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Dead Cells |OT| Cascellvania
- Thread starter janusff
- Start date
Dump from reddit.
Dead Cells 1.1: the "balance update"
The upcoming patch is a big "balance update". This means that most of the changes will be concerning balance and bug fixes of already existing features, items and biomes. There will however be some entirely new features, including Custom Mode.
Custom Mode
Custom Mode is the biggest addition coming with 1.1 and will allow players to change a lot of things about how they approach their runs. It is developed mainly by u/Tipyx_FR. Not all details are currently known, but here are some specific features you can control:
Timed Doors
Timed Doors will no longer be inside levels, but will instead be moved to transition levels (like the one after Concierge). There will no longer be scrolls inside them: instead, the player will get a 3-choice altar with a weapon, skill or amulet. The quality of those items will be based on difficulty and not on the forge level (e.g. guaranteed S items on 4BC).
No-hit doors
A new type of reward will be introduced: if you finish a level or boss fight without getting hit, you will be able to open a "no-hit door". No-hit doors will be in transition (Collector) areas, after every level. The reward for no-hitting a boss will be a legendary item. Rewards for no-hitting a level are not known (legendary?), but it will require killing 50 mobs in addition to not getting hit.
Game mechanics and damage/HP scaling
Mob scaling based on player stats
A big issue of the current version is that the HP and, more critically, the damage from mobs scale with the player's stats. This means that mobs will kill you in a few hits when you reach high stats unless you stack damage reduction like crazy (see next section). This has led some players to advise newcomers to go with their strategy of skipping scrolls. I will not fuel the debate despite strong opinions about the matter, the important point is that this was an unintended player response to an ill-designed mechanic. Thankfully, the devs have now fixed this. Scaling on stats has been completely removed in v1.1: mobs will now have fixed HP and damage values tied to the biome they are in.
Therefore, players will now only benefit from taking scrolls. A rebalance of stat requirements will be done, and it will be necessary to take most Timed Doors and cursed chests on high difficulties (3-4 BC) in order to be strong enough.
Damage Reduction (DR)
In the current game, DR is a very important aspect of all Brutality and Tactics builds, to the point that it is basically mandatory for players who don't want to die in 2 hits (aka most people). Currently, a lot of items give DR and it caps at 75%. In v1.1, most items will not give DR anymore and the cap will be nerfed to 30% instead of 75%. On the other hand, mob damage will be balanced accordingly, so that DR becomes the intended "safety option" instead of a mandatory game mechanic. Items that will still give DR include Amulets.
Boss damage caps
Boss have damage caps, which means that a single hit cannot deal more than 5% of a boss' max HP (3% in the case of Time Keeper, 25% for tentacles). This makes most slow weapons such as Broadsword pretty bad against bosses. Damage caps will not be removed or altered in v1.1 because the devs don't want to change too many things at once. It is however something that they're considering after they get feedback from the 1.1 update.
Cooldown reduction (CDR)
Cooldown reduction will be changed a lot. Currently, skill spamming (Death Orb, Cluster Grenade...) is one of the surest ways to wreck everything in your path, and Efficency/Fireworks mutations are basically no-brainers. In v1.1, CDR mutations will no longer provide a passive flat CDR%. CDR will be granted based on player actions: for instance, you will get CDR by parrying or killing enemies. This will reduce brainless skill spamming, especially against bosses. To make up for the fact that CDR will be harder to obtain, base cooldown of most skills has been lowered.
Homunculus rune
A lot of mutations will be reworked in the upcoming version. The most important change will be the way Efficiency and Fireworks Technician work (see previous section). Changing mutations mid-run will become much more expensive, to avoid people changing mutations before and after every boss (notably to take/remove Alienation/Acceptance). The cost of the first mutation change will be cheap (1000 gold) but subsequent changes will be very expensive (50 000 Gold).
Brutality
Status effects
Legendary weapons drop rates have been nerfed heavily, as it was not intended to have players end a run with full legendary builds so easily. In the current version, legendaries drop from Bosses (100% chance), Elites (~17% chance) and random mobs (~4% chance). In v1.1, Legendaries will no longer drop from bosses, and the elite/mob rates will be replaced by a global drop rate.
Affix tweaking
Dead Cells 1.1: the "balance update"
The upcoming patch is a big "balance update". This means that most of the changes will be concerning balance and bug fixes of already existing features, items and biomes. There will however be some entirely new features, including Custom Mode.
Custom Mode
Custom Mode is the biggest addition coming with 1.1 and will allow players to change a lot of things about how they approach their runs. It is developed mainly by u/Tipyx_FR. Not all details are currently known, but here are some specific features you can control:
- Starting weapons, essentially making the Steam-only Armory mod available for all players.
- Which items drop during the run
- Legendary items can be enabled or disabled
- "Meta progress", which means you can decide which permanent upgrades (number of flask recharges available, number of boss cells activated, probably which runes you carry, etc) are activated or not. So for example, you can decide to have only 1 flask even on a 100% completed save.
- Seeded runs will be possible. A "seed" is the specific level generation, loot etc in a given run. When you find a fun seed that you want to share with your friends, they can input a code and play the exact same run as you did. This is also useful for speedrunners.
- The in-game timer will now have the option of not being paused in transition levels, shops, etc. This is a very useful feature for speedruns.
Timed Doors
Timed Doors will no longer be inside levels, but will instead be moved to transition levels (like the one after Concierge). There will no longer be scrolls inside them: instead, the player will get a 3-choice altar with a weapon, skill or amulet. The quality of those items will be based on difficulty and not on the forge level (e.g. guaranteed S items on 4BC).
No-hit doors
A new type of reward will be introduced: if you finish a level or boss fight without getting hit, you will be able to open a "no-hit door". No-hit doors will be in transition (Collector) areas, after every level. The reward for no-hitting a boss will be a legendary item. Rewards for no-hitting a level are not known (legendary?), but it will require killing 50 mobs in addition to not getting hit.
Game mechanics and damage/HP scaling
Mob scaling based on player stats
A big issue of the current version is that the HP and, more critically, the damage from mobs scale with the player's stats. This means that mobs will kill you in a few hits when you reach high stats unless you stack damage reduction like crazy (see next section). This has led some players to advise newcomers to go with their strategy of skipping scrolls. I will not fuel the debate despite strong opinions about the matter, the important point is that this was an unintended player response to an ill-designed mechanic. Thankfully, the devs have now fixed this. Scaling on stats has been completely removed in v1.1: mobs will now have fixed HP and damage values tied to the biome they are in.
Therefore, players will now only benefit from taking scrolls. A rebalance of stat requirements will be done, and it will be necessary to take most Timed Doors and cursed chests on high difficulties (3-4 BC) in order to be strong enough.
Damage Reduction (DR)
In the current game, DR is a very important aspect of all Brutality and Tactics builds, to the point that it is basically mandatory for players who don't want to die in 2 hits (aka most people). Currently, a lot of items give DR and it caps at 75%. In v1.1, most items will not give DR anymore and the cap will be nerfed to 30% instead of 75%. On the other hand, mob damage will be balanced accordingly, so that DR becomes the intended "safety option" instead of a mandatory game mechanic. Items that will still give DR include Amulets.
Boss damage caps
Boss have damage caps, which means that a single hit cannot deal more than 5% of a boss' max HP (3% in the case of Time Keeper, 25% for tentacles). This makes most slow weapons such as Broadsword pretty bad against bosses. Damage caps will not be removed or altered in v1.1 because the devs don't want to change too many things at once. It is however something that they're considering after they get feedback from the 1.1 update.
Cooldown reduction (CDR)
Cooldown reduction will be changed a lot. Currently, skill spamming (Death Orb, Cluster Grenade...) is one of the surest ways to wreck everything in your path, and Efficency/Fireworks mutations are basically no-brainers. In v1.1, CDR mutations will no longer provide a passive flat CDR%. CDR will be granted based on player actions: for instance, you will get CDR by parrying or killing enemies. This will reduce brainless skill spamming, especially against bosses. To make up for the fact that CDR will be harder to obtain, base cooldown of most skills has been lowered.
Homunculus rune
- Homunculus will no longer be usable while cursed, making it impossible to cheese curses with it
- Its damage has been buffed
- Turrets (except Barnacle) can now be picked up and moved with Homunculus
- Stomp attack is now considered a melee attack. This means it will trigger effects requiring "melee attack" status (e.g. Ripper mutation, Grappling Hook, etc)
- Elites will now have a random unique skill such as the ability to have clones, cages, turrets, shields, etc (not many details yet)
A lot of mutations will be reworked in the upcoming version. The most important change will be the way Efficiency and Fireworks Technician work (see previous section). Changing mutations mid-run will become much more expensive, to avoid people changing mutations before and after every boss (notably to take/remove Alienation/Acceptance). The cost of the first mutation change will be cheap (1000 gold) but subsequent changes will be very expensive (50 000 Gold).
Brutality
- Combo: +160 DPS after a kill (almost x2 compared to current mutation)
- Sadism: replaced by Open Wounds mutation. Melee critical hits apply Bleed.
- Vengeance: +160 DPS (small nerf) for 6 sec after getting hit but also -75% damage taken, meaning Vengeance becomes a DR mutation
- Necromancy: heals a % of max HP instead of a flat value. The % scales with survival stats, so it will heal very little at the start of the run but a lot more by the end. Heal % range would be 0.3% to 5%.
- Gastronomy: no details yet but should be changed a bit
- Support: no details yet but should be modified
- Ripper: Stomps will now trigger the ripper effect, making this mutation more viable (the issue was that there are almost no melee Tactics weapons to trigger it). Number of arrows dropped may or may not be increased to 3 instead of 1.
- YOLO: once you lose it, you cannot take another mutation instead, you will be stuck with 2 slots only
- Dead Inside: now grants +60% HP but food no longer heals you
Status effects
- Fire has been nerfed: the bonus damage to burning targets has been changed to 30% instead of 100%. The reason for this is that fire is the easiest status to apply and maintain, and that the increased damage on burning affix is very easy to get on most weapons and skills.
- Slow-down effect after frost now has a diminshing returns limit, which means the duration of the slow effect is diminished with each occurrence on the same target, until it reaches zero (no slow down applied)
- Poison and bleed will probably be tweaked as well (buff? to be confirmed)
Legendary weapons drop rates have been nerfed heavily, as it was not intended to have players end a run with full legendary builds so easily. In the current version, legendaries drop from Bosses (100% chance), Elites (~17% chance) and random mobs (~4% chance). In v1.1, Legendaries will no longer drop from bosses, and the elite/mob rates will be replaced by a global drop rate.
Affix tweaking
- The "launches a grenade" affix has been removed from lots of items and cannot apply breach anymore. this was done because grenades from shield affixes kept stunning enemies while they were attacking, thus making you fail parries. A similar change is planned for "launches an arrow" affix.
- The horribly frequent life-steal 1%/100% affix can no longer appear on legendary weapons. 100%/100% affix was also removed from them.
- The +20% damage taken affix on colorless (cursed) items will now be effective (in the current game, it does nothing)
- Affix conflicts with Wolf Trap are being looked into. Notably, weapon affixes such as "poisons the enemy" are currently not applied while the target is in the trap (clip by u/Dinodsaur).
- Ice Bow has been nerfed significantly. Freeze duration is now 0.5 sec instead of 3 sec. The basic pierce affix has been removed, only the rare (starred) pierce affix wil be available on Ice Bow. Finally, as part of a general DR rework, Ice Bow will no longer be an obvious DR weapon. On the other hand, Ice Bow now deals more damage. The rationale behind the changes was that Ice Bow was obviously OP, and was not intended as a crowd control weapon (this is Frost Blast's role) but as an "interrupt tool".
- The Holy Nutcracker :nutcracker: has been buffed. Last we heard, base damage has been increased and Nutcracker now deals critical damage to immobilized (stunned/frozen/rooted) targets.
- Alchemic Carbine fires a bit faster
- Marksman's Bow now fires almost instantly (0.2 sec), making it like Infantry Bow but for long-range attacks
- Torch's attack sequence has been tweaked to be "more fun".
- Electric whip buff: it will be a 3-attack sequence with the 3rd attack dealing more damage.
- Boomerang was reworked and looks like it's gonna be an actually great weapon soon. Its casting time is now almost instant, its flying speed has been doubled. Boomerang pierces all enemies on the initial throw, and bounces against enemies on the return travel. It does not deal critical damage on the return anymore, but has a higher base damage. This will make it much easier to use against packs of enemies. While waiting for this 1.1 rework, you could always try Uru's boomerang mod on Steam, it's hilarious.
- Spartan Sandals have not been changed and most likely will stay the same. Deepnight likes them as they arebecause they're very fun to use and are intended as a meme secondary weapon.
- Wolf Trap is being tweaked to get rid of some bugs regarding boss behaviour and affixes
- Death Orb has been nerfed a bit. Don't worry, I'm sure it will still be insane.
- Tonic and presumably Vampirism now refill on flask use.
- Swarm Grenade now only spawns 2 worms per use, but its cooldown has been lowered to 1 sec. You can have up to 8 active worms at a given time, and you can now distribute them to different platforms.
- Cluster Grenade will be modified (probably nerfed) in some way
- Frontline Shield is officially irredeemable and will be removed from the game entirely. Another item will take its place, details are not known yet but devs are testing a shield that casts a force field when held, with a sort of mana system to prevent invincibility spam.
- Punishment and Parry shields should now stun enemies correctly
- Grenade parry should no longer control lock the player (clip by u/GlobBlubb)
- The broken hitbox from HotK's jab attack is being looked into
- Weird boss behaviour regarding root effects (e.g. HotK spazzing out in Wolf Traps) is under investigation
OP
OP
i am excited to see enemies having a base stat and damage.
It always sucked when you pick up a scroll and suddenly can't kill enemies in 1 hit anymore.
Changing yolo to a burned slot is awesome unless you pay to reroll. Been Rolling disengagement instead anyways.
It always sucked when you pick up a scroll and suddenly can't kill enemies in 1 hit anymore.
Changing yolo to a burned slot is awesome unless you pay to reroll. Been Rolling disengagement instead anyways.
As I understand it, enemy stat scaling is applied when you enter a level and doesn't change once you're there. However, within a level there are usually two or three tiers of enemies as you go farther. So when you suddenly can't kill an enemy in one hit anymore, I don't think it's from picking up a scroll, but because it's actually a higher level enemy
Late to the party with this one but played an hour or two last night and enjoyed but didn't yet understand it.
Are the levels randomly generated?
I seemed to make decent progress at least to a new named area but whenever I died, I lost all weapons and went right back to the very first room, is this the style of game or as you progress can you open check/save points?
Thanks :)
Are the levels randomly generated?
I seemed to make decent progress at least to a new named area but whenever I died, I lost all weapons and went right back to the very first room, is this the style of game or as you progress can you open check/save points?
Thanks :)
3 weeks until alpha for PC. Before end of November I think for everything else.
Levels are random. No check points. Only takes about an hour to finish the game. You can exit and it will start back where you turned it off. If you die you go back to the beginning. Weapon unlocks and purchases with cells are permanent.
I cannot for the life of me beat the hand of the king, good god the dude is impossible. I had a crazy good run this last game as well, and still got my ass whooped.
What was your build.
Always use the little ice platforms over the spikes when you can. they help you avoid almost all of his bombs in his melee attacks and the floor ground pounds. And you should be rolling through the shield dash.
Pretty impressive list of changes, the devs are relentless. The upcoming new areas, now this, it's almost "game as a"service" level of post launch support, but without IAP, subs or paid loot boxes.
tl;dr if you haven't bought this game, JUST DO IT, a steal, even at full price
tl;dr if you haven't bought this game, JUST DO IT, a steal, even at full price
In the post they also mentioned only one more update coming. Which will probably include 5bc mode and 2 more biomes. They are starting to get itchy to start work on another game.
On my second run on 3 Cell got to HotK and died because I don't know how disengagement works? Lol, I am pretty sure it triggered and I died a second later. Oh well my own fault because I haven't healed inbetween.
But I am quite happy because my only motive for a 3 Cell run was to get Acceptance which I got, so that's nice.
But I am quite happy because my only motive for a 3 Cell run was to get Acceptance which I got, so that's nice.
I'm a little scared to see so many changes coming. Hopefully they all work out for the better.
Two updates. A big balance patch before the end of the year. Then early next year a final content update.
That has been their stated roadmap for many months now.
Two updates. A big balance patch before the end of the year. Then early next year a final content update.
This is immensely exciting to me!
Honestly after beating the game once on the default difficulty, I mostly stopped playing it. I've tried a couple of 1-cell runs but things are so much more difficult and not as rewarding to me, and the HP scaling really muted my excitement overall.
Even if there are some major issues with what they're planning for the first patch, I absolutely love that they're taking the risks in the first place. For a game like Dead Cells, "change for the sake of change" can be a good thing if only to shake up the meta and expose completely new and unexpected systemic outcomes.
1.1 is out now on the beta branch (Steam)
More info: https://steamcommunity.com/games/588650/announcements/detail/1709574265070603465
Full patch notes: https://dead-cells.com/patchnotes
More info: https://steamcommunity.com/games/588650/announcements/detail/1709574265070603465
Full patch notes: https://dead-cells.com/patchnotes
Cool, can't wait for the new patch to comes to consoles and i start playing it again from zero! Another +100 hours of playtime expected for me! :P
I'm kind of confused about the homunculous skill in general. Is it actually useful in ordinary runs, outside of using it to glitch the game? If so, how do people generally use it?
I use it to grab the tower key without risk of trap damage. You can also use it on all the bosses for a bit of extra damage throughout the fight
If you're lucky enough to find a talisman with the invisibility affix you can use homunculus to kill every enemy in the level without being in any danger at all. Attacking normally will break the invisibility but for some reason using homunculus doesn't.
Edit: a more practical use is just adding extra damage over time onto bosses.
How did that patch affect performance on Switch? Still not picked this up because I heard it was laggy on Switch, but if this has improved things I might get it!
Patch isn't coming to switch ou anything but PC until Dec at the latest.
There are now timed doors and kill doors so you either kill a ton of stuff without getting hit or skip it all to make time. The timed doors only give you weapons and gold now.
Cursed chests are needed to boost your scroll count to do dmg
I just started the game a couple of days ago after initially waiting for the patch myself. Slowdown has been extremely minimal for me and hasn't impacted me in the slightest. I've gotten up to the level before the final boss fight thus far in the ~20 runs I've played, so I feel like I've seen a decent amount of the content. The game is fantastic - this is my second favorite indie released on Switch (behind Hollow Knight)! I hope the patch drops soon so those on the fence will hopefully grab the game.
You just stay close to the lights. Clear enemies out carefully, backtrack to lights if it starts to get dark, even mid battle. The lights are never so far apart that you'll get damaged unless you're reckless.
pretty much this. I always kill 20 guys go back and find a light. also never backtrack on foot always use the warps because sometimes you can only go between warps 1 time after the lights break running through might be too long.
I'm glad I got the platinum when I played this at launch. All of the new tweaks make it seem absurdly difficult, but it's hard to really say anything without playing the new build.
I hope it doesn't take forever to come to consoles.
Its still in alpha and 4bc should be a little harder, than having a cheesy dual icebow build. 1.5x is now out btw. they have been tweaking it a little every week.
The updates aren't officially out on PC yet either, they're just being tested on a public beta branch
If I'm about to jump in right now on PC, should I stick with the base version or try out the patch?
I would go straight to the patch since so much has changed.
I lost my save on this game, as I sold my old PS4 and for some reason the cloud save feature didn't have a recent copy. In any case, I've started over again.
One big issue I have always had with the game, is how the end of a run often feels unrewarding. Dying and starting over leaves a really bitter feeling for me because you lose your cells from the current floor.
This is in stark contrast to games like Enter the Gungeon, which don't punish the player for dying, and use the metagame currency as a means of urging players to do another run. In games like Gungeon, the end of each run is bitter sweet, as you can spend your metagame currency on new items, which will change the items available in the next run.
It feels like that motivational gameplay loop is missing here.
It doesn't help that many of the items that you spend cells on are boring. More health flasks, more money, etc, while they make the game progressively easier, they aren't interesting rewards and they don't change the gameplay in any meaningful way.
One big issue I have always had with the game, is how the end of a run often feels unrewarding. Dying and starting over leaves a really bitter feeling for me because you lose your cells from the current floor.
This is in stark contrast to games like Enter the Gungeon, which don't punish the player for dying, and use the metagame currency as a means of urging players to do another run. In games like Gungeon, the end of each run is bitter sweet, as you can spend your metagame currency on new items, which will change the items available in the next run.
It feels like that motivational gameplay loop is missing here.
It doesn't help that many of the items that you spend cells on are boring. More health flasks, more money, etc, while they make the game progressively easier, they aren't interesting rewards and they don't change the gameplay in any meaningful way.
The currency in Gungeon is pretty rare though. I feel like I make more progress in Dead Cells to be honest. Even on a bad run I get through at least 3 levels and bank some cells in the process.