Hello! We're back for a new alpha test! The "Clean Cut" update is designed to improve the whole Dead Cells experience with a bunch of trims and cuts for every part of the game, and now we just need to make some tweaks before we officially release it. So what's in store?

New items

Firstly, we have two new weapons, the Sewing Scissors and Giant Comb, both indispensable tools for a clean cut. Sewing Scissors: a huge pair of scissors that scale with Survival. Will instakill all enemies that it hits, if one of the enemies is killed by the attack's standard damage. Giant Comb: a Brutality weapon that deals critical damage to enemies that are not on the ground.

New NPC

Turns out, the Tailor was hiding a daughter all along, and by some coincidental massive stroke of fortune, she has just the skills to replace your head with the flame "Bobby version" on all skins. Crazy world...

New mode

Finally, we have the brand new Speedrun Mode with in-game time tracking for speedrunners, or anyone else who wants to know how much time they've spent trying to make it to Hand of the King and failing. Weve also done a ton of upgrading, reworking and rebalancing.

Upgrades

• We've added a new DIY mode in Boss Rush. With this mode, you can choose whichever bosses you want to face in a run.
• The 3 bosses from Return to Castlevania have also been added to Boss Rush and Training Room.
• Enhanced bosses have been tweaked in the Boss Rush.
• Training Room has multiple new options for you to practice your skills now. Too much to list here, just go check it out and have a nice surprise :)

Reworks

Mutations:

• Combo: there is a true combo meter now! The mutation has been changed to enable a damage increase with every melee hit in a 2.5 sec window (of course the window refreshes after every hit). It scales exponentially, go crazy with it!
• Tainted Flask: it can recharge even if your flask is not totally empty. We also added 1 more elite into every biome. Its kinda experimental, we might revert it at the end, and its all up to you the reaction and feedback we get.
• Networking: you can just mark enemies with ranged attacks now, there doesn't need to be an actual projectile stuck in the mob's body.
• Berserker: it now stacks (it caps at 90%) and renders you immune to stuns.
• What doesn't kill you: now grants recovery instead of healing. You have to earn your healing now.
• Necromancy: also now grants recovery instead of healing. It scales with the max health of the mobs you kill, which means you can get more recovery by killing a stronger enemy. The cap of up to a maximum 50% HP is eliminated, but its less effective as you get closer to max health.
• Frostbite: now stacks with slow effects and acts as a full stack on frozen targets.
• Dead Inside: now doubles your life but prevents ALL healing sources.
• Disengagement: there is no longer a cooldown but can only trigger once per biome. (I know, I know)

Other:

• Slow effect stacks up to 5 times. Each stack has a greater slowing effect, then the affected enemy is frozen at the fifth stack.
• The Mimic can now appear randomly in shops outside of the Bank biome. Mwahahaaaa

Rebalancing

Return to Castlevania Weapons:

• Whip Sword: whip form now passes shields.
• Whip Sword's transformation attack hitbox tended to bug, it should now be consistent with its visual FX, which means it wont only hit one single target anymore.
• The ghosts gathered by Death Scythe's have a slightly smaller explosion radius.
• Bible is a heavy weapon.
• Throwing Axe can no longer roll Fire Bullet affix.
• Alucard's Shield has better parry windows, and the whole combo instead of the next hit crits.
• Rebound Stone: it deals slightly more damage and has a smaller but longer window before being able to "catch it" (i.e., trigger the crit). Its cooldown now starts upon its destruction.
• Holy Water has a bigger vertical hitbox and deals damage in a more logical way. By logical, we mean the flame itself can cause damage now.
• Medusa Head deals more damage and bumps further.
• We added some security measures to prevent the Cat from being targeted by enemies. There is also a long cooldown when the Cat is killed by the Queen.

Mobs:

• Medusa's flurry attacks should now have a small pause after the end of the attack.
• Haunted Armor (the one with an axe) should now activate at a slightly longer range.
• Elite Merman should now fire 2 big fireballs instead of a big one and a normal one.

Bosses:

• Dracula (Humanoid)'s fire pillars are now slightly easier to avoid (in terms of intervals) but are not rollable anymore.
• Dracula (Demon) is now a beast, along with Buer, Werewolves and Medusa (Crowbar wise).

And that's it!

How to access the alpha:

Back up your save first. The alpha shouldn't affect your saves but better to be safe than sorry. If the worst happens then theres a save restore hack detailed here: https://steamcommunity.com/games/588650/announcements/detail/1696100248017690442) Then follow these instructions to access the alpha:

• Go to your Steam game library.
• Right click on Dead Cells and click "properties".
• Select the tab "Betas".
• In the first dropdown box select "Alpha - Not for the faint hearted".
• Click close and wait for the upload to finish downloading.
• Start playing.

As always, everything is still being tweaked according to feedback. So some things may break, have strange interactions or just straight up crash the game. If you want to leave feedback you can do so in the comments here, or on our official Discord (link at the bottom of the post) - there are two channels called update34-alpha-discussion and update34-alpha-feedback specifically for these conversations, so please use them! Bug reports can be sent to us with the following form to help us collect all information on bugs and crashes in one place, this helps us to fix them quicker! https://forms.clickup.com/f/2b318-1807/WG3GMB5KUFQB4XRAHX Cheers, Matt, EE & MT

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[ 2023-04-05 16:08:45 CET ] [ Original post ]