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