Hey,

Hope everyone's good! Last week we mentioned that Update 19 will be making some meaty changes to some of Dead Cells’ underlying mechanics.

Some mutations have been mentioned as a bit of a non-starter once you're at higher levels, so we want to address this and make sure all the mutation choices have a significant impact on your run.

So, to start with we’re going to give damage mutations a bit more OOMPH to open up your mutation options. To do this we'll be changing their effect from DPS-based to percentage-based.

We know that sounds a little bit dry, so if you're not up for some Dead Cells maths right now you can check out this TLDR:

• At the moment, damage mutations increase a weapon's DPS based on the number of scrolls you have of that mutation's colour.
  
• Damage from the mutations is calculated from a base DPS value separate from the weapon's DPS value. e.g. Combo gives +160 base DPS for 8 seconds after a kill.
  
• Weapon level, quality and affixes increase a weapon's DPS based purely on multiplying the weapon's base DPS by percentages.
  
• This results in mutations contributing less and less to total weapon damage as the weapon level/quality increases.
  
• To solve this. we will be changing the calculation for damage mutations from a DPS value to a percentage of weapon damage - preventing their impact on total DPS from dropping as weapon level/quality increases.

At the moment, the damage from mutations is calculated on a DPS value that is separate from your weapon's base DPS value. The mutation DPS increases by 15% for each of the scrolls that you have for the colour of that particular mutation. These are:

• Combo (Red/Brutality)
  
• Vengeance (Red/Brutality)
  
• Tainted Flask (Red/Brutality)
  
• Support (Purple/Tactics)
  
• Tranquility (Purple/Tactics)
  
• Extended Healing (Green/Survival)
  
• Gastronomy (Green/Survival)

The 'scaling from scrolls' approach was chosen during the Foundry Update way back in December 2017, because it’s very similar to the way that weapon damage is displayed and scaled. However, the damage increases that you get from a weapon’s level, quality & affixes are all calculated through percentages. This makes damage mutations much less effective the further you get into the game.

This is because as the weapon level & quality increase, their contribution to total damage rises while the mutation's stays the same. You also get more affixes with higher quality weapons which only increases the gap, leaving the mutation's effect in the dust.

If all that sounded like complete waffle, we can illustrate it with a rough example of the Combo mutation {+160 DPS for 8 seconds after killing an enemy} on the Frantic Sword in BC0.

The effect of the Combo mutation on Frantic Sword I is this:

• 137 base DPS
  
• Combo mutation = 137 + 160 DPS = 297 DPS - a 116% damage increase

While, the effect of the Combo mutation on Frantic Sword VIII is this:

• 137 base DPS
  
• 100% damage bonus = 275 base DPS
  
• Combo mutation = 275 + 160 DPS = 435 DPS - a 58% damage increase

Now for argument's sake let's look at the Frantic Sword with a +100% damage on poison affix instead.

Frantic Sword I:

• 137 base DPS
  
• +100% damage on poison = 137 + 137 DPS = 274 DPS - a 100% damage increase

Frantic Sword VIII:

• 137 base DPS
  
• 100% damage bonus = 275 base DPS
  
• +100% damage on poison = 275 + 275 DPS = 550 DPS - a 100% damage increase

So, currently the damage increase from DPS based mutations diminishes with each increase in weapon level or quality. But the other contributors to weapon damage are based on percentages of the weapon's base DPS, so their effects are preserved at higher weapon levels.

Since we don’t see any reasons for handicapping damage mutations, we’re going to move the relevant mutations from their current DPS system to a percentage-based one. This will let them scale just like the other weapon multipliers, so they don't lose their effect as your weapons improve. Wooo equality!

We haven't settled on exact % figures for each mutation yet, but we'll adjust it to make sure they're a real benefit to pick up, giving you a dilemma over which mutation you want to choose for your build every time.

This change will make damage mutations relevant at all Boss Cell levels and their effects will be much clearer to you as a player. We're hoping this will encourage a wider use of the current mutation roster, opening up more builds and strategies to experiment with.

More updates to come soon!

Thanks,
Matt, EE and MT

Official Discord
Official Reddit
Motion Twin Twitter
Dead Cells' Facebook


Community Highlights:


@okajamira


@GarbageWormboy

Hey,

Our next update is going to be a bit of a big one, mainly focusing on fixing the slightly broken elements in the game. Unsurprisingly, this will involve making some pretty big changes to some of the main systems in Dead Cells.

Now, if we tried to fit all of the changes we're making into one piece of Steam news it would be the mother of all text walls, so we’re going to release a few regular chunks of news to get you up to speed before the update arrives. Today’s topic? Gold!


So, for a while now we’ve been hearing that the economy in Dead Cells just doesn’t feel right. The main issue being pointed out is that the quality and price of merchants from BC1 to BC5 are kind of crap, especially before forge completion and that lovely 100% S weapon drop rate. Unfortunately, forge completion takes some serious time AND you will typically reserve your money for other kinds of purchases anyway. Well, let’s just be honest, you’ll be keeping your money for health flasks.


My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined


This typically leads to merchants mostly being ignored, with everyone’s gold stashed away in case you need to buy health back, and so you don’t buy new items or improve your gear. Unfortunately, changing and improving your items and builds is a big part of what makes Dead Cells fun to play, so feeling like you can’t do so without being punished is less than ideal.


Currently, the price for items scales exponentially with their quality and number of affixes. At the same time, you’re being given less money in the name of increased difficulty, so good items can quickly become way too expensive to afford. Throw in the ever-present health flask worry and it’s really hard for you to plan how much gold to save and what to spend it on.

The problem we’ve had in addressing this is that the ‘exponential’ system is limiting our control on how much available gold to give you in a run. So, we will be changing gold drops to a linear progression. This will make it much easier for us to balance the amount of items, health flasks and weapon quality buffs we want you to be able to buy at each BC.


Big changes coming for these guys soon too


We will also be altering how the merchants operate. Shop choice won’t be determined by item categories anymore, but by scroll colour. Yep, you'll be able to choose between Survival, Tactics or Brutality scaling items, which should really increase the chance of finding an interesting weapon or skill for your preferred build, on any given run.
Shop re-rolls will become free, but every time you re-roll will cause the price of the new items to increase. That way, you’re not heavily punished if you re-roll once and still don't get any interesting items. Affix re-roll and Forge refining will also see their prices decreased.


So, that’s a brief overview of our plans for the Dead Cells economy and why we feel the need to change it. Of course there is a bit more to this than what you’ve just read, we are well aware that these changes could bring up new problems and it needs to be handled carefully. But don't worry, we will be testing how it feels to play with the new economy and making adjustments before we finalise anything.

Stay tuned for more news on the changes coming in Update 19!

Thanks,
Matt, EE & MT

Official Discord
Official Reddit
Motion Twin Twitter
Dead Cells' Facebook


Community Highlights:


@sbubbey


u/verdinho2211

Hey,

Hope you're all safe and well!

If anyone is interested in a live stream with a couple of the Dead Cells devs, we'll be starting one very soon - just go to the Steam Store page, Evil Empire's Twitch channel or MT's YouTube page at 3pm CEST, so basically now. You'll be able to ask any questions you have in the chat so please come and get involved if you can :)

We also just wanted to say thanks to everyone who answered our balancing survey last week, the results have really helped us to flesh out our thoughts on what we need to tweak. 5,455 of you got involved, which shocked a lot of us who didn't expect that level of interest, so thanks again!

Anyway, seeing as you helped give us these extra insights, we wanted to share some of the 'top-level' results with you. Please don’t get too caught up in figuring out anything from them, because very soon we'll be adjusting some of these items based on our own thoughts, community feedback and the results of the survey.

Favourite colour

• 41.9% - Brutality
  
  
• 27% - Survival
  
  
• 26.1% - Tactics
  
  
• 4.4% - None (Come on guys, stop lying to yourselves)
  
  
• 0.7% - Use the colourless ‘Custom’ mode

Most loved and hated weapons/skills (based on % of ‘Use as much as possible’ picks)

Top 5

• Scythe Claws (The Bad Seed)
  
• Giant Killer
  
• Rhythm n' Bouzouki (The Bad Seed)
  
• Vorpan
  
• Twin Daggers

Bottom 5:

• Cursed Sword
  
• Spiked Boots
  
• Spartan Sandals
  
• Tentacle
  
• Spite Sword

Top 5:

• Heavy Crossbow
  
• Quick Bow
  
• Hokuto's Bow
  
• Magic Missiles
  
• Electric Whip

Bottom 5:

• Sonic Crossbow
  
• Boomerang
  
• Ice Crossbow
  
• Hemorrhage
  
• War Javelin

Top 3:

• Rampart
  
• Punishment
  
• Bloodthirsty Shield

Bottom 3:

• Greed Shield
  
• Knockback Shield
  
• Force Shield

Top 5:

• Powerful Grenade
  
• Giant Whistle
  
• Great Owl of War
  
• Mushroom Boi (The Bad Seed)
  
• Double Crossb-o-matic

Bottom 5:

• Portable Door
  
• Wings of the Crow
  
• Vampirism
  
• Grappling Hook
  
• Root Grenade

A good chunk of these results were as we expected and probably won't be a surprise to you too, but some responses did make us double take. We heard the feedback about other things too, such as adjusting mutations or adding a katana (this came up A LOT, you really want this huh?) - we appreciate all the extra comments you made and have taken it all into account for future updates, but of course no promises on anything! Again, if you want to chat about any thing you saw in the post then head over to the live stream and get chatting with the devs.

A decent number of balancing changes will be on the way pretty soon and it won't be just a simple buff here and nerf there. Many additional changes will have a major impact on the experience, and we will definitely need your help to make sure we're not going the wrong way, as well as fine-tuning the balance changes. The Update 19 should make Dead Cells in the best shape it has ever been and makes it ready to welcome the content updates planned for later this year.

Cheers,
Matt, EE & MT

Official Discord
Official Reddit
Motion Twin Twitter
Dead Cells' Facebook

Community Highlights:


@Fire_Bay


u/1sombras1

Hey everyone,

We're looking to make a major balance change in the next update, so that every option in Dead Cells can be a realistic choice for you to take.

We already have a pretty good idea of what the preferred items and builds are, but to help us really pin down what's popular and what gets thrown on the trash heap, we've created a short survey that we're asking players to fill in. This will help us to figure out what needs the most love, so if you can spare a few minutes to give us a response we would be very grateful!

You can find the survey here.

Thanks in advance for your responses and have a great weekend!

Cheers,
Matt, EE & MT

Hi everyone,

The Bestiary update has made it through beta and is now available on Steam. It's a 'relatively' small update to keep you going until our next big one, but there’s still plenty to get stuck into for now!

The name just might have given it away, but this update is centered around introducing some new mobs. The 'common' enemy pool was getting a bit too small considering the addition of new levels, and the BC enemies just weren't enough to avoid some repetition.
So, there are now six brand new enemies - 3 are biome-specific, the other 3 are spread through different levels at different Boss Cells. These will freshen up the gameplay and give you some new attack patterns to master, but hopefully not too soon!
There's a couple of clips in here showing new mobs, but the rest you can discover yourself...

We’ve added 11 new affixes on active skills, aimed primarily at growing the pool of affixes available for the items that didn't have enough. Again, this is to flesh out the existing parts of Dead Cells before we introduce new pieces of larger content.

8 new normal affixes:
- Ice, fire, bleed or poison on nearby floors or enemies when the effect of the used active ends
- A grenade, a volley of arrows, or fire spreads when a deployable trap is destroyed
- Get all your arrows back when using a skill

3 new starred affixes:
- Oil and fire spread around when a deployable trap is destroyed
- Push enemies around you when the effect of the used active ends
- Extended duration for powers like Corrupted Power or the Smoke Bomb


Slumbering Sanctuary just seemed to be missing some stabbing action...

The levels from our recent DLC 'The Bad Seed' felt a little empty in terms of finding juicy secret areas (*cough* CELLAR *cough*), so we’ve added some new lore rooms and secrets for you to discover in the Arboretum and the Morass, which should make them feel more ‘Dead Cells’.

We also took this opportunity to re-balance the bestiary for The Bad Seed. None of the new mobs are being introduced, but we've tweaked the numbers of the guys who are already there to make these biomes a bit less punishing. On top of this, we've made a few tweaks to the behaviour of the mobs and the layout of these levels that'll make them more fun to play through.

Yes, you can stop asking now! Levels from The Bad Seed now have eight achievements up for grabs, plus two ‘general’ achievements have been added to the base game that are available for everyone.


A samurai crab thing - what's not to love?

Two new outfits can now be found that are linked to the secrets and lore of The Bad Seed DLC. We have also added in a pretty cool skin (well, we think so at least) that's available for everyone that can rise up to the ultimate challenge.

Finally, we have included an absolute buttload of balancing and quality-of-life changes. None of them are huge on their own, but all together they will make your runs feel smoother. If you want to see the whole lot you can find them here, but be warned it's a pretty long list!
Some personal favourites are: frozen enemies have their attacks interrupted, Knife Throwers always dodge or dash once before starting to attack you, neighbouring rooms in Arboretum are now inter-connected and some teleporters in the Morass and Clock Tower will activate from further away to avoid backtracking.

That's all for now, speak to you soon!

Cheers,
Matt, Evil Empire & Motion Twin

Official Discord
Official Reddit
Motion Twin Twitter
Dead Cells' Facebook

Community Highlights:


u/ErnesTeaa


u/Dorsale \\[T]/

Hey everyone,

We’ve teamed up with the guys who made Celeste, Subnautica and The Escapists 2 to create a bundle of top quality games that you can sink oodles of time into during the quarantine period. This should help people to stay inside over the next few weeks without going crazy, whilst hopefully raising awareness as to why we’re all stuck indoors.

The situation with the COVID-19 virus means that we’ve all got to be mindful of the impact of our behaviour on others. Most of us will get nothing more than a cold if we get the virus, but for those in our families and communities who will fall gravely ill, they’ll need access to quality healthcare and if a lot of them get sick all at once, that might not be available for them.

So, we would like to present for your entertainment the “Go Play INSIDE!” bundle, which you have to pronounce as if you’re an exasperated parent dealing with a 3 hour cleanup job after your kids enjoyed using every single one of their toys and breaking a vase.

This bundle should give you an excellent excuse to stay at home and practice social distancing while binge playing through your backlog, that way you’ll be helping reduce the burden on your country’s healthcare system and workers, reducing the risk of an unnecessary peak of sick people needing to go to the hospital and generally looking out for the vulnerable people out there.

The bundle gives you 20% off all the games and is a ‘complete the set’, which means if you buy it you only pay for the games you don’t already have. On top of that each game has an additional discount applied to it for the time being.

On top of this, 20% of each bundle sale will be donated to the Covid-19 Relief Fund of Action Against Hunger, which has been set up to help protect those who are suffering from malnutrition, which makes them much more vulnerable to Covid-19. If you want to know more or make a donation on your own you can follow this link.


We should have some more info on the latest update next week so keep your eyes peeled for that, otherwise have a good weekend, stay inside and stay safe!


By Helixexe

By Sir-Wow

Keep on washing those hands,

Matt and the EE and MT teams.

Hey everyone,

Hope you’re all staying safe, sane and entertained!

The latest update is now in the beta branch. It introduces 6 new enemies and some quality of life & bug fixes - if you want to know more you can see the alpha announcement here.

If you missed the alpha and want to give the beta a go, then the access instructions are 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 download to finish.
  
• Start playing.

We have a thread currently stickied on the Dead Cells subreddit to collect feedback and discuss the new mobs, but you can also post on the #current-update-discussion channel on the Dead Cells' Discord if you prefer (links are below). Let us know any feedback you have, all of it will help us to make the update as good as it can be :)

Cheers,
Evil Empire and Motion Twin

Official Discord
Official Reddit
Motion Twin Twitter
Dead Cells' Facebook


Community Highlights:


u/shimhaq


u/ErnesTeaa


u/TiaStealsPasswords

Hey,

Hope you’re all doing well out there, everyone at MT and EE have been working at home for over a week now, but we’re still working hard to get updates out for you to enjoy while we’re all stuck inside.

Our latest update will be the 18th one, which is pretty crazy when we think about it! We’re introducing 6 new mobs, available for testing in the alpha branch right now. As usual, feedback is very much welcomed.

If you want to have a go at testing the update and giving us feedback, then the instructions are right here, go nuts! Just remember it's an ALPHA so may be broken, back up your save and remember that there is a save restore hack (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 "Alpha - Not for the faint hearted".
  
• Click close and wait for the upload to finish downloading.
  
• Start playing.

Save restore hack instructions here.

We’re also adding a small patch to introduce a new weapon, skin and diet based on the Half-Life series to celebrate the release of Alyx, as well as some quality of life fixes. Enjoy the Freeman’s way of life.



The full patch notes can be found here.

Hope you enjoy the new additions and re-balancing!

Stay calm and wash your hands,
Matt, Evil Empire and Motion Twin

Official Discord
Official Reddit
Motion Twin Twitter
Dead Cells' Facebook


Community highlights:


u/1sombras1



@noctilums


@CheapSukerock

Hey all,

Another small update has been released, the main thing here was sorting access to the DLC for the guys who couldn't get in.

Full notes below:

1.7.2 - 2020-02-21 (cff6dadf)

• Enemies in a shop room with you are now able to attack you, but ranged enemies outside the shop can't shoot at you. This will prevent ranged enemies to shoot at you while you shop, while fixing weird behaviors when enemies follow you in a shop.

• Fix a bug where the gardener's corpse doesn't appear even if you never got into the Arboretum.
  
• Fix weird behavior on bosses when reloading a save.
  
• Fix blueprints flying to the player after a reload.
  
• Fix performance issues on Xbox.

More to come, we'll keep you posted!

Cheers,
Matt, Evil Empire and Motion Twin

Hey guys,

Quick bit of news to say that the hotfix that was in alpha has been pushed to the live version.

It should fix some of the most annoying bugs from the latest update, including the Hunter Grenade/tick softlock and, yes, the pink Ninja skin is black again...

The full list is here:

1.7.1 - 2020-02-19 (df004900)

• Prevented the doors to the Morass appearing if the DLC isn't owned or if you haven't been to the Arboretum at least once (DLC).

• The little mushies in the Arboretum can now be dodged with a roll when thrown by their adult counterparts (the bigger mushrooms of Arboretum) (DLC).

• Removed the pop-up window when using a save on a newer version. It was confusing people more than anything else.

• Fixed the Gardener's corpse dropping infinite keys and blueprints (DLC).
  
• Fixed blowgunners jump related crashes (DLC).
  
• Fixed the Ninja skin going pink.
  
• Fixed custom modes adding mobs crashing the game
  
• Fixed some crashes when loading a save.
  
• Fixed the lights not glowing in the transition level between Prison Depths and Morass (DLC).
  
• Fixed Mushroom Boi not following you when teleporting (DLC).
  
• Fixed 'ShareComboWeapon' related crashes.
  
• Fixed grenades locking the beheaded when used on Mama Tick (DLC).
  
• Fixed Smoke bomb's damages being considered melee instead of range (DLC).
  
• Fixed Arboretum's Carnivorous plants bumping the player but not damaging him when standing at the very edge (DLC).
  
• Blowgunner now keeps patrolling instead of freezing if you're standing just below him (DLC).
  
• Fixed Fugitives (orange spear-wielding dudes of the Morass) hovering above the ground (DLC).
  
• Fixed the softlock caused by using the Hunter's Grenade on Morass's ticks. Now, the tick will transform into an Elite Tick. Good luck to you all. (DLC)
  
• Fixed the Royal Gardener's skin being locked forever if you didn't pick it when looting said gardener the first time. (DLC)

We know there are more and we're working hard to get them fixed too :)


Thanks!
Matt, Evil Empire & Motion Twin


Community Highlights:

u/cmarienorthwest


@caughtherainbow

@AlteredBits

@TK_KATUKI