Hades 2 is no pushover in terms of difficulty, but there is no greater challenge than the poster villain of this adventure: Chronos himself. The Titan of Time is arguably far harder than the game’s preceding final battle, and resetting the clock on the underworld is going to take a lot more than base skill.
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When defeating Chronos, preparation through multiple attempts and Crossroads upgrades will absolutely be required. What those preparations should be and your study-guide for Chronos’s playbook can all be found in this deepdive on Tartarus’s most dangerous escaped convict.
Updated on September 28, 2025, by Alexis Campbell: We updated the guide to reflect all truths within the official 1.0 release. We also included a new section on Unrivaled Chronos.
What To Know Before Fighting Chronos
Chronos is a time-manipulating titan who will laugh at your puny attempts to control time. While facing him, you will not be able to:
- Pause the game, unless you have crafted the correct boon from the cauldron at the Crossroads.
- Use Time-Altering abilities, such as Selene’s ‘Phase Shift’ boon.
This is true until later, when you can cast the “Power To Pause And Reflect” and “Temporal Fluctuation” incantations. These are both handy tools you should invest in once the opportunity arises, typically by trying each of them at least twice and failing during a Chronos fight.
You’ll want every boon you can get your hands on for Chronos, especially with his beefy healthpool, but here are a few things you should strive to get before matching Chronos in the House of Hades:
- Death Defy x2 or higher – Through the Arcana cards, you’ll want to make sure your Death Defiance count is at least at level two.
- Casting Time Reduction – Any effect that reduces the time of your Casts, whether through boons, Arcana Cards, or Aspects of the Night, is highly valued.
- Knuckle Bones Keepsake – Odysseus’s keepsake will reduce Chronos’s health by 10-15 percent on Rank B or greater and reduce his outgoing damage further.
- Toula the Cat – Having an extra Death Defy and your familiar’s damage output can make a huge difference, especially with the Hourglasses in Phase Two or:
- Frinos the Frog – If not Toula, then Frinos can block projectile attacks from his reinforcements and save Melinoe from unnecessary damage.
You can have your choice of other boons, damage types, and weapons for Chronos. Every person has their own perfect playstyle and fit for combat. What matters is a weapon you’re comfortable with for your first attempts.
As you navigate your way to Chronos, there is one other important step to take: visit Hades. Hades almost always spawns on your trip to the bottom of Tarturus and is indicated by the golden hands sigil as with any other friendly NPC. Enter, and speak with him for a special boon.
Hades’ boons will give you the ability to greatly weaken Chronos by, for example:
- Old Grudge: Lowering the boss’s health by 20 percent (stacks with Knucklebones)
- Deep Dissent: Reducing the number of summoned enemies by 50 percent
You do not want to miss out on these boons if you can help it.
The summoned enemy reduction also works on the banners that Chronos summons to bolster his health. Instead of four banners generating protection for Chronos and his allies, there will only be two.
How To Defeat Chronos: Phase One
Chronos’s first stage can easily be broken into two parts:
1. First 60 percent
2. Last 40 percent
The only difference between these stages is the number of attacks he’ll make in quick succession. Phase One will teach you the moves, and Phase Two will have you face those moves as they appear in combos and with strange reinforcements.
Phase One, Stage One
As you enter the room, there will be four satyrs (two if you took the relevant boon from Hades), and Chronos will take a few seconds before he’s able to be struck. Use this opportunity to begin immediately and furiously attacking the minions.
It is best to use your Omega Cast on these enemies to prevent them from firing their ranged projectiles and summoning vermin to complicate your fight. Chronos is slow in the first half anyway, so you’ll have the opportunity to sprint away from him while dealing with his minions. Ignore him where you can, and don’t be too greedy.
With the minions gone, begin watching Chronos. Don’t get overly greedy and begin wildly attacking. This phase is meant to teach, so learn. Be patient. Keep these facts in mind:
- Most of Chronos’s attacks are best dealt with by dashing forward.
- Use the techniques and feel you gained by facing Hecate; her fight feels very similar in this phase.
- The most dangerous of his attacks is definitely the Cyclone Slash. It has the fastest wind-up and can be extremely punishing.
The best way to avoid the Cyclone Slash is simply to keep an eye on Chronos’s body language as much as possible. This attack is the only attack that begins with Chronos raising his scythe to his left side.
As you push toward and past the halfway point, Chronos will summon four flag posts on a normal run that generate auras of protection. This aura can spread to his minions and absorb damage.
When Chronos begins to summon them, take them out as he transitions into the second stage of Phase One.
Phase One, Stage Two
After the flag posts have been summoned, Chronos will be officially in the second stage of this phase. His slashing attacks from the first phase will now appear in combos of three attacks. Some slashes will be horizontal while others dash forward, but the combo will never exceed three attacks.
Dash through them as you learned from the first stage.
At the 30 percent health mark, Chronos will automatically teleport to the golden sigil toward the back of the hall and summon his reinforcements.
These reinforcements all have shields, making them a little hardier than the last fight. Take them out as quickly as possible as you did in the first stage. But be warned he prefers to do his Spiraling Orb attack shortly after summoning these allies.
Chronos will teleport to the sigil at 30 percent health, even if he is in the midst of an attack. The hitbox will travel with them and can unintentionally strike you if you are not prepared for the teleport.
When all reinforcements are dealt with, you can focus on Chronos again.
There’s nothing else special about this stage, so give it your all and conserve your energy for the much trickier Phase Two.
How To Defeat Chronos: Phase Two
Phase Two Chronos takes everything you learned about him in Phase One and turns it into a trial of zoning.
Every attack in Chronos’s arena will overlap, starting small and working its way until an average of three of the moves in the table above are happening simultaneously. However, the combo chains from the first phase will no longer be present. As a result of these facts, the general strategy for the fight is much like the first phase:
- Take your time and memorize the patterns of dodging for the first half.
- Apply all you’ve learned and be aggressive in the second half.
The most dangerous attacks in this fight are Chronos’s arena attacks, such as his ‘Marked by Time’ and ‘Gathering Time’ attacks. These attacks will deal massive amounts of damage that often result in an instant loss of a life if not still equipped with armour.
To mitigate these possibilities and increase your chances of survival overall, the best advice to give is: keep your eyes on the floor. The floor will always be your marker for the safest place in the arena. Clear, uncolored areas are your friend.
Chronos always opens his fight with some form of an arena attack. As soon as you enter the arena, be on guard and ready to dash to the circle of safety.
Once you reach Chronos’s final 50 percent, he’ll summon the Hourglasses. These pesky things will create a zoning nightmare and introduce an even bigger problem: passive healing. If you do not have the means to damage Chronos quickly, you should absolutely destroy the hourglasses ASAP.
Any more than a single hourglass on the field can present a real problem — especially in early stages of the game where damage output might not be so severe. Do not let them outnumber you greatly.
Once Chronos summons the Hourglasses, they will continue to be re-summoned on each of the time sigils on the face of the arena clock. Thus, there isn’t much use in continuously trying to defeat them before engaging Chronos. Best to juggle getting rid of those when you have a spare moment with dealing real damage to Chronos.
You’ll be holding your breath for the final 20 percent health as the zoning becomes increasingly ludicrous. There is no further advice here except that:
- Practice and patience are the keys.
- Luck is desired, but skill is necessary.
- The floor is lava; never look away.
Do not be afraid of failing this section with Chronos. Practice, and upgrade what you can as you learn to move through his patterns through instinct.
You will eventually come out on top, and there is – we can guarantee 100 percent – no greater feeling of accomplishment. And when you do, we have great news for you: you will have to do this again many, many more times before you see the credits.
How To Beat Unrivaled Chronos
If you thought Chronos was tough the first time, you’re in for a very rude awakening. Unrivaled Chronos not only has an additional third phase, but he also presents several real and frustrating problems in his first two phases.
Thankfully, there is nothing shockingly new move-wise from Chronos in the first two phases. Rather, all of his attacks are the same with small tweaks. These are the summarized notes you need to know for the first phase:
- All of Chronos’s delayed slashing attacks cover a wider range and appear with two slashes rather than one.
- Any rings of time that Chronos creates now have a second layer.
- Any teleportation domes that Chronos creates are now circled with smaller time freezing domes.
- Vacuum Slash now attacks forward and behind Chronos, requiring you to always stay at his side (and can usually only be damaged by area effects that can strike from above or below Chronos).
In the second phase, Chronos gets a little upgrade to his Gathering Time ability. It is his most dangerous attack as he will both use this attack three times to open the second phase and conjure a time dome that can stall you to death.
Otherwise, the only notable difference in this second phase (other than bringing what we learned from the new phase one with his two-slash attacks) is his Marked by Time attack. As the safe ring around him appears, he will also conjure hands of time that you must essentially jump-rope with inside the ring to survive.
Where Chronos becomes new and interesting is his new third phase. Once you have defeated his second phase, you will be teleported to yet another new arena. Thankfully, it looks a lot scarier than it actually is.
As you appear inside the arena, sprint immediately. Almost any direction will suffice. You should notice as you move that there are red lines on the ground. He will dash around from sigil to sigil. Just calmly dash away from each red line as it appears, careful not to trap yourself anywhere or touch a leftover trail.
From this point on, everything you already know from the first two phases goes into practice here. To survive it all, keep this list of five solid things to practice to defeat Chronos in his true form:
- Do not let the hands scare you: Chronos will summon a few titan hands during the fight. They are just like the old hands from the previous Hades game. You can run away from them and defeat them slowly. Overreacting will lead to unnecessary damage.
- Slash attacks look bigger, but their answer is the same: If you have successfully dodged Chronos’s slashing strikes, you will dodge his new ones. His sprint attacks might make four slashes now, but you don’t need to do anything different than what you already know to avoid them.
- When you feel overwhelmed, it is okay to run: There are times when Chronos might make another copy of himself and attack as he normally would. This can often feel overwhelming, and it is okay to sprint away for distance to reorient yourself if you feel you are losing the rhythm.
- Stay away from the dead center: Several different attacks will appear in the middle of the arena without clear cues. You can often get accidentally hit if standing in the exact middle. Just do not lose sight of Chronos himself.
- If you do not have a speed bonus on an Omega, do not risk it: Lengthy Omega move animations will often be a leading cause of damage for this fight. Unrivaled Chronos is all about speed and reaction time. Your wind-up attacks will often lead to excessive damage intake. Keep it simple; keep it neat.
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