I was having a blast until infection.

[Walfegood]

my 5th run and I make it to the castle with an incredible set up, tons of dmg and 5k hp with a shield that blocks 90% dmg and 95% projectile dmg. I go around the castle killing everything with a combination of DoTs and slashing them and only ever having to block the big guys spin attack since I basically had no range.

Then I make it to the blood room with the 2 elite backstabbers and try my darnest to chase them around, but they are always teleporting so it takes quite a while to kill even one when my range is pitiful and I have no slows/stuns. When I finally do manage to kill one I breath a sigh of relief since now I can focus on just catching one of them, but not even 3 seconds later I explode while at half hp. Turns out I died to infection, a mechanic I had to google since there is no prior warning or hints that at this final part of the game it wants you to be a dodging/parry/stun/snare master/spammer or die instantly against moderately hard enemies(the moderate difficulty being the increased HP they have).

Honestly this one mechanic seems out of place in this game with the lack of prior information/hints about it. The enemies have a giant exclamation mark for thier attacks and the spider lady gives you a hint/info about the darkness in the sepulcher, the explosives blink before exploding, the invinciblity buffing target dummies have a light connecting them. The Concierge telegraphs everything and even knocks you away prior to doing his strongest move so that you dont just insta die(the red bubble of death), the Time Keeper teleports away and pauses before he does his special attacks and the swords that rain down create a beam of light before falling. This one major mechanic though has nothing that I have seen to give any indication of its existance prior to me dying to it.

[Comegetsome]

wow. at first i thought tl;dr.. then i read and it didnt seem like whining but an accuratedescription that the game does tell you and telegraph many things so you are aware but it doesnt really do that w/ malaise. tho i believe it does tell you the instant u get infected that you are infected and puts a 'tick' bar above your HP bar that i guess means ( i never died to it) that once the tick bar fills up you die instantly.

all i can say is you're right it doesnt tell you out right the infection kills you when the bar fills up but then again this is Dead Cells, EVERYTHING is out to get you :) now you know and will be better prepared next run :D

[Tarshaid]

Originally posted by Comegetsome:

wow. at first i thought tl;dr.. then i read and it didnt seem like whining but an accuratedescription that the game does tell you and telegraph many things so you are aware but it doesnt really do that w/ malaise. tho i believe it does tell you the instant u get infected that you are infected and puts a 'tick' bar above your HP bar that i guess means ( i never died to it) that once the tick bar fills up you die instantly.

all i can say is you're right it doesnt tell you out right the infection kills you when the bar fills up but then again this is Dead Cells, EVERYTHING is out to get you :) now you know and will be better prepared next run :D

Pretty sure you got that right, although IIRC, infection death is more like strong constant damage rather than an instant drop.

I'll admit that it's not exceedingly clear, but it does tell you that you've been infected at the first hit, and a new gauge appears to show you how much it has progressed.

[Walfegood]

Originally posted by Tarshaid:

Pretty sure you got that right, although IIRC, infection death is more like strong constant damage rather than an instant drop.

I'll admit that it's not exceedingly clear, but it does tell you that you've been infected at the first hit, and a new gauge appears to show you how much it has progressed.

unfortunately I didnt see the marks because of all the flashy attacks I was doing and the backstabbers doing theres, and I was rolling a lot.

But if I had lived then I would have seen it, but I still think a prior notice would of been nice.

[TreasureCat]

It gives you several text notifications as the level gets increasingly higher. Of course, that doesn't help much if you take a whole bunch of hits at once. It also doesn't tell you at all what that means.

I haven't been overtaken by it yet, so I actually don't know, but I've been assuming instant death or something almost as terrible.

[Mois]

The Malaise mechanic is never explained ingame, I was lucky enough to not get fully infected and had to Google about it.

[NeedtoDie]

It's part of the rogue-lite genre, where you have die to something, learn and avoid it next time.

It is the same as dying to the Guardian Knight's Tornado or Golem's pull. You couldn't predict it, you die, you learn.

[esco1979]

If you dis-liked that do NOT play on 4 cells difficulty. It's a constant factor there. As in from every enemy EXCEPT ones that spawn in like lieutnants and those little green worms and flying bugs that spawn when you kill certain zombies .

[Walfegood]

Originally posted by NeedtoDie:

It's part of the rogue-lite genre, where you have die to something, learn and avoid it next time.

It is the same as dying to the Guardian Knight's Tornado or Golem's pull. You couldn't predict it, you die, you learn.

Your first statement is true of other rouge-lites but thats not how this game presents its other threats, as I wrote in my post.

As for the Guardian Knight's Tornado or Golem's pull, Nothing about Tornadoes is safe ever and its telegraphed prior to him doing it and in the event you fail to stop him or get away its not instant death. For the Golem's pull, I am not sure what about since I have never seen the golem do anything aside from ram me.

incase you meant the Catchers pull, I will say it is also telegraphed by the fact he pulls you with a chain first then has a short pause before slamming his sickle on you, which also isnt an insta kill.

These attacks hurt and can be a run ender but so can any other random enemies attack, but they all have that giant yellow exclamation mark prior to them along with their attack pose, so you have a warning to the attacks and therefore are able ready an appropriate response.

Infection on the otherhand is the single thing in this game I have encountered that has no prior warning or hint about it, which is what my original posts point is.

[NeedtoDie]

Originally posted by Walfegood:

Your first statement is true of other rouge-lites but thats not how this game presents its other threats, as I wrote in my post.

As for the Guardian Knight's Tornado or Golem's pull, Nothing about Tornadoes is safe ever and its telegraphed prior to him doing it and in the event you fail to stop him or get away its not instant death. For the Golem's pull, I am not sure what about since I have never seen the golem do anything aside from ram me.

incase you meant the Catchers pull, I will say it is also telegraphed by the fact he pulls you with a chain first then has a short pause before slamming his sickle on you, which also isnt an insta kill.

These attacks hurt and can be a run ender but so can any other random enemies attack, but they all have that giant yellow exclamation mark prior to them along with their attack pose, so you have a warning to the attacks and therefore are able ready an appropriate response.

Infection on the otherhand is the single thing in this game I have encountered that has no prior warning or hint about it, which is what my original posts point is.

No, I'm talking about the Golem's ability to teleport you right in front of him, from anywhere. It's a common way to die when you're not used to it, and you can't really avoid it until you know how it works.
The infection mechanism gives you just as many hints about its danger as the Guardian's Tornado.
You have to be hit multiple times, a meter appears, and several warnings prompt on your character. I don't remember the message, but it's something like "Warning, high infection", and "Infection level critical", etc.


It's fair, just like the rest. Some people don't like hit, like esco1979 who is mad because of multi-hit in 4-cell diffficulty, but, just like the rest of the game, it's perfectly avoidable with knowledge and you can only blame yourself when you get killed.

IMO, the most unfair difficulty of the game is about some of HotK patterns. They are incredibly hard to read and react, even when known, and have deceptive hitboxes.

[Walfegood]

Originally posted by NeedtoDie:

No, I'm talking about the Golem's ability to teleport you right in front of him, from anywhere. It's a common way to die when you're not used to it, and you can't really avoid it until you know how it works.
The infection mechanism gives you just as many hints about its danger as the Guardian's Tornado.
You have to be hit multiple times, a meter appears, and several warnings prompt on your character. I don't remember the message, but it's something like "Warning, high infection", and "Infection level critical", etc.


It's fair, just like the rest. Some people don't like hit, like esco1979 who is mad because of multi-hit in 4-cell diffficulty, but, just like the rest of the game, it's perfectly avoidable with knowledge and you can only blame yourself when you get killed.

IMO, the most unfair difficulty of the game is about some of HotK patterns. They are incredibly hard to read and react, even when known, and have deceptive hitboxes.

Ah, never seen the golem do it, so I cannot comment on it.

As for the infection warning messages, they only appear when you get hit and even then I noticed no affects after having been hit once and becoming infected and if I had not exploded in a previous run to a large stack of infection(I assume since there was so much flashy stuff and dodging I didnt see the messages) while at half HP then honestly I would have never noticed the mechanic.

Now I do agree with you on HotK patterns, that guy is hard as hell and really fast and unrelenting.

[CoreParadox]

Originally posted by Walfegood:

my 5th run and I make it to the castle with an incredible set up, tons of dmg and 5k hp with a shield that blocks 90% dmg and 95% projectile dmg. I go around the castle killing everything with a combination of DoTs and slashing them and only ever having to block the big guys spin attack since I basically had no range.

Then I make it to the blood room with the 2 elite backstabbers and try my darnest to chase them around, but they are always teleporting so it takes quite a while to kill even one when my range is pitiful and I have no slows/stuns. When I finally do manage to kill one I breath a sigh of relief since now I can focus on just catching one of them, but not even 3 seconds later I explode while at half hp. Turns out I died to infection, a mechanic I had to google since there is no prior warning or hints that at this final part of the game it wants you to be a dodging/parry/stun/snare master/spammer or die instantly against moderately hard enemies(the moderate difficulty being the increased HP they have).

Honestly this one mechanic seems out of place in this game with the lack of prior information/hints about it. The enemies have a giant exclamation mark for thier attacks and the spider lady gives you a hint/info about the darkness in the sepulcher, the explosives blink before exploding, the invinciblity buffing target dummies have a light connecting them. The Concierge telegraphs everything and even knocks you away prior to doing his strongest move so that you dont just insta die(the red bubble of death), the Time Keeper teleports away and pauses before he does his special attacks and the swords that rain down create a beam of light before falling. This one major mechanic though has nothing that I have seen to give any indication of its existance prior to me dying to it.

Yup, same kind of room just killed my also amazing run, pretty annoying that this mechanic isn't shown off AT ALL before they lock you in a room with it.

[Baron01]

Originally posted by NeedtoDie:

..

It's fair, just like the rest. Some people don't like hit, like esco1979 who is mad because of multi-hit in 4-cell diffficulty, but, just like the rest of the game, it's perfectly avoidable with knowledge and you can only blame yourself when you get killed.

...

Malaise is not fair, it is absolutely not like the rest of dangers in the game, as pointed out by OP, and it is also unnecessary. I have only run into it first time yesterday after I have killed HotK on normal 4 times. There is no way anyone not knowing about this mechanic would be paying attention to those announcements when you have your face full of angry elite who is intent on smashing your face in. I guess I did not run into Malaise infection earlier because I always focused on stun, freeze and parry, which prevented any hits from these elites. I was just unlucky yesterday with poor drops and lower focus, which messed up my timing and I got overwhelmed.

I read about Malaise in game's lore but it was very vague info without any real link to actual game.

[esco1979]

If people struggle to beat 0 Cells then they have ZERO gaming skills. It's a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ joke to beat. They need to Git Gud.

There actually are rewards for higher difficulties: more cells for example, the doors with more treasure and cells behind them.... not to mention the reward of challenging oneself. But I still get what you mean.

[jack shite]

So that's what that bar is. I've always wondered where it came from or what it meant. However, I've never died with malaise (sounds like it would go nicely on a sandwich). What did I do right?

[DentistOfPain]

Sometimes you really notice the indie background of a game. A lot of bad design decisions are brushed of behind the git gud defense. I would count infection to the anti pattern. Some things are just made to kill you to artificially lengthen to gameplay. Trail and error is nothing a good designer would never combine with perma death.