History GameBreaker / Hades

*** Lapses into hilarious territory when you figure out it's possible to kill Asterius during his mini-boss fight before he has a chance to yield with this boon. Granted he still appears in the region's boss fight along Theseus but it's hilarious to see the Bull of Minos disintegrate instead of simply storming off in frustration.

* '''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 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. Even better if you've got Billowing Strength and/or Second Wind on you as well, at which point their respective damage/speed boosts can basically always be active for the remainder of a chamber.

* ''Cluster Bomb'' 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). It's more broken paired with ''Rocket Launcher'' upgrade due to an actual bug in the game where the racket damage ''isn't'' reduced. The combined effect is akin to a rocket shotgun with a base damage of 400 (five shots at 80 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.

* ''Cluster Bomb'' 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.

** Zeus Call is commonly considered one of the strongest Call boon in the game. On its own, the call is pretty good with the lightning bolts doing plenty of damage in quick succession. Within the context of being a Zeus boon, it is well positioned to snowball into some of the most powerful boon in the game, being able to take advantage of Double Strike and Splitting Bolt, continuously applying Static Dischagre, unlocking access Billowing Strength, and qualifies as a requirement to unlcok Smoldering Air. The combination between Smoldering Air, Zeus Call, and Zeus support boons are extremely powerful, and can be achieved on most build by simply getting a Zeus Call and a core Aphrodite Boon.

** Zeus have a couple of boons that synergizes with each other. Double Strike gives every single lightning bolt effect a second hit ignoring the internal cooldown on lightning bolts, Static Discharge applies Jolted which punishes enemies when they attacks with a lighting bolt that can activate Double Strike. Splitting Bolt further enchances Zeus boons by adding an extra instances of Lightning Bolt. All of these are applied to almost every activation of Zeus boons as a flat damage, which let them scale with global damage multipliers, one of which are native to Zeus boon in form of BIllowing Strength. With the right luck, it is possible to stack a bunch of Zeus boons to the point where even the normally weak Zeus Dash is capable of doing massive damage.

* The God keepsakes guarantees the next God you encounter to be the same as their equipped Keepsake or have it be available as a choice in multiple exit rooms while boosting the overall chance for higher rarity boons for said God. This is, without a doubt the single most powerful thing in Hades due to its ability to essentially force a build. Right from the start of a run, it lets you cherry pick a core boon from the very first room. Furthermore, a new God Keepsake can be equipped after every biome, which lets you get a separate God boon of choice to be put in your God pool, significantly increasing the chance to get a desired Duo Boon. It can also be acquired by simply offering an Nectar to get the God to give their keepsake. The God keepsakes are so good, that using any other keepsake at the start of the run is all but considered a SelfImposedChallenge.

* '''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.

* ''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), still counts as a bull rush for the purpose of other upgrades and aspects, and the charged shot can be fired for full damage immediately allowing the shield to quickly rack up damage.

* The so called God keepsakes guarantees the next God you ecounter to be the same as their equipped Keepsake, and boost the chance for higher rarity. This is, without a doubt the single most powerful thing in Hades due to its ability to essentially force a build. Right from the start of a run, it lets you cherry pick a core boon from the very first room. Furthermore, a new God Keepsake can be equipped after every biome, which lets you get a separate God boon of choice to be put in your God pool, significantly increasing the chance to get a desired Duo Boon. It can also be acquired by simply offering an Ambrosia to get the God to give their keepsake. The God keepsakes are so good, that using any other keepsake at the start of the run is all but considered a SelfImposedChallenge.

* '''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 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.

* ''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 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 latter hits any enemy. This attack bounces off walls and bounces between enemies, allowing you to inflict the effect on entire groups really quickly, which makes it the equivalent of an ''Exagryph with the Delta Chamber and Ricochet Fire hammer upgrades''. 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. If you are feeling lucky, you can pick Poseidon's Tempest Flourish instead, get the Sea Storm Duo boon along with Static Discharge and Razor Shoals. The result is being able to trigger Privileged status with just one click/button.

* '''Cold Fusion (Demeter/Zeus)'''. Normally, Zeus' Jolted condition expires once an enemy attacks. With Cold Fusion, 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.

* ''Hoarding Slash'', giving you 5% damage per the amount of Charon's Obols you have, can easily be this if you play your cards right. On it's own with some frugality it's pretty good, but it only gets significantly better if you can defeat Charon early on (no easy task mind you) after taking the 300 gold, get the Chaos Boon Affluence, and/or get Hermes' Side Hustle Boon, while still seeking gold every chance you get, watch as enemies and even bosses start dropping like flies. While this is a bit luck-based to say the least (though there are numerous ways to get a similar result), to put it into perspective, assuming you get it first and Side Hustle 2nd (or vice versa, with Side Hustle ), get Chaos Boon Affluence (boosting your obols collected by between 30 to 100 percent), and fight Charon for 300 (390-600 due to the boon), with 71 (out of 73) chambers of Side Hustle netting between 710 to 1349 extra Obols (10-19 per chamber), this strategy, assuming you somehow find no additional obols through enemy drops, vases, or chamber rewards, will give your basic 20-25-30 attacks a boost of between 55 and '''97''', enough to kill even the tankiest enemies in the game in a matter of seconds without any additional boons.

* The Aspect of Chiron makes 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.

* '''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 you can acquire be leveled up considerably by the end.

** Her dash boon is Divine Dash, widely touted as one of if not ''the'' best single boon in the entire game. While it only deals minimal damage, it causes any projectiles to be deflected if Zag touches them while dashing, and also blocks most melee attacks from causing him any damage. Suddenly, a huge amount of incidental damage that whittles down any given playthrough is being erased, taking a lot of pressure to play perfectly off the player.

** Her dash boon is Divine Dash. While it only deals minimal damage, it causes any projectiles to be deflected if Zag touches them while dashing, and also blocks most melee attacks from causing him any damage. Suddenly, a huge amount of incidental damage that whittles down any given playthrough is being erased, taking a lot of pressure to play perfectly off the player.

** 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.

* 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.

** 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 gives 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.

* The Beowulf aspect of Aegis is essentially Coronacht's Aspect of Hera applied to the Bull Rush, which now has a ''much'' wider area of effect. While it does give an extra damage penalty, the fact that the Bull Rush still allows you to NoSell damage makes it not as bad as it sounds. With the right build, you can pretty much annihilate most enemies and bosses in a flash.

* Hera's aspect of Coronacht is incredibly powerful, removing the normal cast (which is usually redundant when using the bow anyway) and instead lets Zag load the cast directly onto his bow and fire it, striking the enemy with both the arrow and the cast at the same time. Combined with casts that are powerful but hard to hit with, like Dionysus' Trippy Shot or Poseidon's Flood Shot (both can be gotten in the first room with the proper keepsake), the aspect of Hera provides an AlphaStrike build that will deal 400+ damage in a single attack. The only downside to it is that you have to hide for a while (5 seconds at max level) while waiting for your cast to come out.

* The "Ruthless Reflex" upgrade to the Mirror of Night offers Zagreus a 2-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 'Greatest 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. It gets even better if you can make the extra dash boon rare or epic, so it grants two or three extra dashes, respectively.

* ''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.

* '''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 on top, making this one of the deadliest casts in the game.

* Calculated Risk (Athena/Dionysus) slows enemy projectiles by 50%. 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 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 attacks. With Cold Fusion, 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 quite as insanely damaging as other examples, it 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, and/or other Demeter boons that add Chill to your cast, slowing enemies a lot and thus making them stand in the path much longer.
* 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 boons you're 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.
* 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.
* 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. What's even more broken is that Ice Wine can stack with Scintillating Feast (unlike Hunting Blades which can't stack with Crystal Clarity) which is also a game breaker, making for a truly insane cast.
* 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 present. Already sounds good, but the range of effect is ''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 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 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 (Divine Dash used to be an eligible prerequisite). 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.
* Mirage Shot (Artemis/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.
* 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 on top, 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), ''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.
* 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 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 at any point, your health will slowly tick back up during fights. Coupled with Athena's dash or any damage reduction boon, this can easily turn bosses 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 charge (but not use) Bull's Rush, and you're basically invulnerable. 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 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 you can acquire be leveled up considerably by the end.
* Vengeful Mood (Ares/Zeus) allows any revenge boons that the player's acquired to automatically trigger every 3 seconds, in addition to when Zagreus is damaged. There are 5 potential revenge boons in the game and they can all be stacked with this duo, along with 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.

** Typhoon's Fury and Breaking Wave. Creating a playstyle based around knocking foes into walls would seem overly challenging, but it works ''so'' much better than one would think. Typhoon's Fury, at minimum, ''triples'' the amount of damage a wall slam will do, while Breaking Wave will cause a wall slam to trigger a water blast with a decent range and ''very'' high damage. Any boon or weapon enabling knockback spam (like the above Tidal Dash) turns either of these boons into nukes, never mind having both of them.

* Vengeful Mood (Ares/Zeus) allows any revenge boons that the player's 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, along with 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.

** 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.

** Due to either a poor choice of words or a bug, Hermes' Stygian Soul Legendary Boon buffs ''all'' sources of damage instead of just cast like the description stated by 50% if the enemy in question doesn't have a bloodstone in them. This also includes the miscellaneous damage like Zeus' lighting bolts, Artemis' Support Fire arrows and any damage over time status effects, as demonstrated in this [[https://www.reddit.com/r/HadesTheGame/comments/upicwt/question_regarding_bad_news/i8l7ilp/ post]].

* The "Ruthless Reflex" upgrade to the Mirror of Night offers Zagreus a 2-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. It gets even better if you can make the extra dash boon rare or epic, so it grants two or three extra dashes, respectively.

** Typhoon's Fury and Breaking Wave. Creating a playstyle based around knocking foes into walls would seem overly challenging, but it works ''so'' much better than one would think. Typhoon's Fury, at minimum, ''triples'' the amount of damage a wall slam will do, while Breaking Wave will cause a wall slam to trigger a water blast with a decent range and ''very'' high damage. Any boon or weapon enabling knockback spam (like the above Tidal Dash) turns either of these boons into nukes, nevermind having both of them.

* ''Cluster Bomb'' 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 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 downside is that [[DifficultButAwesome you'll have to train yourself to stay within the defensive aura.]]

* Hera's aspect of Coronacht is incredibly powerful, removing the normal cast (which is usually redundant when using the bow anyway) and instead lets Zag load the cast directly onto his bow and fire it, striking the enemy with both the arrow and the cast at the same time. Combined with casts that are powerful but hard to hit with, like Dionysus' Trippy Shot or Poseidon's Flood Shot (both can be gotten in the first room with the proper keepsake), the aspect of Hera provides an AlphaStrike build that will deal 400+ damage in a single attack.
* 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 latter 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 "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. It gets even better if you can make the extra dash boon rare or epic, so it grants two or three extra dashes, respectively.

* The Pom Blossom keepsake is PostEndGameContent and thus PurposefullyOverpowered. The FinalBoss will even openly acknowledge its power if you fight them while wearing it. The Blossom has the effect of upgrading a random boon by one level every six, five, or four encounters (depending on the keepsake's level). Over an entire run, you can accumulate about 12 random levels this way, or 9 if you use a god trinket in Tartarus to force a certain build. That's effectively an entire floor's worth of nothing but Pom fruit.

* 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' realm), 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. However, it will not work in the starting areas of Asphodel, Elysium, or in Styx's hub, as there are no room rewards to trigger the autosave.