A new alpha update for the action platformer Dead Cells is now available on Steam. This patch brings a new weapon and balancing changes to most of the weapons and skills in the game.
New Weapon
The latest addition to Dead Cells is the Panchaku. This weapon looks like frying pans attached by a chain and works similarly to a nunchaku. What makes the Panchaku amazing is that it deals critical damage to enemies facing you. On top of that, this weapon can even deflect grenades!
Item Rework
Dead Cells has a healthy array of weapons to choose from. However, the developers found that most people would only use about two or three of the available options. This prompted them to make changes to 26 weapons and skills in an attempt to rebalance the item pool.
The idea here is to bring the items to relatively the same power level or, at least, close to each other. This is to encourage you to use and explore the other weapons in the game.
You can read the adjustments below:
- Hard Light Sword and Pistol: slight damage buff to the sword and attack speed buff to the pistol
- Queen's Rapier: the delayed slice hits sooner
- Maw of the Deep: attack speed buff
- Wrecking Ball: first and last attacks are faster
- Leghugger: now jumps on a nearby target before launching its reactivation attack plus keeps its growth state across instances of the object in a run
- Gilded Yumi: charge time slightly decreased + now crits reliably on Mama Tick (to be consistent with Impaler)
- Killing Deck: damage buff on the first 2 attacks
- Hand Hook: now also crits when the thrown enemy hits another entity
- Greed Shield: can now trigger once per enemy every 10 seconds + damage buff
- Frantic Sword: crit multiplier is now inversely proportional to your life (when at or under 50% max life)
- Abyssal Trident: slight damage buff
- Shrapnel Axes: slight damage buff
- Pollo Power: now fires 1 more egg + damage buff
- Crowbar: now also crits on beast enemies (hand-picked, think "non-humanoid, non-mechanic")
- Lightning Bolt: now crits one tick earlier and damages you 1 tick later
- Spiked Shield: crit damage buff
- Smoke Bomb: scaling heavily nerfed (it was following the same formula as the stats)
- Grappling Hook: same as Smoke Bomb
- Boy's Ax: damage nerf + can't roll the Extra Ammo affix + can't be affected by Ammo mutation
- Bladed Tonfas: slight crit multiplier nerf
- Lacerating Aura: cooldown now starts at the end of the effect instead of starting at cast
- Maw of the Deep: its root is now less effective on bosses
- Crusher: it's slow and is now less effective on bosses
- Hunter's Grenade: no longer provides stats
- Rapier: damage nerf
- Sonic Carbine: damage nerf
- Hokuto's Bow: procs less often + damage bonus nerfed
If you don’t like the changes made to your favorite weapons, do not worry. The good news is that these adjustments are still subject to change before the final version of this update is released.
So, what do you think about the Panchaku and the weapon and skill adjustments made in this patch?
