Top 6 Tips | How to not suck at Dead Cells | Part 1

Decided to do another "How to not suck" series.

Here are the 6 tips:
1) Stick to a build
2) Learn to love shields
3) Use your grenades, skills, and powers
4) Reroll your affixes
5) Ignore the timed doors
6) Save your money

Will have parts 2-4 focusing on how to get consistent brutality, tactics, and survival builds

[PhilosopherJEB]

Me: “But I don’t suck at DEAD CELLS. I’ve played it for dozens of hours!”

Also Me: “Uh, hand-of-the-who?”

[thorne]

Another tip: unlock the starting random weapons and shields ASAP so you don’t spend ages looking for stuff you like, and instead get a chance for it off-spawn

[DarkSaruman]

Here's a TL;DR for quick reference:

1) Stick to one color.
2) Learn to use shields. (Perhaps not so relevant anymore as they were heavily nerfed)
3) Keep your powers/skills/traps on cooldown.
4) Reroll affixes to create synergies once you have level IV, V or VI items.
5) Ignore the timed doors. Picking up all scrolls / chests on the level is more important.
6) Spend your money wisely. Don't forge early weapons. Don't buy stuff from the merchant in the first few levels.

[SDFRiver]

Just started playing about a month ago. This is the most recent video I have found that's not full of fluff. Who has time to watch an hour and a half discussion on weapon Tiers?? This is much more to the point. I'm looking forward to applying what I've learned to my next 2BC run. Thanks for the tips, Skip.

[ScottyDnB]

The view count of this video does not represent the quality of it, great stuff, keep it up my man.

[destinyblade]

An 11 minute guide with actual 11 minutes information? You deserve more subs and views. This helped me a lot since I'm playing this after a long time(I got the game when it was in early access)

[kevinfetters]

Hi Skip, 5BC player here, just wanted to say this is a super well put together beginners guide for people and I'm sure it'll help a ton of people get through the early BC's, great job on the video, if it helps I'll just give a few pieces of supplementary advice to the points you made as well as a few other tips to help people struggling in the game.

Point one: This is a really solid tip, however I do want to point out there are a few niche cases where you actually do want to take an off color scroll, often times in late game if you have a good number of scrolls grabbing the extra bulk after beating giant/in hpc can be really nice as the scrolls might not make a huge difference versus hand of the king due to things like damage caps, however in general yes, focus on one color per run.

Point two: I'm glad you mentioned that shields aren't always needed, but to emphasize, in version 1.9/2.0 which is the current version of dead cells, shields are probably the weakest they've been in a really long time, green in particular has very few strong shield builds I feel and reds best builds don't need them a ton either, while purples strongest shield is 5BC locked so it's not always a great option, that said it is important to learn shields for sure, but just know that they aren't required people :D

Point three: Nothing to add here really, great point, use skills people haha, they're there for a reason. I guess if I could say anything I'd say don't rush into a group if your skills are cooling down still, feel free to wait if you need to that way you won't just get bodied because your powerful grenade is turned off. Patience is super important in Dead Cells.

Point four: one thing you didn't note here is not getting greedy with weapons/affixes in general, an item bought from Promenade with decent affixes (Bonus to poison for example) can honestly go the entire run if you want, this goes with the fact that scrolls scale way more than weapons do, with 4 scrolls being a 100% damage boost essentially, so yeah, don't get too greedy with rerolls trying to go for bonus to poison, bleed, and burning oil for example simple is better sometimes.

Point five: Yes, very much, time doors are a trap after you get the blueprints for them. Going slower in general is way more important because it's way safer, you didn't point out that you're gonna also be less likely to notice secrets/challenge rifts if you're going fast, time doors are trash, only one that's worth it really is the 26 minute door in sepulcher through stilt village because it has such a generous timer.

Point six: yupp yupp, preserving money is so important, buy a weapon in depths/corrupted prison if you need, buy weapons if you see good synergy on them, and just go for simple combos in dead cells.

Overall this was a fantastic beginners guide, if you ever want I'd be more than happy to give some more in depth super detailed posts and what not to help actually push past certain biomes/bosses/or just detailed combos with you, great presentation though!

[hellboy]

So I took some tips to heart, and IMMEDIATELY got past the point in which I was constantly ending my runs! Thanks again, great tips and has me coming back to the game now.

[KazLordOfLightWarriors]

Tip 7: As someone who has beaten the game with 4 Boss cells (I later found out that you need to kill the giant for the 5th, woopie) food one of your most important assets. Never immediately use it unless you are below the healing threshold, but use it over your healing flask obviously. And my personal opinion is never use your flask unless there's no immediate food, and your screen is in red (I think that's about 15% health) and even then you do still have your 1-health protection, where it lets you live with 1 health if you take massive damage, and that comes back every 45 seconds.

[mothmando]

Thank you! Straight away I went from dying in ancient sewers to dying in throne room

[tesseract]

“Learn how to shield”
*clicks off video*

[DannyCtes]

Man the shield tech leveled me up so much in this game, still the timing throws me off but man I'm having fun again. Thanks mang

[alphabetsalphabets]

Very, very nice. As someone who used to struggle at the game, and find videos talking about something a beginner knows. Either explicitly shown by the game or implicitly. You cut through all of the bs and get straight to the point.

[KingJu]

I was struggling to beat the final boss for the first time until I realized how scrolls and the different colors of weapons actually worked. Lol, great video.

[Rcook]

Honestly the first tip helps tremendously and didn’t entirely think bout that 😅 I’d have my main power maybe 3-4 scrolls ahead but the others beefed up for health. Been having tremendous trouble getting past hand of the king. Running a heavy crossbow/sliced/heavy grenade build.

[landonkuiper]

Well damn, this was helpful. I've always just balanced everything and didn't go for a specific build. No wonder why I kept on getting bodied.

[thepop]

So the times doors I use when I need cells but if I want to do a "serious run" I just look around for all the scrolls

[smiller]

Coming back to this video to say that this was extremely helpful info. I was able to get past 1BC and 2BC realitively quickly after watching. Before I could barely beat normal mode. Great video!

[christiandevincent]

I would just like to say that I have only watched three of the four videos in this series, and in only a couple of days, I managed to beat the Hand of the King with two boss cells activated. (I had been on two boss cells before watching these videos.) What astounds me is that I beat it with relative ease, too.

In case you’re curious, I had a legendary nutcracker, a party shield, a crusher, and a legendary knife dance, with the mutations “What Doesn’t Kill Me, ” “Extended Healing, ” and “Blind Faith.” I focused greatly on survival.

I don’t say that to tell you all to copy me (although if that works for you, go for it!), but just to say that these videos are really amazing!

[metafishling]

For the scroll tip, you forgot to hammer home why focusing on one stat is so important: damage doubles every 5 scrolls. 6 scrolls is 2x, 11 scrolls is 4x, 16 scrolls is 8x. Those are huge gains. You are much more likely to survive if you are killing enemies in 1-2 hits vs 8-16 hits or more.

Timed doors are worth going for at some points in the game if you can consistently beat the first boss. If you rush for timed doors (using dodge-jump-dodge-jump to avoid enemies), you can skip turning in cells and quickly farm up the Forge or a particular blueprint. Just don't overdo it. Overall though, you are right that kill doors are the better target.

And, regarding gold, if a player can't consistently reach the final boss on their current BC, then spending gold early on weapons or affixes is fine. Saving gold for later biomes only applies if you are consistently making it to those later biomes on every run. The core advice is fine, but a little too strict. It should be "make sure you have enough money for later biome gear and rerolls by not overspending early".