History GameBreaker / Hades

* Sweet Nectar (Aphrodite/Poseidon) buffs up any Poms of Power effects by 2, meaning any future Poms you acquire will increase your boons by 3 levels, instead of 1 - and any already-buffed Poms (like those won from Erebus, bought from Charon's late-game shop for 300 Obols, etc) go up by ''4'' levels). Needless to say, this can lead to incredibly powerful runs, particularly if you manage to get this duo while you're still in Tartarus - and if combined with the Pom Blossom Keepsake, you're all-but-guaranteed to have every possible Boon be leveled up considerably.

* The Guan Yu aspect of the Eternal Spear, when fully upgraded, halves your health and any health upgrades for the duration of the run (70% demerit at base), but in exchange gives the spear's spin attack health-restoring properties for each hit. It only heals for one point per hit, but the spin attack will hit several times at least and has decent range. It gets even more broken when combined with hammer upgrades that increase its size and decrease charge time. This was so broken, in fact, that the spin attack got nerfed so it would bounce off walls instead of passing through them, as prior to that, you could hide behind the plentiful barriers and attack with impunity.

* Due to how the game's autosave system works, you can actually fish twice in the same room and both catches will be counted. Considering how low the spawn rate is for those in the later areas like the surface or Chaos, it is a godsend for those who want to fill up the codex and obtain valuable rewards. To explain, the autosave triggers whenever Zagreus enters a new room/zone or collects the room reward. However, the fishing spot is independently spawned in the room itself. So if you fish -> collect reward -> quit, you can fish again at the same spot for a second time while keeping the first catch. It is noted to not work in the starting areas of Asphodel, Elysium along with Styx's hub, as there are no room rewards to trigger the autosave.

* ''Power Shot'' turns Aegis into a better version of Coronacht, replacing its bull rush with a powerful ranged attack that requires charging. However, unlike Coronacht, Aegis' damage-nullifying guard is kept while the attack charges, which removes the bow's main drawback. The Power Shot also pierces shields (like Theseus and Greatshields'), and still counts as a bull rush for the purpose of other upgrades and aspects.

* The Guan Yu aspect of the Eternal Spear, when fully upgraded, halves your health and any health upgrades for the duration of the run, but in exchange gives the spear's spin attack health-restoring properties for each hit. It only heals for one point per hit, but the spin attack will hit several times at least and has decent range. It gets even more broken when combined with hammer upgrades that increase its size and decrease charge time. This was so broken, in fact, that the spin attack got nerfed so it would bounce off walls instead of passing through them, as prior to that, you could hide behind the plentiful barriers and attack with impunity.

* The fully upgraded Evergreen Acorn keepsake, given to you by Eurydice, allows you to be impervious for up to 5 hits in a final encounter in each region. This keepsake is a favorite for high-level heat runs, particularly for Styx, because the final boss' damage is so powerful, they can strip away your health in the blink of an eye. Giving the player 5 free hits against Theseus & Asterius and Hades can pay in dividends for allowing them to bypass their particularly-hard early phases easier.

* Sweet Nectar (Aphrodite/Poseidon) buffs any Poms of Power effects up by 2, meaning any future Poms you acquire will increase your boons by 3 levels, instead of 1 (and Erebus and Styx miniboss and 300-coin Poms increase boons by ''4'' levels). Needless to say, this can lead to incredibly powerful runs, particularly if you manage to get this duo while you're still in Tartarus.

* Ice Wine (Demeter/Dionysus). Trippy Shot is already the highest-damaging spell in the game as far as straight damage goes, but it's tricky to aim due to being a lobbed shot with travel time. Ice Wine not only removes this weakness, it ''increases the damage by 50% and inflicts Chill.'' This turns an already-DifficultButAwesome spell into an immediate [=AoE=] nuke capable of obliterating the health bars of most anything in the game, even if you're not running a cast build.

* Heart Rend (Aphrodite/Artemis) offers an additional 150% critical hit damage to any foe already inflicted with the Weak Status-effect. Critical Hits on their own already offer x2 damage, and Heart Rend stacks with this, now offering a very generous x3.5 damage hit rate. ''All'' attack types benefit from this multiplier [[note]]Attacks, Specials, Casts, Calls, Dash Damage, and even Zeus' Lightning.[[/note]] so this tends to be a preferred boon for stacking up some of the heaviest hitting attacks.
* Hunting Blades (Ares/Artemis). It's been {{nerf}}ed several times, and yet still remains broken. It adds a homing effect and a 100% speed increase to Ares' Slicing Blades, turning an AwesomeButImpractical cast that does huge damage but is slow and hard to hit with into a homing monstrosity that will easily deal 500 damage on its own. It's incredibly fire-and-forget, allowing Zagreus to focus on avoiding attacks, and since both gods have several Boons that upgrade Cast it has incredible growth potential.

* Merciful End (Ares/Athena) does for Doom what Hunting Blades does for Slicing Shot: if you hit an enemy with a deflecting move, any Doom effects on that enemy occur instantly. So what used to be a strong curse that triggered after a time delay can now be triggered at will. The only issue is that it specifically requires Attack and Special Boons from Athena and Ares (it used to be triggered by Divine Dash). Still, once you have the Duo ''and'' Divine Dash in your arsenal, Merciful End's full ass-kicking ability blossoms, especially if you have a dash-heavy weapon like the Sword or the Fists equipped.

* Scintillating Feast (Dionysus/Zeus) adds lightning strikes to Dionysus' Trippy Shot cast, so any enemy that is inside the Festive Fog will be struck with lightning. Zeus' various lightning boons such as Double Strike and Jolted can also stacked, making this one of the deadliest casts in the game.

* Sweet Nectar (Aphrodite/Poseidon) buffs any Poms of Power effects up by 2, meaning any future Poms you acquire will increase your boons by 3 levels, instead of 1. Needless to say, this can lead to incredibly powerful runs, particularly if you manage to get this duo while you're still in Tartarus.

** Fully Loaded, Artemis' Legendary Boon, much like Hunting Blades received a massive nerf coming out of Early Access but even after it is still considered a must for cast builds. It grants the player two additional cast stones. Artemis' Legendary is also unique in the fact that while it requires two out of three of her Tier 2 boons, two of them (Pressure Points and Exit Wounds) don't require ''any'' of her other boons while the third, the aforementioned Support Fire, is also incredibly useful, so her Legendary is still one of the easiest to get.
** Artemis' Aid is a textbook MagikarpPower. It can be used at 20% rather than the typical 25% offered by the other gods' aids, but the catch is her normal call offers rather lackluster damage. Her ''Greater Call'' on the other hand, her call used once fully charged, has the potential to be the single strongest attack in the game, capable of eliminating an entire phase of a boss fight. This is all due to it having a 35% crit chance and being able to take advantage of other boons you may have acquired like Heart Rend or Clean Kill.

** Fully Loaded, Artemis' Legendary Boon, much like Hunting Blades received a massive nerf coming out of Early Access but even after it is still considered a must for cast builds. It grants the player two additional cast stones. Artemis' Legendary is also unique in the fact that while it requires two out of three of her Tier 2 boons, two of them (Pressure Points and Exit Wounds) don't require ''any'' of her other boons while the third, the aforementioned Support Fire, is also incredibly useful so her Legendary is still one of the easiest to get.

** Her legendary boon, Divine Protection, stands out even among legendary boons for breaking the game in two - while active, it completely negates the next hit that Zagreus takes. And 20 seconds after it's discharged, it comes back. It's a permanently regenerating shield that Zagreus doesn't need to do anything to use, so all that's needed is to know when to play it safe and defensive (and given that you need at least one boon that can deflect attacks to get Divine Protection, anyone with the boon is already well equipped to do so), and it's more than reasonable to never take another point of damage in the entire rest of the run.
** Athena's Aid makes you invulnerable and capable of deflecting any attack for a brief window of time. Her fully charged Greater Call makes the effect lasts for at least 9 seconds.

** Normally, his dash-boosting boons aren't necessary, but they can make life a lot easier when fighting the Minotaur and Hades when they are buffed by Extreme Measures and Forced Overtime. With Hyper Sprint, in particular, it's possible to avoid Hades' spin attack even when it starts right next to you, and it give you the speed that is usually required to avoid the Minotaur's charging attacks, which is particularly important when he is fought in a small room as a mini-boss.

** Aphrodite's Unhealthy Fixation makes any Weak effects have a 15% chance of charming an enemy which causes them to fight for you. Not only is this fantastic for neutralizing the threat of large mobs, there is no enemy immune to this effect. Not even the FinalBoss has ContractualBossImmunity to it, so it can turn the game's hardest fight into a joke.

** Dionysus' Strong Drink is immensely powerful early on to aggressive playstyles; it always guarantees 100% health recovery from fountains (thus ensuring you meet each new level at full power) and grants Zagreus a permanent damage buff to everything each time he drinks from one. The game has four guaranteed fountains (one behind each boss plus one in the Satyr Sack room in the Temple of Styx), and three optional ones that admittedly are luck-based to find - yet because it has no prerequisites, with a few Poms of Power and getting it early on in Tartarus, it can easily see Zagreus with a permanent 20-30% damage bonus by the endgame.

* Any hammer upgrade that says "Charged". While the bow and shield both provide charging bonuses, their default power isn't high. A Charging upgrade to the bow or spear will make that weapons' respective special deal up to 300% damage, which on top of boon modifiers, means you've just been given a OneHitKill to most enemies, two hits at most.

* ''Cursed Slash'' causes [[PowerAtAPrice Zagreus' maximum health to drop by sixty percent]] (which also affects any [[HeartContainer Centaur Hearts]] you pick up afterwards) but also causes each of his normal attacks to recover two HP per hit. It may seem like this would make Zagreus into a GlassCannon, but in practice, it makes him much more durable. When you can recover from all damage with just a few basic combo strings, getting back to maximum health becomes trivial. Lose some health? Just play defensively for a bit with dashes and hit-and-run tactics, and you'll be back to full in no time. Combined with Darkness upgrades, a few Hearts, and Cerberus' Collar, and Zag will still have about 100 HP of health for a max, giving him a solid health pool that he can recover with ease.

* ''Flurry Jab'' removes its charged attack, but instead lets you hold the attack button to stab furiously in front of you. Since most ranged attacks can be blocked, you can just get up close enough to hit the foe and stand still while stabbing them without any danger of getting hit. It also staggers enemies, so unless the enemy is armored, you risk almost nothing by using this upgrade (unless there are other enemies around, which can be solved via some good positioning or simply dashing from time to time. Even Meg's bullet hell attack and the Hydra's spit attacks can be blocked with this, letting you get in a lot of free damage while the attack plays out.
* ''Serrated Point'', at the cost of reducing your dash distance by 25%, turns Varatha into the strong dash attack weapon in the game. Serrated Point buffs the dash attack by increasing the number of hits to 3. Unlike most upgrades of this nature, the damage between the three hits isn't lowered either.

* The Achilles aspect changes the Special mechanic of your spear where rather than [[SummonToHand summoning your spear back]], you instead charge towards where it lands. The benefit is, once the Spear has been fully upgraded, you will be granted a 150% boost to the next 4 attacks or casts after this is done. This makes Achilles Aspect into one of the go-to weapons for a cast build.
* The Guan Yu aspect of the Eternal Spear, when fully upgraded, halves your health and any health upgrades for the duration of the run, but in exchange gives the spear's spin attack health-restoring properties for each hit. It only heals for one point per hit, but the spin attack will hit several times at least and has decent range. It gets even more broken when combined with hammer upgrades that increase its size and decrease charge time. This was so broken, in fact, that the spin attack got nerfed so it would bounce off walls instead of passing through them, as prior to that you could hide behind the plentiful barriers and attack with impunity.

* The Aspect of Rama gives the bow a slower-charging but much wider and stronger main attack. This is good as is, but the special attack is what makes the Aspect really broken. Instead of a large spread fire, it instead rapidly fires a volley of three quick arrows that apply the Shared Suffering effect, causing any enemy under the effect to take up-to-60% of the damage of your main attack whenever the later hits any enemy. This attack bounces off walls and bounces between enemies, allowing you to inflict the effect on entire groups really quickly. This stacks on top of your main attack, so even against a single enemy it's a 60% damage boost. Finally, on-hit effects trigger for each arrow in the special attack, allowing you to build absurd stacks of damage with a special-focused build. If you get Zeus's Thunder Flourish, which adds chain lightning to your Special, you have a rapid-fire attack that inflicts Shared Suffering and can do a substantial amount of damage on its own. This can be spammed for an absolutely obscene damage output and renders the bow's Attack redundant for most enemies – outside of those in high-Heat runs – due to how slow it is. It's also a swift attack, which allows for the bow to be an extremely nimble weapon with an excellent range. This can be made even more powerful with Zeus's Legendary Boon, which deals forty additional damage each time you damage a foe with lightning, which gives you a build that can tear through Asterius and Theseus.

* The Aspect of Gilgamesh offers a Maim mechanic to your dash-special, which grants a simultaneous Debuff and Buff to your enemies, making them take 25% extra damage while dealing an additional 50% damage while the effect is active. This aspect also offers an additional passive via giving Zagreus an additional 2 dashes. This passive to the Dash offers the player to utilize the Ruthless Reflex mirror upgrade to its fullest potential, which offers a 50% dodge chance & attack bonus if you can dash right before getting hit, while still having additional dashes. Aspect of Gilgamesh is pound for pound one of the strongest hitting weapons in the game, and with good reflexes on the player's end through Shadow Reflect, they can make the absolute most out of the Maim feature.

* The "Reckless Dash" upgrade to the Mirror of Night offers Zagreus a 3-second 50% dodge chance and damage bonus whenever he dodges an attack by dashing. On its own, it's DifficultButAwesome because [[DamnYouMuscleMemory it denies Zagreus his second dash]] (which helps a lot with Asphodel and dodging certain attacks like the FinalBoss' SpinAttack). There are, however, two ways to break the game with this: One, Zagreus' aspect of the Twin Fists of Malphon can be upgraded with a flat 15% dodge bonus using titan blood, and the Lambent Plume can add 1-1.2% dodge chance every time you SpeedRun a room (fairly easy in Tartarus and Asphodel, and still doable in Elysium), which can see Zagreus hit a ~90% dodge chance for three seconds by the endgame with a well-timed dash (or higher with a Hermes 'Greater Reflex' boon). Second, Hermes has a boon that straight-up adds dashes. Normally, having more than two dashes is overkill. With Reckless Dash, however (which can trigger on each of the multiple dashes), you have just eliminated the only drawback and can use a DashAttack style with Stygius, the Twin Fists, or Varatha to straight-up be invincible most of the time.

** Dionysus' Strong Drink is immensely powerful early on to aggressive playstyles; it always guarantees 100% health recovery from fountains (thus ensuring you meet each new level at full power) and grants Zagreus a permanent damage buff to everything each time he drinks from one. The game has four guaranteed fountains (one behind each boss plus one in the Satyr Sack room in the Temple of Styx), and three optional ones, and with a few Poms of Power and getting it early on in Tartarus (it has no prerequisites) can easily see Zagreus with a permanent 20-30% damage bonus by the endgame.

* Sea Storm (Poseidon/Zeus). Provided you can acquire it, it's an instant recipe for huge damage output, as it is the only ability in the game that allows you to stack two effects onto one attack (knockback + lightning), ''and'' furthermore can trigger Privileged Status if their additional status effects (Jolted and Rupture) are added. To really sweeten the deal, if you go that far, you're on a fast track to getting both gods' Legendary Boons... and with ''them'' added, you're basically achieving an '''overkill''' level of damage.

** Demeter's Winter Harvest instantly kills any Chill-affected enemies whose health drops down to 10%, inflicting Chill on the others nearby. If you also happen to have [[DamageOverTime Killing Freeze]] - which you most likely do, since it is one of the few boons that grant you the chance at getting Winter Harvest - you can simply afflict everyone in the room with Chill and take cover until Decay kills them on its own. And, just like in the case with Aphrodite's Unhealthy Fixation, no enemy is immune to this, not even the final boss.

* ''Flurry Jab'' removes its charged attack, but instead lets you hold the attack button to stab furiously in front of you. Since most ranged attacks can be blocked, you can just get up close enough to hit the foe and stand still while stabbing them without any danger of getting it. It also staggers enemies, so unless the enemy is armored, you risk almost nothing by using this upgrade (unless there are other enemies around, which can be solved via some good positioning or simply dashing from time to time. Even Meg's bullet hell attack and the Hydra's spit attacks can be blocked with this, letting you get in a lot of free damage while the attack plays out.

* ''Concentrated Volley'', specifically for Aspect of Chiron, is deadly as the special will be boosted by +3 for each consecutive hit. Because Chiron's special effect is adding a homing buff to special this is effectively a guaranteed buff to an already powerful special.

* ''Perfect Shot'' makes the Power Shot mechanic, in which the tip of the arrow will briefly flash before you shoot, easier to pull off. Doing so normally grants a x3.5 damage multiplier to your attack, but with Perfect Shot this increases the multipler to x5.

* ''Draining Cutter'' allows the Twin Fists to restore 2% of your health every time you kill something with the uppercut special. It's not especially overpowered in most areas of the Underworld, but it becomes a whole other story in the Temple of Styx thanks to [[GoddamnBats the Vermin]]. Any solid hit will kill the small rats and with [[ZergRush how many fling themselves at you at a time]], clearing a room of them using just your special will typically restore a ''very'' generous amount of your health.

* ''Triple Bomb'' allows you to fire out three bombs at once is roughly the same as having a guaranteed critical on every use of an already strong attack with a wide radius. And if you actually ''can'' apply critical to it – and even better, turn the bombs into missiles with increased base damage, which is made even more powerful with boons that increase Special damage – kiss the challenge of the game goodbye. Getting this hammer upgrade early makes it a straight-up DiscOneNuke.

* ''Spread Fire'' effect which at the cost of lowering you ammo count by 6, effectively turns your rail into a rapid-fire shotgun. While you sacrifice both the ammo size and the range at which you can attack, each shot increases to a base-40 damage per shot. This combined with the pure attacking speed turns this into a favorite upgrade in the speed-running community.

* Poseidon's aspect of Stygius boosts your cast damage, and its special (which is identical to the baseline special attack) automatically dislodges any blood crystals stuck in your foes. Artemis has a boon called Exit Wounds (requires any cast boon that isn't Ares', Dionysus' or Demeter's), which deals a minimum of 50 damage whenever a blood crystal dislodges from a foe -- which includes dislodgings from the aspect of Poseidon. As long as you don't subsequently re-pick to a cast that doesn't lodge in foes (i.e. Ares, Dionysus or Demeter), the aspect of Poseidon/Exit Wounds combo allows Zagreus to repeatedly cast at foes and dislodge them again, racking up a lot of damage quickly.
* The Aspect of Arthur has the slowest attack of any weapon but consequently has the highest base damage. Combine this with certain boons, such as Athena's Blinding Flash, which boosts backstab damage when combined with any Deflect boon or, even better, Daedalus Hammer's Shadow Slash upgrade (+200% backstab damage), or Artemis' critical chance boons, and you can easily decimate enemies and bosses alike if all three swings connect (with the last hit dealing much more damage than the first two). You can easily deal over 1000 damage in a single hit under the right conditions. Furthermore, the Aspect changes Stygius' special to an area of effect that slows down projectiles ''and'' gives you damage resistance while you're standing in it, and it also increases your maximum HP by fifty points. All of this turns Zagreus into a massive MightyGlacier that can deal a few big hits for a ton of damage. The only downsides is that [[DifficultButAwesome you'll have to train yourself to stay within the defensive aura.]]

* The Achilles aspect changes the Special mechanic of your spear where rather than [[SummonToHand summoning your spear back]] you instead charge towards where it lands. The benefit is, once the Spear has been fully upgraded, you will be granted a 150% boost to the next 4 attacks or casts after this is done. This makes Achilles Aspect into one of the go-to weapons for a cast build.

* Chaos' aspect of Aegis adds an additional thrown shield to your special whenever you bull rush, and can be upgraded to five additional shields. With the right special-boosting boons (anything that adds flat damage like Zeus, Ares or Dionysus is good, as is Artemis for the critical chance or Athena since every single thrown shield now reflects missiles) or upgrades, the Chaos Aspect supports a bull rush -> special -> bull rush playstyle that will clear rooms in seconds, deals tons of burst damage to bosses, and renders Zagreus extremely difficult to damage because he never stands still.

* The Chiron's aspect makes the Coronacht's Volley Fire shoot fewer arrows, but these arrows home in on an enemy you just hit with a normal attack. It can put out ludicrous amounts of consistent, single target damage at a very long range, and it starts to become nasty if you upgrade the Volley Fire with Relentless Assault, which boosts the number of arrows considerably. With defensive boons such as Demeter's slowing attacks and Hermes's speed, you become a vicious sniper that's very hard to touch.

* The Aspect of Gilgamesh offers a Maim mechanic to your dash-special, which grants a simultaneous Debuff and Buff to your enemies, making them take 25% extra damage while dealing an additional 50% damage while the effect is active. This aspect also offers an additional passive via Zagreus an additional 2 dashes. This passive to the Dash offers the player to utilize the Ruthless Reflex mirror upgrade to its fullest potential, which offers a 50% dodge chance & attack bonus if you can dash right before getting hit, while still having additional dashes. Aspect of Gilgamesh is pound for pound one of the strongest hitting weapons in the game, and with good reflexes on the player's end through Shadow Reflect, they can make the absolute most out of the Maim feature.

* Exagryph's Aspect of Eris is generally considered to be either the best weapon or in the top tier by [[SpeedRunning Speed Runners]], and it's not hard to see why: It provides a scaling (up to +75%) bonus to all damage you deal for a solid 4 seconds after Zagreus absorbs his own special. This turns the somewhat finicky special into an always-useful and very solid damage buff, and since it's not specific to just the main firing mode it synergizes excellently with sources of flat damage (Zeus in particular, but also Dionysus) that lets you chew through the game at incredible speed.

* The "Reckless Dash" upgrade to the Mirror of Night offers Zagreus a 3-second 50% dodge chance and damage bonus whenever he dodges an attack by dashing. On its own, it's DifficultButAwesome because [[DamnYouMuscleMemory it denies Zagreus his second dash]] (which helps a lot with Asphodel and dodging certain attacks like the FinalBoss' SpinAttack). There are, however, two ways to break the game with this: One, Zagreus' aspect of the Twin Fists of Malphon can be upgraded with a flat 15% dodge bonus using titan blood, and the Lambent Plume can add 1-1.2% dodge chance every time you SpeedRun a room (fairly easy in Tartarus and Asphodel, and still doable in Elysium), which can see Zagreus hit a ~90% dodge chance for three seconds by the endgame with a well-timed dash (or higher with a Hermes 'Greater Reflex' boon). Second, Hermes has a boon that straight-up adds dashes. Normally, having more than two dashes is overkill. With Reckless Dash, however (which can trigger on each of the multiple dashes) you have just eliminated the only drawback and can use a DashAttack style with Stygius, the Twin Fists, or Varatha to straight-up be invincible most of the time.

* The fully upgraded Evergreen Acorn keepsake, given to you by Eurydice, allows you to be impervious for up to 5 hits in a final encounter in each region. This keepsake is a favorite for high-level heat runs, particularly for Styx, because the final boss' damage are so powerful, they can strip away your health in the blink of an eye. Giving the player 5 free hits against Theseus & Asterius and Hades can pay in dividends for allowing them to bypass their particularly-hard early phases easier.

* Chaos' aspect of Aegis adds an additional thrown shield to your special whenever you bull rush (you will bull rush a lot with Aegis), and can be upgraded to five additional shields. With the right special-boosting boons (anything that adds flat damage like Zeus, Ares or Dionysus is good, as is Artemis for the critical chance or Athena since every single thrown shield now reflects missiles) or upgrades, the Chaos Aspect supports a bull rush -> special -> bull rush playstyle that will clear rooms in seconds, deals tons of burst damage to bosses, and renders Zagreus extremely difficult to damage because he never stands still.

* The Chiron's aspect makes the Coronacht's Volley Fire shoot fewer arrows, but these arrows home in on an enemy you just hit with a normal attack. It can put out ludicrous amounts of consistent, single target damage at a very long range, and it starts to become nasty if you upgrade the Volley Fire with ''Relentless Assault'', which boosts the number of arrows by ''double'', if Chiron's aspect hasn't been upgraded with titan blood. With defensive boons such as Demeter's slowing attacks and Hermes's speed, you become a vicious sniper that's very hard to touch.

* The Aspect of Rama gives the bow a slower-charging but much wider and stronger main attack. This is good as is, but the special attack is what makes the Aspect really broken. Instead of a large spread fire, it instead rapidly fires a volley of three quick arrows that apply the Shared Suffering effect, causing any enemy under the effect to take, when fully leveled-up, 60% of the damage of your main attack whenever the main attack hits any enemy. This attack bounces off walls and bounces between enemies, allowing you to inflict the effect on entire groups really quickly. This stacks on top of your main attack, so even against a single enemy it's a 60% damage boost. Finally, on-hit effects trigger for each arrow in the special attack, allowing you to build absurd stacks of damage with a special focused build. If you get Zeus's Thunder Flourish, which adds chain lightning to your Special, you have a rapid-fire attack that inflicts Shared Suffering and can do a substantial amount of damage on its own. This can be spammed for an absolutely obscene damage output and renders the bow's Attack redundant for most enemies – outside of those in high-Heat runs – due to how slow it is. It's also a swift attack, which allows for the bow to be an extremely nimble weapon with an excellent range. This can be made even more powerful with Zeus's Legendary Boon, which deals forty additional damage each time you damage a foe with lightning, which gives you a build that can tear through Asterius and Theseus in ''seconds''.

* The Aspect of Demeter offers an additional 5 hits to your Special after you have landed 12 hits with your attack. Due to the quick pace in which you can stack up hits, this leads to an especially devastating Special Attack you can abuse frequently. Particularly if you pair it with Artemis' Deadly Flourish (which adds a 20% crit chance) and aforementioned Rush Kick hammer upgrade.
* The Aspect of Gilgamesh offers a Maim mechanic to your dash-special, which grants a simultaneus Debuff and Buff to your enemies, making them take 25% extra damage while dealing an additional 50% damage while the effect is active. This aspect also offers an additional passive giving Zagreus an additional 2 dashes. This passive to the Dash offers the player to utilize the Ruthless Reflex mirror upgrade to its fullest potential, which offers a 50% dodge chance & attack bonus if you can dash right before getting hit. Aspect of Gilgamesh is pound for pound one of the strongest hitting weapons in the game, and with good reflexes on the player's end through Shadow Reflect, they can make the absolute most out of the Maim feature.

* Lucifer's aspect of Exagryph replaces the normal fire with a fast-hitting laser that has a 20-round magazine. This synergizes insanely well with Zeus's attack aspect, chewing through mooks and bosses like a hot knife through butter while sending lightning bolts at nearby opponents at an astounding rate. The only thing that will kill you when you have this combo is carelessness.
* Exagryph's Aspect of Eris is generally considered to be either the best weapon or in the top tier by [[SpeedRunning Speed Runners]], and it's not hard to see why: It provides a scaling (up to +75%) bonus to all damage you deal for a solid 8 seconds (Now {{nerf}}ed to 4 seconds) after Zagreus absorbs his own special. This turns the somewhat finicky and hard-to-hit with Exagryph special into an always-useful and very solid damage buff, and since it's not specific to just the main firing mode it synergizes excellently with sources of flat damage (Zeus in particular, but also Dionysus) that lets you chew through the game at incredible speed.

* Calculated Risk (Athena/Dionysus) slows enemy projectiles by 40%. Suddenly, faraway attacks are much easier to react to. Additionally, if you have a way to deflect projectiles, which you likely do since you need to get some of Athena's boons to have a chance at this, the projectiles become a source of extra damage.
* Cold Fusion (Demeter/Zeus). Normally, Zeus' Jolted condition expires once an enemy attack. With Cold Fusion, Zeus and Demeter's Duo Boon, it will continuously damage an enemy every time they attack for ten seconds. For certain enemies, this means they will effectively kill themselves trying to kill you.
* Crystal Clarity (Artemis/Demeter). While not being quite as insanely damaging, it also allows Zagreus to play an almost entirely defensive playstyle while having his crystal turrets kill enemies for him, since it makes the Crystal Beam cast track enemies ''much'' quicker. Just throw out a few of these, and play keep-away until everything is dead. Even better if you get Artemis' Legendary boon, which will give you additional casts to abuse this with.
* Deadly Reversal (Artemis/Athena) gives the player a 20% crit chance for 2 seconds anytime they deflect an enemy attack. Much like with Merciful End, while you will need Athena's attack or special to unlock it, once you do you can still use her Dash to abuse this, giving you a constant Crit Chance buff. Particularly noteworthy in that ''any'' of your attacks can crit [[note]]Attack, Special, Cast, Zeus' Lightning, Ares' Doom effect, any revenge boon[[/note]].
* Exclusive Access (Dionysus/Poseidon) makes it so any future boon you get offered is guaranteed to ''at least'' be an epic rarity. This will make all your boons stronger than normal and guarantee an easier time unlocking Legendary boons. Bonus points if you manage to get this duo boon as early as Tartarus.

* Ice Wine (Demeter/Dionysus). Trippy Shot is already the highest-damaging spell in the game as far as straight damage goes, but it's tricky to aim due to being a lobbed shot with travel time. Ice Wine not only removes this weakness, it ''increases the damage by 50% and inflicts chill.'' This turns an already-DifficultButAwesome spell into an immediate [=AoE=] nuke capable of obliterating the health bars of anything in the game, even if you're not running a cast build.
* Lightning Rod (Artemis/Zeus) makes enemies near your on-the-field bloodstones (provided you have Infernal Soul active) get struck by lightning every second for 70 damage. For each bloodstone. Already sounds good, but the range of effect is also very gracious, so the enemy can be standing twenty to thirty feet away from your bloodstones and still be pelted for 210 damage every second. You can stay safely far away and be running from your foes and still be destroying them without lifting a finger. Just like with Crystal Clarity, this is another game-breaking Duo Boon that gets even better if you have Artemis' Legendary boon, pumping out 350 lightning damage (which can trigger Jolted, if you have it) per second.
* Merciful End (Ares/Athena), does much for Doom what Hunting Blades does for Slicing Shot: if you hit an enemy with a deflecting move, any Doom effects on that enemy occur instantly. So what used to be a strong curse that triggered after a hamstringing time delay can now be triggered at will. The only issue is that it specifically requires Attack and Special Boons from Athena and Ares (it used to be triggered by Divine Dash but that was swiftly patched [[ComplacentGamingSyndrome since most people are going to get that anyway]]). Still, once you have the Duo ''and'' the Dash in your arsenal, Merciful End's full ass-kicking ability blossoms, especially if you have a dash-heavy weapon like the Sword or the Fists equipped.

* Scintillating Feast (Dionysus/Zeus) adds lightning strikes to Dionysus' Trippy Shot cast, so any enemy that is inside the Festive Fog will be struck with lightning. Zeus' various lightning boons such as Double Strike and Jolted can also be stacked with this, making this one of the deadliest casts in the game.
* Sea Storm (Poseidon/Zeus). Provided you can acquire it, it's an instant recipe for huge damage output, as it is the only ability in the game that allows you to stack two effects onto one attack (knockback + lightning). This also means it's possible to use the Privileged Status upgrade with only one attack, as both knockback and lightning strikes come with additional status effects (Rupture and Jolted), providing a 40% damage bonus while both are maintained in addition to the damage they inflict. To really sweeten the deal, if you go that far, you're on a fast track to getting both gods' legendaries.[[labelnote:Some math]]Splitting Bolt causes every lightning-producing ability to trigger twice, while Second Wave causes knockback to trigger twice. Sea Storm adds lightning to every knockback ability, so you're striking a single enemy with lightning four consecutive times for one attack. With one strike activating Privileged Status, this means the lightning strikes alone total 208 damage on top of the hit itself. Add the damage modifiers from both gods' status effects, and now you're just achieving overkill.[[/labelnote]]
* Smoldering Air (Aphrodite/Zeus) caps your God Gauge at only one segment, so you can't use a Greater Call, which is unfortunate if you have [[GatheringSteam Artemis's or]] [[MagikarpPower Aphrodite's Call]]. But in exchange, the gauge charges up almost absurdly quickly on its own, at five points per second. If you've got a Call from the likes of Athena, Ares, or Poseidon, that means becoming briefly invulnerable once every five seconds flat, allowing you to get through the most brutal of segments with relative ease.
* Stubborn Roots (Athena/Demeter) is powerful for defensive players. If you're out of Death Defiance (which you may well be post Temple of Styx, especially in earlier runs) your health will slowly tick back up. Coupled with Athena's dash or any damage reduction boon, this can easily turn the final boss into a simple numbers game where you just need to dodge around whenever you're low to completely refill your health. If you happen to be using the Shield? Sit in a corner, hold it up and watch any semblance of challenge drains from the game as not even Hades can damage you as you stand perfectly still and heal up whatever damage anything can inflict. About the only thing that can kill you at this stage is impatience. Or the Tight Deadline condition of the Pact of Punishment, which consistently damages you after you run out of time.
* Sweet Nectar (Aphrodite/Poseidon) buffs any Poms of Power effects up by 2, meaning any future pom you acquire further in the run will increase your boons by 3 levels, instead of 1. Needless to say, this can lead to incredibly powerful runs, particularly if you manage to get this duo while you are still in Tartarus.
* Vengeful Mood (Ares/Zeus) allows any revenge boon the player has acquired to automatically trigger every 3 seconds. There are 5 potential revenge boons in the game and they can all be stacked with this duo and further boosted by other passive boons from the Olympians. If built right, the player can literally let the "Revenge Damage" do all the work for them, even in boss fights.

* VengefulMood (Ares/Zeus) allows any revenge boon the player has acquired to automatically trigger every 3 seconds. There are 5 potential revenge boons in the game and they can all be stacked with this duo and further boosted by other passive boons from the Olympians. If built right, the player can literally let the "Revenge Damage" do all the work for them, even in boss fights.

[[quoteright:300:[[WebComic/ThreePanelSoul https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/mummy_31.png]]]]
[[caption-width-right:300:Why, indeed?]]

[[AC:Duo Boons]]

[[AC:Single Boons]]

!!Hammer Upgrades

!!Weapon Aspects

* ''Rush Kic'' changes your uppercut special to a vaulting kick that not only does more damage, but will launch you a fair distance to the target. You can bounce around the battlefield kicking foes left and right, dealing huge damage and while not having to worry about closing in first.

* Cursed Slash for the Stygian Blade causes [[PowerAtAPrice Zagreus' maximum health to drop by sixty percent]] (which also affects any [[HeartContainer Centaur Hearts]] you pick up afterwards) but also causes each of his normal attacks to recover two HP per hit. It may seem like this would make Zagreus into a GlassCannon, but in practice, it makes him much more durable. When you can recover from all damage with just a few basic combo strings, getting back to maximum health becomes trivial. Lose some health? Just play defensively for a bit with dashes and hit-and-run tactics, and you'll be back to full in no time. Combined with Darkness upgrades, a few Hearts, and Cerberus' Collar, and Zag will still have about 100 HP of health for a max, giving him a solid health pool that he can recover with ease.

* Varatha's ''Flurry Jab'' upgrade removes its charged attack, but instead lets you hold the attack button to stab furiously in front of you. Since most ranged attacks can be blocked, you can just get up close enough to hit the foe and stand still while stabbing them without any danger of getting it. It also staggers enemies, so unless the enemy is armored, you risk almost nothing by using this upgrade (unless there are other enemies around, which can be solved via some good positioning or simply dashing from time to time. Even Meg's bullet hell attack and the Hydra's spit attacks can be blocked with this, letting you get in a lot of free damage while the attack plays out.
* Serrated Point, at the cost of reducing your dash distance by 25%, turns Varatha into the strong dash attack weapon in the game. Serrated Point buffs the dash attack by increasing the number of hits to 3. Unlike most upgrades of this nature, the damage between the three hits isn't lowered either.

* Aegis' "Power Shot" upgrade turns Aegis into a better version of Coronacht, replacing its bull rush with a powerful ranged attack that requires charging. However, unlike Coronacht, Aegis' damage-nullifying guard is kept while the attack charges, which removes the bow's main drawback. The Power Shot also pierces shields (like Theseus and Greatshields'), and still counts as a bull rush for the purpose of other upgrades and aspects.

* Coronacht's "Flurry Shot" upgrade eliminates the need to charge up your shots, and while you don't have access to Power Shot, you can launch arrows and do damage a lot faster, especially if you also take Twin Shot or Triple Shot and some good damage boons for the attack.
* Concentrated Volley, specifically for Aspect of Chiron, is deadly as the special will be boosted by +3 for each consecutive hit. Because Chiron's special effect is adding a homing buff to special this is effectively a guaranteed buff to an already powerful special.

* The Breaching Cross upgrade. It causes the dash strike for Zagreus to pierce enemies, and it also causes each such attack to deal ten times its damage to armor. With this, breaking through enemy armor becomes a joke.
* "Rush Kick" changes your uppercut special to a vaulting kick that not only does more damage, but will launch you a fair distance to the target. You can bounce around the battlefield kicking foes left and right, dealing huge damage and while not having to worry about closing in first.
* "Draining Cutter" allows the Twin Fists to restore 2% of your health every time you kill something with the uppercut special. It's not especially overpowered in most areas of the Underworld, but it becomes a whole other story in the Temple of Styx thanks to [[GoddamnBats the Vermin]]. Any solid hit will kill the small rats and with [[ZergRush how many fling themselves at you at a time]], clearing a room of them using just your special will typically restore a ''very'' generous amount of your health.

* The "Triple Bomb" effect. Being able to fire out three bombs at once is roughly the same as having a guaranteed critical on every use of an already strong attack with a wide radius. And if you actually ''can'' apply critical to it – and even better, turn the bombs into missiles with increased base damage, which is made even more powerful with boons that increase Special damage – kiss the challenge of the game goodbye. Getting this hammer upgrade early makes it a straight-up DiscOneNuke.
* The "Cluster Bomb" effect launches five reduced-damage bombs in a single attack in a parabola pattern. While it's finicky to get all five shots to hit the same target (they only overlap at point blank), the upgrade will clear out rooms of {{mooks}} and is invaluable against large mobs and mobile bosses who can dodge a single bomb (but not so easily a spread of five). If you get the "Rocket Launcher" upgrade as well in the same run, the combined effect is akin to a rocket shotgun with a base damage of 350 (five shots at 70 damage each) that will annihilate practically anything at close range. If you get critical hit boosts from Artemis, this could easily add up to over 1000 damage per shot.
* The "Spread Fire" effect which at the cost of lowering you ammo count by 6, effectively turns your rail into a rapid-fire shotgun. While you sacrifice both the ammo size and the range at which you can attack, each shot increases to a base-40 damage per shot. This combined with the pure attacking speed turns this into a favorite upgrade in the speed-running community.
* The Delta Chamber effect turns your attack into a 3-round burst while also making your ammo infinite, meaning you never have to reload. This is especially deadly when you are using gods such as Zeus, Demeter, or Dionysus on your attack, as you can abuse their status effects while never having to worry about reloading.

* Cold Fusion (Demeter/Zeus). Normally, Zeus' Jolted condition expires once an enemy attack. With Cold Fusion, Zeus and Demeter's Duo Boon, it will continuously damage an enemy every time they attack for ten seconds. For certain enemies this means they will effectively kill themselves trying to kill you.

* Heart Rend (Aprodite/Artemis) offers an additional 150% critical hit damage to any foe already inflicted with the Weak Status-effect. Critical Hits on their own already offer x2 damage, and Heart Rend stacks with this, now offering a very generous x3.5 damage hit rate. ''All'' attack types benefit from this multiplier [[note]]Attacks, Specials, Casts, Calls, Dash Damage, and even Zeus' Lightning.[[/note]] so this tends to be a preferred boon for stacking up some of the heaviest hitting attacks.

* DeadlyReversal (Artemis/Athena) gives the player a 20% crit chance for 2 seconds anytime they deflect an enemy attack. Much like with Merciful End, while you will need Athena's attack or special to unlock it, once you do you can still use her Dash to abuse this, giving you a constant Crit Chance buff. Particularly noteworthy in that ''any'' of your attacks can crit [[note]]Attack, Special, Cast, Zeus' Lightning, Ares' Doom effect, any revenge boon[[/note]].

* Poseidon's Duo Boon with Zeus, Sea Storm. Provided you can acquire it, it's an instant recipe for huge damage output, as it is the only ability in the game that allows you to stack two effects onto one attack (knockback + lightning). This also means it's possible to use the Privileged Status upgrade with only one attack, as both knockback and lightning strikes come with additional status effects (Rupture and Jolted), providing a 40% damage bonus while both are maintained in addition to the damage they inflict. To really sweeten the deal, if you go that far, you're on a fast track to getting both gods' legendaries.[[labelnote:Some math]]Splitting Bolt causes every lightning-producing ability to trigger twice, while Second Wave causes knockback to trigger twice. Sea Storm adds lightning to every knockback ability, so you're striking a single enemy with lightning four consecutive times for one attack. With one strike activating Privileged Status, this means the lightning strikes alone total 208 damage on top of the hit itself. Add the damage modifiers from both gods' status effects, and now you're just achieving overkill.[[/labelnote]]
* Ares' and Artemis' Duo Boon, Hunting Blades. It's been {{nerf}}ed several times, and yet still remains broken. It adds a homing effect and a 100% speed increase to Ares' Slicing Blades, turning an AwesomeButImpractical cast that does huge damage but is slow and hard to hit with into a homing monstrosity that will easily deal 500 damage on its own. It's incredibly fire-and-forget, allowing Zagreus to focus on avoiding attacks, and since both gods have several Boons that upgrade Cast it has incredible growth potential.
* Ares' and Athena's Duo Boon, Merciful End, does much for Doom what Hunting Blades does for Slicing Shot: if you hit an enemy with a deflecting move, any Doom effects on that enemy occur instantly. So what used to be a strong curse that triggered after a hamstringing time delay can now be triggered at will. The only issue is that it specifically requires Attack and Special Boons from Athena and Ares (it used to be triggered by Divine Dash but that was swiftly patched [[ComplacentGamingSyndrome since most people are going to get that anyway]]). Still, once you have the Duo ''and'' the Dash in your arsenal, Merciful End's full asskicking ability blossoms, especially if you have a dash-heavy weapon like the Sword or the Fists equipped.
* Demeter's and Artemis' Duo Boon, Crystal Clarity, is another variant of Hunting Blades. While not being quite as insanely damaging, it also allows Zagreus to play an almost entirely defensive playstyle while having his crystal turrets kill enemies for him, since it makes the Crystal Beam cast track enemies ''much'' quicker. Just throw out a few of these, and play keep-away until everything is dead. Even better if you get Artemis' Legendary boon, which will give you additional casts to abuse this with.
* Zeus's and Aphrodite's Duo Boon, Smoldering Air. It caps your God Gauge at only one segment, so you can't use a Greater Call, which is unfortunate if you have [[GatheringSteam Artemis's or]] [[MagikarpPower Aphrodite's Call]]. But in exchange, the gauge charges up almost absurdly quickly on its own, at five points per second. If you've got a Call from the likes of Athena, Ares, or Poseidon, that means becoming briefly invulnerable once every five seconds flat, allowing you to get through the most brutal of segments with relative ease.
* Zeus's and Artemis's duo boon, Lightning Rod, makes enemies near your on-the-field bloodstones (provided you have Infernal Soul active) get struck by lightning every second for 70 damage. For each bloodstone. Already sounds good, but the range of effect is also very gracious, so the enemy can be standing twenty to thirty feet away from your bloodstones and still be pelted for 210 damage every second. You can stay safely far away and be running from your foes and still be destroying them without lifting a finger. Just like with Crystal Clarity, this is another game-breaking Duo Boon that gets even better if you have Artemis' Legendary boon, pumping out 350 lightning damage (which can trigger Jolted, if you have it) per second.
* Calculated Risk, the duo boon of Athena and Dionysus, slows enemy projectiles by 40%. Suddenly, faraway attacks are much easier to react to. Additionally, if you have a way to deflect projectiles, which you likely do since you need to get some of Athena's boons to have a chance at this, the projectiles become a source of extra damage.
* Normally, Zeus' Jolted condition expires once an enemy attacks. With Cold Fusion, Zeus and Demeter's Duo Boon, it will continuously damage an enemy every time they attack for ten seconds. For certain enemies this means they will effectively kill themselves trying to kill you.
* Stubborn Roots is the duo boon of Demeter and Athena, and it is powerful for defensive players. If you're out of Death Defiance (which you may well be post Temple of Styx, especially in earlier runs) your health will slowly tick back up. Coupled with Athena's dash or any damage reduction boon, this can easily turn the final boss into a simple numbers game where you just need to dodge around whenever you're low to completely refill your health. If you happen to be using the Shield? Sit in a corner, hold it up and watch any semblance of challenge drains from the game as not even Hades can damage you as you stand perfectly still and heal up whatever damage anything can inflict. About the only thing that can kill you at this stage is impatience. Or the Tight Deadline condition of the Pact of Punishment, which consistently damages you after you run out of time.
* Mirage Shot, a duo boon given by Artemis and Poseidon, adds a second projectile to your cast, which deals 35% damage of the original. While fine on its own, this effect can be added to ''any'' cast in the game, like the aforementioned broken Hunting Blades. Even leaving aside Hunting Blades, stacking this boon with Artemis' (which has an increased critical chance) or Poseidon's (which offers knockback damage) makes for a deadly combo.
* Heart Rend, the duo boon offered by Aphrodite and Artemis, offers an additional 150% critical hit damage to any foe already inflicted with the Weak Status-effect. Critical Hits on their own already offer x2 damage, and Heart Rend stacks with this, now offering a very generous x3.5 damage hit rate. ''All'' attack types benefit from this multiplier [[note]]Attacks, Specials, Casts, Calls, Dash Damage, and even Zeus' Lightning.[[/note]] so this tends to be a preferred boon for stacking up some of the heaviest hitting attacks.
* Sweet Nectar and Exclusive Access, two Poseidon Duo boons with Aphrodite and Dionysus respectively, can offer some devasting impact to your builds. Sweet Nectar will offer a permanent buff to any Pom of Power you find, give your boons a buff by 2 levels rather than 1. Exclusive Access guarantees that any future boon you find in your run will be ''at least'' Epic-level. The fact that you can get either of these Duo Boons as early as Tartarus can mean you can wind up running with some insanely powerful builds by the end game.
* Ice Wine, Demeter and Dionysus's Duo boon. Trippy Shot is already the highest-damaging spell in the game as far as straight damage goes, but it's tricky to aim due to being a lobbed shot with travel time. Ice Wine not only removes this weakness, it ''increases the damage by 50% and inflicts chill.'' This turns an already-DifficultButAwesome spell into an immediate [=AoE=] nuke capable of obliterating the health bars of anything in the game, even if you're not running a cast build.

* Athena has a few good ones, all by herself. [[StoneWall While her attacks don't deal much damage, they're excellent for defense]] and avoiding damage.

* Ditto for Poseidon:
** While not as lauded, Poseidon's Tidal Dash is the next best thing to Athena's Divine Dash: it has a very generous radius in which it knocks back enemies, and its damage is extremely high for a dash boon at 35 when Common (compare to Zeus at 10). It also stacks well with Poseidon's other boons that can debuff and damage enemies even more. You can easily speed around a room and reliably clear it of Numbskulls, Flame Wheels, or Vermin when employing this dash, and a lot of pressure is taken off of tense rooms containing such things as Nemean Chariots or Snakestones.

* Artemis, during early access, was rather infamous for being able to break the game with her boons due to being the defacto Cast God. [[note]]Mirage Shot, which was listed above as a Duo Boon provided by Artemis and Poseidon, used to be a Solo Tier 2 Artemis boon.[[/note]], even after receiving some balance nerfs, she still offers some really useful support boons:
** Support Fire boon adds a 10-damage AlwaysAccurateAttack that fires every time Zagreus attacks, uses his special, or casts. With a rapid-fire weapon like Exagryph or the Twin fists, this Boon practically doubles your damage. It is also very simple to obtain, being a tier 2 boon (you just need one of several other boons from Artemis first).
** Fully Loaded, Artemis' Legendary Boon, much like Hunting Blades received a massive nerf coming out of Early Access but even after it is still considered a must for cast builds. It grants the player two additional cast stones. Artemis' Legendary is also unique in the fact that while it requires two out of three of her Tier 2 boons, two of them (Pressure Points and Exit Wounds) don't require ''any'' of her other boons while the third, the aforementioned Support Fire, is also incredibly useful so her Legendary is still one of the easiest to get.
** Artemis' Aid is a textbook MagikarpPower. It can be used at 20% rather than the typical 25% offered by the other gods' aids, but the catch is her normal call offers rather lackluster damage. Her ''Greater Call'' on the other hand, her call used once fully charged, has the potential to be the single strongest attack in the game, capable of eliminating an entire phase of a boss fight. This is all due to it having a 35% crit chance and being able to take advantage of other boons you may have acquired like Heart Rend or Clean Kill.
* Not to be outdone, Zeus the king of Olympus can offer some rather devasting boons.

* Many of Chaos' boons can become one of these once you've survived the penalty period.
** In particular, the Flourish, Strike, and Lunge boons tend to give flat bonuses to your basic attacks that often exceed the damage bonuses of other Boons and stack with those Boons. This can let you hit ''insane'' damage when paired with high-rarity Boons, especially Aphrodite's.
** Chaos' Grasp boon is the only method, outside of gaining Artemis' Legendary boon to get permanent extra cast stones. This is considered essential for cast-builds.
* Hermes also offers a number of buffs that can have a massive impact on your playstyle.
** Hermes' various Cast Boons, Quick Reload & Greater Recall for Infernal Soul, and Auto Reload & Bad News for Stygian Soul. Greater Recall in particular will have the Cast Stones automatically return to you once they have dislodged from the enemy.
** Normally, his dash-boosting boons aren't necessary, but they can make life a lot easier when fighting the Minotaur and Hades when they are buffed by Extreme Measures and Forced Overtime. With Hyper Sprint, in particular, it's possible to avoid Hades' spin attack even when it starts right next to you, and it give you the speed that is usually required to avoid the Minotaur's charging attacks, which is particularly important when he is fought in a small room as a mini-boss.
* Aphrodite's Unhealthy Fixation makes any Weak effects have a 15% chance of charming an enemy which causes them to fight for you. Not only is this fantastic for neutralizing the threat of large mobs, there is no enemy immune to this effect. Not even the FinalBoss has ContractualBossImmunity to it, so it can turn the game's hardest fight into a joke.
* Dionysus' Strong Drink is immensely powerful early on to aggressive playstyles; it always guarantees 100% health recovery from fountains (thus ensuring you meet each new level at full power) and grants Zagreus a permanent damage buff to everything each time he drinks from one. The game has four guaranteed fountains (one behind each boss plus one in the Satyr Sack room in the Temple of Styx), and three optional ones, and with a few Poms of Power and getting it early on in Tartarus (it has no prerequisites) can easily see Zagreus with a permanent 20-30% damage bonus by the endgame.
* Demeter's Winter Harvest instantly kills any Chill-affected enemies whose health drops down to 10%, inflicting Chill on the others nearby. If you also happen to have [[DamageOverTime Killing Freeze]] - which you most likely do, since it is one of the few boons that grant you the chance at getting Winter Harvest - you can simply afflict everyone in the room with Chill and take cover until Decay kills them on its own. And, just like in the case with Aphrodite's Unhealthy Fixation, no enemy is immune to this, not even the final boss.

* Twin Fists:
** The Breaching Cross upgrade. It causes the dash strike for Zagreus to pierce enemies, and it also causes each such attack to deal ten times its damage to armor. With this, breaking through enemy armor becomes a joke.
** "Rush Kick" changes your uppercut special to a vaulting kick that not only does more damage, but will launch you a fair distance to the target. You can bounce around the battlefield kicking foes left and right, dealing huge damage and while not having to worry about closing in first.
** "Draining Cutter" allows the Twin Fists to restore 2% of your health every time you kill something with the uppercut special. It's not especially overpowered in most areas of the Underworld, but it becomes a whole other story in the Temple of Styx thanks to [[GoddamnBats the Vermin]]. Any solid hit will kill the small rats and with [[ZergRush how many fling themselves at you at a time]], clearing a room of them using just your special will typically restore a ''very'' generous amount of your health.
* Adamant Rail:
** The "Triple Bomb" effect. Being able to fire out three bombs at once is roughly the same as having a guaranteed critical on every use of an already strong attack with a wide radius. And if you actually ''can'' apply critical to it – and even better, turn the bombs into missiles with increased base damage, which is made even more powerful with boons that increase Special damage – kiss the challenge of the game goodbye. Getting this hammer upgrade early makes it a straight-up DiscOneNuke.
** The "Cluster Bomb" effect launches five reduced-damage bombs in a single attack in a parabola pattern. While it's finicky to get all five shots to hit the same target (they only overlap at point blank), the upgrade will clear out rooms of {{mooks}} and is invaluable against large mobs and mobile bosses who can dodge a single bomb (but not so easily a spread of five). If you get the "Rocket Launcher" upgrade as well in the same run, the combined effect is akin to a rocket shotgun with a base damage of 350 (five shots at 70 damage each) that will annihilate practically anything at close range. If you get critical hit boosts from Artemis, this could easily add up to over 1000 damage per shot.
** The "Spread Fire" effect which at the cost of lowering you ammo count by 6, effectively turns your rail into a rapid fire shotgun. While you sacrifice both the ammo size and the range at which you can attack, each shot increases to a base-40 damage per shot. This combined with the pure attacking speed turns this into a favorite upgrade in the speed-running community.

* Coronacht's "Flurry Shot" upgrade eliminates the need to charge up your shots, and while you don't have access to Power Shot, you can launch arrows and do damage a lot faster, especially if you also take Twin Shot or Triple Shot and some good damage boons for attack.

* Zeus's legendary boon, Splitting Bolt, shoots a spark that deals forty damage every time you damage someone with a lightning boon. What makes this ridiculously powerful is that by the time you get it, you probably have a whole suite of lightning boons it can synergize with, and Splitting Bolt is enough to turn your build from something merely powerful into something that will kill Theseus and the Minotaur in mere seconds when they are unbuffed by the Pact of Punishment, and its crushing power will tear through Hades's health even if he and his summons are buffed by the Pact. This boon is particularly overpowered with a swift weapon and if you also have Lighting Rod.

* Demeter's Winter Harvest instantly kills any Chill-affected enemies whose health drops down to 10%, inflicting Chill on the others nearby. If you also happen to have [[DamageOverTime Killing Freeze]] - which you most likely do, since it is one of the few boons that grant you the chance at getting Winter Harvest - you can simply afflict everyone in the room with Chill and take cover until Decay kills them on its own. And, just like in case with Aphrodite's Unhealthy Fixation, no enemy is immune to this, not even the final boss.

* Ice Wine, Demeter and Dionysus's Duo boon. Trippy Shot is already one of the highest-damaging spells in the game, but it's tricky to aim due to being a lobbed shot with travel time. Ice Wine not only removes this weakness, it ''increases the damage by 50% and inflicts chill.'' This turns an already-DifficultButAwesome spell into an immediate AoE nuke capable of obliterating the health bars of anything in the game, even if you're not running a cast build.

* Mirage Shot, a duo boon given by Artemis and Poseidon, adds a second projectile to your cast, which deals 35% damage of the original. While fine on it's own, this effect can be added to ''any'' cast in the game, like the aforementioned broken Hunting Blades. Even leaving aside Hunting Blades, stacking this boon with Artemis' (which has an increased critical chance) or Poseidon's (which offers knockback damage) makes for a deadly combo.

* Cursed Slash for the Stygian Blade causes [[PowerAtAPrice Zagreus' maximum health to drop by sixty percent]], but also causes each of his normal attacks to recover two HP per hit. It may seem like this would make Zagreus into a GlassCannon, but in practice, it makes him much more durable. When you can recover from all damage with just a few basic combo strings, getting back to maximum health becomes trivial. Lose some health? Just play defensively for a bit with dashes and hit-and-run tactics, and you'll be back to full in no time. Combined with Darkness upgrades, a few Hearts, and Cerberus' Collar, and Zag will still have about 100 HP of health for a max, giving him a solid health pool that he can recover with ease.

** Sweet Nectar and Exclusive Access, two Poseidon Duo boons with Aphrodite and Dionysus respectively, can offer some devasting impact to your builds. Sweet Nectar will offer a permanent buff to any Pom of Power you find, give your boons a buff by 2 levels rather than 1. Exclusive Access guarantees that any future boon you find in your run will be ''at least'' Epic-level. The fact that you can get either of these Duo Boons as early as Tartarus can mean you can wind up running with some insanely powerful builds by the end game.