Hades weapon upgrades and how to get more Titan Blood

(Image credit: SuperGiant Games)

If you want Hades weapon upgrades then you'll need Titan Blood, and know how to unlock the hidden aspects that let you max out a weapon. There's no quick way of doing this though as you'll have to beat the game multiple times, using multiple weapons, in order to accumulate Titan Blood and strengthen your weapons, as well as unlock the hidden aspects, to fully do it. But, while it's not easy there are at least a few ways you can make life easier, and several nuances that you can miss competently. TO make Hades weapon upgrades as painless as possible we've put together some pointers to make the process smoother. 

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How to upgrade weapons in Hades 

(Image credit: Supergiant Games)

Collecting Daedalus Hammers during escape attempts will give your weapons temporary upgrades, but to permanently upgrade them, you'll need to unlock and improve their Aspects using Titan Blood. 

Aspects won't be available when you first get a weapon; you'll need to unlock all six weapons using Cthonic Keys to get access to them in the first place. And even then, you'll only have three of the four Aspects on each weapon to start. 

Once you get all six weapons, you can check their Aspects by hitting "Reveal" at the armory slot of your equipped weapon. You can upgrade these Aspects by spending Titan Blood. It takes five Titan Blood to max out a weapon's topmost, basic Aspect, and their other Aspects cost around 15 Titan Blood each.  

How to unlock all Hades weapon Aspects  

To unlock hidden fourth Aspects, you'll first need to unlock the final Aspect on Varatha the spear, the Aspect of Guan Yu. To do so, you'll need to unlock the Fated List of Minor Prophecies, unlock five different weapon Aspects, reach (not defeat) the final boss, and speak with Achilles until he discusses the "true nature" of your weapons. Note that you need to unlock Aspects; upgrading the basic Aspects which are already available will not work. You can unlock the Aspects of any weapon.

Once you've unlocked all the necessary items and reached the final boss, talk to Achilles on the left side of the underworld base and he'll reveal the chant you need to unlock the Aspect of Guan Yu. Go, erm, talk to Varatha and you'll unlock its hidden Aspect. 

The hidden Aspects of the other five weapons can now be unlocked as well, but they have their own requirements:

  • Stygius - Aspect of Arthur: spend five Titan Blood on Stygius Aspects and then talk to Nyx.
  • Aegis - Aspect of Beowulf: spend five Titan Blood on Aegis Aspects and then talk to Chaos. 
  • Coronacht - Aspect of Rama: spend five Titan Blood on Coronacht Aspects and then talk to Artemis (through her boons).
  • Malphon - Aspect of Gilgamesh: spend five Titan Blood on Malphon Aspects and then talk to Asterius, the minotaur in Elysium, when you encounter him solo as a miniboss. 
  • Exagryph - Aspect of Lucifer: spend five Titan Blood on Exagryph Aspects and then talk to Zeus (through his boons). 

How to get more Titan Blood in Hades 

(Image credit: Supergiant Games)

As you may have noticed, you won't really get anywhere with weapon upgrades if you don't know how to get more Titan Blood. You'll get your first Titan Blood after beating the first boss, and you'll get another one by beating the final boss. To quickly get more, you can beat these same bosses with all six weapons, earning up to 12 Titan Blood through normal escape attempts. After that, you'll need to crank up the Heat Gauge to get more.

The Heat Gauge is unlocked after you beat the final boss. It's a list of modifiers that make the game more difficult and reset the boss rewards, or bounties. Each modifier has a Heat value, and the minimum Heat level to receive bounties increases by one each time you beat a boss with a given weapon. 

Let's say I beat the game with the Malphon fists for the first time. If I want to earn more Titan Blood on my next Malphon run, I'll need to increase the Heat value to one using a one-point modifier. I don't want to go over one Heat right now, though, because that will just make the game more difficult without improving my rewards. When I clear the game on one Heat, I'll get the same bounties as last time: two Titan Blood, one Diamond, and one Ambrosia. If I want to get more loot using Malphon, I'll need to up the Heat to two, and so on and so forth. 

(Image credit: Supergiant Games)

This is your main way of getting more Titan Blood: incrementally raising the Heat for specific weapons and continually beating bosses. To go along with this, you can get more Titan Blood by trading in Ambrosia at the underworld merchant in the southeast corner. One Ambrosia is good for one Titan Blood, and Ambrosia are generally less useful (especially early on), so don't be afraid to trade some in. 

You can also occasionally purchase Titan Blood from Charon's shop in the final region, provided you have 1,200 gold to spare. This generally isn't worth it, though, because that 1,200 gold could be spent on boons and power ups that will help you beat the final boss and unlock a new Heat tier. In other words, don't buy Titan Blood unless you're very confident you can beat the final boss. 

Finally, clearing some prophecies will award Titan Blood. You can get a quick boost of 10 Titan Blood by beating the final boss with all six weapons. Combined with the 12 Titan Blood you'll get from bosses on those six runs, this will give you a tidy sum of Titan Blood to start upgrading Aspects.

Austin Wood

Austin freelanced for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree, and he's been with GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've yet to realize that his position as a senior writer is just a cover up for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a focus on news and the occasional feature, all while playing as many roguelikes as possible.