An upcoming patch for the roguelite platformer Dead Cells is adding the “Panchaku” weapon and is rebalancing a handful of other weapons and items. The Panchaku themselves are exactly what they sound like, frying pains attached by a chain and used as nunchaku,
The Panchaku are a deadly weapon with the unique property of critting enemies that are facing the player. So players who find and equip the Panchaku will be able to smack their enemies around to deadly (and comedic!) effect. The game also adds a costume to look like “Bobby”, including a flaming pink head to complete the look.
You can find a list of Dead Cells item changes here.
Item Reworks
It’s been a while since our last major rebalance of weapons, with the ‘What’s the Damage?’ update releasing over a year ago. Since then we’ve had new items and mutations from the ‘Everyone is Here’ and the ‘Break the Bank’ updates, plus ‘The Queen and the Sea’ DLC, so there’s a few imbalances here and there.
So, we’re making changes to 26 weapons and skills to rebalance the item pool.
Why do we do rebalancing? Well, we need to do this to keep the variety element strong – a good roguelite should offer you difficult choices. If you’re going to take the same 2-3 weapons every time then you’re going to get bored pretty quickly – we don’t want people to be recycling 90% of weapons without even considering using them.
That’s why we need to bring items to the same power level (or as close as possible) to encourage players to explore and use more of the item pool.
Here’s what we’re proposing:
Buffs
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 attack are faster
Leghugger: now jumps on a nearby target before launching its reactivation attack + 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 buffNerfs
Steam
Smoke Bomb: scaling heavily nerfed (it was following the same formula as the stats)
Grappling Hook: same as Smoke Bomb
Boy’s Axe: 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: its slow 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
The new Dead Cells update will also include large changes to the Legendary Item system, and also adding content based on the developer’s other game Soul Knight.