Version 2.3, officially the Whack-a-Mole Update, is major update to Dead Cells that was released on the 30th of March 2021 to PC, and on the 22nd of April 2021 for the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and the Nintendo Switch.

The Whack-a-Mole Update served to ease the difficulty curve across boss cells, fix a large number of persistent bugs, as well as introduce a set of new Survival-scaling melee weapons, and Tactics-scaling mutations to increase playstyle options for each.

Important features

• New difficulty curve: We're experimenting with a new way of increasing the difficulty from one BC to the next.
  • BC0: Health fountains in every transition.
  • BC1: Health fountain every other transition, with one minor flask when the fountain is missing.
  • BC2: No more health fountain, one minor flask in every transition.
  • BC3: One minor flask after the first boss and before the second.
  • BC4: No more health in any transition, enemies teleport to your position.
  • BC5: No more health, enemies teleport, malaise added.

Looking to have your opinion on that new formula, so don't hesitate to give us feedback!

• Community suggestion: A new NPC 5BC exclusive has appeared, the Collector's intern! He will be able to unlock blueprints while the big guy is away.
• New weapon: Oven Axe. They say the last hit can be chained, but no one lived long enough to confirm...
• New weapon: Toothpick. A big wooden club. Hold to charge and break the club on the head of your unfortunate enemies.
• New weapon: Tombstone. Stay on the ground and doom nearby enemies if you manage to kill something with the last hit. An ethereal tombstone falls on the heads of doomed enemies. Each kill starts a new wave of doom (up to 3 consecutive waves).
• Community suggestion: New mutation: No Mercy. (Colorless). Instantly kill enemies going under 15% health (non-scaling). Effect halved for bosses.
• Community suggestion: New mutation: Point Blank. Close-ranged range attacks inflict X% bonus damages.
• Community suggestion: New mutation: Barbed Tips. Inflict x damage per seconds to enemies per arrows stuck in them.
• Community suggestion: Added an Omnivorous diet which randomizes the appearance of your food.

Balancing

• Legendary items now scale based on the sum of your two highest statistics. Legendary no longer increase the item level. This is very subject to change and hence has no visual indication implemented yet.
• Community suggestion: Tesla Coil blueprint drop rate increased.
• Items obtained by the Collector (when completing a blueprint) are now Colorless.
• Community suggestion: Malaise no longer increases the movement speed of enemies.
• Community suggestion: Sudden Death prevention invulnerability duration increases from 0.5 to 0.6 seconds.
• All weapons now have a bit of air control if an enemy is in the strike zone.
• Capped the fatal fall's damages to 15% of your max life.
• Fatal Falls Community suggestion: Added bonus scrolls in Fractured Shrines (in BC3+) and Undying Shores (in BC4+) to make them on par with other levels.
• Fatal Falls Community suggestion: Turned one double-scroll into a triple-scroll in Fractured Shrines.
• Fatal Falls Community suggestion: Improved Soul Shot's (the off-hand of Ferryman's Lantern) aim to target multiple enemies if possible.
• Community suggestion: You can now find one outfit and one other item as blueprints in a level.
• Mobs can no longer spawn or turn into elites do to Malaise in the first few seconds after an Elite mob aggroes you.
• Fixed Shovel, Flashing Fans and War Spear not working with Porcupack.

Level design

• Fatal Falls Community suggestion: Fixed missing scrolls in Fractured Shrines and Undying Shores.
• Fatal Falls: Made fatal fall zones in Fractured Shrines more tolerant to prevent unfair damages.

Graphics & UI

• The description and affix list of items now scroll together in the Pause menu for a better readability in all situations. Still not an excuse for really long descriptions of items, but it's better than nothing.
• Fatal Falls Community suggestion: Reordered Fatal Fall's achievements in the Statistics panel to a more logical order.
• Increased the size of the flask zone to account for all items.
• Community suggestion: Cocoon now display "Parry" when a successful parry occur.
• Improved Cold Blooded Guardian animations and visual effects for a better readability.
• Community suggestion: Fixed Myopic Crows color in the Statistics panel.
• Malaise rules modification are now denoted by icons when the malaise increase. You can find the meaning of each icon in the Infos tab of your pause menu.
• Fatal Falls: Improved Serenade's visual effects for a better readability.
• Improved readability of War Javelin and Snake Fangs teleport visual effects, especially in Fractured Shrines.
• Community suggestion: Added a small visualization of the item in your backpack in the pause menu.
• Added a small mention of the possibility to use Custom Mode to lock back items in the Collector UI to encourage players to unlock everything, even items they might end up not liking. Use the Custom Mode! It's part of the game! You're not cheating!
• Backpack mutations (Porcupack, Acrobatipack and Armadillopack) now have their icon showcasing the internal cooldown.
• Removed the confusing "Hold RB to empty your backpack" prompt in the switch item GUI.
• Fixed some typos.
• Fixed Acceptance text not mentioning food cursing you.
• Community suggestion: Fixed Acrobatipack not mentioning that melee weapons don't trigger the effect.

Quality of life

• Community suggestion: Cursed Gems now require a long press to be picked up. No more accidental cursing.
• Community suggestion: Added the option "Hold to chain attacks" in the Gameplay tab of the options. Serious note here: please suggest more accessibility options. We will do our best to include them.
• Hunter's Grenade now respawn on a platform after being thrown into the void.
• Moved the "Random Outfit" option from the classic options to the Custom Mode, with a new option to randomize your skin on every main level (not in the transitions) and an interface to chose which skins you want to have randomly selected.

Bug fixes

• Fixed a crash when using the "Hitchcock" or "Darkness" game modifiers in Custom Mode.
• Fixed various crashes.
• Fatal Falls: Fixed a crash that occurred when dying with a Serenade equipped and replacing a Barrel Launcher.
• Fatal Falls: Fixed a crash related to Myopic Crows.
• Fixed a crash that occurred with some mods due to Malaise.
• Fatal Falls: Fixed Giant Whistle freezing the Scarecrow.
• Fatal Falls: Fixed some crashes related to the Scarecrow.
• The Bad Seed Fixed: crash related to Jerkshrooms.
• Fixed a crash occurring with hero climbing when modifying SFXs.
• Fatal Falls: Fixed Serenade's icon disappearing when entering or exiting a sub-level.
• Fatal Falls: Fixed Serenade sometimes eating your main weapon. God that one was a doozy!
• Fatal Falls: Fixed Serenade resetting the other power's cooldown. A very finite amount of power.
• Fatal Falls: Improved performances in the corners. Don't expect anything revolutionary, but we're working on it.
• Fatal Falls: Fixed Mac OSX version. Technically it was fixed earlier, but better to put it in a patchnote, right?
• Fixed the force malaise option from the Custom Mode always re-activating even after deactivating it manually.
• Fixed a bug making you float after entering a challenge portal with the Assault power.
• Fatal Falls: Fixed a soft lock occurring in Undying Shores when using the War Javelin to reach the far right of the map.
• Fatal Falls: Prevented some soft-locks in Undying Shores when paths are too close to one another.
• Fatal Falls: Fixed some crashes occurring with Serenade.
• Fatal Falls: Fixed non-reanimated corpse in Undying Shores appearing on the minimap.
• Reduced the lag occurring when breaking a ground or wall.
• Fatal Falls: Fixed Pool Party achievement not triggering.
• Fatal Falls: Fixed A cut above achievement triggering on hits instead of kills.
• Fatal Falls: Fixed unstable platforms collapsing during cinematics. Scrolls pickup, etc.
• Fatal Falls: Fixed Hunter's Grenade locking doors when used on Stone Warden. Yes, it means that you can turn a Warden elite. You asked for this.
• Fatal Falls: Prevent altars from spawning on unstable platforms.
• Fatal Falls: Forced dead cultist to appear if you didn't unlock the Cultist Outfit.
• Fatal Falls: Fixed Cocoon's cooldown not resetting when parrying a grenade.
• Fatal Falls: Fixed Cursed Sword, Perfect Halberd (and other weapons interacting with hero's damages) not working when replaced by Serenade.
• Fatal Falls: Fixed the achievement "Me, Jealous?" not triggering.
• Fatal Falls: Fixed Soul Shot (the off-hand of Ferryman's Lantern) not triggering Acrobatipack.
• Fatal Falls: Reverted unwanted changes in bestiaries from non-DLC levels to state before the DLC.
• Mushroom Boi now teleport next to you when fatal-falling instead of disappearing.
• Fatal Falls: Fixed Myopic Crows dying when entering fatal-fall zones. Yes, this means more crows. Gnehehe
• Fatal Falls: Fixed the first Serenade you encounter not being colorless.
• Fatal Falls: Fixed Snake Fangs teleporting to hidden mobs.
• Fatal Falls: Prevent a soft-lock when going to the end of the room at the end of Scoring Mode. Why would you do that?!
• Fatal Falls: Fixed Soul Shot (the off-hand of Ferryman's Lantern) not interacting with the perk Kill Rhythm.
• Fixed malaise spawning enemies in transition levels.
• Fatal Falls: Fixed Cocoon not damaging thrown Jerkshrooms.
• Fixed Cocoon being able to rally.
• Fixed being able to load the Katana's strike when holding a shield.
• Fatal Falls: Removed a confusing "point at self" animation from a lore-room in Undying Shores.
• The Bad Seed Fixed: Ticks soft-locking because of the Hunter's Grenade and the Cocoon.
• Fixed some seed errors (notably in Cavern).
• Fixed bosses having a small life bar after reloading the level.
• Fatal Falls: Fixed Scarecrow's Sickles disappearing after reloading a level, locking the power until the end of the level.
• Fixed a crash on the Tentacle Whip.
• The Bad Seed Fixed: a crash on attacking Mama Tick during the cinematic. Who does that? And how?
• Fix Phaser sometimes teleporting the player out of a boss arena.
• Fixed Porcupack only working on the first enemy hit.

References