The Arbiters need hugs too, you know...

Hello everyone!

How are you doing? Are you hyped by the recent E3? There were quite a few interesting announcements, but here we all have been particularly impressed by the trailer of GhostWire: Tokyo from Tango Gameworks (and Shinji Mikami).

Aside from that, we've also been busy working on the thirteenth update of Dead Cells. The full patch notes, as usually, can be found here but I will run you through the reasoning behind the main changes here.



The Rampager: This is the new enemy inhabiting a variety of biomes in Boss Stem Cell 3 and higher, since the previous 3BC mob, the Arbiter was put back in its original lair only, the Cavern. More on that later.

The Rampager is reaaaaaaaally fast and will pursue you until the end of time if it sees you. You better be ready to smash that parry or dodge button when one is on your back.



Frenzy and Adrenaline mutations (Brutality): Melee and Brutality currently have a hard time recovering from their wounds, so we added two new mutations to make risky and fast-paced play style more viable. Both scales with your damage output and your Brutality stat.


There are approximately 30 "autosell" items and weapons buffed for less than 10 "instapick" ones nerfed. Since we know seeing its favorite killing tool being nerf is never a great feeling, we wanted to offer at least some level of explanation here.

The items that have been nerfed were clearly predominant in the meta and much more effective than their counterparts and alternatives... It made every other weapon feel underwhelming and weak in comparison.

Having too powerful weapons and items go against the core experience of Dead Cells which is at least partially based on weapon variety, making every run feel same-y and uninteresting. Which is why we thrive to offer an item pool as much balanced as we can and will continue to work on improving that aspect of Dead Cells based upon community feedback.




Powerful Grenade: Super wide area, high damage, not so long cooldown, ability to interrupt and bump, dual scaling, that grenade had it all. The size of the area and its damage have been reduced; it's still effective, just not at the "waaaaaay-better-than-everything-else" level it was before.

Heavy Turret: Range, stun, high damage by itself and increased player's damage... err, same as above, this turret brought so much to the table that it overshadowed all the other turrets and traps.

Rampart: Such a very defensive-oriented shield shouldn't be so effective at dealing damage, thus why we decided to decrease its damage. The invulnerability time frame has also been reduced by one sixth.

Giant Killer: This sword was both great to clear a level and the best to get rid of elites and bosses, with no real downside to compensate. Now it's still the absolute best to melt elites and bosses but it's weaker for the less worthy foes.

Explosive Crossbow: Survival scaling long-range weapons are complicated to balance, and it's almost by design. It allows to get the best of all worlds; high damage, long-range, tons of health, a great shield and the best mutations in the game as of right now, resulting in a very safe and effective build. To all that, the explosive crossbow added AoE damage and an easy crit condition... We decreased its speed, but increased its damage by a bit to bring it back closer to a more "survival weapon" feeling.

Wave of Denial: Super short cooldown, repel enemy and projectiles, high damage when projecting on a wall or making use of fall damages... The point of the skill is to use it when well positioned in the middle of the enemy pack or as a panic button to save yourself from incoming threats, but the low cooldown meant you could waste it all the time and hence not really be rewarded for the "well-positioned" aspect. Thus, cooldown has been increased.

Infantry Grenade: While, to be honest, it wasn't as broken as the powerful grenade, the Infantry Grenade's super low cooldown and good damage made for an over effective skill. Its damage output has been reduced by around one fifth.

Necromancy: This mutation was dominating the meta, providing unparalleled survivability. We reduced the amount of health it gives back by enemy killed and lowered the maximum cap.



Most of the buffs are fairly straightforward, increasing either the speed or damage of the item. Hopefully, nobody should feel robbed by a buff, hence we see a lesser need to detail the reasoning. All the changes are listed in the patch notes. Oh, and now you can set fire to water with some oil.

The list of items buffed includes:
War Javelin, Swift Sword, Blood Sword, Cleaver, Cursed Sword, Fast Bow, Flamme Turret, Hook, Knockback shield, Magnetic Grenade, Nutcracker, Oiled Sword, Pyrotechnics, Repeater Crossbow, Sadist's Stiletto, Seismic Blade, Shrapnel Axes, Sinew Slicer, Stun Grenade, Sonic Crossbow, Swarm Grenade, Twin Daggers, Valmont's Whip, Quick Bow, Spartan Sandal, Thunder Shield.

We hope you saw the name of your favorite weapon in there! Of course, nothing is set in stone and we looking to see you try these weapons and give us some feedback on the changes.




As mentioned previously, the Arbiter has been replaced by the Rampager as a transversal 3BC+ mob. A bullet-hell(ish) Dead Cells is not what we want, and it had also the unforeseen impact of slowing down the pace of the game by a lot, as well as making a shield even more mandatory than it is right now.

Consequently, Inquisitors are making a comeback into higher difficulties (3BC +) to fill the lack of long-distance shooters let by the Arbiter's retreat into the Cavern.

However, this made the Prison Quarters the hardest level in the whole game (once again) in high difficulties. Being an unavoidable level as well as the only one where you're almost unequipped, an unfairly hard Prison Quarters is a major issue. The enemy density has hence been reduced, and we added back the base Zombie at higher difficulties.

Currently, it's the only level where a low-tier enemy is mixed its higher-tier counterpart, which could make for a more enjoyable and varied experience, but may also lead to hectic fights. It's by no mean a definitive decision, but if it works well, we could also decide to expand this philosophy to the rest of the game. Let us know what you think and if you like it or not!

A few more change in the bestiary of some biomes have been done to make it more consistent. All of this come with the usual batch of QoL changes and bg fixing. Details listed in the patch notes.


Well, I think that will do! Thanks for the ones braves enough to read the entirety of this news. As always, we hope you will love the many changes we brought to Dead Cells and don't hesitate to discuss, debate and suggest here on the Steam forums, on Reddit (an official thread will be opened) or on Discord.

Thanks!
The MT Team


Official Discord
Official Reddit
Motion Twin Twitter
Dead Cells' Facebook



Tomb Raider™, by u/fromdreams.



That nice Fanart by Sombritas_des (again).

Set fire to the wateeeeeer ♫

Hello everyone,

A short news to inform you of the latest patch pushed today in the beta branch. The 13.4 and 13.5 are coming with a bunch of balancing tweaks (quite a lot actually) and we would love to get your feedback on it..

Another thing: we're encountering some technical issues with the Linux build, so if you're playing on this platform, 1. Don't panic. 2. Send us a report so we can dig the problem and try to fix it.

To the windows users, please warn us if your antivirus thinks Dead Cells' binaries are virus; our security certificate has come to an end, we supposedly don't need another one, but you never know.

Quick memo on how to join the beta branch:

• 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.

WARNING:
If you play with your save files in the beta version, you will not be able to use them in the stable version, until we push the beta branch out to the public.

If you are worried about losing you save then head over here: "steam\userdata\<ID>\588650\remote" and copy the files somewhere safe.

You can have one save slot dedicated to the beta branch and one to the old branch simultaneously, but you must revert to the stable branch to be able to use it.

We hope you will enjoy the new additions and changes the 13.4 brings to the table. In any case, don't hesitate to let us know here, on Reddit, on Discord or on Twitter!

Thanks,
The MT team.

• Official Discord
  
• Official Reddit
  
• Motion Twin Twitter
  
• Dead Cells' Facebook

Thanks to Rehbock who is drawing the adventures of Youkool and Gatlink coding Dead Cells. Always a pleasure to a new episode pop up! You can find more on these on the Dead Cells' Discord.






Cells by 神砂嵐.



"Intro Knight" by r/Brondips

Hello everyone,

Hope you're doing well! On our side, we just made the new update available on the Beta branch. The full patch notes are available here as usual, but here is a quick rundown:


Brutality and melee builds clearly needed new ways to sustain through the game to make risky playstyles more rewarding and viable, so we added two red mutations, Frenzy and Adrenalin to help with that.

The Arbiter is dead... (BC3+)

As a transversal mob inhabiting a majority of biome in Boss Cells 3+, the Arbiter had the unwanted effect of transforming Dead Cells in a bullet hell(ish) kind of game, heavily punishing non-shield builds and terribly slowing the pace of a run.

Hence the decision to put him uniquely in the Cavern level where fighting him in the often wide and open combat rooms can feel less of an hassle. We also make it so the Arbiter will only attack horizontally.

I know some of you were just getting used to it and even beginning to like the guy, but hey, let's be honest here and admit that it had probably more to do with Stockholm's syndrome than anything else.


With the Arbiter's... err... re-localization, we had to find an alternative mob to provide a new challenge to players. We tried replacing the Arbiter with various already existing mobs, but, in the end, nothing felt really convincing. So we went back to the drawing board and basically made an enraged, steroids-powered zombie.


All it wants is a good ol' hug. Probably.



It's previous mechanic was definitely underwhelming, so we tweaked it. Now, parry once and you become a walking Tesla coil. Use your shield again to create a electric wave around you, dealing damage and stunning the enemies.

Elites Rework

With the addition of the random abilities, the minions weren't necessary anymore, and were adding a lot of visual noise, so we decided to get rid of it. The pushback effect also got deleted, as it lead to some cheap damage being dealt. We've also begun to prevent some mob/ skill combinations that were feeling really random and unfair.

All of these also come with the usual batch of bug fixes and balance tweaks, and a few Quality of Life improvements. So, please jump in the beta branch and tell us how you feel about the latest additions. Full list available here.


Moving on to a few additional notes. For the console players around getting their Dead Cells news here, the DLC will be available on Switch and Playstation today. Apologies for the Xbox owners... a nasty bug is still playing cats and dogs with us. We will bring you the DLC as soon as we can. The 1.3 will be sent to certification when we're satisfied with the community feedback here.

Last but not least, we've now passed the 2 Millions copies of Dead cells sold threshold! Thanks to all of you for the continuous support and for talking your friends into giving Dead Cells a chance!



Thanks,
The MT team.

• Official Discord
  
• Official Reddit
  
• Motion Twin Twitter
  
• Dead Cells' Facebook

MGS-ish John Deadcells, by u/teoft



The Prisoner, by u/TooleyBostay



"Console players waiting for the dls, be like" by u/sombras1

Hello all!

We've just pushed a little bug fix update live on the alpha branch for those who are willing to test out the horrors we've prepared for you.

I'm not telling you here, cos this is the Alpha update. So y'all can wait for a big detailed news when it hits the main branch. However, if my most excellent MS paint comic sans title image wasn't enough for you...

• WE NERFED THE ARBITER! In fact we banished the beast from BC3 entirely, except for his natural cavern-esque habitat.
  
• We nerfed the elites...
  
• Aaaaand that's it. I'm done, here are the patch notes!

Yeah well, I didn't sleep well last night, so this is what happens. Half assed steam newsing, snoozing, snooooooozing.

Nah, actually this is us getting back on the horse! From now on we'll be MUCH more on the case with updates. We've heard you about the problems with the RotG DLC, some of the things will be fixed in the update 13 Alpha/Beta cycle, some will not (getting the collector into the base game... Not likely to happen... For now...)

It's coming. In fact it's almost here. We're through lotcheck, just waiting for a few things to finalise on the DLC setup front before we get it up for everyone, but if there are no more problems, potentially next week or the week after.... Or excuses excuses.

Same goes for PS4 and XB1.

Anywho, stay tuned for more news and acerbic commentary, at least until Jo gets back and reclaims his rightful role as "chief news writing poobah"*.


To access the ALPHA 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 "Alpha - Not for the faint hearted".
Click close and wait for the upload to finish downloading.
Start playing.

WARNING:
In this version of the game you will lose your save every time we push an update, which could be pretty often! This will not impact your old save files. You will be able to import the old ones in to this version, but not export them. This way you can play with everything you've already unlocked, without fear of frying your saves.

If you are still worried about losing you save then feel free to head over here: "steam\userdata\<ID>\588650\remote" and copy the files somewhere safe.

There is a special slot only for saves from this version that will appear. It's pretty self explanatory, but feel free to ask questions. :)

All the best,

Steve & the MT team.


*Super legit actual title on his linkedin.

Hey friends!

It's here, it's crawled out of the alpha dungeon, made it though the beta gauntlet and now it's here for you all to play, Rise of the Giant, our first free DLC has fiiiinally made it to you after a slightly longer than planned gestation period.

https://youtu.be/wc6ZpTwN2cI

• A brand new level for those who have finished the game at least once (remember we lowered the base difficulty significantly in update 11). This is a kind of cavern, a deep dark hole filled with traps and other nasty surprises.
  
  
• A new Boss! Guess what it is... Go on, guess! If you said "it's the giant" then you're wrong! It's Kratos!!!!!!! We teamed up with Sony Santa Monica to bring everyb.... Nah it's the Giant. And guess where he's hidden!!! Go on, guess!
  
  
  
  
• The next big thing we've got for yo is the Custom Mode that many have been clamouring for, is now available WITHOUT requiring you to beat the game. If that's not quite what you wanted, keep complaining, we're a little slow on the uptake, but we do listen, even it we're maybe a little deaf in the right ear...
  
  
• A shiny new SKINNING SYSTEM, that's right, skin the creatures you find and wear them like it was Silence of the Lambs up in here! All for the very reasonable price of $19.99 per loot box where you've got 99% chance of getting absolutely nothing!!! Oh wait, what!? You just play the game and unlock them for free? BUT WHAT ABOUT OUR SHARE PRICE!?
  
  
• Ok enough college sarcasm, next up we have 10 new enemies! Some of them will obviously be waiting for you in the new levels, though many of them have been spread out through the NG+ difficulty levels. They're waiting for you to roll up thinking you own the game...
  
  
• 3 new skills, including a flying pet thing with extra cuteness and 10 new weapons including the completely original Boi Axe! Now with extra BOI!
  
  
  
  
• The Hunters Grenade door has been replacecd by the Spcicalist's Shop. Essentially a few knick knacks for those advanced players who know what's up, and some pweeeety skins for the rest of us.
  
  
• Oh and there may be another bunch of hidden stuff yadi yadi yada floating around in the game. No biggy.
  
  
• Alright that's it, i'm done. You can check out the rest of the gazillion changes you've helped us make over here in the patch notes.

I really cannot stress enough how important your continued feedback, contribution and support, each and every one of you, has been to bringing Dead Cells to where it is today.

We said that we were going to do this free DLC quite a while ago, something of a thank you present to the community, and we meant it. So thank you all! Ok enough mushiness and tears, this is NOT goodbye.


Here's a little of what we're planning at the moment and where we're heading:

• Right now we're working on building out the team a bit more, we'll have news on how that's coming along and how we're planning on doing things as we move forward soon.
  
  
• We are however building some new monsters, some little guys that may or may not have leaked a little bit already *cough cough over here cough cough*
  
  
• We're going to keep adding content to the game for as long as it makes sense to do so, that's to say, for as long as enough people keep buying and playing the game to support the development costs and make us some more money for our next game.
  
  
• There WILL be a next game... If you didn't see the Redbull documentary that they did on us, check it out, because you'll learn that we're really just all about games, and we'll be doing it until the arthritis kicks in and we physically can't.
  
  Before you ask...... NO, I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE NEXT GAME WILL BE. We are going to go through a really fun period of building demos, iterating and arguing over why roguelites are so yesterday and therefore we should definitely do another. We'll keep you posted as soon as we have things to share, and maybe even before we should.
  
  Super top secret non-existant co-op royal battle of the bush mode, with machine gun, and frying pan.
  
  
• We'd like to try and figure out if we can build some insane modes for Dead Cells, we don't know how yet, but we're imagining a sort of Skunk-works team secluding themselves in a bubble for months on end without showering, with the aim of emerging with something incredible! That or a whole bunch of take-out boxes and a smell to put the Guillain's pile of rotting corpses to shame.

We've always tried to be open and honest and the success of Dead Cells will not change that one bit, so stay tuned.

Oh and since you all asked once or twice... a minute. The console releases will follow ASAP, I'd say around the end of the month early May, though as it's not 100% up to us (thank you certification period) we'll just do our best and officially say "soon". Also next time I'll jsut include this kind of useful information from the get go...

To finish up with this public safety announcement, here's some more community artwork:

Noir Cells by @LeoTeEdglord

Freaky realistic cells... By ExCharny

KDA strike a pose! By Hobo_hellorville

Heya everyone,

We hope you're all doing well. On our side, the DLC is going live tomorrow and we made a second animated trailer to celebrate! Really hope you will like it, and for the ones testing the new content on the beta branch, some parts should feel a bit familiar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLz1r_sCeXc

The music, done by Dead Cells' sound composer Yoann "Valmont" Laulan, is also available on Youtube and Bandcamp.

Last thing, we're at Pax East this year, so if you're around, come say hi and test the DLC!

Cheers,
The MT Team

Community highlights:

Redditor 1sombras1 's empathy gave birth to this awesome drawing of our new favorite boss



Thanks @FogRyu for choosing Dead Cells as an inspiration for its #pixel_dailies soumission!