32 Heat: tactics?

[Specific Beef]

It's a bit of a leap, but since I broke the second prize for [redacted] at 16 Heat, I decided to try doing 32 Heat to get the last prize in the hope of just hammering away until I get it. How much harder can I be, I wondered? Infinitely, as it turns out. I escape on 16 Heat with 2 or sometimes 3 lives. At 32 Heat, my furthest reach is the early part of Elysium.

If ever there was a way to really hone your thinking about which items and buffs are the most valuable, this is it. But perhaps my starting decisions aren't great, since all I can manage is "die in Asphodel" or "die in Elysium" as far as different Pact strats go.

As my weapon, I've been going with Nemesis sword, in the hope that I can amass constant Crit bonuses and maybe inflate them with Artemis's help, and the Collar keepsake to give me a decent pool of health at the start with Dusa's companion. I've been letting go all the Mirror bonuses except the top three, since I figure this one is unavoidable as a means to get a decent chunk of Pact points in without completely ruining my chances.

Should I use a different weapon? And what do you think are the best Pact clauses for this run? There's a reasonable amount of wiggle room at 32 Heat on the Pact, but everything I try seems to kick my arse.

[Washing Machine]

I reached stage4 on it today with Excali before armored satyrs ruined the day.

Time limit, boss3 buff, Jury Summons, health pickups giving less, and last 6 mirror buffs are what I stay away from. Usually the biggest issue is armored perks on certain enemies, one of the best Zag sword runs I had died completely to a stage3 room full of traps and teleporting archers.

From what I've seen of dudes clearing higher heat levels, they usually do it extremely lame and patient sitting back with shield bull Rush or bow kiting all day. I guess one way to prep is to run bit lower heat where you set on the armor perks and +40% speed on enemies, just to get the hang of it.

[squat_instructor]

A few things that helped me:
- 32 heat allows for a lot of pact setups, try adjusting it to your liking as much as possible
- try getting a good seed and re-run it instead of dying and resetting the seed
- pick the aspect that implies the least close quarters combat for a given weapon (Chaos shield for example is basically cheating)
- would recommend using Acorn keepsake at least starting from Hydra
- I found Stubborn Defiance to work much better for me
- might want to not go Extreme Measures 3 to make champoins fight MUCH more manageable since it's a big run killer on the time side
- Athenas dash and call can go a long way on any setup

Hope it helps

[Niccolo']

athena's dash was the most instrumental boon when i beated 32 with gauntlets, it just let you safely dash-attack almost every opponent.

[Specific Beef]

Thanks for the tips, everyone!

[Mr.Door]

Use "cheap" infernal arms:

Excalibur is amazing. Huge AoE slow + extra HP and the damage is amazing despite the slow speed

Bow of Hara is amazing. Just hold Special and auto-aim to victory with some killer Zeus buffs/duos.

Shield. Block. Murder. Repeat.

[Gregor]

I would consider something like this , and done it with the shield of Chaos on an earlier patch, I've looked through my records, but since it doesn't show my exact choices I can't just post my successfull escape.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2171708462

you could remove 40% dmg, and 25% reduced healing for upping the limitations on avaliable boons by 1 more.

[Washing Machine]

32 is low enough penalties tbh that you can sort of manage the 7min time limit per floor, which gives +5 Heat and opens up a lot of stuff. Just avoid any+HP or +Enemy Count so you can kill everything quickly.

I tried a bunch of attempts dashing and mashing with sword/shield/fists, and they were working decent enough. The timer isn't a problem anyway if you use melee weapons, it's just luck of the draw on what rooms you get and what boons you end up with. Only time I've actually reached Hades himself on 32, but sadly that run died in the room just before where I got the miniboss satyr & miniboss snake combo that drained my last 2 revives and most of my health. Hades just wasn't happening at that point.

Besides, it's the only way I can manage since I'm far too impatient a player to kite slowly through the game with bow or gun.

EDIT: As an update, got the job done today. Got 3 runs in a row that reached stage4, second one I ran out of time because the sack was in 2nd last (or last, didn't have time left to check) room, but last run was a complete breeze. It wasn't even anything strong, I had no special cast type, lvl1 Rare rarity stuff mostly, but having Athena dash and some damage on basic shield to mash dash attack makes everything manageable. I guess the big kicker was that I didn't get any complete BS rooms in stage3, and the sack was in 2nd room. Reached Had with all 4 lives and it was a done deal at that point. FeelsGoodMan

[Dystopia]

I went with fists with fully upgraded zagreus aspect and played hit and run strategy. Athena's dash is also a lifesaver. Mainly avoid harder rooms and even sacrificing 1 boon per biome isn't that bad as it gives you coins to buy them back later at charon's shop or save for death defiance refill, so easy heat. i recommend faster but slower weapons as arored enemies may be quite an issue in later biomes. there are some guides on steam so you can try them out too and tweak them to your playstyle

[Infamous_sniper21]

Experiment with the pact of punishment to find which modifiers you can manage. For me, I found I could manage champions with two perks as long as I didn't level jury summons at all (I swear, the first rank of jury summons is actually 200%, not 20%, those fights drag on forever).

I also found, however, that I couldn't handle traps deal 5 times damage or faster enemies. The guillotines in the Temple of Styx deal 150 damage if you buff trap damage. The possibility of losing a run to them was too much for me to handle. Additionally, speeding up enemies resulted in aggressive enemies being nearly impossible to deal with (like the chariots) and I had to completely relearn their timing.

I eventually beat 32 heat with Excalibur by getting Demeter's cast which allowed me to sit back and let it kill things. I also got a +40% speed boost along with 1 second of +100% speed after dashing to further help me kite things. I thought the run was over when I was forced to pick up the boon which heals you for 2 hp each hit but lowers your hp by 60%. However, I managed to really kite things well by running in, poking twice, and then dashing out. Poseiden's dash was amazing in the Temple of Styx due to all the wall smashes. Hades was pretty easy since I could so easily kite him. I was stuck with only 126 max hp though so I was definitely still in danger of losing.