Hades 2: How To Complete The Trial Of Blood

Melinoë has her hands full in Hades 2: along with her missions to the House of Hades and Olympus, the god Chaos has also decided to take interest in her and the conflict. The Pitch-Black Stone sits ominously in Melinoë’s training grounds.

The Trial of Blood is one of the more difficult of Chaos’ trials, ranking in at five out of five… eyes? It challenges Melinoë with the task of traversing the Rift of Thessaly and besting the goddess of Strife, Eris, with the Sister Blades, the White Antler, and a cat. The initial loadout for the Trial of Blood can get a bit complicated, and you’ve still got some ship-hopping to do.

What Is The Loadout?

For the Trial of Blood, the most important features you start with are the weapon, its Aspect, and the Keepsake. Those are the Sister Blades in the Aspect of Artemis, and the White Antler. You won't be able to attempt the Trial of Blood until you unlock all three of these things.

The Sister Blades are quick and mobile. The Aspect of Artemis gives you a Parry and Riposte: when Channeling your Omega Attack, you have a chance to Parry, preventing damage from most types of direct attacks, then Riposte, making you Impervious for pme Sec and giving your next nine strikes a 50 percent Critical chance.

Artemis’ keepsake, the White Antler, also increases your Critical chance, starting at 20 percent and increasing as you upgrade the keepsake. It also sets your Maximum Life to 30. When it's possible to start a run with 100 Life, 30 is quite the downgrade.

While Chaos’ trials dictate which weapon, aspect, keepsake, Boons, Arcana, and familiars you start with, any upgrades you make to Melinoë and her tools and companions will carry into the Pitch-Black Stone. Similarly, encounters in the Pitch-Black Stone apply towards upgrading your keepsakes.

Some Trials also give you a specific Familiar, Arcana, and Boons to start out with. Here, you have the cat, Toula! While she does have a nice attack, for this trial, she brings to the table a single Death Defiance. When you only have 30 Life, it’s a valuable one.

Your Chaos-made Arcana spread consists of only two cards: The Lovers and Strength. The Lovers gives you one instance of damage resistance in Guardian Encounters. In the Rift of Thessaly, this will likely just be Eris, though there is a chance of encountering Charybdis as well.

The heavy lifter here is Strength. This card gives you a damage reduction and a 25 percent damage dealt as long as you have no Death Defiance effects. You could theoretically pop your Death Defiance early and deliberately in order to get that damage boost, but since Toula's Defiance only restores 10 Life, you're more likely to put yourself at a disadvantage. Better to save Strength for when that Death Defiance goes naturally.

What Are The Trial's Boons?

You start out with a handful of Boons from Artemis, Aphrodite, and Poseidon, meaning you will likely only see Aphrodite and Poseidon throughout the Rift of Thessaly.

Flutter Strike, from Aphrodite, gives your attacks an extra 120 percent damage against nearby foes. Glamour Gain inflicts her special condition, Weak, on nearby foes, and lets you gradually restore Magick when any nearby foe is Weak. Finally, Broken Resolve makes your Weak effects more potent.

Weak foes deal less damage.

Poseidon’s Heroic Boon, Flood Control, reduces any damage you take by five, but Primes 30 Magick. The Sister Blades aren’t a super Magick-dependant weapon, so this likely won’t cause much of an issue, especially with Aphrodite’s Glamour Gain.

Finally, your Boon from Artemis is First Blood. Any foes with at least 80 percent Life or Armor may take Critical damage, increasing your chance by 30 percent.

Into The Rift

The Trial of Blood is easy if you think about it. Just don’t get hit. Simple.

Really, though: damage reduction can only do so much. Especially once reaching Eris, whose attacks get stronger the more hurt she is, one attack could mean the end of a run. The Trial of Blood forces you to pay attention to every detail on the screen and stay ahead of it all.

Artemis is here to help you obliterate anyone in your path: everything she offers for this Trial increases your Critical chance, with some damage prevention thrown in for good measure. It’s very easy to kill most enemies in a hit or three. It just becomes a matter of making sure you hit first.

Boons In The Rift

You’ll likely just see Poseidon and Aphrodite in the Rift of Thessaly, but there’s also a chance of Hermes showing up. A lot of what you choose will be about finding what works best for you.

For example, you could favor Poseidon’s knockback Boons, keeping distance between you and foes that could potentially hit you; or you could lean into the proximity features of Aphrodite’s, and forego those knockback abilities to keep your enemies close and benefit from Flutter Strike and Glamour Gain. You can try the Trials as often as you want, so there’s no harm in some trial and error to find what works best for you. In the meantime, though, some are almost always going to be easy picks.

Almost anything from Hermes is a great. Most tend to make you or your attacks faster, or make enemies slower.

• Nimble Mind: makes your Omega moves faster, minimizing the time where you’re at your most vulnerable (Channeling). Especially when the Aspect of Artemis is focused around your Omega Attack, speeding that up gives enemies less time to hit you when you’re slowed.
• Hard Target: makes most foes’ ranged shots slower, and therefore easier to see coming and avoid. It’s an underrated one, but a lot of enemies in the Rift of Thessaly have projectiles. It likely doesn’t work on Eris, but those pesky Sticklers and Blaskets pack a punch that you’d do well to avoid.
• Nitro Boost: makes your Sprint 15 percent faster and gives you a barrier that ignores instances of damage, the amount of hits blocked depending on the rarity of the Boon. That increased speed does wonders for avoiding Eris’ gunfire, and this damage barrier works in every encounter, not just Guardian ones, like the Lovers card.

Aphrodite’s Boons are largely focused on dealing more damage and taking less damage. They tend to be a little bit less flashy, but are almost always a good option. Just watch out for Life Affirmation—it makes any Max Life rewards more potent, which won’t help you here.

• Shameless Attitude: it gives you a blanket damage bonus, but doubles the bonus if you have at least 80 percent Life. Anything to help you kill enemies before they kill you will go a long way, and if you can keep your health up, all the better.
• Healthy Rebound: heals you to 100 perrcent Life whenever you exit a Location, provided you haven’t lost too much Life—you need minimum 80 percent for this to kick in. This requires you to first have Shameless Attitude.
• Sweet Surrender: Weak-afflicted foes take more damage. This one requires either Rapture Ring, Passion Rush, or Glamour Gain, but luckily you start with Glamour Gain. Rapture Ring or Passion Rush will help spread Weak around some more, so they're still good grabs.

Poseidon has a lot of knockback abilities, which help give you room to breathe when surrounded by enemies.

• Wave Flourish or Tidal Ring: A ranged Special with knockback from Wave Flourish pushes far targets even further, and Tidal Ring adds extra damage to your Cast. Tidal Ring could later be combined with Geyser Spout to add knockback.
• Island Getaway: Poseidon’s Duo Boon with Aphrodite gives you 15 percent Damage Resistance from nearby foes, and makes it so Boons of Aphrodite treat all foes as nearby—which pairs incredibly with Flutter Strike and Glamour Gain. You already have Flutter Strike from Aphrodite for Island Getaway’s prerequisites, and from Poseidon you need one of Wave Strike, Wave Flourish, Tidal Ring, Breaker Sprint, or Fluid Gain. It might be a tad more difficult to nab, but if possible, is absolutely worth it.

Daedalus Hammers

Since your starting Boons are geared towards close combat, if you happen upon a Daedalus Hammer, it’s best to stick towards ones that upgrade your Attacks, though there are some exceptions.

• Explosive Ambush: Your Omega Attack deals 400 percent damage in a wider area, but uses 20 Magick. This pairs well with the Aspect of Artemis, but keep an eye on your Magick limit.
• Skulking Onslaught: Makes your Attacks deal 150 percent damage when striking foes from behind. This will promote good habits: getting behind enemies will both increase your damage, and decrease your chance of being hit, as typically enemies have to be facing you.
• Melting Sickle: Your Special destroys 50 percent of any Armor, based on the total. This is the exception! If you can whittle down an enemy’s armor from a distance, it makes finishing them off much easier.

How To Defeat Eris

The strategy is simple: hit others before they hit you. The execution, a bit more difficult.

Eris is trouble. She's got a gun, she's having a great time, and you only have 30 Life.

• Keep behind her: A lot of her attacks show their path before she fires, and if you're fast enough, you can get behind her or cover. Boons can help, but it's also plenty possible without divine intervention. Close combat works well against Eris, since it makes it a lot easier to slip behind her. She can only shoot in one direction. Don't be in that direction.
• Kill the minions: She'll summon little guys throughout the fight to help her. They're annoying and get in the way, and if you're focused on Eris and ignoring them, you're far more likely to get hit. With Artemis' criticals, they should die easily--get them out of the way.
• Hit her!: Get up close and personal with the goddess of Strife! Make use of the Aspect of Artemis' Omega Attack, and rack up those critical hits.

It's fine if it takes practice. You're just killing some time, after all.

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