18 damage per proc (on average). Static Shock = 20*4=80 (might be more because attack also but there might be an internal lightning limit) - but you're also dealing more damage since this shit bounces. Killer current = 0.3*180=54 SS wins. Also 17:16 skill issue, I always play like an idiot then blame the game when I die XD

You are tooooo fast for me. Make it look so easy hah

Do you find blinding sprint is easier to apply than the hera sprint? I do

Man the difficulty spike from underworld to surface is tough.. 32 fear gonna take a while for me 😂