Dead Cells - Metroidvania Roguelite in Early Access

Dead Cells DLC on sale this week on Xbox:

Bad Seed for $2.49
Fatal Falls for $3.49

I finished the DLC. In BC1 with all fountains activated, just to see it how it was. In fact, I have to warm up again my skills (which always were kind of poor), because in my first two tries I died by curses lol.

So this time there are less new enemies, and the second biome isn’t a normal map, but a chase sequence with a trio of bosses. To compensate, there are more new items than in the past dlcs:

I believe the second DLC was my favorite. But I still recommend buying it all, given their low price.

What map do you use, if you use one from the internet? Or is it all in your head by this point? I’ve forgotten all the routes by now.

The one in the wiki:

I’m sorry to ask such a basic question here, but I haven’t played the game in a while I’ve totally forgotten everything it seems.

So I bought the DLCs, and I jumped back in. This lady told me about Aspects, and I picked one (poison one!) and I advanced forward and there was a message about meeting someone in the sewers, okay. And then there was a book telling me about weapons being added from all these other games, okay, got it. And then…

Why can I not jump more than a foot? Am I just used to other games like Hollow Knight where you can jump higher, is that what happened? My jump height is really low. So my memory of being able to jump higher is just my brain playing tricks on me?

But wait!!! There’s the score keeper guy on the platform above me! And I can’t even jump high enough to go look at my own stats. Now I know something is up. Have I activated something that’s restricting my jump height? Maybe it’s the A button combined with something else? I tried holding A down, but that didn’t make me jump any higher. What gives?

Edit: Bah, I shouldn’t have started a game until I figured this out. I reached the toxic sewers and now I’m stuck because I can’t jump high enough to get back up.

I’ve got the spider rune, so I can climb that little wall on the left, but I need to get up to that pipe and I can’t do it with my minuscule jump height.

Aha! I figured it out. You can double jump in this game. That’s how you get to that pipe.

Aspects are like ‘cheats’, big bonus but the game won’t let you unlock the next difficulty if you use them. Just FYI.

The letter about someone in the sewer, you can ignore it for now, it’s for the third DLC.

Yes, your jump is pretty low. As you have seen, you can double jump, and also wall jump. Some amulets give you the power of triple or even quad jump.

I have not seen this aspect lady. Where is she?

In the starting area, before you pick up your first weapons, you can jump down to see her after rolling a bit.

She does say you can’t earn a boss cell if you have an active Aspect, but I don’t see why that’s an issue, I already have my boss cell, that I don’t use, so I don’t think I can earn anymore boss cells anyway if I’m not using the boss cell I already have.

(Using a single boss cell makes the game impossible).

By the way, you may be interested in the custom mode. You can made the Hard (aka Boss Cell 1) mode a bit easier, with things like
-enemies not killing you in 1 hit while being under curse, but your hp goes to 1hp.
-Less enemies to kill in curses.
-Reactivate the full fountain like in BC0 (in BC1 and onwards it appears sometimes broken)
-Max mutations to 4 or 5, instead of 3.

Some of the modifications will deactivate achievements, but it doesn’t affect anything, so you can unlock BC2 (if only for misguided bragging rights). Well, there are some enemies, paths and items exclusive to it.

Oh, I had to die a couple times for the aspect person to offer then to me. The first couple times I couldn’t interact with them.

So the Hollow Knight nail is a terrible weapon in this right? I can’t tell because I’m currently terrible at the game with any weapon.

I tried another weapon from a different game where you hit someone twice with melee, and the third hit is a critical hit with a gun! I think the weapon is from Curse of the Gods or something, but that was freaking brilliant. So powerful!

It just feels so awesome to use because it’s melee, melee, and then bam, because the gunshot is a critical, it always is the killing shot so far. It really makes me want to try that other game.

Are the DLC important if I haven’t yet played the game?

Important no, it’s just ‘more’. I’d after 40 hours you want more Dead Cells, and more variety in special, then buy it.

It can be fun but it’s a lot more focused than DC.

Have I given the impression that I like this stupid game? No, I hate it.

/fumes after failing 4 runs, getting zero progress in all the evening done.

It seems it doesn’t do a lot of damage, in exchange it has three special features:
-it doesn’t stop briefly your movement when attacking, like the other weapons
-it has a ‘upwards attack’ and ‘downward attack’ that other weapons lack
-the crit jumping in enemy with the sword pointing down, and bouncing from them.

Overall it seems a weapon that needs a skilled player’s hand, to really maximize the fact you can crit several times in a row.

Interesting, so the best way to use it would be to jump over enemies and killing them from above, every time.

I am leaning quite heavily on pets this run. I have never beaten the final (non-true, pre-dlc) boss, and only made it to him once. I am at High Peak Castle, now, quitting for the night. The Leghugger I think they must have added this DLC, given the way I found him? Very nice.

When I came back to the game a few months after 1.0, they had added a bunch of stuff to the descriptions, like you could pick certain mutations, but there were suddenly downsides like it adds to Malaise, with no explanation for what that meant.

I noticed this time that they got rid of all that. Now mutation descriptions, at least, are back to the way they were at 1.0 release. Simple bonuses that spell out exactly what you’re getting. Maybe that malaise stuff (whatever it is) is still there in the background, but it’s not clogging the descriptions anymore. Nice.

God, I’ve completely forgotten how to play this game. I just don’t have any of the rhythms down on how to attack, remember to freeze enemies, when to roll, remembering to drink potions, etc.

There is still a pair of mutations that will mention something about malaise. It doesn’t affect you, as it doesn’t appear until BC4.