Hades Boss Guide: How to Beat Bone Hydra

I never played Hades while it was in Early Access, but I’m making my way through the 1.0 release on my Nintendo Switch. I’m loving it, and I’m not usually even a big Supergiant fan. Hades is just a rock-solid action game, with a ton of gameplay variety and a story interesting enough to keep me motivated. Yesterday I was able to beat the first boss, and now I’ve made my way past the Bone Hydra. So I figured I’d be a good samaritan and turn that experience into a guide.

Hades Bone Hydra Guide

The Bone Hydra is basically the part in that one Mario game when he kills Bowser, who comes back as a skeleton. Hercules smoked the Hydra during his mythical trials, and now its skeletal remains are chilling around Asphodel as a static boss fight. Unlike the Furies in Tartarus, you’ll always face Bone Hydra no matter what. There are variants like everything else the more you play and succeed, but this guide is for the standard form when you first encounter this fight.

Related: Hades Boss Guide: How to Beat Megaera the Fury

Bone Hydra is tethered to the northmost area in its boss arena, and can only stretch so far. Since it can’t chase you around, its main strategy is to shoot at you from a distance, then lure you into range so it can smash you. There are three phases in a sense, just like the Furies. But Bone Hydra mostly makes its attacks stronger, rather than adding new ones into the mix. Either way, we’ll break it down by phases for ease of reading.

Phase One

Bone Hydra will shoot slow-moving, deflectable projectiles at you, try to lunge at you with its face if you’re close enough, or do a slam move that causes an area of effect impact. It should be a problem to avoid these moves as long as you keep moving. If you don’t have ranged attack options you’ll be in a bit more danger, but overall the first phase is pretty easy. There are even pillars you can use for cover if you can’t deflect reliably.

Phase Two

You’ll know the second phase is happening, as Bone Hydra will back up against the wall and surround itself with a blue force field. At this point a group of extra heads will emerge from the lava behind you, and you’ll have to take them out before you can damage the big boy again. Each add can have a different ability, three of them mirrors of what Bone hydra can do, with two more. One of them can shoot out some strange objects that show 5-second timers. If you don’t break them before then, new mobs will hatch. The other new ability is a volley of wave shots, which you have to dodge through.

When it isn’t hiding behind its buddies, Bone Hydra gets a couple upgrades. Its projectiles are still blockable, but it shoots far more of them, much faster. Their homing properties are approved too, making fancy defensive maneuvers risky. Luckily, if you get right up on one of the pillars you won’t be able to fire back, but you will have a safe pocket of real estate. Its lunging attack will also do more damage if it hits you.

Phase Three

Phase Three is all about more. The number of bonus baddies will double, giving you more to worry about all at once. Bone Hydra will continue to shoot tons of bullets at you, and its slamming attack will now hit multiple times before it stops. Just stay vigilant and mobile! If you get this far you don’t have to worry about anything new cropping up, so just do what you were doing before a little more carefully.

Once you take out the Bone Hydra for the first time you’ll get a Diamond, which you’ll also get on repeat victories under certain conditions. The Diamonds are crucial for contractor upgrades back at the Hades office, so you’ll be seeing plenty of Bone Hydra. Just keep in mind that after you beat it three times, you’ll activate the variants. So stay on your toes and you’ll be fine.

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Are you enjoying Hades? Have you made it to Elysium yet? Or has the Bone Hydra been the bane of your existence? Let us know how Hades is going for you over at the Prima Games Facebook and Twitter channels!