Unbelievable! Hades Speedrunner Shatters Perceived Limits with Jaw-Dropping Achievement

Highlights

Conquering the maximum difficulty in Hades was considered statistically improbable, but speedrunner AngeL1C recently beat it after 51 attempts.

In Hades, the Pact of Punishment empowers players to elevate the challenge by introducing various conditions, like heightened enemy health and fresh boss mechanics.

Hades heavily relies on RNG, posing a daunting task to conquer a 64 Heat run.

Hades has conquered its most challenging hurdle, accomplishing what was once deemed statistically improbable. Just last week, a content creator revealed why the game had never been conquered at its highest difficulty level, only for it to be surpassed.

In the rogue-like genre, it is common for defeating the final boss in an attempt to be merely the beginning, and Hades is no exception. After successfully escaping the Underworld for the first time, players unlock the Pact of Punishment, which offers various options to incrementally increase the difficulty. These options, called Conditions, each have a corresponding Heat value that represents the overall difficulty of a run. For example, the Calisthenics Program boosts enemy health, while Extreme Measures introduces new boss mechanics. Players can choose to apply as many or as few Conditions as they desire, but they will no longer receive rewards (on Normal Mode) after reaching 20 Heat. The highest possible level of Heat is theoretically 63.

But then comes Hell Mode, an option available when starting a new save game that immediately unlocks the Pact of Punishment and introduces an additional Condition. This results in the ultimate challenge of reaching a maximum of 64 Heat. In Hell Mode, players are unable to heal, face restrictions on upgrades, endure an extra phase in the final battle, and these challenges only scrape the surface of the difficulty. Additionally, each run in Hades is unique, thanks to the RNG factor that significantly impacts gameplay. Recently, Haelian, a content creator known for rogue-like games, delved into the immense difficulty of completing a 64 Heat run.

According to Haelian, the addition of a timer in the game that drains five points of health per second when it expires means there is only one viable combination of Boons, which are the enhancements bestowed upon Zagreus by the gods, capable of dealing enough damage in the limited time available. Due to RNG, the chance of a particular run being mathematically possible is a mere 0.0147%, let alone achievable. This implies that a potentially successful run may occur roughly once every 83 hours.

And yet, AngeL1C, a renowned speedrunner and challenger, came close to victory last year and finally succeeded after just 51 minutes of attempts. Describing her video, she acknowledges the immeasurable amount of luck required for everything to align perfectly, as she almost fell one hit short of defeat against Hades' ultimate boss. Recently, she accomplished an unseeded but modded version of the 64 Heat challenge, effectively removing any reliance on random number generation (RNG), which is considered permissible within the community. However, the ultimate aspiration was always to achieve an unseeded, unmodded victory, and the coveted Hades crown has now been claimed.

Hades is currently available on PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.