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A recent update has put a lot of emphasis on the shops for getting good gear so money is more important than ever.  I expect this to change though.

 

Stuff like the fire grenade can be good depending on what else you have that complements it.  Oil weapons obviously pair very well with it.  If you run a skill build they can also be quite devastating.  I personally prefer skills that have more utility like traps or phaser as I usually run strength builds.  In general strength tends to be fast but risky while skill is slower but safer.

 

The first boss is a lot of pattern recognition and waiting for opportunities to strike.  Try not to fight him in a corner because his damage aura will tear through you if you get stuck.  Skills are extremely useful against him.  Ranged weapons are also quite powerful provided you can get the ammo back.

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16 hours ago, Trip Hazard said:

I'd like a Bloodborne style system where I can challenge the enemy that killed me in hopes of winning that back. Ah well, once more unto the breach.

That would be super cool. I can't tell you how many blueprints I've lost haha. Approaching completion though!

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Just had a lovely, very tense run where I went into the Toxic Sewers for the first time, picked up a bunch of skill upgrades, then finally grabbed the teleportation rune in the Old Sewers! I had learned from my last encounter with the elite enemy that holds it to keep away and pick my moments to strike, and the fight went off without a hitch (tho I did "panic roll" a couple of times)

 

Picked up the impaler from the Black Bridge as well, and I'm really looking forward to trying that out. The game has been doling out upgrades at a good rate, enough to keep me satisfied but not so many that I feel overwhelmed or don't get time to play with them a bit :tup:

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I had a very frustrating moment the other day where I managed to pickup two new blueprints and then got careless and died before I could cash them in.  I have about 3 things left to unlock, all of which are already rare and hardly drop, plus they're only located in the Forgotten Sepulcher which takes some gearing up to get through.  The thing that's currently stymying me is the lack of weapon/skill drops and the heavy reliance on shops and gold.  Even at the max gold return (85%) I usually run a deficit and often don't get useful gear anyway.

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I'm loathe to unlock any shields because I just can't see myself using them, and it would reduce the likelihood of an item I do want being generated...

 

Okay, so I think I'm stuck right at the end of the Fog Fjord. I've gone as far right as I can and there's a timed door, now sealed. No way to go over the door (perhaps if I had triple jump, but I haven't got that). The map is completely explored and devoid of enemies and I've got 42 souls, the most I've ever had. Am I stuck? Did the level generation go a bit wonky?

 

Edit: It's okay, I found the exit inside a building halfway through the map. On that note, the map really needs to indicate which doors you've been in and which you haven't :P

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That was actually a pretty charmed run. I made it through the graveyard and fought the watcher. Whittled it down to about a 3rd of its life but the tentacles got me in the end. 

 

What's the maximum number of flasks you can carry? I've only got 2 at the moment, (the next upgrade is still over a hundred souls off) which might have been enough if I weren't so panicked!

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The flask can be upgraded to carry 4 charges at max.  The amount of health restored depends on which area you're in.  The game restores health based on an expected value for each level, regardless of what your current max is.  I recommend focusing on getting the non-weapon upgrades first.  Upgrading the weapons doesn't provide a huge amount of damage improvement while getting more flask charges and money will pay off immediately.

 

Shields are kind of iffy.  They don't really function like shields in most games do, they're more like parries.  You can't hold them out forever and only block damage if you time it right.  They do provide a passive defense boost in that whenever you take damage they generate a small forcefield around you for a short time that lowers further damage (but doesn't negate it).  This can help you from getting overwhelmed by a bunch of enemies at once but won't do as much good against a single strong enemy.  Your health regain from attacking enemies is also reduced in this state but if you're quick enough you can still get most of it back.  In general sword and board helps with survivability as you'd expect.  I personally prefer fast, hard hitting tactics so I usually skip shields too.

 

Two skills that really help out a ton against the Watcher are the trap and the ivy grenade.  The traps can help protect you from the tentacles, especially the one that sweeps from the sides.  The ivy grenade will hold the Watcher in place so you can hammer away at him.  I've had fights where I was able to lock him in place and have him skip his entire attack phase.  I've heard it's possible to one shot him with the right setup.

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I spent some time away from Dead Cells to try and avoid burning out early (also because I was getting frustrated at not getting blueprint drops after much grinding).  I came back to it over the weekend and there was an update last week that changed some things.  Scrolls drops have been rebalanced to not appear primarily in shops, instead they work like they used to.  They added a combo mechanic of sorts.  If you kill multiple enemies in a short amount of time you get a movement speed boost (doesn't affect attack speed as far as I know) which you can extend by killing more enemies.  Money was also changed a bit with the cash recovered after death being a static amount (between 3k and 15k) instead of a percent.  There's also a passive ability you can unlock to recycle unwanted drops for gold.

 

One of the bigger additions is the new daily run mode.  It kind of works similarly to other daily run roguelikes such as Spelunky or Binding of Issac in that everyone gets the same seed which changes each day and there's a leaderboard.  The main differences are it's not just a specific seed of the whole game, rather it's one level with a boss at the end.  Scrolls boost all your stats, there's a time limit and a scoring mechanism, plus you can keep retrying it to improve your ranking.  Frankly I don't like it because it's not like the main game.  Scoring is not a thing outside the daily mode so the decision to have one is really bizarre.  Being able to continually retry the same seed makes a daily pointless to me.  The fun of the daily in Spelunky was you had to use your knowledge and skill at the game to make it through a one shot run.  This isn't really true in the DC daily since you can keep trying shit until it works.

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It's been a few months since I last played this game so I decided to see if anything changed and boy has it.  There have been some major reworks.  Besides the usual new areas/enemies/weapons, some big mechanical changes were implemented.  Stats were reworked into three groups, Brutality, Tactics, and Survival.  Weapons now fall under one (or in some cases two) of these groups.  Finding a level up scroll in the world allows you to boost one of these categories which increases the damage or effects of weapons in that category.  In the case of weapons belonging to two categories, it picks whatever stat is higher.  There are also special colorless versions that will use the highest stat; right now these can only be found in cursed chests.  Boosting a stat will also give you more HP though you get less of an increase as the stat level goes up. 

 

In between levels you can also equip a mutation.  These are basically perks that fall into one of the three stat types above.  For example, one of the Survival mutations gives you some HP each time you kill an enemy while a Brutality one increases damage if there are at least two enemies nearby.  A couple of the mutations are general ones that don't relate to a stat, such as one that doubles the amount of ammo ranged weapons have.  Since they're tied to stats, leveling a stat will also increase the mutation's effect.  You start with none and can equip one more after each level up to three (there might be a way to equip more, not sure yet).  You can change the equipped ones at the cost of some gold.

 

Shield use changed too, they work like I wanted them to before.  If you hold them out they reduce the amount of damage you take.  If you time it correctly you can parry which negates all the damage and increases the shield's effect.  For example the spike shield damages enemies and deals critical damage on a parry.

 

Besides all that, the game also got more difficult.  Enemies are a lot tougher (or maybe you're just weaker) and healing items heal for much less.  I used to be able to beat the game fairly consistently before.  Now I haven't even made it past the 4th area yet.

 

Some other change include new movement runes, more level variety, some weapon reworks, and changes to how cells are spent.  They can still be used to upgrade weapons but you have to reach the blacksmith in the third area to do it.  The collector unlocks blueprints, mutations, and some other general stuff like letting you reroll shop inventory.  Also everything you unlocked before is still unlocked.

 

One final bit of craziness, the game now interacts with my Razer keyboard.  The color of the backlight changes to match the level I'm on except for the number row, which is green and acts like a display for how many charges are left in my healing flask.  The entire keyboard flashes when I take damage or pick up a cell.  At first I thought my keyboard was being glitchy (wouldn't be the first time) but after a while I noticed the pattern.  This is the first game I've ever seen actually use this function.

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When this won RPS's GOTY I bought it and I've been enjoying it a ton. I've gotten much better at it over the 15 hours I've played, although I still haven't beat a second boss. I think my single complaint is that the shields take too long to block after you hit the block button. I guess I could learn the timing but frankly I just find it too much of a pain. I suppose they would be too powerful if they worked instantly, but the way they feel right now is not great IMHO. Aside from that this game is great.

 

edit: I take it back I have three issues. The first is the shield thing. The second is that giving you a randomly generated set of equipment at the start is silly because you can just restart until you get what you want, but that's tedious and frustrating. Just let me pick, or don't give me stuff at the start. The third is that the optimal way to play is to only unlock blueprints for your favorite equipment. But that sucks. I don't know what my favorite equipment is until I unlock a blueprint and try the stuff out. Now that I know the Spartan Boots or whatever are trash, it's too late to do anything about it unless I restart entirely.

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I agree with the shield thing.  I feel like the timing of the parry is off which discourages me from wanting to pick shields even though I like them in theory.  It also makes me focus on brutality and tactics upgrades, which is basically how the game was optimized before the changes.  As for the random starting weapons, I like it.  I can understand wanting to reroll until you get what you want but I find just going with what you're given makes the game more dynamic.  The game would get old fast if I could just pick my optimum weapon over and over again.  One of my favorite things to do in this game is an all weapons run, which is no matter what weapon drops I force myself to pick it up and use it.  The blueprint thing I can also understand but I don't mind it for the same reasons as the starting weapons.  There are a handful I absolutely never use (oil grenade I'm looking at you) but for the most part I switch it up a lot.

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I made it to the Forgotten Sepulcher for the first time today! I was streaming, actually, if someone wants to go find the VOD and scrub through to find it. Spoiler for what happened to me:

 

I died immediately in the dark.

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The devs have announced that Dead Cells is coming to console sometime this year.  Glad to see a Switch release on there, feels a like a great game for on the go.

 

 

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This looks awesome, it's the first game I've seen in ages that I actually want to play. Just debating whether to get it on GoG or Steam

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It is also on switch, though it sounds like there are some mild framerate issues there. Some people seem bothered, others seem to not really mind. Either way, be aware of that if you're sensitive to FPS drops.

Otherwise it sounds like the switch version is great. I am about to try it this evening, and will share thoughts once I've made some progress. 

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I just bought this on Xbox One, mainly because of the way that the developer described the company structure there.

 

Not sure when I will play it.

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I started playing it on the Switch last night. Managed to get 2 health potions and make it to the first boss. This is very good, lots of clever little design touches.

 

Haven't noticed any FPS issues, but then I'm not usually very sensitive to that stuff.

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I've been playing DC on and off since it first came to Early Access but I've not tried the final release or the last beta update before that so there's probably some new stuff I haven't seen yet.  I'm tempted to start over fresh but I've already invested so much time unlocking and upgrading that it's probably not worth it.

 

I might record some updated gameplay if there's any interest in that.  Heck, I may even stream it.  I'll probably crank the difficulty back a bit though.  The last time I played I was using 3 boss cells and I still haven't beaten the final boss yet.

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The devs have yesterday pledged to tackle the Switch framerate issues, however present. So that'll soon be a thing of the past.

 

[Now all we need is for Capcom to do the same with Mega Man X Collection's slowdown on Switch.]

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I picked it up and played a little last night on my laptop, works fine on a keyboard but might take me a while to get comfortable with the controls.

 

What do you guys think about the map randomization in the game? I understand why they included it and it's not something I mind, but I also don't think it adds much. The variety seems to come from the weapons, not the encounters, and I think I might've preferred hand crafted areas over randomized ones, even despite the fact that you'll play through the first area hundreds of times probably.

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