Self-described Hades “fucking legend” and speedrunner Jade, or AngeL1C, became the first known player to complete the cult-favorite roguelike at its max difficulty settings on August 2, 10 days after roguelike content creator Haelian said it couldn’t be done in a July 25 YouTube video.
In Hades, turning your difficulty settings up to the face-melting 64 Heat requires players to switch on Hell Mode, weakening protagonist Zagreus, while, among other game changes, turning normal enemies steel-strong and lightning-fast, and juicing up bosses through extra abilities. With all this in mind, Haelian factored together the specific Boon upgrades a player would need, the time they’d have to spend proving their run isn’t seeded (containing fixed choices), and other elements necessary to beating Hades on 64 Heat; ultimately, Haelian declared the odds of someone doing so to be “0.236643 percent, or a measly one in 422 attempts.”
“And then, even then,” he continued in the July 25 video with, at the time of writing, over 870,000 views, “if you manage to get past this hellscape,” you would still need to race against the clock to defeat Hades’ multi-stage final boss, Hades, within the five-minute time limit 64 Heat allots per game section. Impossible, right?
But a little over a week later, Jade uploaded a YouTube video that proved beating Hades at 64 Heat in an unseeded, unmodded game could be done, though it’s realistically a millennium away from what an average player can do with their thumbs.
“Welp,” Haelian said on Reddit in response.
Jade, at least, acknowledges the perfect timing and raw skill necessary to complete the historic run in her video’s description.
“51 minutes of attempts, to get luck that is arguably unachievable in thousands of hours,” she wrote. “Never say never I guess.”
In an August 3 reaction video, Haelian decided that Jade is one of the only Hades players in the world capable of tearing up 64 Heat, and developer Supergiant Games congratulated her for the “godlike feat” on Twitter.
“Zagreus knows there’s no better motivation to achieve something quite like being told it’s impossible!” the developer said.