Dead Cells now lets you train against bosses, see the world map, and equip Aspect buffs

The Practice Makes Perfect update might be just what you needed to finish the fight

Friends, it’s time to get back into Dead Cells. Again. This is the update.

Whether you were never able to triumph over the Hand of the King, or you pummeled the hard-hitting boss but couldn’t manage to beat the game on higher (Boss Cell) difficulties, there’s a new update that can go a long way. Update 25, Practice Makes Perfect, is all about options — and getting better. There are three new huge quality-of-life features.

There’s now a training room, accessible from the home base (look for the door with clashing swords), that lets you practice against bosses and regular enemies.

• Each boss has its own door that’ll whisk you away to their usual fight.
• There are also rooms in which you can pick out enemies, from a list, to train against. They’ll appear as statues until you activate them, at which point they’ll show you their moves like normal. If you die, no big deal. You can also populate a room with a specific biome’s creeps instead of selecting foes one by one.

After speaking to an NPC in the Prisoners’ Quarters, you can equip an Aspect.

• The buffs are meant to be “extremely strong powers to make your run easier,” with the caveat that when you use them, you can’t unlock the next Boss Cell (or earn flawless achievements). I’d say that’s a fair trade-off. You can have one Aspect at a time.
• Aspects can do things like heal you while you’re in a poison pool or gas cloud, or increase flames by +100% damage, just to name two. So yeah — impactful.
• So far, there are 13 potential Aspects, but more could show up in the future.

While we’ve grown accustomed to looking up Dead Cells biome flowcharts on the internet, you can now see the world map in-game like it’s no big deal.

• The map will only show you biomes you’ve seen before, so it’s more of an on-the-fly, mid-run refresher than a resource for new or unfamiliar players.

And the Practice Makes Perfect update has several smaller additions:

• “Reminder after killing the Hand of the King to use the Homonculus rune to exit the run (except in 5BC or after the first 0BC kill).”
• “Total damage change is now displayed when picking stats from a scroll, time to retire the calculator…”
• “Incentive (cell drop buff) for picking your least visited biomes.”
• “Return stones now teleport you outside their relative Z-door.”
• “A few tidbits of lore hinting at something coming in the near future, found in High Peak Castle and Undying Shores.”
• “Multi-binding is now properly removed from Normal Mode and available in Custom Mode.”

I took the training room and Aspect system for a spin, and I think it’s going to really bridge the gap, difficulty-wise, for a lot of us. Here are more screens to show off the update:

_{Look for this guy in the Prisoners’ Quarters, below the Boss Cell selector, to equip an Aspect.}

_{This is the door to the training room, which is also in the Prisoners’ Quarters. Front and center.}

_{Here’s what the enemy training selection process looks like.}

_{And here’s an enemy, in statue form, before it’s manually activated.}

_{Best of all, you no longer need to reach the Throne Room to practice against the Hand of the King.}

New content is always appreciated, but features like this — that can help you enjoy the content we already have even more — go so much further. You spoil us, Dead Cells.