Pickups

Pickups are items which are not gear, stat upgrade scrolls, runes, or blueprints. Pickups can be collected with the Interact key/button while the player is close.

There are 3 main categories of pickups:


 * 1) Gems, worth varying amounts of gold;
 * 2) Food, which heals the player
 * 3) Keys, which lets the player unlock doors

Gems
Gems give a significant amount of gold when collected. Generally, gems are more valuable when appearing in harder biomes, and their value increases multiplicatively with each loot level by 40%, rounded to the nearest multiple of 5.

Food
Food regenerates a fixed percentage of health when eaten. There are 2 different functional types of food, each with 5 different appearances depending on the selected diet.

Minor Foods
Minor foods encompass restore 15% of the player's maximum health (30% with the Gastronomy mutation). Enemies and wall runes may drop them, they might be found on the ground at the end of a branch, or they’ll be for sale in a food shop.

Major Foods
Major foods heal 50% of the player's maximum health (100% with the Gastronomy mutation). Major foods drop rarely from enemies and wall runes, but are most reliably obtained by purchasing them in food shops.

Cough Syrup


Reduces Malaise infection levels by 30%. Can be bought at food shops.

Cells
Cells are one of two currencies in Dead Cells. (The other is gold.) Surviving to the end of a level lets the player spend cells, but dying in a level will lose all cells.

Cells can drop from slain enemies and looted chests. Capsules of cells may also spawn within the level.

Cells can be spent either at The Collector at the end of each level, on upgrades or blueprints; or at The Blacksmith after each boss, to upgrade the chance of finding better quality items. These upgrades are permanent and persist through all playthroughs for that save file.

Liposuction


A rare pickup that produces one extra cell on every kill for 45 seconds, even if the enemy doesn't normally drop cells. It randomly drops from enemies, but the exact chance is unknown.

Residual Cells
A bag that spawns next to the Dead Man's Bag if you defeated the Hand of the King with some leftover cells. It contains those leftover cells from the previous run for you to use on the next one. If you don't pick up this bag, you'll lose all the cells in it.

Keys
Unlike most pickups, keys are not used when they are picked up. Instead, they are added to the player's inventory, so they can be used later to open their respective doors. Keys remain in the player's inventory for the rest of the run if not used on the appropriate. Unused keys disappear upon death or at the end of a successful run.