Pickups

Pickups are items which are not gear, stat upgrade scrolls, runes, or blueprints. Pickups can be collected with the Interact command while the player is close or, in the case of gems, just by walking on top of them.

All main categories of pickups are:


 * Gems, worth varying amounts of gold
 * Food, which heals the player
 * Scrolls, which upgrade player's stats
 * Cells, which allow player to upgrade mechanisms and unlock items
 * Specials, which serve miscellaneous functions
 * Keys, which let the player unlock doors

Gems
Gems give a significant amount of gold when collected. 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 (or twice as much if the Gastronomy mutation is there). There are 2 different functional types of food, each with 7 different appearances depending on the selected diet, which is altered by game settings. If untouched by the player, it will be chosen as "Carnivore".

Minor Foods
Minor foods restore 15% of the player's maximum health normally. 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 normally. Major foods drop rarely from enemies and wall runes, but are most reliably obtained by purchasing them in food shops.

Scrolls
Scrolls are items that increase the player's stats. More details on Stats page.

Note that Single-State Scrolls come with items themselves, as a ++ rank item contains one of them, and an S rank item contains two of these scrolls.

Cells
Cells are one of two currencies in Dead Cells, together with gold. Surviving to the end of a level lets the player spend any cells he has collected, but dying in a biome will lose them all cells.

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

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

Dead Man’s Bag


A bag that spawns at the start of Prisoners' Quarters. It contains some of the gold from your last run. The value depends on your current level of Gold Reserves and anywhere above this limit is always lost.

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. If you don't pick up this bag, the cells in it will be lost.

Scroll Fragments


They can be picked up from Scroll Fragments Altars, which are generated in most non-boss biomes in 3BC and above. A number of scroll fragments are also dropped by killing bosses (3BC and above). Collecting four of them allows you to upgrade one of your three stats.

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.

Cough Syrup


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

Bonus Point Stars


These blue stars are found in Daily Run courses. They give a 5-point bonus for each enemy killed while the blue star effect is active (15 seconds). Finding and using these stars properly to kill as many enemies as possible while the bonus is active is key to getting high scores in daily runs.

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 door. Unused keys disappear upon death or at the end of a successful run.