The crew has talked a lot so far about disliking tactics builds & leaning more toward brutality(str); but straight up, once you unlock the Heavy Turret, tac builds can become extremely OP if not just plain broken. If you use the efficiency mutation, by about halfway through the run you can have a new turret out like every 3 seconds, so basically constant DPS. Stack that with some multiplicative elemental damage modifiers & you can chunk down the final boss in under 1'30 easy. Regular adds will go down within half a second & elites within about 5 seconds of placing the turret if you spec correctly. If you find a legendary Ice Bow or Fire Brands, you're basically unstoppable(if you have the appropriate elemental modifiers).I did play probably 20 hrs of the early access version on Steam(so I have some experience with the combat), but after picking it up on Switch, I beat the hand of the king with this strat on my 8th run. This effect can be achieved with pretty much any turret(i.e. Double Crossb-o-matic, Sinew Slicer, & especially the heavy turret).
If you're having trouble with the first boss, use a combination of the Sinew Slicer & the Wolf Trap with the efficiency mutation, which are all unlocked from the start. Invest mainly in Tactics(purple) and some in Survival(green) for the Wolf Trap. Then, pick up a ranged weapon like the Duplex Bow or Throwing Knives(or, if you're lucky, the Fire Brands). Throw out both skills as soon as they regen to maintain their durability. The Sinew Slicer will do most of your sustained DPS throughout the fight. The Wolf Trap synergizes with the Sinew Slicer quite well, but comes in most handy in the latter part of the fight for his jump attack. While normally he jumps across the arena and bops you, the boss will instead get stuck in the Wolf Trap and not be able to move. Take these opportunities throughout the fight to get ranged hits off & refresh your Sinew Slicer. This is just a good early-game build in general, but it really shines in this bossfight.
I have had some good str only runs with grenades and such, but IMO it's far easier to play tac than str, because in the long run you're going to be doing around the same amount of damage but with far less risk. Do watch out for the guys with the huge swords in High Peak Castle, though, because their tornado-like attack basically renders turrets useless. But, if your efficiency mutation is high enough(Mutations scale with stat increases), you should be able to throw down multiple turrets in quick succession(i.e. 2-4 seconds) to knock him out of his attack. Also, either heavy turret tac builds or elemental stacking str nade builds seem to be the most effective on Conjuntivius, the sewers boss. Don't even try to use a melee only build on him, all I'll say is that it won't go very well, without spoiling too much.
Another thing I've found useful is early on in the game, I would invest in some weapon/skill unlocks until they requires only 1 cell to unlock. You can either use this to manipulate the loot pool to suit your preferred stat(brut, tac, sur)/play style OR if you get deep into a run & think you might finish it, you can spend 1 cell & get a weapon/skill/ability that matches your current level. They won't show up in the rest of your runs until you do finally unlock them, but basically getting it for free when you need it the most could potentially change the outcome of that run. Plus, if you don't end up using them like that, unlocking them all at once and seeing like 20 different items in one room is pretty cool(but a little wasteful gold-wise).
Also, when you've gotten somewhat accustomed to the first few levels(say 10 runs or so), DEFINITELY go for the timed doors. If you don't try to kill every enemy, 2 minutes can be easily achieved on the first level for the Toxic Sewers/Promenade timed doors while still picking up some of the stat upgrades/items along the way. The timed gates always have a scroll of power, cells, and money behind them(except for the one in the forge, that one's just money and cells). I've found that the amount of cells can vary from like 10 to I think I've gotten 28 once? There's probably a hard and fast stat like how ever many you would've gotten on the previous level or something, but I don't know it. It's pretty much always worth it though, I've found. Plus, going fast in this game makes you feel badass.
I've been playing pretty much non-stop since release because I mainly play roguelikes anyway(over 200 hrs in BoI, EtG & Rogue Legacy, over 50 in Flinthook, Neurovoider, Crypt, GoNNER, Tumbleseed, & Death Road), but tbh, my motivation to keep playing Dead Cells has dropped a lot since beating the regular difficulty. The progression seems heavily focused on ramping you up to the end of normal mode, & once you do, you can either keep grinding cells for item unlocks or move on to the next difficulty. With only one playable character in the game & no rewards for beating it on subsequent playthroughs of the same difficulty, I find myself not even worrying about the final boss once my cells/blueprints are cashed(because beating him has the same outcome as just dying progression-wise). If the only goal other than unlocking more items is to get more boss cells by going up a tier(and probably a few rare blueprints, IDK), I'm probably just going to grind out the rest of the items on normal & wait for more content, because I've unlocked all the runes already.
Howlongtobeat has this game at 27 hrs for main+extra and 50 for completionist, so it seems to be on the shorter side in terms of roguelikes of the same esteem/calibre. I've already logged 18 hrs on Switch (so about 40 total) and I've unlocked what seems like about 60-70% of the items(maybe I've just been playing too much lol). If cells could be used to dump into more permanent upgrades such as health and crit chance(other than the ludicrously expensive forge upgrades)like Rogue Legacy, I think the progression ramp would make a lot more sense, because then you could play through higher difficulties in a similar way to the victory laps in Binding of Isaac. You get progressively more OP, but the enemies scale with you(granted not by nearly enough in BoI, lol). All that being said, I've still enjoyed the shit out of the actual gameplay thus far. It does physically pain me to watch other people play this game, though, because play style can vary so drastically from person to person. Maybe the controls just clicked with me more than usual, because it took me like 100 hours in Enter the Gungeon to reach a proximate skill gap to this game. Anyway, I hope some of my tips help new players and that my Tactics stat apologetics convinced some new players to not just ignore anything purple.
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