I’m not good at Dead Cells. This difficult rogue-lite action-platformer can be extremely brutal when you’re still learning the ropes, and death comes fast. At least, I thought so until I landed an impossibly useful build on my third total attempt. After two deaths, I was able to defeat the Concierge, the Time Keeper, and just about defeat the Hand of the King.
The build is essentially tactics-based, with a strong focus on one particular turret. The Double Crossb-o-matic isn’t just a useful tool, it’s also insanely strong if you build up your tactics.
To further enhance this build, you’ll probably want to bring at least one bow-type weapon. I brought two, and was able to eliminate even the toughest enemies without a scratch. This is a great build for total newbies like me, and if you’re struggling with the boss fights or enemy encounters in the mid-areas of the game, I recommend grabbing a few turrets and letting your new best friends sort things out for you.
More Dead Cells guides on Gameranx:
- Dead Cells: How To Find Keys & Cash In The Promenade | Secrets Guide
- Dead Cells: How To Get The Vine, Teleportation, Ram & Spider Runes | Locations Guide
Want To Make Easy Progress? Equip Double Turrets | Powerful Build Guide
This build is about more than just turrets — but turrets are a big part of it. My strategy for easy victory is thus: equip the strongest turrets you can find, equip two of them in both gear slots, and upgrade Tactics nonstop.
Here’s what I recommend:
- Double Crossb-o-matic: Drops from Zombies (so, possible to get from the very first area) — there’s only a 0.04% chance of dropping, so you’ll need some luck.
- Sinew Slicer: If you don’t have the Double Crossb-o-matic unlocked, you can use the Sinew Slicer in its place.
- Or any other turret. Just get double turrets!
- Upgrade Tactics: Continue to upgrade tactics to boost the damage, even when you stop getting health bonuses. That +15% damage is insanely powerful. You won’t need the health at a certain point.
- Recommended Mutations: Along with Tactics and Double Crossb-o-matics, I recommend bringing…
- Efficiency (Tactics): This skill lowers the cooldown on Tactics gear like turrets. You’ll want to lower the cooldown by a whole lot — that way, you can continue to deploy and redeploy turrets before they’re destroyed.
- Support (Tactics): This skill increases your DPS by a huge amount when you’re in active range of turrets. Because this is a turret-based build, this is crazy powerful.
- And A Third Mutation: The last mutation is up to you. Necromancy (Survival) heals you for every dead enemy. Very useful, even against the last boss who summons minions. Ammunition is also good, if you want to focus on bows as your main weapons — which you should.
- Main Weapons: Bows — Legendary Bows Preferred
- Because we’re focusing on turrets, you’ll probably want a ranged weapons. Bows are a great choice, and they’ll only get stronger as you level up Tactics. If you also use Support, your bows will become insanely powerful. Defeat bosses and always look for Legendary Bows.
And that’s it! Basically, a ranged approach will keep you safely away from enemies. The cooldown on turrets will be short, so you can just spam them during boss fights — the bosses will take continuous damage while you can focus on evading attacks. Enemies are easy to deal with — just drop a turret and run to safety!
This simple strategy helped me complete a huge portion of the game within an hour of starting it, and it happened purely by accident. Dead Cells is an awesome game, so I’m curious what other amazing builds are available out there. Let us know in the comments if you’ve made your own OP build.
