No one has bested beloved roguelike Hades at its highest difficulty level, and an expert thinks it could take as long as 85 hours to pull off even a single viable attempt.
The Heat Gauge and Pact of Punishment in Hades gives the player more control over their difficulty settings, with options like reduced health and harder enemies, to throw out some of the less agonizing options. The Heat Gauge goes up to a whopping 64 levels in total, and no one has truly beaten Supergiant's game on this excessive difficulty setting.
This is because there's some buck wild difficulty prohibitors for anyone undertaking the challenge. For example the 'Lasting Consequences' option means you can't heal at all throughout the run; enemies hit twice as hard as they normally would with any and all attacks; no 'Death Defiance' ability means there's no resurrecting. Perhaps most important is the 'Tight Deadline' option, which at its highest rank only gives players five minutes to clear each zone before they start taking significant damage over time.
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The excellent video below from Haelian delves into the situation surrounding Hades' highest difficulty level. The video paints a picture of just how hard the 64 Heat Gauge level is, pointing out that the only way anyone has actually bested the difficulty level is by using mods or seeds to guarantee certain Boons dropping to bolster Zagreus. While that's still an impressive achievement, the argument appears to be that it's not a true victory, given the element of random chance inherent to both a run's success and the roguelike genre in general.
Haelian's spoken to the High Heat community, a group of masochistic (kidding) Hades players who're all trying their hardest to beat Supergiant's game on the highest difficulty level. They're a consensus among the members that only one build even stands a chance of overcoming the level 64 Heat Gauge, and it all centres around the shield.
You'll need an Aspect of Zeus blessing, the Explosive Return ability from a Daedalus Hammer, and an Epic Thunder Flourish Boon, which makes your Special attack cause a lightning bolt to strike nearby enemies. The fact that all of these need to drop on your run is what's led modders to guarantee the Boons appear, such is the imposing nature of Hades' highest difficulty level.
The whole thing boils down to this: there's simply too much randomization at the highest difficulty level in Hades to allow players to succeed. Haelian calculated that if you're going for the High Heat community's optimal build (which, why wouldn't you be), you basically stand a 1 in 1,700 chance of everything going right so you can make your way out of Tartarus with the optimal build.
Yes, you read that right: out of Tartarus. Not through the whole game with the best build - just out of the first area. There's also elements like the Satyr Sack to consider, which is entirely randomized between several rooms, and that you only stand a 56.8% chance of finding the first time round.
So where does this all leave us? Well, Haelian's run the math, and calculated than you stand a 0.0147% chance of everything going your way. That's every 1 in 6,802 runs, which works out at one perfect run every 85 hours - and that's only if you die in the very first room when you don't find the boon you're looking for. That's utterly killer for anyone even thinking about taking on the challenge, as it means 85 hours of theoretical continuous play in order to even be able to attempt a successful run.
The entire thing is a wild look into how, in catering to the player with difficulty modifiers, Hades has effectively crushed any chances of a player making it through the game with every difficulty option enabled. Haelian mentions that the two modders who've beaten the game on Heat Gauge level 64 should be commended, and we can't agree more - it's not like anyone else is doing it via ordinary means any time soon.
Hades 2 is still on the way at some point in the future, and we can only hope it has some slightly revised difficulty options for all the hardcore community members out there.
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