"My apologies for the screaming": Hades 2 magician beats most difficult Max Fear challenge after earth-shattering "lock in" that shouldn't be possible

Hades 2 challenge runner Boated has beaten the game on its highest Max Fear difficulty for the second time while, let's be honest, some people have trouble finishing Supergiant's roguelike sequel even once in its most basic difficulty. (I am one of those people.) (Sorry.)

"YES! YES! COME ON!" Boated screams in a new YouTube video after devastating Chronos in Hades 2's final battle, marking the world's first documented 1.0 Max Fear clear. Previously, Boated had completed a Max Fear run in Hades 2's early access version, which balanced weapons, combat, and enemy behavior differently – among many other things – from Hades 2's current 1.0 version.

In either case, Max Fear makes Hades 2's sunless rooms, where everyone is trying to kill you, even less like a nice dinner party. "I'm just mashing, and I'm vomiting," Boated says at one point during their run where Fear, or challenge level, is cranked up to 67. Even at the very start of their run, they quickly realized they "actually need to lock in," and say that "I've never had a big run like this get so real so fast" as powerful enemies swarmed.

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Any Fear over 32 was already extreme enough for fellow Hades 2 expert Mininet to create a 16-page Google Doc guide to not dying immediately, so Boated's eventual success here is genuinely astounding.

Helpfully, they walk through their plan heading into the run at the start of the video you can watch above; Boated uses the Witch's Staff starting weapon equipped with Aspect of Melinoe to increase the protagonist's Magick pool and the Power of her Special and Omega Special, and they bring along Melinoe's polecat familiar Gale at level 10, to deal extra damage and supply Flora. Boated also equips the Jeweled Pom keepsake, which gives you a random Hades blessing while at the Fates' Whim.

It all culminates in truly godlike destruction. "My apologies for the screaming," Boated finally says. "It really was just a lot of raw emotion coming out of me there."

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