Hello,
We're back with another alpha for our next slab of content - the Boss Rush Update!
How does it work?
There is a new area, accessible through the basement door in Prisoner's Quarters where you access the Training Room and the Tailor - one you've gone through the basement door just follow the corridor until you come to the third door with the red boss head next to it.
Through this door, you'll find another 4 doors, leading to 4 different stages where you will fight:
- 3 bosses back-to-back
- 3 bosses back-to-back with modifiers
- 5 bosses back-to-back
- 5 bosses back-to-back with modifiers
What are modifiers, I hear you ask? Basically we've given the bosses even more ways to kick your ass. Think extra limbs, healing powers, buddies to help them kill you - all the good stuff!
The bosses are randomly selected from the following tiers:
Tier 1 - Concierge, Conjunctivius, Mama Tick
Tier 2 - Time Keeper, The Giant, The Scarecrow
Tier 3 - Hand of the King, The Servants (just the final fight, not the entire tower!), The Queen
Spoiler Boss is not available in the alpha and likely won't be available on release BUT it should™ arrive later.
The stages with 3 bosses back-to-back will pit you against one Tier 1 boss, then one Tier 2 and finally, you guessed it, one Tier 3. Simple!
The stages with 5 bosses follow a similar path, but here you'll be fighting two Tier 1 bosses, then two Tier 2s, then one Tier 3. Not quite so simple...
NOTE: For testing purposes, in the alpha you will have access to all bosses regardless of your progress in your current save. In the official release of the update, the bosses that you encounter in the Boss Rush will only be bosses that you have personally encountered at least once in-game.
There is a choice between Brutality, Tactics and Survival at the start of each stage - choosing one will automatically give you stats focused on the one you chose, and give you a choice of relevant builds in the following room.
New unlockables
There are more goodies to unlock as you progress through the stages, if you can!
New stuff will unlock depending on the length (3 bosses or 5 bosses), the mode (Normal bosses or Modified bosses), the difficulty (0+BC, 3+BC or 5BC) and your ability to flawless the entire run or not.
Yep, the 5 boss 5BC Flawless is going to be a bit hard to get!
Weapon - Glyph of Peril (Tactics/Survival): A ranged attack with 7 attacks in its combo. The more health that you're missing, the longer the combo. Critical hits will start after the third hit of the combo.
Skill - Taunt: Taunt an enemy, making it relentessly pursue you for 20 seconds. In doing so, it drops its guard, so it takes 75% more damage from melee attacks during its pursuit.
I'll let you discover exactly what taunts the Beheaded uses, but I don't think you'll be disappointed...
Mutation - Wish: The next weapon you pick up is legendary. Once chosen it cannot be removed (like the YOLO mutation).
Skins: There are 6 new skins to discover, with various barbarian/boss themes.
Customisable statue: You've got a fan! They're making a grand statue of you as tribute, and as you progress through the Boss Rush, you'll be able to add shiny new elements to it. Such humility!
New/updates legendary affixes
We're also adding more legendary affixes to flesh out our last update. These are:
- Spartan Sandals: Super Bump - bumps stuff even further
- Oil Sword: Oil on Kill (again, quite self explanatory: spreads oil on the ground on kill)
- Flint: Instant Charge - all attacks are fully charged without needing to hold the button
- Katana: Deflect Bullets - all uncharged attacks deflect bullet (but not grenades)
- Killing Deck: Random Effect - every card applies a random debuff on targets (any kind of DoT, crowd controls, etc. with a few exceptions that wouldn't make sense like item-specific effects)
- Money Shooter: Pay to Win - refund the shot's cost if it kills a target + innate super pierce. Can trigger multiple times if a shot kills several enemies.
- Knockback Shield: Super Bump
- Wave of Denial: Super Bump
- Pollo Power: Miracle of Life - eggs hatch into chicks that attack nearby enemies
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 there’s 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 update31-alpha-discussion and update31-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
We have some known issues already:
- Long load time after the Queen. It'll be fixed in the next patch.
- Glyph of Peril weapon lacks polish.
- The exit text when you win a run should not be "Do you want to abandon the run?", obviously.
- The alpha is only available on Windows, not Mac or Linux - we have a problem which should be fixed for beta.
Full patchnotes are here.
Hope you enjoy the new mode, we'll gather feedback for a week or two then come back with the beta :)
Cheers,
Matt, EE & MT