Hades 2: How To Unlock Oath Of The Unseen And Easiest Vows

If you’ve been looking for a way to increase the difficulty in your Hades 2 runs or if you’re hoping to get more Nightmares to upgrade your weapons, unlocking the Oath of the Unseen is exactly what you’re looking for. The Oath of the Unseen provides players a way to add challenging modifiers like increased enemy health or disabling Arcana cards to each run. In exchange, if Melinoe defeats the designated boss with these challenges enabled, she’ll be rewarded with a Nightmare.

Thankfully, unlocking the Oath is a straightforward and simple task, while the harder part is figuring out which vows to take since each one can break your entire build if you’re not careful. If you’ve been struggling to figure out which vows make sense for you, or even how to unlock the Oath, then you’ve come to the right guide.

How To Unlock The Oath Of The Unseen

You Just Have To Beat One Boss

In order to unlock the Oath, you’ll have to defeat Chronos once. While he can be a challenging fight, when you understand how Chronos’ unique mechanics work, the final boss of the Underworld becomes a much easier battle to navigate.

After defeating the TItan of time, head to the practice area, and you’ll get a message saying that you’re now worthy of the Oath of the Unseen. You’re now able to activate Testaments of Night by interacting with the pillar located between the entrances to the Underworld and the Surface. From there, you’ll be able to choose which vows (run modifiers) you want to add to your next run.

How Do Testaments Of Night And Fear Level Work?

Getting Nightmares Will Be Worth The Trouble

On the left side of the Testament screen, you’ll see five highlighted boss portraits – one for each of Melinoe’s weapons. At the bottom of each portrait is a symbol representing one of those weapons and a number. These bosses are your designated targets and will drop a Nightmare for you when you defeat them with the indicated weapon and fear level.

To increase your fear level, you’ll have to activate the vows on the right side of the screen. Each vow is worth a different amount of Fear, and activating them will add their value to the overall Fear of the run, which is indicated at the bottom of the screen.

Here’s a list of all the vows currently in Hades 2 you can take and the amount of fear they add:

Easiest Vows To Take For High Level Fear

It’s Almost Free Fear If You’re Careful

With all of that in mind, here are the easiest vows you can take relative to their Fear payoff.

Vow of Fury – Faster Enemies, Faster Rooms

• Increased speed is a blessing and a curse.
• It saves you time, but it makes Chronos a bit harder.

For most rooms, enemies will group up and approach you faster, allowing you to clear rooms quickly and efficiently. However, enemies and bosses will also attack faster. While it’s not too troublesome against most enemies, this can be problematic against Chronos if you’re still not comfortable with the fight. But once you get used to it, this is an easy 6 Fear to add to your runs.

Vow of Wandering – Meeting Enemies Sooner Isn’t A Problem

• If you know how to fight the enemies in Hades 2, this vow isn’t too troublesome to deal with.
• Oceanus can be a little more difficult thanks to the enemies from the Fields of Mourning.

Unfortunately for players, the Fields of Mourning carry numerous obnoxious foes which can make Oceanus a problematic biome to work through. However, since the maps in Oceanus are rather small and filled with choke points, it’s much easier to close the gap and group these foes together to take them out quickly and painlessly than if you had fought them in the Fields.

To make this vow easier to handle, make sure you have most of your damage setup before the midpoint in Oceanus. After that, this vow will be a minor annoyance at worst for 3 Fear.

Vow of Panic – Easily Solved And Sometimes A Buff

• Practically a free point of Fear for some builds
• Arcana cards can be used to ignore or benefit off this vow

Starting rooms without magic isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, there are Arcana cards you can take to mitigate this effect or give you buffs from it. If you take the Huntress card and use a build that doesn’t rely on Magick, this Vow practically gives you +50% damage in each room.

If you do need Magick, take the Unseen Arcana card to work around this vow without harming your build. Alternatively, if you can survive the first few rooms without Magick, you can find a god with a good Magick restoring boon like Hera to functionally ignore this Vow for a free Fear.

Vow of Desperation – Speeding Is Fun!

• Most players don’t take more than 5 minutes to complete a biome
• Time is cumulative so you’re rewarded for completing biomes quickly

This vow sounds scarier than it actually is.

In essence, Vow of Desperation gives you a limited time to complete each biome, but you’re given more time at the beginning of each biome and the time you gain is cumulative. This means, at Rank 3, if you complete Erebus in 4 minutes (with 1 minute left on the clock), you’ll have a total of 6 minutes to complete Oceanus. Additionally, this also means Vow of Desperation becomes less and less threatening as you get more of your build together because you’ll be clearing rooms more efficiently and gaining more time in doing so.

Stores, rooms with Artemis or Icarus appearing, NPC rooms, material harvesting, and fountain rooms all stop the clock. If you need time to make a decision between two rooms, pause the game to also stop the clock and give yourself a moment to think.

Most players without any other vows will usually take somewhere between 3 and 4 minutes to finish each biome anyway, so if you don’t waste too much time in each region and know how to get your build together, this can be an almost free 6 Fear.