Pickups

Pickups are miscellaneous items which are not gear items, stat upgrade scrolls, runes, or blueprints. Pickups can be collected using the Interact key while the player is close enough to do so.

There are three main categories of pickups: gems, which give varying amounts of gold; foods, which heal the player; and keys, which allow the player to unlock specific doors.

Gems
Gems give a significant amount of gold when collected.

The table below lists all gems in order from least valuable to most valuable. Generally, gems will be more valuable when they appear in harder biomes, and their values increase multiplicatively by 40% (rounded to the nearest multiple of 5) with each loot level increment.

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

Minor Foods
Minor foods, encompassing Kebabs, Carrots, Guts, Cherries, Pastries and Croissants (Carnivore, Vegetarian, Monster, Fruitarian, Castlevaniesque and Baguette, respectively), restore 15% of the player's maximum health by default (30% with the Gastronomy mutation). Enemies and wall runes may drop them, or they might be found on the ground at the end of a branch or for sale in a food shop.

Major Foods
Major foods, encompassing Drumsticks, Big ol' radishes, Monster's eyes, Watermelons, Turkeys and Baguettes (Carnivore, Vegetarian, Monster, Fruitarian, Castevaniesque and Baguette, respectively), are very effective at healing the player, healing 50% of the player's maximum health by default (100% with the Gastronomy mutation). Major foods, though they do drop rarely from enemies and wall runes, are most reliably obtained by purchasing them in food shops.

Cough Syrup
A item which reduces the Malaise infection levels by 30%, can be bought at food shops.

Cells
Cells are one of the two currencies (the other being gold) in Dead Cells. Surviving to the end of a level allows one to spend cells at The Collector, while dying prior to the end of a level will result in the loss of all cells.

Cells have a chance to drop from slain enemies and looted chests. There are also chances for levels to have gold doors, which a player can spend an amount of money to open the door (or break it down at the cost of a curse) behind which is a container of cells.

Cells can be spent either at The Collector at the end of each level, on upgrades or to unlock 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 subsequent playthroughs.

The door to the area after the Collector will remain locked until all cells are spent. Should one decide they do not wish to spend all their cells at the Collector (for example to spend them at The Blacksmith after the next boss), the door can be broken down to proceed to the next level.

Liposuction


Liposuction is a rare pickup that grants one extra cell on every kill for 45 seconds, even if the enemy can't give any cells on its own. It is randomly dropped from enemies, though the exact drop chance is not known.

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

Keys
Unlike most other pickups, keys are not used immediately when they are picked up. Instead, they are added to the player's inventory so they can be consumed later to open their respective doors. Keys will remain in the player's inventory for the rest of the run if not used within the appropriate level. All unused keys disappear upon death or at the end of a succesful run.