The Hades 2 patch just destroyed the best weapons, but players are still pretty happy

Hades 2 received its second major update within the first month of its Early Access launch. The big patch 2 features a host of balance changes to shake up fan-favorite weapon aspects and Daedalus' hammer upgrades.

“Among the improvements in this patch, look for many new UI icons as well as weapon-related balance changes aimed at improving core combat and associated choices,” developer Supergiant explains in the patch notes. From what we gathered from our test, the placeholder icons for memories and other things are now replaced with proper artwork – and from what we've come to expect from Supergiant, they look fantastic.

To enhance your races, you can now encounter up to one additional Olympian each night, meaning the cumulative number of boons in a race is now the same as in Hades 1. The fact that you'll likely find an added perk or other major reward in Erebus, the first region of the Underworld, means you'll be much stronger earlier in your runs. Death Defiance has also received major improvements, with Nemesis only offering a cooldown if you need it and a period of increased invulnerability after Defiance. And for those who have not yet successfully completed their very first race in Hades 2Chronos is now less “manifestly unfair”.

On the weapon balancing front, Patch 2 touched on all five night weapons. While the majority are buffs, Supergiant nerfed a handful of clearly overpowered picks, chief among them being Aspect of Momus.

• Witch's Staff (Momus): reworked; Each of your Omega moves automatically triggers multiple times in a row from wherever you use them.

“It's definitely a lot less broken than before, but I think that's for the better,” one player said in the patch notes Reddit thread. “Momus has only ever been used to increase his special power, so making it an aspect worth using for its own merit is ultimately good for the game.”

Selene's hexes have also benefited from a number of improvements, primarily focused on reducing their Magic spending requirements. So hexes should be much more useful even if you don't build specifically for them. The only exception is Dark Side, which oddly requires more Magic to cast now.

Daedalus Hammers has seen many underutilized upgrades removed from the game and several others reworked to be more powerful. This should mean fewer unwanted choices when picking up the hammer during a race. “[I am] extremely happy, they saw that some options were just worse and found cool ways to solve this problem,” said one player.

If you're waiting for Boon's reworks to complement the weapon skins and reworked hammers, they're not part of this patch. The wait shouldn't be any longer, however, with Supergiant promising “Boon updates in our next patch.”

You can head over to Steam to view the full patch notes for the Hades 2 early access to patch 2.