Equipment

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Dead Cells provides players with multiple options of style defining Gear in the form of various Weapons, which have limited but different movesets, Skills, which cause a variety of effects but must cool down between uses, and Talismans, passive items which can grant powerful offensive or defensive benefits.

Gear items, like Pickups, are not automatically collected - they must be picked up using the Interact key. Alternately, in most cases, these items can be recycled into gold instead if the appropriate upgrades have been unlocked.

Most pieces of gear appear with one or more Affixes which add effects or grant situational benefits. Only non-starter level-one gear items and unique talismans lack affixes of any kind (starter gear items always generate with the affix "Can not be sold.").

If you're looking for one missing item, but you have all stuff that are listed below, you might be missing Merchandise Category general improvement (blueprint found in the Graveyard), or the Giant Killer, which is currently unobtainable.

Gear Upgrades
As of the Foundry Update, the player can spend cells at the Forge (which only appears after bosses) to permanently upgrade specific weapons and skills. Investments at the Forge persist through death, allowing cells for upgrades to be collected across multiple runs.

Each weapon or skill can be upgraded three times in total (each upgrade increases the item's sale value, increasing both shop prices and recycling returns):
 * The first upgrade, adding "+" to the end of the name, causes the item to generate with 2 more gear levels than usual. This upgrade can be performed with any number of source cells active for 30 cells.
 * The second upgrade, adding a second "+" to the end of the name, causes the item to generate with 4 more gear levels than usual (2 of these levels come from the first upgrade) and give +1 to one scaling Stat for the base form of the item. This upgrade, costing 75 cells, can only be performed while at least one source cell is active.
 * The final upgrade, replacing the "+" symbols at end of the name with an "-S", causes the item to generate with 6 more gear levels than usual (4 of these levels come from the first and second upgrades) and give either +2 to one scaling stat or +1 to both scaling stats (only if the base form of the item has two scaling stats i.e. it is a two-color item). This upgrade, costing 200 cells, can only be performed while at least three source cells are active.

Gear Variants
Up to two variants of standard gear (weapons and skills) can be encountered during gameplay: colorless items and legendary items.

Colorless Items
Colorless items, obtained from Cursed Chests, are in most ways the same as standard items, inheriting the benefits of "+", "++" and "S" upgrades and being affected by gear levels. However, they possess two Affixes which cannot appear on standard items: These items are visually distinguished from standard items by a white icon (rather than an icon colored based on the base item's scaling stats).
 * Colorless (scales with your highest stat)
 * You take 20% more damage

Legendary Items
Legendary items, introduced in the Baguette Update (currently in alpha testing as of April 12th, 2018), are powerful item variants which always drop from bosses but can also be obtained rarely from slaying enemies or opening treasure chests. Though they do not inherit the benefits of "+", "++" or "S" upgrades (i.e. they never grant bonuses to scaling stats), they are affected by gear levels, and they possess up to two bonus Affixes compared to standard items: These items are visually distinguished from standard items by a gold icon (rather than an icon colored based on the base item's scaling stats).
 * Colorless (scales with your highest stat)
 * A specific affix (fixed for each base item) which has a 15% chance to be applied after all other affixes have been generated, ignoring the usual affix generation rules

Weapons
Only two weapons can be carried at a time. Attempting to pick up a third weapon will summon a prompt which compares all three weapons and asks the player to choose whether to discard a carried weapon in order to pick up the new weapon.

The following is a list of weapons in the game Dead Cells.

Skills
Skills are secondary abilities in Dead Cells that can be used in combat. The player must find skills throughout the run, as they will never start with them. Skill damage and cooldown are improved based on the player's Tactics stat, though some skills can instead scale their effects (but not their cooldowns) with Brutality or Survival.

The player has two skill slots. Upon picking up a third skill, a menu which compares all three will appear, allowing the player to choose which of the three skills to discard.

Equipped skills can be swapped with each other in the pause menu, using the Interact key.

Skills are roughly split into three types: traps and turrets, grenades, and powers (the contents of Miscellaneous at skill shops once Merchandise Categories has been unlocked).

Talismans
Talismans are passive equipment items. Most talismans do not have innate benefits - their utility comes from the affixes on them.

Only one talisman can be carried at a time. Upon picking up another talisman, a menu will appear, allowing the player to choose which of the two to keep.

Talismans can be sorted into two categories: amulets (generated talismans) and unique talismans.

Amulets
You may only equip one amulet at a time, but their effects are powerful... "A fine object, adroitly hidden under your clothes to make less work for the artists." Generated talismans, called amulets, come in ruby, golden, ice, sapphire and moonstone varieties and are most frequently acquired by defeating Elite enemies or opening chests at the ends of challenge zones entered via challenge portals. They have no innate qualities, but always have one or more major and/or minor affixes in addition to one or more stat-upgrading affixes (+X Brutality/Tactics/Survival).

As amulets are leveled items, the gear levels of Biomes impact the quantity and quality of the Affixes on amulets found within them, especially stat-upgrading ones.

Unique Talismans
There is currently only one unique talisman, which cannot possess affixes of any kind.

Prisoner's Collar
"'Nothing worth mentioning, except maybe a vague whiff of dead rat...'" The player starts every run with the Prisoner's Collar equipped. It gives no benefits of any kind.

Ygdar Orus Li Ox
Formerly a unique talisman which sometimes appeared behind gold doors in the Prisoners' Cells or Prison Depths, it was changed into a Mutation in the Foundry Update. Both forms of Ygdar Orus Li Ox (abbreviated YOLO) revive the player on the spot if they would otherwise take a fatal blow while not under the effect of a curse, freezing nearby enemies for a short duration, bringing the player's health up to 25% of maximum health, and destroying themselves on use.