Scylla and the Sirens are a unique obstacle in Hades 2. What makes them so difficult is the fact that there are three members of the band, and they all act independently. This means that, even once you have their attack memorized, you may still have a tough time, since you have to keep all their movements and attacks in mind.
The fight is in two distinct phases, with the barrier being directly in the middle of their health bar.
Phase 1
As I mentioned, the three members of Scylla and the Sirens act independently. They all have their own method of attack.
Roxy, the drummer, stays stationary and covers the battlefield in area of effect attacks. Meanwhile, Jetty, the keyboardist/guitarist will chase you around and hit you with attacks that either harm or knock you back. Scylla herself tends to frustrate with projectiles and will also roam the arena to harrow you. One note about Scylla: You can’t hit her from behind. The shell will block your attacks.
A tempting strategy would be to focus on a single band member to knock them out and lessen the attacks being thrown at you. This works, but I don’t recommend it. Staying mobile seems to be the best policy here. If you circle the arena, getting hits in while attacks are thrown your way, you will probably take less damage and deal more damage overall. However, to be clear, if you concentrate your attacks on a single band member, they will eventually bow out and stop attacking. It’s not that it doesn’t work, it just isn’t recommended.
Roxy
The drummer, Roxy’s main attack has her sending a wave of AoE circle that moves across the arena. They activate pretty quickly, so you need to act fast if you find yourself standing in one. If you dash toward them and get to the other side, you’re in the clear for a while.
Her other attack is to create a large AoE circle around herself. Dash out of this, but be careful: once she triggers this attack, she then reverses it. The hazardous area covers most of the battlefield, while there is only a small pocket of safety around her remains safe. There’s very little room to maneuver while you wait for the attack to trigger, but you can jab Roxy with a few attacks while you’re near her.
Jetty
The guitarist’s (keytarist?) fiercest attack has her perform a Townsend Slide (sliding across the floor on her knees). Being in its path causes damage, but she will also stop abruptly and create an AoE that pushes outward. Your only warning is the slide itself because once she stops, waves of energy immediately start spreading. You have to be paying attention at the time to her position, then quickly dash away from her.
Another attack from the Jetty is sonic bubbles that push you back and stun you. Note that these don’t actually damage your health, but if you’re stunned and land in the path of another bandmate’s attack, there’s not much you can do to avoid it.
There’s one more attack that I rarely see from Jetty. She shoots out these gunky pink balls that bounce across the ground, exploding whenever they touch it. This isn’t much different than a standard projectile, just slower and with a harder to predict radius.
One thing to note about Jetty is that she largely hangs back away from the fight, then wades toward you when she’s ready to attack, or if you attack her. She will also sometimes plunge under the water and pop up somewhere else. This makes her less of a threat, but it also makes it easy to forget about her until she’s ramming her keytar up your backside.
Scylla
In the first phase of the battle, Scylla has a few attacks. One is to shoot energy in front of her shell in all directions, pointing them at you. They are short range, but she can move while she’s doing it. It’s best to just keep your distance and move to another target while she’s doing this.
Another attack has her send four laser-like beams in each direction around her shell, and they then rotate counter-clockwise. These too are short-range. If you’re too close, you can either dash out of range or stay in the safe area between them.
One of her more vexing attacks has her fire a pinkish-red bubble that follows you around the arena. They seek for quite a while, and sometimes she’ll spit a few at a time at you. If you’re circling the arena and staying mobile, it’s a bit easier to avoid them, but they have a habit of showing up when you least expect them.
The last attack in her repertoire has her abruptly blast a wave of sea mines in front of you. This is a long-range attack. The best way to avoid them is to dash directly into them. If you’re far enough away, however, you may be able to find a gap to slip through.
Stage 2
Once you’ve knocked out the band by taking their collective health gauge down to 50%, they’ll return for an encore. One of the band members will gain the “Featured Artist” spotlight, and it seems to be random. The Featured Member gets their attacks powered up.
As an example of these powered-up attacks, Jetty will create two waves when using her Townsend Slide. Scylla will fire mines alongside her lasers. They’ll generally just be a larger nuisance. Most of the second phase goes pretty much the same as the first, but that Featured Artist will throw a lot more damage your way, which makes juggling the three band members all the more chaotic.
You can focus fire to try and put the Featured Artist out of the battle first, but they will also be the hardest to get close to while all the rest of the chaos is going on. Once again, I feel the best strategy is to continue circling the arena, taking shots whenever you see an opening.
If you defeat Roxy and Jetty in phase 2, they’ll explode and be out for good. However, Scylla will turtle up into her shell, at which point you can’t hurt her. If she’s the first you took down, you’ll just have to avoid her as you take on the other two. I have seen her finish an attack she had started before her shell closed, but once she’s shelled up, I haven’t seen her start another attack.
Once the three bandmates have been defeated again, Scylla will immediately pop her shell back open (it will take another couple seconds before her shield disappears.) At that point, it’s the grand finale.
Scylla’s last act is to summon a massive horde of fish that will swarm you. During this time, Scylla won’t do any attacks herself, but if you take down enough fish, she’ll simply summon more to replace them. While that may make this sound easy – especially as the fish don’t have much HP – it’s really difficult to get a shot in on Scylla while being swarmed.
My best advice is to try and put the fish between you and Scylla so any attack you make passes through the fish and hits Scylla. Also, drop your ensnaring casts. You don’t need to charge it, but any fish that pass into it will be stuck temporarily, which can give you breathing room. If you received boons that make your casts cause additional damage, that’s even better.
Scylla and the Sirens is a tough boss fight because you need to keep a lot of plates spinning. While each of the three band members has a simple attack pattern, when they’re all going off at the same time, it gets chaotic and hard to control. Keep moving, watch for an opening for attack, and don’t get overwhelmed.
Also, try not to get that song stuck in your head.
Who is Scylla in Greek Mythology?
You may be familiar with who the Sirens are, but Scylla is a bit less known. She isn’t a Siren herself. Both Scylla and the Sirens make an appearance in Homer’s Odyssey, but aside from being related to water, they aren’t conceptually linked.
Odysseus and his crew had to navigate through narrow waters, which had the monster Scylla on one side, and on the opposite side Charybdis, who was another monster. Odysseus is warned that he’d best steer his ship closer to Scylla than Charybdis because, while Scylla would undoubtedly snatch some of his crew, Charybdis would swallow the ship whole.
Sure enough, Scylla did snatch some of Odysseus’ men, but she didn’t drown them, as her song may imply. Instead, she ate them whole.
Like most creatures of Greek Mythology, Scylla has been described in many ways. The more unfavorable have her with a multitude of heads and even dogs for legs. However, some accounts have her begin with a more human-like appearance that becomes twisted by magic. Whatever the case, she’s usually pretty monstrous, which is the case with Hades 2.
As for Charybdis, she must be pissed she didn’t get included in the band.
