Dead Cells

Hello everyone!

It’s been a hot minute… okay, a looooong minute… since last time. We’ve been closely tracking your reports, so we're stepping in today to squash the most disruptive bugs weighing down your runs.

While our team is currently head-down cooking up the next Windblown Early Access update (launching later this month 🔥), we wanted to ensure our Dead Cells gang gets the love and care you deserve. This Steam patch focuses strictly on game stability, and we're actively working on dedicated console patches as we speak!

Please find the full breakdown below:

Crash Fixes

● Fixed the most common crash when starting the game by adding memory alignment checks to prevent data serialization issues on 32-bit systems. ● Fixed a null access crash when selecting Dracula's boss cell in Custom Mode while using a fixed number of activated boss cells. ● Fixed an issue where Wolf Trap failed to destroy both traps simultaneously, leading to subsequent null access errors down the line. ● Fixed a null access crash that occurred if the inventory was re-arranged mid-attack while using the Flint or Bone. ● Fixed narrative-driven crashes by adding stability null checks to the Doom Bringer speechdeck. ● Added internal cooldowns to most item-pickup and inventory management UIs. This prevents "can't replace weapon/active" racing conditions, closing out potential exploits and related game crashes.

Localization

● Regenerated texture sheets for Asian fonts to properly display previously missing glyphs and characters.

Linux-only

● Fixed controller issues on Linux by upgrading the SDL library to 2.32.10.

Thank you all for your incredible involvement and for continuing to share your feedback with us. Go enjoy those crash-free runs, see you next time! 💌

Cheers, Bidju & everyone at MT

Community Highlight

@nagurama_

Hey everyone!

It took us a longer time than usual to prepare, but better late than never: the 35th updated The End is Near is here! In this update, we are stuffing in new mobs, weapons, mutations and biome effects all expanding on the curse mechanic, 40+ new head skins, almost 20 new legendary affixes, extra accessibility options and more!

TLDR:

• New additions based on one of our most iconic mechanics, Curse: 3 new mobs, 3 new weapons, 3 new mutations and a new biome effect for you to choose whether you are gonna take the risk for more rewards or not.

• New legendary affixes.

• 40+ new heads for customization options.

• New routing: you can now go to both Return to Castlevania biomes in one run.

• More accessibility options.

**

New Curse Additions:

**

3 new mobs:

• Sore Loser: a cutie who can’t hurt you but is super clingy and annoying, always trying to be close to you and dash through you. When you kill it, you get cursed.

• Doom Bringer: every melee attack from it won’t cause damage, but will apply 2 stacks of curse and stun you, and you will instantly die if you have already got 50 stacks of curse. Sounds pretty fair right?

• Curser: it launches a slow homing projectile that can go through the walls. If you “accidentally” get caught by this projectile, you take damage and 5 stacks of curse. One more surprise! If you get close to it, it will bonk you with its staff.

Please note that cursed mobs won’t spawn randomly in your run! (yeah, we know mobs giving curses sounds a bit scary and even annoying) There is a new biome effect, Cursed Biomes, which features the new cursed mobs in exchange for extra rewards. You can choose to go into it with its rewards, or go to the other biomes that don’t have any scary cursed mobs.

Here is more info about how Cursed Biome works in your run:

• Cursed biomes only spawn in runs with a Boss Cell level 2 or higher (boss fight biomes won’t be cursed).

• Just like biome incentives, there will be a specific icon above the exit to a cursed biome, so that you can have the choice of taking this challenge or just going to the other normal biomes.

• A cursed biome always contains 9 (+/-2) cursed mobs randomly selected from Curser, Sore Loser and Doom Bringer.

• There is, of course, a reward for that risk: all the items dropped in a cursed biome will drop 1 gear level higher, regardless of their source (shop, loots, etc.). The spawn chance of cursed chests also increases by 10% in such biomes.

• There is a cap to the number of cursed biomes that you can go through on your route, depending on the BC level, set as follows: from BC 2 to 5 respectively: 2, 3, 5 and 8 (i.e. in 5BC, there is no cap).

• This cap only limits the number of Cursed Biomes that you can go to in a run, it doesn’t mean that you must go through that many Cursed Biomes to finish your run.

• Once you have hit the cap, no more cursed biomes will appear in that run. Until you have hit the cap, cursed biomes will continue to appear.

• As long as you haven’t reached the cap, biomes always have a 25% chance of being cursed. There will always be at least 1 biome without cursed mobs at any point in your run, no exceptions.

With new infested monsters, we of course prepared more powerful weapons and mutations for you:

3 new weapons:

• Anathema: rip a Mushroom Boi’s heart out to fire a heavy indirect projectile dealing AOE damage. However, there is a price for being an utter savage - you will get cursed if your attack hits anything. Yep, you only get cursed if you hit something. Whoever is creating these curses doesn't care how many mushrooms you tear apart, just if you hit anything afterwards. Makes you think...

• Indulgence: Calls down a ray of vengeful light on the nearest enemy dealing critical damage if you are not cursed. Targets killed by the ray purge you of 3 stacks of curse instead of 1. Fires 1 additional ray per 5 stacks of curse you have (max: 5 per cast).

• Misericorde: inflicts crits if the victim has less than 50% HP. Curses you if the crit doesn't kill its target.

3 new mutations (all colorless):

• Cursed Flask: your health flask has infinite charges but also curses you 20 times each time you use it. But can you survive from those 20 stacks of curse? TAKE CARE, my friends…

• Damned Vigor: upon being dealt fatal damage, you stay alive at 1 HP for 2 seconds. If you kill any enemy while under this effect, you will be saved. Otherwise, when the effect disappears or you get hit while under it, you instantly die without any sort of protection applicable.

• Demonic Strength: Damage increases by 30% if you are cursed. This bonus is increased by 2% per curse stack you have. Cursed Sword counts as 1 stack for this effect (no special bonus for it, but you can still stack curses on top of it).

Also, after digesting a bunch of suggestions from you guys, we’ve done a bunch of reworking and rebalancing on the legendary weapons that needed it.

**

New legendary affixes:

**

• Flawless: NEW Almost Perfect: Killing an enemy within one second after getting hit allows you continue causing crits.

• Gold Digger: NEW Filthy Rich: Crit multiplier increases with your gold.

• Punishment: NEW Punish Combo: Recasts the AOE effect if it kills at least one target.

• Rampart: NEW Mirror Coating: Reflects damage of attacks received while under the effect of the shield's force field. This damage scales with the attack received (i.e., the stronger the attack is, the more damage the shield reflects).

• Cocoon: NEW Parry Streak: Each consecutive parry reduces Cocoon's cooldown the next time it starts.

• Emergency Door: NEW Armoured Door: The door can't be destroyed by enemies (except for bosses).

• Bone: NEW Whirlwind: Increases the last attack's whirlwind duration by 2 sec with every enemy it kills.

• Wrenching Whip: NEW Retiarus: The first attack throws 3 crow's feet in front of you (with the same internal cooldown as the grenade affix).

• Explosive Decoy: NEW Foolproof: The cooldown of the item is instantly reset if its explosion doesn't hit at least one target.

• Barrel Launcher: Triple Bullet (i.e. not a new affix, but we changed the one it had before).

• Leghugger: NEW Mitosis: Summons 2 Leghuggers instead of 1.

• Assault Shield: NEW Charged Dash: Holding the shield button will charge a stronger version of the dash, which can then be used by releasing the button.

• Ice Shards: NEW Bouncy: Projectiles bounce on the ground twice before disappearing.

• Quick Bow: NEW Sharpshooter: Critical hits will refill one ammo.

• Bladed Tonfas: NEW Lacerator: Only uses the first attack of the combo.

• Grappling Hook: NEW Octavio: Also fires a chain behind you.

• Tesla Coil: NEW Double Use: You can use the skill twice. Each use has its own cooldown.

• Lightning Rods: NEW Double Use: You can use the skill twice. Each use has its own cooldown.

**

Some notable balances:

**

• The Bank is slightly easier in 2, 4 and 5BC. Yeah, SLIGHTLY...

• The Throw Master's bone projectile deals less damage in Return to Castlevania DLC.

• Alienation rework: Instead of healing the player per curse reduced, it will now heal the player when the curse is lifted, with the amount of health recovered based on the max amount of curses you had (for that curse instance). The effect only starts triggering when the player had more than 5 curses, and requires 35 stacks of curse to fully heal you.

New head customization:

What do we have in the Tailor’s Daughter’s secret stash?

• Flame heads based on various appearances of the Beheaded along the years to make sure you are always in a suit and tie.

• Bosses’ heads such as the Queen, the Time keeper, etc. As if you could become as badass as those bosses with their smart brain.

• And lots of strange and secret heads, such as the Cell Head, are waiting for you!

New routing

• We've also changed the connections between biomes:

• Added an exit to Master's Keep in High Peak Castle.

• Added exits to Corrupted Prison and Ossuary in Castle's Outskirts.

• Added an exit to Dracula's Castle (early) in Corrupted Prison and Toxic Sewers.

• Added an exit to Black Bridge in Dracula's Castle (early).

• Added an exit to Defiled Necropolis in Ossuary.

• Replaced the exit to Fractured Shrines in Defiled Necropolis by an exit to Graveyard.

• Added a light source in the Mimic Hint lore room, when it spawns in Forgotten Sepulcher.

• Added an exit to Dracula's Castle (late) in Mausoleum, Guardian's Haven and Clock Room.

Yes, this does mean that you can now go to both Return to Castlevania biomes in one run...

**

More accessibility options:

**

• Added two new sets of control icons and an option to select them. You can select either "Legacy" (current icons), "New" (a new, cleaner set) or "Big" (accessibiliy focused, easier to read).

• Changed the Daily Challenge's boss arrow opacity, for better visibility.

• Added new input options for the "going through platform" action.

• Added options to change the controller triggers' deadzone.

• Reworked the Auto-hit assist mode option. It will no longer force the use of a melee weapon in the first slot.

• Added an option to add a background to most texts in the game. The background's color and opacity can be adjusted.

• The left stick can now be used to scroll through item descriptions in the pause menu.

• Added options to fully invert the player and camera movement.

• Added a bunch of options to tweak the camera's behavior. The influence of the player's movement, combat, or points of interest can be customized.

• Split the "controller sticks deadzone" into two options, one for each stick.

• Added an outline option for spikes.

• Added a button to center the minimap on the player.

And that’s all!

**To the players - Thank you for everything. Thank you for all of your dedication, passion, and feedback. Dead Cells wouldn't be what it is today without all of you.

And a huge thanks to everyone who worked on the game, from previous Motion Twin members to everyone at Evil Empire.

If you want to stay up to date on what the two teams are doing next, you can check out Windblown and The Rogue Prince of Persia below:**

Evil Empire

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2717880/The_Rogue_Prince_of_Persia/

Motion Twin

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1911610/Windblown/

Cheers,

EE & MT

Hey everyone,

We've just pushed a new patch for the beta test of Update 35, including some Balancing works, adjustments on Graphics & UI as well as Music & Sfx, and Bug Fixes of course!

*** This patch only affects the current beta test, if you are not participating in the beta, this does not affect you.**

If you want to take part in the ongoing beta, just check out (https://steamcommunity.com/games/588650/announcements/detail/3717214876920515900?snr=2_9_100003_) for instructions on how to access.

Here's everything we changed:

Balancing:

• Misericorde now applies curses only if the attack doesn't crit.

Graphics & UI:

• Added a Minimap icon when a biome is incentivized.

Music & Sfx:

• Updated a bunch of sounds for the new mobs.

Bug fixes:

• Fixed World Map displaying deprecated paths.

• Fixed a bunch of translation problems.

• Fixed Cursed and Incentivized biomes not reloading properly with the "Multiple lives" assist option on.

• Fixed a crash when using the Emergency Door against Conjunctivius.

• Fixed some projectiles not displaying outlines when the options was on.

• Fixed some heads unlocking in the Training Room.

• Fixed some visual and music bugs when killing Dracula in Training Room.

• Fixed Richter not being able to jump down platform.

• Fixed the number of cursed biomes always being 0 in some seeds.

That's all and thanks for taking part!

Cheers, XYZ, Matt, EE & MT

Hey everyone!

The upcoming update The End is Near is now in Beta! In case you missed the alpha post, in this update we are stuffing in new mobs, weapons, mutations and biome effects all expanding on the curse mechanic, 40+ new head skins, almost 20 new legendary affixes, extra accessibility options and more!

Before we go through the updated list of new content for the update, a quick note here for the players who didn't like the idea of Cursed mobs and might’ve missed our patches in the Alpha phase. **Instead of making cursed mobs spawn randomly in your run , we have introduced a new effect on biomes, Cursed Biomes, to make sure that players can choose to have cursed mobs in their run or not. **Also, the players who choose to take the risk will now get rewards for taking on that risk. We are gonna elaborate more on this mechanic below!

Now, let’s get to the full list of new content:

New Curse additions:

3 new mobs:

• Sore Loser: a cutie who can’t hurt you but is super clingy and annoying, always trying to be close to you and dash through you. When you kill it, you get cursed.

• Doom Bringer: every melee attack from it won’t cause damage, but will apply 2 stack of curse and stun you, and you will instantly die if you have already got 50 stacks of curse. Sounds pretty fair right?

• Curser: it launches a slow homing projectile that can go through the walls. If you “accidentally” get caught by this projectile, you take damage and 5 stacks of curse. One more surprise! If you get close to it, it will bonk you with its staff.

New Cursed Biome system:

• Cursed biomes only spawn in runs with a Boss Cell level 2 or higher (boss fight biomes won’t be cursed).

• Just like biome incentives, there will be a specific icon above the exit to a cursed biome, so that you can have the choice of taking this challenge or just going to the other normal biomes.

• A cursed biome always contains 9 (+/-2) cursed mobs randomly selected from Curser, Sore Loser and Doom Bringer.

• There is, of course, a reward for that risk: all the items dropped in a cursed biome will drop 1 gear level higher, regardless of their source (shop, loots, etc.). The spawn chance of cursed chests also increases by 10% in such biomes.

• There is a cap to the number of cursed biomes that you can go through on your route, depending on the BC level, set as follows: from BC 2 to 5 respectively: 2, 3, 5 and 8 (i.e. in 5BC, there is no cap).

• This cap only limits the number of Cursed Biomes that you can go to in a run, it doesn’t mean that you must go through that many Cursed Biomes to finish your run.

• Once you have hit the cap, no more cursed biomes will appear in that run. Until you have hit the cap, cursed biomes will continue to appear.

• As long as you haven’t reached the cap, biomes always have a 25% chance of being cursed. There will always be at least 1 biomes without cursed mobs at any point in your run, no exceptions.

3 new weapons:

• Anathema: rip a Mushroom Boi’s heart out to fire a heavy indirect projectile dealing AOE damage. However, there is a price for being an utter savage - you will get cursed if your attack hits anything.

• Indulgence: Calls down a ray of vengeful light on the nearest enemy dealing critical damage if you are not cursed. Targets killed by the ray purge you of 3 stacks of curse instead of 1. Fires 1 additional ray per 5 stacks of curse you have (max: 5 per cast).

• Misericorde: inflicts crits if the victim has less than 50% HP. Curses you if the attack doesn't kill its target.

3 new mutations (all colorless):

• Cursed Flask: your health flask has infinite charges but also curses you 20 times each time you use it.

• Damned Vigor: upon being dealt fatal damage, you stay alive at 1 HP for 2 seconds. If you kill any enemy while under this effect, you will be saved. Otherwise, when the effect disappears or you get hit while under it, you instantly die without any sort of protection applicable.

• Demonic Strength: Damage increases by 30% if you are cursed. This bonus is increased by 2% per curse stack you have. Cursed Sword counts as 1 stack for this effect (no special bonus for it, but you can still stack curses on top of it).

New legendary affixes:

• Flawless: NEW Almost Perfect: Killing an enemy within one second after getting hit allows you continue causing crits.

• Gold Digger: NEW Filthy Rich: Crit multiplier increases with your gold.

• Punishment: NEW Punish Combo: Recasts the AOE effect if it kills at least one target.

• Rampart: NEW Mirror Coating: Reflects damage of attacks received while under the effect of the shield's force field. This damage scales with the attack received (i.e., the stronger the attack is, the more damage the shield reflects).

• Cocoon: NEW Parry Streak: Each consecutive parry reduces Cocoon's cooldown the next time it starts.

• Emergency Door: NEW Armored Door: The door can't be destroyed by enemies (except for bosses).

• Bone: NEW Whirlwind: Increases the last attack's whirlwind duration by 2 sec with every enemy it kills.

• Wrenching Whip: NEW Retiarus: The first attack throws 3 crow's feet in front of you (with the same internal cooldown as the grenade affix).

• Explosive Decoy: NEW Foolproof: The cooldown of the item is instantly reset if its explosion doesn't hit at least one target.

• Barrel Launcher: Triple Bullet (i.e. not a new affix, but we changed the one it had before).

• Leghugger: NEW Mitosis: Summons 2 Leghuggers instead of 1.

• Assault Shield: NEW Charged Dash: Holding the shield button will charge a stronger version of the dash, which can then be used by releasing the button.

• Ice Shards: NEW Bouncy: Projectiles bounce on the ground twice before disappearing.

• Quick Bow: NEW Sharpshooter: Critical hits will refill one ammo.

• Bladed Tonfas: NEW Lacerator: Only uses the first attack of the combo.

• Grappling Hook: NEW Octavio: Also fires a chain behind you.

• Tesla Coil: NEW Double Use: You can use the skill twice. Each use has its own cooldown.

• Lightning Rods: NEW Double Use: You can use the skill twice. Each use has its own cooldown.

Some notable balances:

• The Bank is slightly easier in 2, 4 and 5BC. Yeah, SLIGHTLY...

• The Throw Master's bone projectile deals less damage in Return to Castlevania DLC.

• Alienation rework: Instead of healing the player per curse reduced, it will now heal the player when the curse is lifted, with the amount of health recovered based on the max amount of curses you had (for that curse instance). The effect only starts triggering when the player had more than 5 curses, and requires 35 stacks of curse to fully heal you.

New head customisation:

What do we have in the Tailor’s Daughter’s secret stash?

• Flame heads based on various appearances of the Beheaded along the years.

• Bosses’ heads such as the Scarecrow Hat.

• And lots of strange and secret heads, such as the Cell Head, are waiting for you!

New routing

We've also changed the connections between biomes:

• Added an exit to Master's Keep in High Peak Castle.

• Added exits to Corrupted Prison and Ossuary in Castle's Outskirts.

• Added an exit to Dracula's Castle (early) in Corrupted Prison and Toxic Sewers.

• Added an exit to Black Bridge in Dracula's Castle (early).

• Added an exit to Defiled Necropolis in Ossuary.

• Replaced the exit to Fractured Shrines in Defiled Necropolis by an exit to Graveyard.

• Added a light source in the Mimic Hint lore room, when it spawns in Forgotten Sepulcher.

• Added an exit to Dracula's Castle (late) in Mausoleum, Guardian's Haven and Clock Room.

Yes, this does mean that you can now go to both Return to Castlevania biomes in one run...

More accessibility options

• Added two new sets of control icons and an option to select them. You can select either "Legacy" (current icons), "New" (a new, cleaner set) or "Big" (accessibiliy focused, easier to read).

• Changed the Daily Challenge's boss arrow opacity, for better visibility.

• Added new input options for the "going through platform" action.

• Added options to change the controller triggers' deadzone.

• Reworked the Auto-hit assist mode option. It will no longer force the use of a melee weapon in the first slot.

• Added an option to add a background to most texts in the game. The background's color and opacity can be adjusted.

• The left stick can now be used to scroll through item descriptions in the pause menu.

• Added options to fully invert the player and camera movement.

• Added a bunch of options to tweak the camera's behavior. The influence of the player's movement, combat, or points of interest can be customized.

• Split the "controller sticks deadzone" into two options, one for each stick.

• Added an outline option for spikes.

• Added a button to center the minimap on the player.

We have also done some tweaks and fixed some bugs with this build:

Graphics & UI:

• Added Latin-American Spanish and Polish as language options.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed Death Outfits being able to equip custom heads.

• Fixed Spoiler Level's Lightning Walls being able to kill entities immune to lava.

• Fixed Legendary Hook cooldown resetting when only one of the hooks missed.

• Fixed a crash when loading a save with speedrun data.

If you wanna take part in this Beta test, please follow the instructions below:

• Go to your Steam game library.

• Right click on Dead Cells and click "properties".

• Select the tab "Betas".

• In the first dropdown box select "Beta".

• Click close and wait for the upload to finish downloading.

• Start playing.

Bug reports can be sent to us with the following form to help us collect all information on bugs and crashes in one place, this helps us to fix them quicker! Bugs & Crashes Report

For feedback and suggestions, just leave them here or on our official Discord - there are two channels called update35-beta-discussion and update35-beta-feedback.

Cheers, XYZ, Matt, EE & MT

• Official Discord

• Official Reddit

• Motion Twin Twitter

• Dead Cells' Facebook

Hey everyone,

We've just pushed the fifth patch for the alpha test of Update 35, including some Balancing works and Bug Fixes.

*** This patch only affects the current alpha test, if you are not participating in the alpha, this does not affect you.**

If you want to take part in the ongoing alpha, just check out (https://steamcommunity.com/games/588650/announcements/detail/3693568442144329950?snr=2_9_100000_) for instructions on how to access.

Here's everything we changed:

Balancing:

• Curser can now detect the player and shoot its projectile through walls.

• Fixed Mimic despawning when trying to jump a very long distance.

• Reduced Doom Bringer's speech frequency.

• Increased Doom Bringer's walking speed when targeting a player.

• Doom Bringer's stun attack radius was increased, and it can now hit through walls.

• Doom Bringer's attack now gives two curses instead of one.

• Alienation's minimum curse was reduced to 5.

Bug fixes:

• Fixed Death's instant death attack sending the player back to Prison when in Training Mode or Boss Rush.

• Fixed heads' particle effects sometimes not playing.

• Fixed some lore rooms still spawning in Dilapidated Arboretum with the "Disable Lore Rooms" option enabled.

• Fixed a crash when Dracula's Castle tries to generate a Cursed Chest.

• Fixed Giant sometimes getting stuck during the double fist slam attack animation.

• Fixed some ranged multi-hit weapons (Scarecrow's Sickles, Cross, Bible, etc.) not dealing any damage after hitting an unbreakable door.

• Fixed head unlock notification not replacing text variables with the right number.

• Ygdar Orus Li Ox can no longer be removed from the inventory by resetting mutations.

• Fixed Glitch head not unlock retro-actively.

• Fixed Boss Rush Servants just standing there when skipping the fight.

That's all and thanks for taking part!

Cheers, XYZ, Matt, EE & MT

Hey everyone,

We've just pushed the fourth patch for the alpha test of Update 35 yesterday, including some Balancing works and Bug Fixes.

*** This patch only affects the current alpha test, if you are not participating in the alpha, this does not affect you.**

If you want to take part in the ongoing alpha, just check out (https://steamcommunity.com/games/588650/announcements/detail/3693568442144329950?snr=2_9_100000_) for instructions on how to access.

Here's everything we changed:

Balancing:

• Reduced Cursed Biomes chance and increased the number of Cursed Mobs in a Cursed Biome.

• Buffed Alienation's healing by reducing the curse threshold for a max heal.

Bug fixes:

• Fixed mob animations not being the right speed, when the mob was taunted or slowed.

• Fixed Smoke Bomb damage buff not affecting projectiles.

• Fixed Cursed Mobs replacing normal mobs instead of adding themselves to the list.

• Prevent Boss Rush modified Concierge from jumping when the other instance is also jumping or throwing a fire wave.

• Fixed not being able to roll in the other direction while holding the Morning Star.

That's all and thanks for taking part!

Cheers, XYZ, Matt, EE & MT

Hey everyone!

During the past few weeks we've seen a bunch of different opinions on the new curse additions, especially the cursed mobs…

We fully understand the pushback on mobs that give curses, as curse and its instadeath effect has always been an optional experience that gave extra rewards if you chose to add some spicy danger in your run.

In this update so far, the cursed mobs were unavoidable at 2BC+, even with a low chance of them spawning, and they didn't give any reward for the risk. So the choice was removed. For people who want to consciously avoid instadeath – no bueno.

Well, we like to trumpet that we work with the community when we add updates so, 'toot toot', we've listened to you, we've had lots of discussions and have come up with a new solution.

New 'Cursed Biome' system

The previous system where, from 2BC+, cursed mobs could randomly spawn in a random biome is gone.

Instead, we have introduced a new type of biome, Cursed Biome, which features the new cursed mobs in exchange for extra rewards. NOTE: This is not a new biome, it is a new effect on biomes.

And of course, you can choose to go into the cursed biome with its rewards, or go to the other biomes that don't have any scary cursed mobs.

How Cursed Biome works:

• Cursed biomes only spawn in runs with a Boss Cell level 2 or higher.

• Just like biome incentives, there will be a specific icon above the exit to a cursed biome, so that you can have the choice of taking this challenge or just going to the other normal biomes.

• A cursed biome always contains 6 cursed mobs randomly selected from Curser, Sore Loser and Doom Bringer. This number might change based on alpha/beta feedback.

• There is, of course, a reward for that risk: all the items dropped in a cursed biome will drop 1 gear level higher, regardless of their source (shop, loots, etc.). The spawn chance of cursed chests also increases by 10% in such biomes.

• There is a cap to the number of cursed biomes that you can go through on your route, depending on the BC level, set as follows: from BC 2 to 5 respectively: 2, 3, 5 and 8 (i.e. in 5BC, there is no cap). This cap only limits the number of Cursed Biomes that you can go to in a run, it doesn’t mean that you must go through that many Cursed Biomes to finish your run. Once you have hit the cap, no more cursed biomes will appear in that run. Until you have hit the cap, cursed biomes will continue to appear.

• As long as you haven’t reached the cap, there can be only up to 2 exits to cursed biomes at once. There will always be at least 1 biome without cursed mobs at any point in your run, no exceptions.

This system has been implemented in-game with a new patch, you just need to update the game now to have it in your run.

We believe that this is a good solution that respects the feedback players gave us, while also honouring our vision for the update, but we are still in Alpha phase so we still need feedback on this new system. The numbers are easily adjustable, so if this new setup works on a basic level then we can tweak chances, percentages, ratios afterwards - if it's mathematical, we can rebuild it, we have the technology.

We also made other changes!

Balancing

• Alienation rework. Instead of healing the player per curse reduced, it will now heal the player when the curse is lifted, with the amount of health recovered based on the max amount of curses they had (for that curse instance). The effect only starts triggering when the player had more than 10 curses.

• Slightly nerfed Anathema's damage.

• Reduced Dracula's Castle (late) scroll fragments count, to match other biomes at the same depth.

• Added a small cooldown to Emergency Triage forcefield.

Graphics & UI

• Tweaked the update banner to improve readability.

Quality of life

• Added a tooltip for Cursed Mobs in the Boss Cell Selection UI.

• The Tailor's Daughter will now create notifications for any head you might unlock when talking to her.

• Removed the "Leave the Body" prompt of the throne fountain, when at 5BC.

You can leave feedback in the comments here, or on our official Discord – there are two channels called update35-alpha-discussion and update35-alpha-feedback specifically for these conversations, so please use them!

As always, this patch only affects the current alpha test, if you are not participating in the alpha, this does not affect you. If you want to take part in the ongoing alpha, just check out (https://steamcommunity.com/games/588650/announcements/detail/3693568442144329950?snr=2_9_100000_) for instructions on how to access.

Cheers, XYZ, Matt, EE & MT

Hey everyone,

We've just pushed the second patch for the alpha test of Update 35 yesterday, including some Balancing works and Bug Fixes.

*** This patch only affects the current alpha test, if you are not participating in the alpha, this does not affect you.**

If you want to take part in the ongoing alpha, just check out (https://steamcommunity.com/games/588650/announcements/detail/3693568442144329950?snr=2_9_100000_) for instructions on how to access.

Here's everything we changed:

Balancing:

• Reduced the chance of having Cursed Mobs in a run to 40%.

• Increased maximum number of levels where Cursed Mobs can appear.

• Increased the spawning chance and the max number of Cursed Mobs per biome.

• Removed some affixes from Anathema's pool: Pierce, Super Pierce and Fire Bullet.

• Greatly increased Anathema's damage.

• Anathema now only applies one curse when hitting an enemy.

• Changed Anathema's legendary affix to Global Shield on Use.

Bug fixes:

• Fixed Servant Head not unlocking properly. It now unlocks after having killed all the servants at least 15 times.

• Fixed Katana's dash attack not doing any damage if it hits a door.

• Fixed Doom Bringer not dealing any damage when the player has more than 50 curses.

• Fixed text backgrounds appearing in undiscovered parts of the minimap.

• Fixed Deep Pockets not working with arrow or grenade affixes.

• Fixed Blue Hole head not unlocking properly

• Fixed custom heads' animation stopping in some situations.

• Fixed Sewer's Tentacle movement particles not being played enough and being the wrong color.

• Fixed a bunch of custom heads' horizontal and vertical offsets.

• Fixed Boss Cell head not unlocking retroactively.

• Fixed Anathema dealing melee damage.

• Fixed Anathema's AoE damage not scaling to player and weapon stats.

• Fixed a crash sometimes happening when reloading the game when the Owl was active.

• Fixed Damned Vigor not letting the player resurrect when killing a boss.

• Fixed heads having a downwards offset in the head selection UI.

• Fixed Collector's menu flickering when opening it.

• Fixed being able to use the flask at full health, when equipped with both Tainted Flask and Cursed Flask.

That's all and thanks for taking part!

Cheers, XYZ, Matt, EE & MT

Hey everyone,

We've just pushed a new patch for the alpha test of Update 35, including some Balancing works, Graphics & UI change and Bug Fixes.

*** This patch only affects the current alpha test, if you are not participating in the alpha, this does not affect you.**

If you want to take part in the ongoing alpha, just check out the post yesterday for instructions on how to access.

Here's everything we changed:

Balancing:

• Increased Anathema's damage.

• Added a cap to the number of levels that can have cursed monsters. This cap is different per difficulty.

• Added a 50% chance for a run to not have cursed monsters.

• Dead Inside no longer lets you use the Health Flask.

Graphics & UI:

• Removed the crit display for Anathema.

Bug fixes:

• Fixed custom head animations not being updated after door transitions.

• Fixed exit doors sometimes facing the wrong way.

• Fixed Damned Vigor not working in training room.

• Fixed Sore Loser not dropping the Indulgence blueprint.

• Fixed the cooldown display of Decoy and Maria's Cat.

• Fixed a crash when exiting the game while Medusa was performing her Petrification attack.

• Fixed a crash sometimes happening when using the Leghugger or Serenade.

Cursed mob spawns

We also wanted to give more detail on the system that manages the way the new mobs spawn. It wasn't finished in time for the initial open alpha patch, but the new one released today contains a first implementation of the system.

Here is how it works in any given biome:

• We start by checking if the run will have "cursed" mobs or not. This will be a 40% chance of happening (50% in the build you're playing on), meaning that in 60% of 2+BC runs, there won't be any cursed mobs at all.

• If your run contains cursed mobs, we then check to see in how many biomes you have encountered them up until now. If this value is equal to the cap, you won't see any new cursed mobs in the rest of the run. The cap depends on the BC level and is set as follows, from BC 2 to 5 respectively: 2, 3, 5 and 8 (i.e. in 5BC, there is no cap).

• Then, if you are both in a "cursed mobs" run AND you haven't reached the cap, we roll to see if any of the three mobs spawn. In the next alpha update, the probability of a mob spawning will be 60% (50% in the current build) and up to 2 of each mob can spawn in the biome. All of these are SEPARATE: I can very well roll and get no cursed mobs at all, or 1 Curser, 2 Sore Losers and no Doom Bringer. These values are the same across the board and do not vary between biomes.

As a reminder, please note that the cursed mobs start spawning in 2BC and never earlier. They start spawning after the first boss in 2BC, and then spread to the rest of the game as you progress towards 5BC, in which they can spawn anywhere.

That's all and thanks for taking part!

Cheers, XYZ, Matt, EE & MT

Hey everyone!

Looooong time no see, I am XYZ, the new marketing dudette of Dead Cells, who will be the main contact with you guys in the future. And for those who might be concerned about Matt, he is doing good, still keeping an eye on Dead Cells, but also taking more responsibility related to a new project!

Anyway, let's get to the point: this time, we are back with something fresh and it's actually video game related!

The 35th free update of Dead Cells "The End is Near" has an alpha available to test right now!

Just be aware that the Alpha and Beta phases might take a bit longer than usual this time, so if the official release comes later than usual, just be cool, it's on the way!

In this update, we’ve expanded on one of the most iconic mechanics of Dead Cells, the dreaded Curse, with 3 new weapons, 3 new mobs and of course, 3 new mutations coming into the game!

We know that curses and the insta-death that comes with them is scary and sometimes even annoying, so a whole update based around them might be too much. But put down the pitchforks because we think that these new additions make the mechanic more fun, add variety and just make the game more interesting. Plus, this is an alpha so we will be taking any community suggestions seriously!

Also, after digesting a bunch of suggestions from you guys, we’ve done a bunch of reworking and rebalancing on the legendary weapons that needed it. Plus, several new balances and new accessibility features are available too!

As well as these hardcore additions, the Tailor’s daughter has also learned some new hairstyles to add some variety & fun to your costumes!

New Curse additions:

3 new weapons:

• Anathema: rip a Mushroom Boi’s heart out to fire a heavy indirect projectile dealing AOE damage. However, there is a price for being an utter savage - you will get cursed if your attack hits anything. Yep, you only get cursed if you hit something. Whoever is creating these curses doesn't care how many mushrooms you tear apart, just if you hit anything afterwards. Makes you think...

• Indulgence: Calls down a ray of vengeful light on the nearest enemy dealing critical damage if you are not cursed. Targets killed by the ray purge you of 3 stacks of curse instead of 1. Fires 1 additional ray per 5 stacks of curse you have (max: 5 per cast).

• Misericorde: inflicts crits if the victim has less than 50% HP. Curses you if the attack doesn't kill its target.

3 new mobs:

• Sore Loser: a cutie who can’t hurt you but is super clingy and annoying, always trying to be close to you and dash through you. When you kill it, you get cursed 3 times.

• Doom Bringer: every melee attack from it won’t cause damage, but will apply 1 stack of curse and stun you, and you will instantly die if you have already got 50 stacks of curse. Sounds pretty fair right?

• Curser: it launches a slow homing projectile that can go through the walls. If you “accidentally” get caught by this projectile, you take damage and 5 stacks of curse. One more surprise! If you get close to it, it will bonk you with its staff.

These mobs don't have specific biomes where they spawn, instead they have a small chance of appearing in any biome from 2BC+.

For the moment, these 3 new mobs are tuned specifically for the alpha to have a guaranteed spawn in Prisoner's Quarters on BC4+ for testing purposes, but that will change in Beta test!

3 new mutations (all colorless):

• Cursed Flask: your health flask has infinite charges but also curses you 20 times each time you use it.

• Damned Vigor: upon being dealt fatal damage, you stay alive at 1 HP for 2 seconds. If you kill any enemy while under this effect, you will be saved. Otherwise, when the effect disappears or you get hit while under it, you instantly die without any sort of protection applicable.

• Demonic Strength: Damage increases by 30% if you are cursed. This bonus is increased by 1% per curse stack you have. Cursed Sword counts as 1 stack for this effect (no special bonus for it, but you can still stack curses on top of it).

New legendary affixes:

• Flawless: NEW Almost Perfect: Killing an enemy within one second after getting hit allows you continue causing crits.

• Gold Digger: NEW Filthy Rich: Crit multiplier increases with your gold.

• Punishment: NEW Punish Combo: Recasts the AOE effect if it kills at least one target.

• Rampart: NEW Mirror Coating: Reflects damage of attacks received while under the effect of the shield's force field. This damage scales with the attack received (i.e. the stronger the attack is, the more damage the shield reflects).

• Cocoon: NEW Parry Streak: Each consecutive parry reduces Cocoon's cooldown the next time it starts.

• Emergency Door: NEW Armored Door: The door can't be destroyed by enemies (except for bosses).

• Bone: NEW Whirlwind: Increases the last attack's whirlwind duration by 2 sec with every enemy it kills.

• Wrenching Whip: NEW Retiarus: The first attack throws 3 crow's feet in front of you (with the same internal cooldown as the grenade affix).

• Explosive Decoy: NEW Foolproof: The cooldown of the item is instantly reset if its explosion doesn't hit at least one target.

• Barrel Launcher: Triple Bullet (i.e. not a new affix, but we changed the one it had before).

Some notable balances:

• The Bank is slightly easier in 2, 4 and 5BC. Yeah, SLIGHTLY...

• The Throw Master's bone projectile deals less damage in Return to Castlevania DLC.

New head customisation:

And last, what do we have in the Tailor’s Daughter’s secret stash?

• Flame heads based on various appearances of the Beheaded along the years.

• Bosses’ heads such as the Scarecrow Hat.

• And lots of strange and secret heads, such as the Cell Head, are waiting for you!

New routing

We've also changed the connections between biomes:

• Added an exit to Master's Keep in High Peak Castle.

• Added exits to Corrupted Prison and Ossuary in Castle's Outskirts.

• Added an exit to Dracula's Castle (early) in Corrupted Prison and Toxic Sewers.

• Added an exit to Black Bridge in Dracula's Castle (early).

• Added an exit to Defiled Necropolis in Ossuary.

• Replaced the exit to Fractured Shrines in Defiled Necropolis by an exit to Graveyard.

• Added a light source in the Mimic Hint lore room, when it spawns in Forgotten Sepulcher.

• Added an exit to Dracula's Castle (late) in Mausoleum, Guardian's Haven and Clock Room.

Yes, this does mean that you can now go to both Return to Castlevania biomes in one run...

More accessibility options

• Added two new sets of control icons and an option to select them. You can select either "Legacy" (current icons), "New" (a new, cleaner set) or "Big" (accessibiliy focused, easier to read).

• Changed the Daily Challenge's boss arrow opacity, for better visibility.

• Added new input options for the "going through platform" action.

• Added options to change the controller triggers' deadzone.

• Reworked the Auto-hit assist mode option. It will no longer force the use of a melee weapon in the first slot.

• Added an option to add a background to most texts in the game. The background's color and opacity can be adjusted.

• The left stick can now be used to scroll through item descriptions in the pause menu.

• Added options to fully invert the player and camera movement.

• Added a bunch of options to tweak the camera's behavior. The influence of the player's movement, combat, or points of interest can be customized.

• Split the "controller sticks deadzone" into two options, one for each stick.

• Added an outline option for spikes.

• Added a button to center the minimap on the player.

And… that’s all!

How to access the alpha:

Back up your save first. The alpha shouldn't affect your saves but better to be safe than sorry. If the worst happens then there’s a save restore hack detailed here: https://steamcommunity.com/games/588650/announcements/detail/1696100248017690442

Then follow these instructions to access the alpha:

• Go to your Steam game library.

• Right click on Dead Cells and click "properties".

• Select the tab "Betas".

• In the first dropdown box select "public alpha".

• Click close and wait for the upload to finish downloading.

• Start playing.

Just bear in mind that we are just in the alpha, bugs and even crashes can happen, and some tweaks will be implemented before its official release. And your feedback is more than welcome regarding our future tweaks of course! You can leave them in the comments here, or on our official Discord (Link at the bottom of the post) – there are two channels called update35-alpha-discussion and update35-alpha-feedback specifically for these conversations, so please use them!

Bug reports can be sent to us with the following form to help us collect all information on bugs and crashes in one place, this helps us to fix them quicker! Bugs & Crashes Report

Cheers, XYZ, Matt, EE & MT

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Hey everyone!

We've just released a hotfix to address some bugs we missed in the Clean Cut update, so this will be a short post. It's also late on a hot Thursday afternoon, so my energy levels aren't high enough for a long one...

There are now legendary affixes for both new weapons that we introduced: Giant Comb: Also deals critical damage while you are airborne. Deals additional damage if both you and the target are airborne. Sewing Scissors: Enemies killed by the special effect of this weapon count three times for your kill streak.

We also identified a critical bug where by fixing it has removed unlocks that were incorrectly awarded to players. So some of you might notice some slight rollbacks on features related to biome visits that you didn't unlock (for example, having access to bosses in Boss Rush that you hadn't actually encountered before). But you shouldn't have had access in the first place, so just be happy for the time you had together </3

Full patch notes will come shortly in the usual place!

Cheers, Matt, EE & MT

Hello!

The "Clean Cut" update is here! 'Tailored' (wink wink) to improve the whole Dead Cells experience with a bunch of trims and cuts for every part of the game, as well as adding some new toys to play with!

TLDR

• 2 new weapons

• Change your head to Bobby with most outfits

• Speedrun mode

• Boss Rush now has customisation options and Return to Castlevania bosses (including upgraded versions)

• Training Room has a ton of new customisation

New items

First up we have the two new weapons, the Sewing Scissors and Giant Comb, both indispensable tools for a clean cut. Head to the Tailor's room to discover them both.

Sewing Scissors: a huge pair of scissors that scale with Survival. Will instakill all enemies that it hits, if one of the enemies is killed by the attack's standard damage. Gotta target those rats.

Giant Comb: a Brutality weapon that launches enemies upwards on the first hit and deals critical damage to enemies that are not on the ground.

New NPC

Turns out, the Tailor was hiding a daughter all along, and by some coincidental massive stroke of fortune, she has just the skills to replace your head with the flame "Bobby version" on most skins. Crazy world...

New Speedrun mode

Finally, we have the brand new Speedrun Mode with in-game time tracking for speedrunners, or anyone else who wants to know how much time they've spent trying to make it to Hand of the King and failing. Activate this mode to track and display the completion time of each biome and track your previous best times.

On top of all that we’ve also done a ton of upgrading, reworking and rebalancing...

Upgrades

• We've added a new “DIY” mode in Boss Rush. With this mode, you can choose whichever bosses you want to face in a run.

• The 3 bosses from Return to Castlevania have also been added to Boss Rush and Training Room.

• Enhanced bosses have been tweaked in the Boss Rush.

• Training Room has multiple new options for you to practice your skills:

• New UIs to spawn a specific weapon with a set Level, Quality and Legendary-ness.

• New UI to choose a certain number of scrolls

• New UI to choose the overall scaling level of the Training Room, based on the values of a selected biome.

• Added the mini-bosses to the mob spawners

• Added a bunch of different traps to the mob rooms.

• Added the Return to Castlevania Bosses.

• Bosses aren't scaled down to level 1 anymore! (no more 20 minutes fights)

• Changed the UI to select mobs to a grid-based one.

• Added a Training Dummy for DPS calculation.

There are now no excuses left to not get good.

Reworks

Mutations:

• Combo: there is a true combo meter now! The mutation has been changed to enable a damage increase with every melee hit in a 2.5 sec window (of course the window refreshes after every hit). It scales exponentially, go crazy with it!

• Tainted Flask: it can recharge even if your flask is not totally empty. We also added 1 more elite into every biome when the mutation is equipped.

• Networking: you can just mark enemies with ranged attacks now, there doesn't need to be an actual projectile stuck in the mob's body.

• Berserker: it now stacks and renders you immune to stuns.

• Necromancy: It scales with the max health of the mobs you kill, which means you can get more healing by killing a stronger enemy. The cap of up to a “maximum 50% HP” is eliminated, but healing power is less effective as you get closer to max health.

• Frostbite: now stacks with slow effects and acts as a full stack on frozen targets.

• Dead Inside: now doubles your life but prevents ALL healing sources except healing with recovery.

• Disengagement: there is no longer a cooldown but can only trigger once per biome. (I know, I know…)

Other:

• Slow effect stacks up to 5 times. Each stack has a greater slowing effect, then the affected enemy is frozen at the fifth stack.

• The Mimic can now appear randomly in shops outside of the Bank biome. Mwahahaaaa

• Switched the Dracula Castle (Hard) Cursed Chest chance to 10%.

• Added a new Petrification affect icon (when you're frozen by Medusa).

Rebalancing

Return to Castlevania

**Weapons: **

• Whip Sword: whip form now passes shields.

• Whip Sword's transformation attack hitbox tended to bug, it should now be consistent with its visual FX, which means it won’t only hit one single target anymore.

• The ghosts gathered by Death Scythe's have a slightly smaller explosion radius.

• Bible is a heavy weapon.

• Throwing Axe can no longer roll Fire Bullet affix.

• Alucard's Shield has better parry windows, and the whole combo instead of “the next hit” crits.

• Rebound Stone: it deals slightly more damage and has a smaller but longer window before being able to "catch it" (i.e., trigger the crit). Its cooldown now starts upon its destruction.

• Holy Water has a bigger vertical hitbox and deals damage in a more logical way. By logical, we mean the flame itself can cause damage now.

• Medusa Head deals more damage and bumps further.

• We added some security measures to prevent the Cat from being targeted by enemies. There is also a long cooldown when the Cat is killed by the Queen.

Mobs:

• Medusa's flurry attacks should now have a small pause after the end of the attack.

• Haunted Armor (the one with an axe) should now activate at a slightly longer range.

• Elite Merman should now fire 2 big fireballs instead of a big one and a normal one.

Bosses:

• Dracula (Humanoid)'s fire pillars are now slightly easier to avoid (in terms of intervals) but are not rollable anymore.

• Dracula (Demon) is now a beast, along with Buer, Werewolves and Medusa (Crowbar wise).

And loads of bug fixes! For all of these check out the full patchnotes here.

Boardgame Kickstarter coming soon

The Kickstarter for the upcoming 1-4 player roguelite Dead Cells boardgame is going live on 16 May!

It just so happens that we received a prototype at the office literally 2 hours ago so we have some sneaky photos to share below. Bear in mind that this is a prototype so nothing you see in the photos is definite!

If you want to follow the Kickstarter campaign to support it or just to get more information, follow this link.

Cheers, Matt, EE & MT

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Hey everyone,

Hope you're all doing alright!

First things first, we just published a fix to resolve incompatible version issues with save files for Mac, Linux, and Windows. Let us know if stuff's still breaking with our bug report form. Fingers crossed that that link will stay un-clicked...

Anyway, the upcoming Clean Cut update is now in beta, one step closer to arriving for all the wary players avoiding the testing phase. Here's a recap of everything coming, you can skip to the end if you already know what we've stuffed into this one.

New Survival Weapon: Sewing Scissors. Instakills all enemies it hits, as long as at least one of them dies to the weapon's standard damage.

New Brutality Weapon: Giant Comb. Throws your enemies upwards, and deals critical damage to airborne mobs!

New NPC: Tailor's Daughter. Find her in the Tailor's Room, and talk to her to freely change the look of your head.

New Speedrun Mode option: Activate it to track and display the completion time of each biome. Also tracks your previous bests and compares them!

New Boss Rush DIY Mode: Lets you choose whichever bosses you want to face in a run. The 3 Bosses from Return to Castlevania are also now accessible in Boss Rush.

Training Room reworks: We added a bunch of options to streamline the experimentation process, such as:

• New UIs to spawn a specific weapon with a set Level, Quality and Legendary-ness.

• New UI to choose a certain number of scrolls

• New UI to choose the overall scaling level of the Training Room, based on the values of a selected biome.

• Added the mini-bosses to the mob spawners

• Added a bunch of different traps to the mob rooms.

• Added the Return to Castlevania Bosses.

• Bosses aren't scaled down to level 1 anymore! (no more 20 minute fights)

• Changed the UI to select mobs to a grid-based one.

• Added a Training Dummy for DPS calculation.

Balancing

• Slow effects now stack up to 5 times. Each stack has a greater slowing effect, then the affected enemy is frozen at the fifth stack.

Mutation reworks:

• Berserker: Can now stack, and renders you immune to stuns.

• Combo: Enable a damage increase with every melee hit in a 2.5 sec window (of course the window refreshes after every hit). It scales exponentially, go crazy with it!

• Dead Inside: Doubles your life but prevents ALL healing sources.

• Disengagement: No more cooldown!.. but can only trigger once per biome.

• Frostbite: Now stacks with slow effects and acts as a full stack on frozen targets.

• Necromancy: Also now grants recovery instead of healing. It scales with the max health of the mobs you kill, which means you can get more recovery by killing a stronger enemy. The cap has been removed, but it’s less effective as you get closer to max health.

• Networking: Marks enemies with ranged attacks now, there doesn't need to be an actual projectile stuck in the mob's body anymore.

• Tainted Flask: Can recharge even if your flask is not totally empty. It also adds 1 more elite into every biome when equipped.

• What Doesn't Kill You: Now grants recovery instead of healing.

Return to Castlevania balancing:

• Dracula (Demon), Buer, Werewolves and Medusa are now considered to be Beasts (crits with the Crowbar).

• Dracula (Humanoid)'s fire pillars are now slightly easier to avoid (in terms of intervals) but are not rollable anymore.

• Elite Mermans should now fire 2 big fireballs instead of a big one and a normal one.

• Haunted Armor (the one with an axe) should now activate at a slightly longer range.

• Medusa's flurry attacks should now have a small pause after the end of the attack.

• Holy Water has a bigger vertical hitbox, and the flame now deals damage.

• Bible is now considered to be a heavy weapon.

• Medusa Head deals more damage and bumps further.

• Throwing Axe can no longer roll the Fire Bullet affix.

• Rebound Stone now deals slightly more damage, and has a smaller but longer window before being able to "catch it" (i.e., trigger the crit). Its cooldown now starts upon its destruction.

• Whip Sword - Whip Form now passes through shields.

• Whip Sword's transformation attack hitbox tended to bug, it should now be consistent with its visual FX, which means it won’t only hit one single target anymore.

• Added a long cooldown when the Cat is killed by the Queen.

• Alucard's Shield has better parry windows, and the whole combo will now crit after a parry.

• The ghosts gathered by Death's Scythe now have a slightly smaller explosion radius.

Graphics & UI:

• Added a new Petrification effect icon.

Level design:

• Switched the Dracula's Castle (Hard) Cursed Chest chance to 10%.

• The Mimic can now appear randomly in shops outside of the Bank.

Bug fixes:

• Fixed Agitated Pickpocket being able to hit through Global Shields.

• Fixed Bible's projectile disappearing after a cutscene.

• Fixed Bobby Head's disappearing in the Tailor's Room.

• Fixed Cursed Sword not disabling other inventory items when switched slots.

• Fixed Diverse Deck - Foresight tagging the blocked attacks as if they were blocked by a shield.

• Fixed Gold Plating not protecting against Dracula - Final Form's grab.

• Fixed Heal Flask glow effect also affecting the player's glow effect.

• Fixed Morning Star's chain detaching itself from the base.

• Fixed Pets' behavior being broken in Dracula's opening cutscene.

• Fixed Serenade destroying deployables when activated.

• Fixed a crash in Shipwreck, when a platform is destroyed at the same time as Mushroom Boi is spawned.

• Fixed a crash when an Automaton falls off a platform while using its Dash Attack.

• Fixed a crash when saving a reloading while a Petrified enemy is on screen.

• Fixed a crash when using the Emergency Door during the Queen boss fight.

• Fixed a softlock when falling off the map during_ Dracula - Final Form_, while all platforms were destroyed.

• Fixed being able to duplicate Turrets using the Emergency Door.

• Fixed the Shop Mimic's hitboxes being too big compared to the visual.

• Fixed weapons' crit indicator sometimes not displaying.

That's the lot, if you're interested in playing the beta read the warning and instructions below!

**

How to access the beta:

** NOTE: Playing the beta will lock your chosen save slot to update 34. You won't be able to go back to update 33 with this save slot during the entire duration of the beta. However, your progress in the beta will be automatically merged into the main game when we release update 34 officially.

If you want to try out the beta and don't know how, first BACKUP YOUR SAVE FILE, then follow these instructions:

• Go to your Steam game library.

• Right click on Dead Cells and click "properties".

• Select the tab "Betas".

• In the first dropdown box select "Beta".

• Click close and wait for the upload to finish downloading.

• Start playing.

You can leave any feedback here or on our official Discord - there are two channels called update34-beta-discussion and update34-beta-feedback. We also have a bug report form for issues and bugs.

Next time we'll be back with the official update announcement and hopefully some extra bits of news!

Cheers, Matt, EE & MT

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Hello everyone,

We've just pushed a new alpha patch focused on fixing lots of small bugs and visual changes.

This only affects the current alpha test, if you are not participating in the alpha, this does not affect you.

If you want to take part in the ongoing alpha, just check out our previous posts for instructions on how to access.

Here's everything we changed:

Training Room

• Fixed missing texts for various new UIs in Training Room
• Fixed a crash when restarting in Training Room
• Fixed training room dummy being destroyed when going through the door
• Updated sprite for the training difficulty picker interaction
• Fixed a crash when spawning colorless legendary item
• Fixed legendary items always being level 1 in Training Room
• Fixed Death not being in Training Room
• Fixed Dracula's Final Form not loading in Training Room
• Camera no longer tracks Tick in Training Room

Bosses & Boss Rush

• Fixed Dracula Final Form's meteors spawning too low during the interphase (aka Genkidama)
• Fixed Dracula's exit in Boss Rush looking rough
• Removed Modified Humanoid Dracula's speed bonus during his last phase
• In Boss Rush, Modified Humanoid Dracula's big fireballs have been recolored to better signal their difference from the normal version of the fight
• Fixed Death's AI breaking after being interrupted during its combo attack
• Fixed Humanoid Dracula's hitbox on melee attack (the first hit had no hitbox)
• Increased cooldown to Modified Humanoid Dracula after shooting fireballs to make it easier to catch

Mutations

• Armadillopack can't parry unparryable projectiles anymore (was problematic on Boss Rush Dracula)
• Necromancy nerf (lower base heal)
• Combo mutation damage bonus now scales more slowly with the number of stacks
• Buff to slow diminishing factor (i.e. it decreases less quickly and thus should be more efficient)

Other

• Late game Dracula's Castle's Cursed Chest now has 10% chance of spawning
• Shop Mimic no longer spawns behind Z-doors (mostly BC doors) (when outside of the Bank)
• Fixed an issue with Tailor's Daughter menu (you could open multiple instance of it)
• Fixed a crash happening with the Tailor upon unlocking the Scissors

Thanks for taking part!

Cheers, Matt, EE & MT

Hello!

We're back for a new alpha test! The "Clean Cut" update is designed to improve the whole Dead Cells experience with a bunch of trims and cuts for every part of the game, and now we just need to make some tweaks before we officially release it. So what's in store?

New items

Firstly, we have two new weapons, the Sewing Scissors and Giant Comb, both indispensable tools for a clean cut.

Sewing Scissors: a huge pair of scissors that scale with Survival. Will instakill all enemies that it hits, if one of the enemies is killed by the attack's standard damage.

Giant Comb: a Brutality weapon that deals critical damage to enemies that are not on the ground.

New NPC

Turns out, the Tailor was hiding a daughter all along, and by some coincidental massive stroke of fortune, she has just the skills to replace your head with the flame "Bobby version" on all skins. Crazy world...

New mode

Finally, we have the brand new Speedrun Mode with in-game time tracking for speedrunners, or anyone else who wants to know how much time they've spent trying to make it to Hand of the King and failing.

We’ve also done a ton of upgrading, reworking and rebalancing.

Upgrades

• We've added a new “DIY” mode in Boss Rush. With this mode, you can choose whichever bosses you want to face in a run.

• The 3 bosses from Return to Castlevania have also been added to Boss Rush and Training Room.

• Enhanced bosses have been tweaked in the Boss Rush.

• Training Room has multiple new options for you to practice your skills now. Too much to list here, just go check it out and have a nice surprise :)

Reworks

Mutations:

• Combo: there is a true combo meter now! The mutation has been changed to enable a damage increase with every melee hit in a 2.5 sec window (of course the window refreshes after every hit). It scales exponentially, go crazy with it!

• Tainted Flask: it can recharge even if your flask is not totally empty. We also added 1 more elite into every biome. It’s kinda experimental, we might revert it at the end, and it’s all up to you the reaction and feedback we get.

• Networking: you can just mark enemies with ranged attacks now, there doesn't need to be an actual projectile stuck in the mob's body.

• Berserker: it now stacks (it caps at 90%) and renders you immune to stuns.

• What doesn't kill you: now grants recovery instead of healing. You have to earn your healing now.

• Necromancy: also now grants recovery instead of healing. It scales with the max health of the mobs you kill, which means you can get more recovery by killing a stronger enemy. The cap of up to a “maximum 50% HP” is eliminated, but it’s less effective as you get closer to max health.

• Frostbite: now stacks with slow effects and acts as a full stack on frozen targets.

• Dead Inside: now doubles your life but prevents ALL healing sources.

• Disengagement: there is no longer a cooldown but can only trigger once per biome. (I know, I know…)

Other:

• Slow effect stacks up to 5 times. Each stack has a greater slowing effect, then the affected enemy is frozen at the fifth stack.

• The Mimic can now appear randomly in shops outside of the Bank biome. Mwahahaaaa

Rebalancing

Return to Castlevania

**Weapons: **

• Whip Sword: whip form now passes shields.

• Whip Sword's transformation attack hitbox tended to bug, it should now be consistent with its visual FX, which means it won’t only hit one single target anymore.

• The ghosts gathered by Death Scythe's have a slightly smaller explosion radius.

• Bible is a heavy weapon.

• Throwing Axe can no longer roll Fire Bullet affix.

• Alucard's Shield has better parry windows, and the whole combo instead of “the next hit” crits.

• Rebound Stone: it deals slightly more damage and has a smaller but longer window before being able to "catch it" (i.e., trigger the crit). Its cooldown now starts upon its destruction.

• Holy Water has a bigger vertical hitbox and deals damage in a more logical way. By logical, we mean the flame itself can cause damage now.

• Medusa Head deals more damage and bumps further.

• We added some security measures to prevent the Cat from being targeted by enemies. There is also a long cooldown when the Cat is killed by the Queen.

Mobs:

• Medusa's flurry attacks should now have a small pause after the end of the attack.

• Haunted Armor (the one with an axe) should now activate at a slightly longer range.

• Elite Merman should now fire 2 big fireballs instead of a big one and a normal one.

Bosses:

• Dracula (Humanoid)'s fire pillars are now slightly easier to avoid (in terms of intervals) but are not rollable anymore.

• Dracula (Demon) is now a beast, along with Buer, Werewolves and Medusa (Crowbar wise).

And that's it!

How to access the alpha:

Back up your save first. The alpha shouldn't affect your saves but better to be safe than sorry. If the worst happens then there’s a save restore hack detailed here: https://steamcommunity.com/games/588650/announcements/detail/1696100248017690442)

Then follow these instructions to access the alpha:

• Go to your Steam game library.

• Right click on Dead Cells and click "properties".

• Select the tab "Betas".

• In the first dropdown box select "Alpha - Not for the faint hearted".

• Click close and wait for the upload to finish downloading.

• Start playing.

As always, everything is still being tweaked according to feedback. So some things may break, have strange interactions or just straight up crash the game.

If you want to leave feedback you can do so in the comments here, or on our official Discord (link at the bottom of the post) - there are two channels called update34-alpha-discussion and update34-alpha-feedback specifically for these conversations, so please use them!

Bug reports can be sent to us with the following form to help us collect all information on bugs and crashes in one place, this helps us to fix them quicker! https://forms.clickup.com/f/2b318-1807/WG3GMB5KUFQB4XRAHX

Cheers, Matt, EE & MT

• Official Discord

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• Dead Cells' Facebook

Hey,

We've seen that some Mac users are still getting crashes. First things first, sorry that it's taking some time to completely fix this issue.

We need some more information to figure out exactly where this is coming from, so if you're still getting a crash on Mac, we're asking that you follow the instructions below and send us the resulting information USING THIS FORM - https://forms.clickup.com/f/2b318-1807/WG3GMB5KUFQB4XRAHX

Instructions:

• Go to the game folder located in Steam/steamapps/common/Dead Cells

• Right Click on deadcells.sh

• Open with > Terminal

• Report any errors from the terminal

Of course, if anyone else is having problems then you can use the same form to report the issue you're having.

Thanks for your patience, Matt, EE & MT

Hi everyone,

Hope you've been enjoying the Return to Castlevania DLC!

No rest for the wicked, the devs have been hard at work fixing some issues that came up with the DLC release and we've just released a hotfix to address a decent chuck of them:

Major

• Crash fix for Mac

• Fix steam deck save issue - This shouldn't have been a save wipe situation, but a save lock situation, so your saves should be OK. If you're still having problems let us know

• Fix parallax rendering on Castle's Outskirts

• Fix softlock on Dracula's Castle for players without spider rune

Minor

• Fixed the Katana cancel technique being wrongfully removed from the game.

• Fixed a crash when loading a very old save.

• Fixed random crashes in Richter Mode when using certain affixes.

• Fixed Richter Mode Vania-moves disappearing when trying to sell them.

• Fixed a softlock in Castle's Outskirts when teleporting through a door with Snake Fangs.

• Fixed Medusa's Head clipping through walls.

• Fixed World Map vibrating up and down in certain resolutions.

• Fixed random crashes on the title screen.

• Fixed a random crash when blocking an attack.

• Fixed Legendary Items spawning in biomes where loot is disabled.

• Fixed Queen's reflected items not having the proper trail color.

Have a great weekend and let us know if you've noticed anything else that needs fixing with this form - https://forms.clickup.com/f/2b318-1807/WG3GMB5KUFQB4XRAHX

Cheers, Matt, EE & MT

• Official Discord

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• (https://deadcells.wiki.gg/wiki/Dead_Cells_Wiki)

Hey everyone,

It's finally here, the Dead Cells: Return to Castlevania DLC is available now!

Storm Dracula's Castle on a new quest, meet famous heroes, fight classic monsters with iconic weapons and confront Death & Dracula in epic boss fights, all backed by original and re-imagined tunes! You can even play as all the main characters from the famous series with 20 new outfits!

This is our tribute to the main inspiration of Dead Cells so we have put a ton of our time and effort into making this the best possible Castlevania x Dead Cells experience, we hope you enjoy it ^^

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2101430/Dead_Cells_Return_to_Castlevania/

Our resident marketing artist Steve has created a pretty epic gameplay trailer to get you in the mood for some manic vampire slaying, check it out here:

So what exactly is in the DLC? Well, there's a main quest featuring Alucard & Richter Belmont, where you'll fight your way several times through both Dracula's Castle and the main island on the way to a final showdown with Dracula in his iconic Throne Room.

Straight from Prisoner's Quarters you'll find an entrance to...

Castle Outskirts

Before you can enter Dracula's Castle, you'll need to venture through the gardens, across the moat and up the ramparts while avoiding traps and fighting off countless evil minions.

Don't get distracted by the view and keep your eyes peeled for hidden pathways, secret rooms and a certain energetic feline...

Dracula's Castle

Moonlight streaming through stained glass windows. Ornate pillars holding up ceilings of magnificent halls. Towering spires pushing into the night sky over fortified battlements.

The beauty of Dracula's Castle hides a dark heart, as undead creatures wait to pounce from every direction. Make your way from the entrance hall to the top of the castle and find the lair of the most powerful vampire of them all...

Boss Fights

This DLC comes with not 1, but 3 new bosses! Death and Dracula take no prisoners and you are no exception. Be prepared for epic battles against majestic backdrops where the winner takes it all...

If you manage to beat these two creatures then prepare yourself for our most ambitious boss showdown yet!

Weapons

14 new weapons can be won in this DLC, like the Vampire Killer, Throwing Axe & Holy Water. Each classic Castlevania item has been translated into the fast-paced combat of Dead Cells while keeping their original essence.

Wield whips, crosses and holy powers to carve your way through hordes of the undead and tame the evil powers of the night.

Richter Mode

Hidden somewhere in the castle is a bizarre room that turns you into the indomitable vampire hunter, Richter Belmont!

Unlocking a moveset inspired by his appearance in Symphony of the Night, you'll storm through a section of the castle finding vania moves and classic weapons that will push all the nostalgia buttons.

Soundtrack

We're giving you access to an alternative soundtrack made of 51 of the original Castlevania tunes, that can be heard across the entire game.

On top of this, we've taken the 12 most iconic tracks, such as Vampire Killer, Bloody Tears and Simon Belmont's Theme, and reimagined them in the style of Dead Cells as a soundtrack for this DLC, while preserving the Castlevania ambiance of course.

Outfits

Unlock 20 outfits as you progress through the castle, letting you roleplay as all your favourite characters like Alucard, Richter Belmont, Simon Belmont, Maria Renard, Trevor Belmont, Sypha Belnades, or even Dracula!

How much is it?

$9.99/9,99€ (or equivalent). The increase in price from the previous DLCs reflects the extra work we've put in to this DLC, as well as the use of the Castlevania IP. The dev team have been working on this for a long time and we think that it shows!

AMA

We'll be running an AMA on r/gaming tomorrow at 16:00 CET, we'll post a link in the Community Hub and on social media, so come ask us all your questions!

That's all, hope you all enjoy the DLC!!

Cheers, Matt, EE & MT

• Official Discord

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• Motion Twin Twitter

• Dead Cells' Facebook

• (https://deadcells.wiki.gg/wiki/Dead_Cells_Wiki)

Hi everyone,

We've just released a hotfix for a load of small bugs and quality of life issues, here are the main fixed bugs:

• Crash with Diverse Deck in custom mode

• Glow effect issues with weapons and mobs

• Generation issue with campfire lore room

• Crash when using key to unlock Cavern biome

• Flawless outfits not dropping

• Duplicate icons for Hotline Miami outfit

Full list here.

Thanks, Matt, EE & MT

Hey everyone,

We're back with another indie crossover update - Everyone is Here Vol. II! We've added more weapons, skills and skins from our favourite indie games, so thanks to all the studios that let us add a piece of their creations to Dead Cells. Watch out for a bundle going live in the next few hours, more on that below...

So, who's in the update?

Terraria

I'm not sure if we can really call Terraria an indie anymore, but they definitely started as one! In any case, we're introducing 'The Guide' and the heavenly sword Starfury!

Striking enemies with this gloriously pink sword causes fragments of stars to fall from the sky, dealing critical hits to other enemies around you. The drawback is that it's a relatively slow and static weapon, but chuck a few dodge rolls in there and you'll be fine.

Shovel Knight

Yeah yeah, we know we've already got a shovel in Dead Cells... But luckily the King Scepter exists, so Shovel Knight will be shoulder bashing your enemies to launch himself into the air, then spinning around the screen drilling enemies into the ground with critical hits. Bouncing on an enemy let's you charge again, so see how long you can keep the chain going!

We needed to make it a bit tricky to keep hitting enemies from above as it could be too easy to cheese enemies with it (cough Pure Nail cough), so the movement is quite sensitive to make it hard to master.

Hotline Miami

Breaking down doors and pummelling the dazed enemies on the other side just got even more fun! Jacket and his trusty Baseball Bat are swinging into Dead Cells, with not one, not two, but three different masks.

The Baseball bat crits on stunned enemies, so you're basically required to hit enemies while they're down... Look out for the damage number VFX pulled from Hotline Miami too!

Katana ZERO

Another head scratcher for us - we've already got a majestic katana in-game so what could Subject ZERO possibly bring to Dead Cells? Well, simply put, the answer is throwing stuff at people!

Throwable Objects stun your enemies, allowing you to close the distance and get some shots in, or give you time to charge the katana's dash attack... You've only got 3 charges of throwable stuff, so you'll need to kill enemies to refill your stash.

Slay the Spire

Translating a deckbuilding card game into Dead Cells was pretty tricky but, after several days of tearing out their hair, the devs managed it.

The Diverse Deck translates each of the 4 classes from Slay the Spire into one complex skill. You will initially gain a passive power from one class. You can play with this passive for as long as you like, then activating it provides a one-off boost effect, and the skill moves on to the next class.

You will start with Barricade, which gives you an amount of permanent bonus health for the period that this 'class' is in play. Each successful parry grants bonus health for a short period of time. On activation, all current bonus health is removed and damage is dealt depending on the quantity removed. Then the skill moves on to Catalyst.

Catalyst makes your melee attacks poison the enemies they hit. On activation, nearby enemies lose all their damage-over-time stacks, and are dealt the remaining damage of these effects in one blow.

Next up is Electrodynamics, which creates a lightning orb that circles around you, dealing electric damage on impact with enemies. Each time you use the skill that you have in your other slot, an additional orb appears. On activation, all your active orbs are destroyed and one lightning strike hits a nearby enemy for each orb destroyed that way. After this, the skill moves on to the final class...

Foresight lets you avoid the first instance of damage every few seconds. On activation, you become immune to all sources of damage for a period of time, then the skill goes back to Barricade and the cycle keeps going.

It all sounds a bit complicated but in practice it's pretty intuitive!

Risk of Rain

Last, but definitely not least, one of the great roguelites of the last few years is arriving in the form of The Commando wielding the Laser Glaive!

The Laser Glaive is irresistibly drawn to enemy after enemy, rebounding around the screen dealing damage to as many foes as possible. It gains damage after each extra enemy it hits and will start dealing crits after hitting multiple enemies. Not bad for crowd control...

Where do I get all this?!

The book of clues in the Prisoner's Quarters has mysteriously gained new pages - figure out these new riddles then complete the challenges to unlock the outfits.

Just like last time, bizarre-looking lore rooms have appeared throughout the island, containing these strange & powerful objects from other worlds...

Bundle

We're running a complete-the-set bundle with all the games included (except Terraria & Hotline Miami) for just one week! It's right here so if you're missing a couple of games in your library or you have a friend who you want to get into some great indie games then check it out!

If you want the complete details of everything in the update, with bug fixes and all that stuff, then go check out the full (https://dead-cells.com/patchnotes) on our site.

We're also aware of a couple of issues which we're working on a hotfix for:

• Crash with Diverse Deck in custom mode

• Glow issue with some outfits and Assault Shield

• Generation issue with campfire lore room

• Crash when using key to unlock Cavern biome

That's it for now, this update was a ton of fun to work on, so we hope you like it as much as we liked creating it :D We can't quite believe that this insane line-up of games all allowed us to pay a little tribute to them in Dead Cells, you've gotta love the indie community!

We haven't forgotten about adding more 'pure' Dead Cells content, that adventure will continue in 2023 and keep an eye out for some news in December...

Cheers, Matt, EE & MT

• Official Discord

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Community Highlights:

@alm4nditte

Re-drawer

Вас зовут Павел?

Hello,

The latest and hopefully last hotfix for the Boss Rush update is out.

We thought we'd fixed the missing outfits and the soft lock when you die against Time Keeper in the Boss Rush... turns out that in fact we hadn't, so this hotfix should rectify those two bugs now!

Sorry for the delay!

Cheers, Matt, EE & MT

Hello,

A hotfix just came out to fix several annoying bugs from the Boss Rush update, as well as adding Custom Mode settings to the Boss Rush.

Quality of Life

• Added Custom Mode settings to Boss Rush

Bug fixes

• Fixed missing door after stage 2 of Boss Rush

• Fixed Boss Rush outfits not appearing at the Collector

• Fixed item in Backpack disappearing after equipping a two-handed weapon

• Fixed missing background in Panchaku lore room

• Fixed softlock when dying to Timekeeper in Boss Rush

• Fixed softlock when playing Boss Rush without the Spider Rune

• Fixed crash when fighting servants in Boss Rush

• Fixed Flint not scaling with gear level

• Fixed Conjunctivius' projectiles being offset from their hitbox

• Fixed Concierge always giving its Flawless achievement

If you're still having issues with outfits not appearing (or other bugs) can you please fill in this bug report form - https://forms.clickup.com/f/2b318-1807/WG3GMB5KUFQB4XRAHX

Cheers, Matt, EE & MT

Hey everyone,

The Boss Rush update is available to play right now! Face off against 3 or 5 bosses back-to-back to unlock new goodies. Oh, and look out for some new souped-up boss versions too...

We've made a little trailer to show off the highlights:

Plus, for the people who prefer visual/audio over text, I quickly whipped up a VLOG to showcase the content:

Here's the TLDR and then we'll get stuck into the details!

• 4 stages to fight through

• 3 bosses back-to-back

• 3 enhanced bosses back-to-back

• 5 bosses back-to-back

• 5 enhanced bosses back-to-back

• New weapon, skill & mutation

• 8 skins

• Customisable statue

• New legendary affixes

**

How do you access the Boss Rush?

** There is a new area, accessible through the basement door in Prisoner's Quarters, where you can also access the Training Room and the Tailor. Once you've gone through the basement door just follow the corridor until you come to the third door with the red boss head next to it.

Through this door, you'll find another 4 doors, leading to 4 different stages where you will fight:

• 3 bosses back-to-back

• 3 enhanced bosses back-to-back

• 5 bosses back-to-back

• 5 enhanced bosses back-to-back

What the hell are enhanced bosses?! Basically we've given them even more ways to kick your ass. Think extra limbs, healing powers, buddies to help them kill you - all the good stuff!

The bosses are randomly selected from the following tiers:

Tier 1 - Concierge, Conjunctivius, Mama Tick

Tier 2 - Time Keeper, The Giant, The Scarecrow

Tier 3 - Hand of the King, The Servants (just the final fight, not the entire tower!), The Queen

Spoiler Boss is not in the Boss Rush BUT it is on the list to add later, if possible.

The stages with 3 bosses back-to-back will pit you against one Tier 1 boss, then one Tier 2 and finally, you guessed it, one Tier 3. Simple!

The stages with 5 bosses follow a similar path, but here you'll be fighting two Tier 1 bosses, then two Tier 2s, then one Tier 3. Not quite so simple...

NOTE: You must have encountered a boss in a normal run for it to appear in the Boss Rush. You don't need to have killed it, just seen it.

There is a choice between Brutality, Tactics and Survival at the start of each stage - choosing one will automatically give you stats focused on the one you chose, plus a relevant amulet, and give you a choice of builds focused on the one you chose in the following room.

You'll also be able to choose mutations before you start the first boss fight.

Between each Tier stage you will enter a transition where there are shops, items, weapon upgrade/rerolls, mutation rerolls and health refills (depending on your BC level of course). So in a 3 boss run this area will appear after the Tier 1 and Tier 2 fight. In a 5 boss run it will appear after the two Tier 1 fights, then after the two Tier 2 fights.

**

New unlockables

** There are more goodies to unlock as you progress through the stages, if you can of course!

New stuff will unlock depending on the length (3 bosses or 5 bosses), the mode (Normal bosses or Modified bosses), the difficulty (0+BC, 3+BC or 5BC) and your ability to flawless the entire run or not.

Yep, the 5-boss 5BC Flawless reward is going to be a bit hard to get!

Weapon - Glyph of Peril (Tacticsl): A ranged attack with 7 attacks in its combo. The more health that you're missing, the more of the combo unlocks. Critical hits will start after the third hit of the combo.

Skill - Taunt (Brutality): Taunt an enemy, making it relentessly pursue you for 20 seconds. In doing so, it drops its guard, so it takes 75% more damage from melee attacks during its pursuit. I'll let you discover exactly what taunts the Beheaded uses, but I don't think you'll be disappointed...

Mutation - Wish (Colourless): The next weapon you pick up is legendary. Once chosen it cannot be removed (like the YOLO mutation).

Skins: There are 8 new skins to discover, with various barbarian/boss themes and some snazzy glowing parts.

Customisable statue: You've got a fan! They're making a grand statue of you as tribute, and as you progress through the Boss Rush, you'll be able to add shiny new elements to it. Just try not to let your head get too big!

**

New/updates legendary affixes

** We're also adding more legendary affixes to flesh out our last update. These are:

• Spartan Sandals: Super Bump - bumps stuff even further

• Oil Sword: Oil on Kill (again, quite self explanatory: spreads oil on the ground on kill)

• Flint: Instant Charge - all attacks are fully charged without needing to hold the button

• Katana: Deflect Bullets - all uncharged attacks deflect bullet (but not grenades)

• Killing Deck: Random Effect - every card applies a random debuff on targets (any kind of DoT, crowd controls, etc. with a few exceptions that wouldn't make sense like item-specific effects)

• Money Shooter: Pay to Win - refund the shot's cost if it kills a target + innate super pierce. Can trigger multiple times if a shot kills several enemies.

• Knockback Shield: Super Bump

• Wave of Denial: Super Bump

• Pollo Power: Miracle of Life - eggs hatch into chicks that attack nearby enemies

Full patchnotes are here.

Cheers, Matt, EE & MT

• Official Discord

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• Motion Twin Twitter

• Dead Cells' Facebook

Community Highlights:

@alm4nditte

K-BoNe

(https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2778817540)

Hi everyone,

We've just released a hotfix for the Boss Rush update beta.

Balancing

• Conjunctivius balancing:

• All projectiles are deleted when screaming.

• The Shock Attack warning more accurately represents the hitbox of the attack.

• Tentacles stop attacking during the bullet hell phase.

• Tentacles swipe attack now has a visual warning.

• Modified Conjunctivius attacks cooldown increased.

• Boss Rush doors now get locked if the player hasn't unlocked enough bosses.

• The new Skins now get unlocked with cells.

• Boss Rush mode door does not appear if the player has never seen Hand of the King.

• Boss Rush shops now only have main stats items.

Quality of life

• Beheaded now spawns next to Mentor Knight after winning a Boss Rush run.

Bug fixes

• Fixed a softlock when skipping Mentor Knight's dialogue.

• Fixed a crash with the Grenade on Destroy affix.

• Fixed Boss Rush disabled items showing up in shops.

• Fixed Boss Rush disabled items dropping from bosses.

• Fixed Boss Rush survival amulets not having scrolls.

• Fixed Boss Rush legendary altars spawn

• Fixed Mama Tick not attacking when angered with Taunt.

• Fixed Giant's arms sometimes visually going crazy.

• Fixed Queen not dropping cells at the end of a Boss Rush run.

• Fixed legendary Flint scaling.

Cheers, Matt, EE & MT

• Official Discord

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• Motion Twin Twitter

• Dead Cells' Facebook

Hey everyone,

The Boss Rush update has moved into its beta phase. We haven't been able to sort out the issue with Linux and Mac so the beta is only accessible on Windows, sorry about that!

For an overview of the update check out the alpha post. Here are the changes for the beta:

Balancing:

• Modified Queen is now impervious to damage during her slicing interphases.

• Modified Scarecrow no longer spawns Spikers.

• Modified Conjunctivius now has 15% less health and does not deactivate platforms periodically anymore.

• The Servants are more aggressive in Boss Rush. Euterpe has been slowed down.

• Glyphs of Peril and Magic Bow are now Tactics only.

• Taunt now has a cooldown.

• Taunt legendary affix - Troll: now taunts everything in range instead of just one target.

• Glyphs of Peril legendary affix: Overshield on crit: grants 4% max health as overshield (blue health) for 15 seconds, stackable.

• The 3 new items must now be unlocked for cells at the Collector.

• Disabled the Giant Killer, Wish and spoiler weapon in Boss Rush.

• Wish no longer works on weapons that have been recently equipped or are in the backpack.

• Added a triple treasure at the start of the Boss Rush.

• Rebalanced Boss Rush shops' prices and content.

• Cells no longer drop from bosses in the Boss Rush, except the final one. The final boss doesn't drop gold anymore.

Graphics & UI:

• A few modified bosses recolors were changed.

• Added all missing dialogues for Mentor Knight.

• Polished intro cutscene of Modified Concierge.

Music & SFX/VFX:

• Boss rush transitions now have background music.

• Added SFX for Mentor Knight, Glyphs of Peril and the Beheaded Fan.

• Changed VFX of Glyphs of Peril.

Bug Fixes

• Arrow and Grenade affixes now properly scale with item damage multipliers

• Malaise no longer increase in transition areas

• Fixed a few items not displaying their synergy with stun in their descriptions

• Fixed not being able to reset equipped Perks before starting a Boss Rush run

• Fixed Servants fight music

• Fixed Wish turning an already legendary weapon into the same weapon and getting consumed

• Fixed two-handed weapons not having the same quality on both hands

• Fixed talisman rerolling in Boss Rush every time stats are upgraded

**

How to access the beta:

**

NOTE: Playing the beta will lock your chosen save slot to update 31. You won't be able to go back to update 30 with this save slot during the entire duration of the beta. However, your progress in the beta will be automatically merged into the main game when we release update 31 officially.

If you want to try out the beta and don't know how, first BACKUP YOUR SAVE FILE, then follow these instructions:

• Go to your Steam game library.

• Right click on Dead Cells and click "properties".

• Select the tab "Betas".

• In the first dropdown box select "Beta".

• Click close and wait for the upload to finish downloading.

• Start playing.

You can leave any feedback here or on our official Discord - there are two channels called update31-beta-discussion and update31-beta-feedback, or leave a comment here. We also have a bug report form for issues and bugs.

Cheers, Matt, EE & MT

• Official Discord

• Official Reddit

• Motion Twin Twitter

• Dead Cells' Facebook

Hello,

We're back with another alpha for our next slab of content - the Boss Rush Update!

**

How does it work?

** There is a new area, accessible through the basement door in Prisoner's Quarters where you access the Training Room and the Tailor - one you've gone through the basement door just follow the corridor until you come to the third door with the red boss head next to it.

Through this door, you'll find another 4 doors, leading to 4 different stages where you will fight:

• 3 bosses back-to-back

• 3 bosses back-to-back with modifiers

• 5 bosses back-to-back

• 5 bosses back-to-back with modifiers

What are modifiers, I hear you ask? Basically we've given the bosses even more ways to kick your ass. Think extra limbs, healing powers, buddies to help them kill you - all the good stuff!

The bosses are randomly selected from the following tiers:

Tier 1 - Concierge, Conjunctivius, Mama Tick

Tier 2 - Time Keeper, The Giant, The Scarecrow

Tier 3 - Hand of the King, The Servants (just the final fight, not the entire tower!), The Queen

Spoiler Boss is not available in the alpha and likely won't be available on release BUT it should™ arrive later.

The stages with 3 bosses back-to-back will pit you against one Tier 1 boss, then one Tier 2 and finally, you guessed it, one Tier 3. Simple!

The stages with 5 bosses follow a similar path, but here you'll be fighting two Tier 1 bosses, then two Tier 2s, then one Tier 3. Not quite so simple...

NOTE: For testing purposes, in the alpha you will have access to all bosses regardless of your progress in your current save. In the official release of the update, the bosses that you encounter in the Boss Rush will only be bosses that you have personally encountered at least once in-game.

There is a choice between Brutality, Tactics and Survival at the start of each stage - choosing one will automatically give you stats focused on the one you chose, and give you a choice of relevant builds in the following room.

**

New unlockables

** There are more goodies to unlock as you progress through the stages, if you can!

New stuff will unlock depending on the length (3 bosses or 5 bosses), the mode (Normal bosses or Modified bosses), the difficulty (0+BC, 3+BC or 5BC) and your ability to flawless the entire run or not.

Yep, the 5 boss 5BC Flawless is going to be a bit hard to get!

Weapon - Glyph of Peril (Tactics/Survival): A ranged attack with 7 attacks in its combo. The more health that you're missing, the longer the combo. Critical hits will start after the third hit of the combo.

Skill - Taunt: Taunt an enemy, making it relentessly pursue you for 20 seconds. In doing so, it drops its guard, so it takes 75% more damage from melee attacks during its pursuit. I'll let you discover exactly what taunts the Beheaded uses, but I don't think you'll be disappointed...

Mutation - Wish: The next weapon you pick up is legendary. Once chosen it cannot be removed (like the YOLO mutation).

Skins: There are 6 new skins to discover, with various barbarian/boss themes.

Customisable statue: You've got a fan! They're making a grand statue of you as tribute, and as you progress through the Boss Rush, you'll be able to add shiny new elements to it. Such humility!

**

New/updates legendary affixes

** We're also adding more legendary affixes to flesh out our last update. These are:

• Spartan Sandals: Super Bump - bumps stuff even further

• Oil Sword: Oil on Kill (again, quite self explanatory: spreads oil on the ground on kill)

• Flint: Instant Charge - all attacks are fully charged without needing to hold the button

• Katana: Deflect Bullets - all uncharged attacks deflect bullet (but not grenades)

• Killing Deck: Random Effect - every card applies a random debuff on targets (any kind of DoT, crowd controls, etc. with a few exceptions that wouldn't make sense like item-specific effects)

• Money Shooter: Pay to Win - refund the shot's cost if it kills a target + innate super pierce. Can trigger multiple times if a shot kills several enemies.

• Knockback Shield: Super Bump

• Wave of Denial: Super Bump

• Pollo Power: Miracle of Life - eggs hatch into chicks that attack nearby enemies

How to access the alpha:

Back up your save first. The alpha shouldn't affect your saves but better to be safe than sorry. If the worst happens then there’s a save restore hack detailed here: https://steamcommunity.com/games/588650/announcements/detail/1696100248017690442)

Then follow these instructions to access the alpha:

• Go to your Steam game library.

• Right click on Dead Cells and click "properties".

• Select the tab "Betas".

• In the first dropdown box select "Alpha - Not for the faint hearted".

• Click close and wait for the upload to finish downloading.

• Start playing.

As always, everything is still being tweaked according to feedback. So some things may break, have strange interactions or just straight up crash the game.

If you want to leave feedback you can do so in the comments here, or on our official Discord (link at the bottom of the post) - there are two channels called update31-alpha-discussion and update31-alpha-feedback specifically for these conversations, so please use them!

Bug reports can be sent to us with the following form to help us collect all information on bugs and crashes in one place, this helps us to fix them quicker! https://forms.clickup.com/f/2b318-1807/WG3GMB5KUFQB4XRAHX

We have some known issues already:

• Long load time after the Queen. It'll be fixed in the next patch.

• Glyph of Peril weapon lacks polish.

• The exit text when you win a run should not be "Do you want to abandon the run?", obviously.

• The alpha is only available on Windows, not Mac or Linux - we have a problem which should be fixed for beta.

Full patchnotes are here.

Hope you enjoy the new mode, we'll gather feedback for a week or two then come back with the beta :)

Cheers, Matt, EE & MT

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Hey everyone,

We're back with our thirtieth update, 'Enter the Panchaku'!

To celebrate this milestone of 30 updates, we're releasing 30 NFTs that unlock exclusive content in the game. The release date for these is never, because we're not touching that stuff. Gotcha...

Here's the TLDR of the update:

• panchaku and new 'flame head' Bobby outfit

• rebalancing on weapons & items

• rework of legendaries system

• Soul Knight weapon and outfit

• pet your pets

• roadmap and Evil Empire/Motion Twin priorities

We've made a little trailer to go along with the update:

And here's a VLOG for people who don't like to read!

Finally, the full patchnotes are (https://dead-cells.com/patchnotes) as usual.

Let's get into it!

Panchaku & Bobby outfit

After numerous requests following the animated Bad Seed trailer, we're finally adding the panchaku to Dead Cells, with a new outfit inspired by Bobby Pills' trailers. We already had a 'Bobby' skin, but now the iconic pink flame head is here to make it complete. You can stop pestering us now, or just move onto the next shiny thing you reprobates want.

Sorry for the potato quality, the 5MB limit on Steam just kills my gifs

The panchaku is simply two frying pans tied together with a piece of string, which crits on enemies facing you and has a slick combo with hits behind and all around you. It can also reflect bombs and projectiles in the middle of the combo. So a slight upgrade on the Vorpan...

Item reworks

It's been a while since our last major rebalance of weapons, with the 'What's the Damage?' update releasing over a year ago. Since then we've had new items and mutations from the 'Everyone is Here' and the 'Break the Bank' updates, plus 'The Queen and the Sea' DLC, so there's a few imbalances here and there.

So, we're making changes to 29 weapons and skills (and a mutation!) to rebalance the item pool.

Why do we do rebalancing? This isn't a multiplayer game after all...

Well, we need to do this to keep the variety element strong - a good roguelite should offer you difficult choices. If you're going to take the same 2 or 3 weapons every time because they're OP, then you're going to get bored very quickly. And we don't want you to get bored of Dead Cells!

That's why we need to bring items to the same power level (or as close as possible) to encourage players to explore and use more of the item pool.

Here's the buffs & nerfs:

Buffs:

• Hard Light Sword and Pistol: slight damage buff to the sword and attack speed buff to the pistol

• Hokuto's Bow: damage bonus buffed

• Queen's Rapier: the delayed slice hits sooner

• Maw of the Deep: attack speed buff

• Wrecking Ball: first and last attack are faster + greatly reduced lock on Wrecking Ball's third and fourth attacks

• Leghugger: now jumps on a nearby target before launching its reactivation attack + keeps its growth state across instances of the object in a run

• Killing Deck: damage buff on the first 2 attacks

• Hand Hook: now also crits when the thrown enemy hits another entity + removed the first hit + greatly reduced the lock of the last attack.

• Greed Shield: can now trigger once per enemy every 10 seconds + damage buff

• Frantic Sword: crit multiplier is now inversely proportional to your life (when at or under 50% max life)

• Abyssal Trident: slight damage buff

• Shrapnel Axes: slight damage buff

• Pollo Power: now fires 1 more egg + damage buff

• Crowbar: now also crits on beast enemies (hand-picked, think "non-humanoid, non-mechanic")

• Lightning Bolt: now crits one tick earlier and damages you 1 tick later

• Spiked Shield: crit damage buff

• Cudgel: Bullets parried will now stun enemies as well.

• Gilded Yumi rework:

• Reduced the ammo count to 2.

• Now has a 2-hit combo, which shoots the second arrow faster.

• Is now considered to be a Heavy Weapon.

• Increased the overall weapon speed.

• Increased the base damage, reduced the crit multiplier.

• Damage no longer gets split between hit enemies.

• Arrows now pierce all enemies.

• Bosses get dragged by the arrow more.

• Reduced the arrow's speed.

• No longer stuns in an AoE on hit.

• Can't roll ammo or pierce affixes anymore.

Nerfs:

• Smoke Bomb: scaling heavily nerfed (it was following the same formula as the stats)

• Grappling Hook: same as Smoke Bomb

• Boy's Axe: damage nerf + can't roll the Extra Ammo affix + can't be affected by Ammo mutation

• Bladed Tonfas: slight crit multiplier nerf

• Lacerating Aura: cooldown now starts at the end of the effect instead of starting at cast

• Maw of the Deep: its root is now less effective on bosses

• Crusher: its slow is now less effective on bosses

• Hunter's Grenade: no longer provides stats

• Rapier: damage nerf

• Sonic Carbine: damage nerf

• Hokuto's Bow: procs less often

• Barbed Tips: damage of each stack is reduced the more arrows there are in the enemy. 1 arrow = 40dmg, 2 arrows = 74dmg, 3 arrows = 104dmg, etc.

Legendary item change

Moving on to the legendary item change, which we’ve wanted to do for a while. For those who don’t know, legendary items are the gold-coloured items.

In the old system, their damage would scale off your two highest stats (Brutality, Tactics and Survival), which wasn’t intuitive with the stats system. Your average player usually just spread points between the off-colour stats to gain maximum health.

As the legendaries power was affected by your two highest stats, it meant that you would need to put points on only one of the stats that you weren't using to get maximum damage from legendaries.

Basically the whole thing wasn’t very clear.

It was also just not very interesting – the only thing that legendaries gave you was more damage, that was it. More damage is always good, but we wanted to make it better!

So to replace the old system, we're introducing legendary affixes (affixes are the tasty extra powers you get on items, like 60% damage to a bleeding enemy).

All the legendary affixes have been specifically added to certain weapons so that they each have a synergy with their item's gameplay. This way, they'll be making legendaries stronger than your typical weapon version by adding an extra, complimentary gameplay element instead of just upping the damage.

We've created a few brand new affixes as well as using some existing ones. There are a lot of legendary affixes in this list, so if you don't really care about specifics you should just scroll past!

Melee Weapons

• Balanced Blade: Run Speed on Crit

• Spite Sword: Poison Skin Area

• Assassin’s Dagger: Mega Crit

• Blood Sword: Double Stack

• Twin Daggers: Run Speed on Crit

• Broadsword: Global Shield on Kill

• Shovel: Better Secrets

• Cursed Sword: True Evil

• Sadist's Stiletto: Super Back Damage

• Swift Sword: Run Speed on Kill

• Giant Killer: God Slayer

• Shrapnel Axes: Fire Bullet

• Seismic Strike: Death Root

• War Spear: Run Speed on Crit

• Impaler: Super Back Damage

• Symmetrical Lance: Quad Damage Free & Ignore Global Shields

• Rapier: Run Speed on Crit

• Meat Skewer: Super Back Damage

• Nutcracker: Death Root

• Spartan Sandals: Fire Feet

• Spiked Boots: Run Speed on Crit

• Hayabusa Boots: Super Back Damage

• Hayabusa Gauntlets: Mega Crit

• Valmont's Whip: Mega Crit

• Wrenching Whip: Bleed on Hit

• Oiled Sword: Poison on Hit

• Torch: Double Stack

• Frantic Sword: Heal Mid Life

• Flawless: Run Speed on Crit

• Flint: Fire on Hit

• Flawless: Run Speed on Crit

• Tentacle: Poison on Hit

• Vorpan: Fire on Hit

• Flashing Fans: Bleed on Hit

• Scythe Claw: Death Root

• Rhythm n’ Bouzouki: Fire on Hit

• Crowbar: Super Back Damage

• Snake Fangs: Double Stack

• Iron Staff: Frost Shield

• Ferryman's Lantern (Melee): Fire on Hit

• Hattori's Katana: Mega Crit

• Explosive Crossbow (Melee): Death Freeze

• Tombstone: Cascading Tomb

• Oven Axe: Run Speed on Crit

• Toothpick: Heavy Stun

• Toothpick (Broken): Rebuild on Kill

• Machete and Pistol: Bleed on Hit

• Hard Light Sword (Sword): Mega Crit

• Pure Nail: Death Worm

• Bone: Run Speed on Crit

• Abyssal Trident: Run Speed on Crit

• Hand Hook: Bleed on Hit

• Maw of the Deep: Triple Bullets

• Bladed Tonfas: Run Speed on Kill

• Wrecking Ball: Speed Ball

• Queen's Rapier: Super Slice

• Dagger of Profit: Run Speed on Crit

• Gold Digger: Heavy Stun

• Panchaku: Fire on Hit

Ranged Weapons

• Multiple-nocks Bow: Double Bullets

• Bow and Endless Quiver: Poison on Hit

• Marksman's Bow: Heavy Stun

• Sonic Carbine: Poison Bullet

• Infantry Bow: Bleed on Hit

• Quick Bow: Mega Crit

• Ice Bow: Strong Ice

• Heavy Crossbow: Super Pierce

• Heavy Crossbow (Reload): Global Shield on Use

• Repeater Crossbow: Super Pierce

• Repeater Crossbow (Quiver of Bolts): Pierce

• Ice Crossbow: Strong Ice

• Ice Crossbow (Piercing Shot): Death Freeze

• Explosive Crossbow: Super Pierce

• Alchemic Carbine: Double Stack

• Boomerang: Extra Ammo Few

• Hemorrhage: Bleed Propagation

• The Boy’s Axe: Extra Ammo Few

• War Javelin: Fire Bullet

• Hokuto’s Bow: Super Pierce

• Nerves of Steel: Mega Crit

• Throwing Knife: Bleed Propagation

• Electric Whip: Super Back Damage

• Firebrands: Double Stack

• Ice Shards: Death Freeze

• Pyrotechnics: Double Stack

• Lightning Bolt: Global Shield on Kill

• Fire Blast: Global Shield on Use

• Frost Blast: Strong Ice

• Magic Missiles: Super Pierce

• Blowgun: Poison Cloud on Hit

• Barrel Launcher: Death Fire

• Ferryman’s Lantern (Soul Shot): Fire Bullet

• Hard Light Gun: Double Stack

• Killing Deck: Bleed on Hit

• Gilded Yumi: Fire Bullet

• Money Shooter: Super Pierce

• Magic Bow: Double Bullets

Shields

• Front Line Shield: Counter Attack

• Cudgel: Long Stun

• Punishment: Death Freeze

• Knockback Shield: Death Root

• Rampart: Frost Shield

• Assault Shield: Heavy Stun

• Bloodthirsty Shield: Double Stack

• Greed Shield: Gold Damage Buff

• Spiked Shield: Mega Crit

• Parry Shield: Stun Shield

• Force Shield: Frost Shield

• Thunder Shield: Poison Shield

• Ice Shield: Strong Ice

Deployable Traps

• Double Crossb-o-matic: Super Pierce

• Sinew Slicer: Bleed Propagation

• Heavy Turret: Super Pierce

• Barnacle: Poison Bullet

• Flamethrower Turret: Double Stack

• Cleaver: Double Stack

• Wolf Trap: Ice on Stop

• Crusher: Ice on Stop

• Explosive Decoy: Run Speed on Kill

• Emergency Door: Deployed Dmg

• Tesla Coil: Oil and Fire on Destroy

• Scavenged Bombard: Double Speed

Grenades

• Powerful Grenade: Bigger Explosion

• Infantry Grenade: Oil

• Cluster Grenade: Echo

• Magnetic Grenade: Echo

• Stun Grenade: Long Stun

• Ice Grenade: Strong Ice

• Fire Grenade: Bigger Explosion

• Root Grenade: Death Root

• Oil Grenade: Death Fire

• Swarm Grenade: Poison on Hit (yes, it applies to the biters’ attacks)

Powers

• Death Orb: Double Speed

• Tornado: Double Speed

• Knife Dance: Bleed Poison

• Corrupted Power: Global Shield on Use

• Vampirism: Oil and Fire on Use

• Tonic: Extended Duration

• Grappling Hook: Fire on Use

• Phaser: Poison on use

• Corrosive Cloud: Double Stack

• Lacerating Aura: Bleed on Hit

• Wave of Denial: Oil and Fire on Use

• Wings of the Crow: Global Shield on Use

• Great Owl of War: Super Pierce

• Lightspeed: Global Shield on Use

• Giant Whistle: Echo

• Telluric Shock: Global Shield on Kill

• : Run Speed on Kill

• Smoke Bomb: Run Speed on Use

• Mushroom Boi!: Poison Cloud on Hit

• Lightning Rods: Fire on Stop

• Scarecrow Sickles: Double Bullets

• Ice Armor: White Walker

• Serenade: Durability Up

• Cocoon: Frost Shield

• Face Flask: Oil and Fire on Use

• Pollo Power: Death Worm

• Leghugger: Bleed on Hit

Legendaries will always roll their legendary affix and they cannot be removed, rerolled or replaced.

Also just to be clear, we've removed the double stat scaling system, although legendaries will remain colorless in terms of scaling, which means that they scale off whichever of your stats has the highest value.

More legendary affixes will be coming in future updates, so keep your eyes peeled.

Oh and we're also adding an option in Custom Mode to allow 'legendary-only' runs:

Look at all that gooooold!

Soul Knight content

We're also introducing content from Soul Knight, another roguelite that already has Dead Cells content in it, so we're returning the favour!

The Magic Bow fires 5 slow-moving arrows, which make up for their lack of speed by homing in to their nearest enemy. Each arrow that successively hits the same enemy does more damage to that enemy. The Knight outfit adds the pint-sized adventurer and his oversized head as an option.

Pet the pet

The last bit of content we're adding is letting you pet the pets.

In transitions between biomes you just need to long press the interact button to show some love to your latest companion. You won't get any benefit from this, it's just something fun for us to add. I mean why wouldn't we add this!

Unfortunately the owl was too awkward to code this for, so it will never know the loving touch of the Beheaded...

Other additions

• Reworked the Outfit Selection UI. It is now a grid displaying the icons of all the unlocked outfits, as well as an in-game preview.

• Added Teleportation Monoliths before the exits leading to Forgotten Sepulcher.

• Added an exit to Clock Tower in Graveyard, for cases where the player would get softlocked otherwise.

• In Ramparts, prevented the exit leading to Conjunctivius from being locked behind a Breakable Ground.

• In Prisoners' Quarters, if the player has the Spider Rune but not the Vine Rune, the passage to the Sewers door will now use a specific room. Yes, this is a very specific change, don't ask about it.

• Weapons' icons on the HUD now fade away when their controls are locked.

• Uniformized the different speed bonus feedbacks.

• Made double tap input option for Dive Attack more reliable and consistent.

• Talisman DoT Affixes now scale based on the highest tier stat, instead of the tier average.

• Gold Gorgers now can't attack or teleport to the player if they didn't see the player at least once.

Bug fixes

• Fixed Corrosive Cloud not triggering the Bleed Propagation affix.

• Fixed Serenade sometimes losing its affixes on use.

• Fixed Explosive Barrels not updating properly when not on screen.

• Disabled gravity when picking up a scroll, to prevent a softlock when falling offscreen.

• Fixed tier icons not displaying properly on colorless items.

• Fixed the Bank Pop-up and the 1BC Pop-up overlapping.

• Corrosive Cloud now correctly displays its synergy with Bleed.

• Fixed the Cherry on the Cake bombs not dealing any damage to the player.

• Added the missing world map transition of Distillery -> Lighthouse.

• Fixed Conjunctivius sometimes shooting projectiles during the death animation.

• Fixed the Hunter's Grenade not spawning back when thrown off a cliff, or when an enemy converted to elite fell of a cliff.

• Fixed a crash when picking up an amulet with the Homunculus Rune in the Daily Challenge.

• Fixed Mushroom Boi getting stuck in the dash animation after triggering the explosion.

• Fixed Mutineers' melee attack not having the attack warning.

• Fixed Invisibility not affecting the player's head or scarf.

• Fixed Armored Shrimps moving while frozen.

• Fixed the player getting stuck off-screen in some specific situations.

• Fixed pets sometimes dying for no apparent reasons

• Fixed the Leghugger not teleporting back to the player when too far away.

• Fixed minimap refresh hiding part of the maps revealed by Explorer's Instinct.

• Fixed Scrolls on the minimap not displaying their Stat icon, when triggering Explorer's Instincts.

• Fixed mutations going higher and higher on the HUD every time the player changes the "place backpack next to weapons" option.

• Fixed Queen sometimes getting stuck on the "Reality Slices" phase.

• Fixed some powers and effects not working properly after going through a ZDoor, as well as their visual disappearing:

• Ice Armor's sprite.

• Cell Bonus FX.

• Lacerating Aura FX.

• Wings of the Crow FX.

• Fixed elite Gold Gorgers using Elite Skills when transformed by the Hunter's Grenade.

• Fixed Barbed Tips damage multiplier being applied one stack too early.

• Fixed Two-Handed Weapons not properly generating their legendary affix.

• Fixed the way DoT Effects damage scale was calculated, leading to some of them dealing less damage than intended.

• Fixed Custom Heads being on the wrong layer after the player was thrown by the Queen.

• Fixed DPS display on weapons not working properly with damage multipliers.

• Fixed DPS display for the Bone.

• Fixed options text getting out of the frame when opened on the main menu.

Roadmap

In case you missed our post the other week, we released the roadmap below. The basic idea is that we'll continue to add Dead Cells content into 2023 & beyond, and 2023 will be our biggest year since v1.0 was released!

This also raised the question of whether there'll ever be any new games coming out. Dead Cells keeps getting new content so we can't be working on anything else, right?

Well, we are.

Motion Twin, the creators of Dead Cells, have not been working on Dead Cells for years. Although they do retain creative control over Dead Cells and have final approval on every addition Evil Empire makes to the game.

Evil Empire is a separate studio made of ex-Motion Twin developers & some new blood, and we took over development of Dead Cells in 2019.

Motion Twin have been working on their next project since then, but we all still work in the same office so it's a close relationship. Evil Empire are also working on our own projects too, but Dead Cells remains the priority for us.

Essentially, don't worry, new games are coming!

Finally, if anyone is going to PAX West in September we'll be there to show off a sneak preview of the upcoming Boss Rush update.

Have a good one and we'll be back soon with news on the Boss Rush update!

Cheers, Matt, EE & MT

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Community highlights:

(https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2811714198)

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