Explorer's Guide 1.4

Guide containing most of the intermediate to advanced knowledge for a Dead Cells player together with a full progression map and in-depth explaination of your goals through the game.

There will be no further updates

I thought that I will still have some energy to play the game and keep the guide up to date, but all of it has burned off. As much as it was fun for 2 years exploring the game, making notes and editing the map for dozen of hours I am now simply done with the game and will have to move on and say goodbye to Explorer's Guide. From this point on (October 2019) this guide won't recieve any further updates. I hope you understand and thank you all for reading.

Ray G. Quit (Rayeficent)

Introduction

Hey! This is the Explorer’s Guide and I will cover most of the intermediate to advanced knowledge for a Dead Cells player. So what can you – an explorer – explore in a mostly randomly generated rouge-lite game? Quite a lot and I will explain all your goals in the game from start to neverending finish and I’ll also give you a full progression map so you won’t get lost (too much). Other than that you'll find a lot of technical info that I managed to dig up regarding scaling, difficulties, and unlockables like weapons, skills etc.

If you found it helpful please give it a thumbs up and add it to favorites. The more of thumbs up it gets - the more people will see it (that's how steam guides work) and hopefully benefit from it. Thanks!

Progression Map

Here you have a full progression map showing you all possible routes you can take.

Scrolls and Scaling

There are 3 tiers of stats that we can pick up during our progress in form of scrolls. Brutality, Tactics and Survival - red, violet, green respectively. Melee and ranged weapons as well as shields and skills fall to one or two of those categories. The more points in each tier you have, the more powerful your item will be. For those weapons that scale with two tiers it scales only with your highest stat. So for example having 10 brutality and 5 tactics for a Cursed Sword will scale only with Brutality and investing in Tactics won't strengthen it (unless you reach 11 tactics).

Every stat improved by 1 gives you +15% damage for item with its respective color. Aside from that you get +X% health for each stat spent. The health bonus gets smaller as you keep investing on a single stat. But if you decide to start investing in a different stat you will add a lot more to the health pool. The idea here is that mono-tiered builds are rather glass canons (high damage, low health), 2-tiers builds are balanced, 3-tiers build have a lot of health but low damage. Have in mind that Survival gives the most health starting at +60%, next is Brutality starting at +50% and the last is Tactics starting at 40%.

Loot and its level

On my progression map you'll notice that every biome has a biome level. That level influences items that you'll get inside that biome. There are sets of rules that have an effect on the item. Add the number to the biome level according to the condition to figure out how it works:

0 - for items found loosely on the ground
0 - dropped from a monster
0 - behind a paywall (golden door)
+2 - bought from the merchant
+1 - regular chest
+0 - cursed chest, together with a gem and scroll of power, additionally the item will be colorless (scales with your higest tier regardless of its original scaling)
+2 - from elites
+2 - reward for completing a challenge secret area

Additionally if you're playing on 3 Boss Stem Cells difficulty add +1 to your items level and on 4 and 5 Boss Stem Cells add +3.

Your goals

So for those that are asking themselves what I should be doing right now in Dead Cells here's your goals graph. We'll be talking about them for the rest of the guide from now on.



And before you "no s*** Sherlock" me, allow me to explain. Some of those are bloody obvious but there is a reason why I am covering this. Many players don't really know what should be done first to enhance their gameplay and how to go about it in most efficient way. This is what this is, there are things that you need to focus at your progress level (left to right on graph) and you need to focus some goals above other until you finish them. Now I'll go into details why some of them are so important and how to achieve them.

Low priority lasting goals

Those three flags on the bottom of the graph are low priority goals but we will talk about them first because those are the things that happen whichever you want it or not during your gameplay.

Unlock weapons, mutations and skills

This is the most important of those three and this will happen during your gameplay by collecting blueprints (that usually have 0.4% to 1.7% drop chance), handing them to the Collector and then spending cells to unlock them. I don't think I need to explain how does this one work further, let's just skip to the meat of it.

At one point you will want to focus this goal (preferably once you're able to easily beat the game on normal) and go on a blueprint hunt. To actually hunt them down you want to have Hunter's Grenade with you. You throw it at certain enemy, it turns into an elite that you have to bring down to around 30% and then reuse Hunter's Grenade extractor to get the blueprint forcefully. If you want details on that check this link [Hunter's Grenade wiki page][deadcells.gamepedia.com].

You'll also need to know which enemy drops which blueprint. For that I suggest two sources. Either go to [Gear wiki page][deadcells.gamepedia.com] and [Mutations wiki page][deadcells.gamepedia.com] or to this very good steam guide:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=963238062

Farm cells and get better

This is a no brainer, you will do it wharever you want it or not, that's the point of the game.

Optionally unlock skins and achievements

This is the lowest priority goal because it doesn't really affect your gameplay at all. It's completely optional, but if you want to do it then you may want to know where you can drop outfits. For that go to the steam guide linked above or here [Outfits wiki page][deadcells.gamepedia.com].

As for the achievements I'd suggest checking [Achievements wiki page][deadcells.gamepedia.com].

Unlock the Runes

This is your most important goal that you can (and should) do as a beginner. It's even more important than finishing the game. Runes are permanent unlocks that will give you access to locked parts of the map - including whole new biomes. You will want to get them as soon as possible to not skip any possible loot on your way. To get them you'll need to visit a certain biome and defeat an elite enemy in a special sub-zone that you won't miss (it spawns only if you don't have the rune unlocked).

The core four runes are Vine Rune that can be picked up in the Promenade of the Condemned, Teleportation Rune in the Toxic Sewers, Ram Rune in Ossuary and lastly Spider Rune in Slumbering Sanctuary.

You can't get them all in one swoop, so once you've unlocked one, either carry on or die and start from the beginning. If you're in a hurry to get them all your routes would look like this:
[Vine] Prisoners' Quarters > Promenade of the Condemned
[Teleportation] Prisoners' Quarters > Toxic Sewers
[Ram] Prisoners' Quarters > Promenade of the Condemned > Ossuary
[Spider] Prisoners' Quarters > Toxic Sewers > Ancient Sewers > Insufferable Crypt > Slumbering Sanctuary

Three other (a bit less important) remaining runes:
Challenger's Rune unlocks daily runs in the starting zone and can be aquired by defeating the boss in Black Bridge.
In the Ramparts you'll face an elite enemy for the Customization Rune. This one will allow you to start custom runs with some modifications. Some of them will lock out achievements and some don't. Few modifications are highly recommended for progression runs, for example those that can lock out some of the weapons and skills from the loot table that you find useless. It's a good thing to have.
The final rune is Homunculus Rune that can be aquired by beating the third boss in the Throne Room. Homunculus allows you to eject your head to do some shenenigans. It can help deal some damage and help you reach some blueprints that wouldn't be obtainable without it. Those three aren't needed for progression and you'll get them eventually so don't stress about them too much.

Unlock general upgrades

Again, pretty obvious goal, isn't it? Yes, for the most part. Still there is one very well hidden blueprint that you might want to hunt down as soon as possible. But I'll talk about it last.

There are 9 types of general upgrades that you want to unlock before going on higher difficulty level.

• Health Flast I-IV - gives you more chugs of health.
  
• Gold Reserves I-V - preserves some gold after you die for your next run. For the final Gold Reserves V you need to beat the game once and find the blueprint using Homunculus Rune in Ancient Sewers like on this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbMNxjhcOhU.
  
• Recycling I-II - allows you to "recycle" items into gold.
  
• Random melee/ranged/shield - replaces your starter arsenal with a random one from your unlocked pool.
  
• Restock - refreshes merchant's stock at shops.
  
• Specialist's Showroom - unlocks Hunter's Grenade so you can hunt blueprints.
  
• Hunter's Mirror - minor upgrade, shows you an enemy in the mirror that is carrying a blueprint you haven't unlocked yet.
  
• Advanced Forge - You can increase the quality of an object at the forge twice instead of once. We are talking about the small forge guy, not the Legendary Forge.
  
• Merchandise Categories - ...

Okay, allow me to explain Merchandise Categories in a separate paragraph. This one is one of the most well hidden and most important upgrades that you need. If you have this unlocked once you reach a shop you can choose a category of loot you'd like to see. If you're at skills shop then you can choose grenades, traps and powers; at weapons shop you can choose between melee, ranged and shields and once you pick one you'll get 3 of that category generated for you. So basically if you're a brutality player you don't want shields or traps, you want melee and grenades. It's really neat control over randomization and gives you a lot of control over your arsenal.

Now how do you unlock Merchandise Categories? You need to go to the Graveyard and find the Architect's Key hidden somewhere in the wall of the underground part of the Graveyard. Good luck with that, but once you find it go to the Graveyard's surface and go to the right end of the map and you can open the door to reach the upgrade. I believe you also need a Ram Rune unlocked for that so I hope you have it.

Also here's a link to [General upgrades wiki page][deadcells.gamepedia.com] if you need it.

Get accustomed to the biomes and beat the game on normal difficulty

Okay, okay, those are pretty obvious goals and there's really no tip other than explore every biome and learn how every enemy work so you won't have problems with them in higher difficulties. Try not to go into higher difficulties (or at least not too far off) until you haven't collected all the runes and general upgrades, those are really core to the experience through the rest of the high end game.

Once you reach the goal of beating the Hand of the King and feel comfortable with all biomes it's time to move to two final goals.

Legendary Forge

All weapons and skills can drop with a '+', '++' or an 'S' modifier that greatly increase that item's power. Not gonna lie, those will be crucial for your progress through higher difficulties of this game so let's talk about how do we get around to upgrading your gear to those modifiers.

Legendary Forge (previously known as Foundry) can be found after first (Conjuctivus or Concierge) and second boss (Giant or Time Keeper) and only then. In there you can permanently upgrade chances for your weapons to drop with +, ++ and S quality. Each of those levels will add to the weapon or skill extra damage, stronger and additional affixes (effects like +100% damage on burning enemies). Aside from that ++ upgrade guarantees you +1 to the tier (Brutality, Tactics or Survival) to which this item belongs and S upgrade will give you +2. In case of items that belongs to two tiers the tier bonus will be randomly generated within those two tiers - for example for [Cursed Sword S] you can get +2 tactics or + 2 brutality or +1 tactics and +1 brutality.

You can upgrade gear by spending cells which goes as follow:

• Normal mode: "+" rank up to 100%, "++" rank capped at 50%
  
• Hard mode: "+" and "++" ranks up to 100%
  
• Very hard mode: "+" and "++" ranks up to 100% and "S" rank capped at 25%
  
• Expert mode: "+" and "++" ranks up to 100% and "S" rank capped at 50%
  
• Nightmare mode: all ranks up to 100%
  
• Hell mode: all ranks up to 100%

Those are permanent progress bars so you'll be able to have benefits from those every time you spend enough cells to reach each 5% milestone (as in 5%, 10%, 15% and so on). Reaching 100% on '+' gear will cost you 500 cells, 100% for '++' costs 3000 and 100% for 'S' is a whooping 10000 cells.

Pro tip: if you want to farm cells just for your Legendary Forge through all biomes without giving them to the Collector after each biome then ... don't give it to him and smash through the locked door behind him forcefully. Suprisingly not many people know that and there is a lot of threads on the forum that people can't progress because they don't have anything to spend their cells on.

Higher difficulties and Boss Stem Cells

You've beaten the game on normal, you know that you should start upgrading your Legendary Forge, you have all the general upgrades and runes unlocked? You're ready for 5 more harder difficulties of this game. When you defeated final boss except for the Homunculus Rune you recieved a Boss Stem Cell. So what it this exactly?

Boss Stem Cells (BSC) are permanent unlocks that can make the game harder and more rewarding. It will also unlock new doors in every biome that will reward you with extra loot, cells or extra access to shop and sometime unlock alternative route to another biome. BSC can be obtained by defeating the final boss in the Throne Room. Once you defeat him, you'll receive a Boss Stem Cell which will allow you to play on next level of difficulty where you have to defeat that boss again to gain access to the next difficulty and so on until you reach 5 BSC. Each difficulty will make your enemies hit harder and have more HP. Starting from 1 BSC difficulty you'll notice new enemies that weren't present in the biome that you're in. On top of that these are changes that are affected by the Boss Stem Cells:


Only one thing remain that need explaination. What is malaise exactly? Simply put it's infection. On 4 and 5 BSC you will have a malaise metter that will fill up to 10 with each hit from an enemy. Once it gets full - your health will almost instantly drop to zero. To get rid of the malaise you need to eat food (that isn't infected with malaise) or take a chug of your health flask - which will reduce malaise metter by 5.

Links

Some of the most useful guides and links that I personally use and can recommend for the game.

Official Dead Cells Wiki[deadcells.gamepedia.com]
Official Dead Cells site[dead-cells.com]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=963238062
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=951106283
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=973253526

[davizinscf]

alguem me ajuda o meu dead cels nn quer autualizar e a autualização mais recente do jogo alguem me ajuda nmral?

[Psychedelic Adventurer]

<3

[Ray G.]

Do and use whatever you like.

[breversa]

@Psychedelic Adventurer: that would be awesome!

[Psychedelic Adventurer]

Since the author has no intentions of continuing this guide, I am considering authoring a revised version of this work for a post 2022 audience.

[xSENSHUx]

Still a great guide. Haven't played for over two years now. The game got so many good updates and sucked me in again like at the beginning

[DaddioDoug]

'Ray G quit' lmao nice

[Drael]

"What is malaise exactly?"

In french, "faire un malaise" means "faint out", "pass out".
And just "Malaise", means "uneasiness" or "faintness".

[Ray G.]

Photoshop.

[sigsegv]

@Rayeficent: I found this to be an extremely well-made and helpful guide while learning to play Dead Cells. Top-tier stuff. I'm sorry to hear that you burnt out on the game and are no longer updating it.

I did want to mention, though, just in case you weren't aware of it, that there's an updated continuation of your Progression Map on the Dead Cells wiki: https://deadcells.gamepedia.com/Biomes_Map . So in theory you could replace the outdated image here with the one from there with little effort, if you wanted to. Or even just add a link to it saying "and here's a non-outdated version of this map" or whatever. (And of course you're not obligated to do any of that; but I figured I'd at least suggest it in case you wanted to.)

Anyway. Thanks for the fantastic guide!

(And, if anyone reading this guide wants to know where to find an updated version of the very-well-made Progression Map from this guide, the link I posted above is where you'll want to go.)