Hela Playstyle Guide: Best Potion Loadouts & Traversal Builds for Every Mouse (2026)

Okay, Hela doesn't have "builds." No skill trees, no stats, no weapons. But after multiple playthroughs, I've found there are definitely different ways to approach the game. Your "build" in Hela is really about three things: which potions you keep stocked, which traversal abilities you lean on, and whether you're playing solo or co-op.

I'm going to use the word "build" loosely. Bear with me.

The Speedster (Solo)

This is how I play when I just want to get places fast. The core idea: maximize movement speed and minimize time spent on the ground.

Key potions: Tailwind (speed boost), Shadow Step (short teleport), and Light (for dark caves - you're moving too fast to wait for your eyes to adjust).

Key abilities: Paraglider Dive is essential. The dive-into-pull-up maneuver gives you a momentum burst that chains perfectly with Tailwind. On flat terrain, you move roughly three times faster than base speed. Double jump is secondary - you use it to skip platforming sections rather than engaging with them.

This playstyle works best solo because co-op partners rarely move at the same pace. In co-op, one person zooming ahead while the other three are still figuring out a tongue-swing puzzle creates friction. Trust me.

Ingredient farming for this build: you need a lot of dandelion fluff (daytime, hilltops) and nightshade petals (nighttime, forest floor near tree roots). I do a dawn loop: wake at meadow cauldron → sprint to hilltops for dandelion fluff → magpie to forest → nightshade route under the redwoods → cauldron → brew ten Tailwinds, five Shadow Steps. Takes about fifteen minutes once you know the route.

Best biomes for speedsters: the meadow (open terrain for paraglider dives), the mountain (long plunges with recovery windows). Worst biome: wetland, where mistimed tongue swings at high speed throw you into the water constantly.

The Puzzle Solver (Solo)

This is for players who enjoy the Shade System and want to break every puzzle in the most elegant way possible.

Key potions: Gust (move objects at range), Smoke Screen (bypass territorial creatures while you work), and Water Breathing (the lake has submerged puzzle rooms most players never find).

Key abilities: Shade placement speed (the quick-tap trick) and tongue bridge anchoring. You'll spend a lot of time positioning shades at precise angles and holding tongue connections. Patience matters more than reflexes.

The puzzle solver approach finds things speedsters miss. That submerged room in the lake? Has a pressure-plate puzzle that rewards you with a permanent tongue range increase. Not potion-based, not scroll-based - it's a hidden upgrade that literally makes your frog's tongue longer. The puzzle solver playstyle is the only one that finds this organically.

Ingredient focus: morning dew (dawn, spiderwebs), bog pearls (wetland creatures), and charcoal (burned campfires in the forest). You can't farm these in volume - they're gated by time-of-day and creature interactions. This build rewards planning ahead rather than burst farming.

The Social Mouse (Co-op Focus)

Playing with friends changes everything about Hela. With two to four players, you rarely need the Shade System at all - you have real people standing on pressure plates. Puzzles that take a solo player minutes of shade-switching take a co-op group seconds.

Key potions for co-op: Tailwind (everyone should have it), Light (one person carries it for cave sections), and the secret Frog Shrine blessing. In co-op, potion effects don't transfer between players, so everyone needs their own supply. This means ingredient farming takes longer but you can split up and cover more ground.

Co-op exclusive tricks:

• Two players can tongue swing from each other. Player A aims at a distant branch, Player B aims at Player A, both swing simultaneously. The combined momentum yeets Player B. It's hilarious and actually useful for crossing the widest mountain gaps.

• Four players can form a tongue chain. A→B→C→D, each anchoring to the next, creating a living bridge. I've only pulled this off once with three friends and it was the most chaotic, joyful minute of gaming I've had this year.

Best platform for co-op: local split-screen on a big TV. Online works fine but the latency makes tongue-chaining harder. On Nintendo Switch 2, each player can use a single Joy-Con, which is surprisingly functional for Hela's simple control scheme.

The Completionist (Mixed)

This "build" is about efficiency. You want to find everything, and you want to do it without wasting time.

Key potions: one of everything. Completionists need the full toolkit because you never know which puzzle requires which potion. Brew in batches of five at each cauldron you discover.

Route: I do completionist cleanup runs biome by biome, starting with the meadow and working up to the mountain. The Ice Core Crystal in the mountain gives you the hidden cauldron map fragment, which you then use to revisit anything you missed. It's a designed-in cleanup loop and it's very satisfying.

Completionists should prioritize: the sniff ability upgrade (windmill roof in the village, cuts ingredient hunting time in half), the magpie fast travel (obviously), and the Frog Shrine blessing (tongue range boost makes platforming sections trivial for cleanup).

Don't sleep on the post-game spellbook quests. They're harder than anything in the main story and some of them require potion combinations the main game never asks for. The witch also gives you an upgraded cauldron after five unique potions brewed - visit her cottage to claim it. I missed this on my first run entirely.

Which Playstyle Should You Pick?

If you're playing solo for the first time, I'd recommend starting with the puzzle solver mindset. The game's mechanics are designed around the Shade System and you'll appreciate the design more if you engage with it. Speedster is more fun on a second run when you already know where everything is.

If you have even one friend to play with, co-op is the best way to experience Hela. The game won "Most Entertaining" and "Most Wholesome" at Gamescom 2025 for a reason - something about being tiny mice together just hits different. Four players is chaos, two players is perfect. My partner and I finished the main story in about eight hours of co-op play and it's some of the best couch gaming I've had since It Takes Two.