Hades: Wounds - how to heal them? Hades guide, tips
Last update: 05 September 2021
This page of the guide to Hades includes information how to heal wounds and restore lost health points. In addition, we explain how to lengthen the life bar - permanently and for the duration of a single trial.
Healing Zagreus
The most important information is that in Hades hero health bar doesn't regenerate by default. As you progress through the game, you will discover the methods described below to restore part or all of the health points with some special rules. Still, in general, you need to remember that the lost health points will not be easy to recover. This is especially important if you play aggressively and thus expose the hero to a high risk of damage.
Information on how to protect Zagreus from dying and what can happen after the death of the hero can be found on a separate page titled Death - How to avoid it?.
One of the easiest ways to regenerate vital forces is visiting shops in the game world. Shops can be separate chambers (as in the example from the above screenshot) or they can be single interactive stands for buying items.
There is never a guarantee that the store will offer food that allows you to partially or completely restore your health, but in most situations, healing items appear in the offer. You must, of course, be prepared to pay for healing with Charon's Obols, that is, one of the in-game currencies (gold).
You can heal a hero with Centaur Hearts which also lengthen the health bar. We described them in more detail in the next sub-section titled Lengthening hero's health bar. You should take every opportunity to acquire them, because after a possible greater treatment in the later phase of the game, you will become more resilient.
Another way to renew your life points is by finding fountains during the exploration. This method requires some preparation, because you have to order projects related to the unlocking of Fountains in individual lands from the House Contractor (one of the positions in the House of Hades). You can also order projects related to increasing their effectiveness (i.e. the ability to restore more health points).
From the moment you get relevant projects, fountains can appear in subsequent playthroughs. Their location is random, so you can never assume that within a single playthrough you will definitely visit a fountain and at the moment when it is most useful to you. Fortunately, using fountains is free and you don't have to consume any raw materials once you get to them.
Some gifts and items from the Well of Charon may be associated with healing - all such bonuses are marked with a heart icon and have two limitations:
- they will only work if you select them from the list of rewards,
- it is possible that they will only work for a certain time (eg. only in 3 further chambers as in the example from screenshot 2).
As for the awards themselves, they can have different effects, for example guarantee one-time regeneration, keep the health of the hero at a minimum safe level (and automatically heal him if it falls below this level), increase the effectiveness of the fountains, reduce the damage received by a weakened hero, or allow you to restore part of the health bar when entering each new location.
To some extent, also talents can heal Zagres. You buy them for the Darkness by the Mirror of Night. Examples are:
- Chtonic vitality - each level of this talent restores 1 health point at the time of entering the next chamber. It may seem unattractive, but you can develop this talent. Health can also regenerate even if you have entered a chamber in which there are no enemies.
- Dark regeneration - each level of this talent restores a certain percentage of health due to the accumulation of Darkness. This can be a very good bonus, as you can accumulate dozens of units of darkness on average in a single attempt.
You can find health regeneration point each time after defeating one of the main bosses. In the next visited area, one of the interactive stations will always be a fountain, and its effectiveness of treatment depends on the purchased projects from the House Contractor.
Health point renewal options can also be linked to meetings with special NPCs, e.g. with Sisyphus (screenshot above) or Patroclus. These characters always offer to choose one of several rewards, and in the list of gifts, you can find an item associated with the regeneration of health. Unfortunately, encounters with unique NPCs are completely random and you can't expect to run into them during each trial you play.
Lengthening the hero's health bar
By default, Zagreus starts each attempt with only 50 health points. This is not enough for longer expeditions, because already a few successful enemy attacks can kill the protagonist. Fortunately, there are methods of lengthening the health bar temporarily or for good.
You can temporarily extend your health bar by collecting Centaur Hearts. They are located primarily in the chambers marked with the heart icon. Every collected heart extends the energy bar by 25 units.
Centaur Hearts can also appear in store offers - in the example from the above screenchot, this item costs 125 gold. If the current state of Charon's Obols allows you to do so, you should make buying them a priority.
The game also allows you to permanently extend Zagreus' health bar, i.e. so that after death, the accumulated additional health points do not disappear.
In this case, take a look at the available talents from the Mirror of Night. With chtonic keys, you must unlock talents that are initially unavailable, in order to eventually be able to buy the Thick Skin talent. Each level of this talent (purchased with darkness) permanently increases the health bar by 10 points.
Warning - you may lose the Thick Skin talent bonus if you replace it with an alternative talent, i.e. by clicking on the arrow button. The game allows you to choose between different variants of talents. You can also, of course, leave this talent intact and deal with the purchase of its next levels.