Equipment

Dead Cells provides players with Gear in the form of:
 * Weapons, which have limited but different movesets
 * Skills, which cause a variety of effects but must cool down between uses
 * And Amulets, passive items which grant powerful offensive or defensive benefits.

Gear items are not automatically collected — they must be picked up with the Interact key/button. Unwanted gear can usually be converted into gold if the Recycle upgrade has been unlocked.

Most Gear appears with one or more Affixes, which add effects or situational benefits. Only non-starter, Level 1 Gear, and unique talismans lack affixes. (Starter Gear always generates with the affix, "Cannot be sold.")

If you're looking for a missing item, but you have everything listed below, you might be missing the Merchandise Category upgrade from the Graveyard.

Gear Upgrades
The player can spend cells at The Blacksmith's Legendary Forge to permanently upgrade all weapons and skills across runs.

When you upgrade the Forge, items that drop or appear in shops have a chance to be of +, ++, or S quality. The max for all qualities is 100%, but to upgrade ++ to 100% requires 1 BSC, and S quality requires 4 BSC. The upgrade benefits are:
 * + quality generates the item with 2 more gear levels than usual.
 * ++ quality generates the item with 4 more gear levels than usual ,and gives +1 to one scaling Stat.
 * S quality generates the item with 6 more gear levels than usual, and gives either +2 to one scaling stat or +1 to two scaling stats (if the item's base form is two-color).

Gear Variants
Two variants of weapons and skills can be encountered: Colorless items and Legendary items.

Colorless Items
Colorless items, found in Cursed Chests, are always of ++ quality. They can be upgraded to S quality at the Forge. Cursed items are Colorless — they scale with your highest Stat. For example, a Colorless Torch, which is a pure Brutality item, scales with Survival if you have higher Survival than Brutality. Colorless items are marked with a white color, rather than the colors of the base item's scaling stats.

Legendary Items
Legendaries are powerful variants of items that you can get as a random drop from mobs with a very low chance (1% and 6% for common mobs and Elites, respectively), as a reward after beating a boss without getting hit, or from a Legendary altar.

Legendary altars have a base 2% chance of spawning per biome, which increases by 15% for each biome that didn't spawn one, thus ensuring you find a Legendary altar in most of your runs. These altars hold a Legendary item and give the enemies nearby 66% damage reduction. The nearby enemies must be killed before you can grab the item, making it a high risk/reward situation.

Legendary items always grant +1 Stat (+1 to all Stats on 3+ BSC) and cannot be upgraded, but have powerful advantages:


 * Colorless — scales with your highest stat)


 * A specific affix (predetermined for each base item) with a 15% chance to be applied after all other affixes, ignoring the usual affix generation rules
 * Cheap re-rolling cost

Legendary items are marked with a gold color, rather than the colors of the base item's scaling stats.

The item pool for Legendary items is not limited to unlocked items, but heavily skewed towards them. It is possible to get any item other than the Symmetrical Lance on a fresh save, but it will be much more likely to get an item from the starting pool. On saves with all items unlocked, the chances of getting any item seem to be equal.

Weapons
The player can only carry 2 weapons at a time. Picking up a third displays a menu that compares all three weapons, and asks the player if they want to discard a carried weapon for the new one.

Skills
Skills are secondary abilities that can be used in combat. The player never starts with skills and must find them throughout the run.

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

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

Skills are roughly split into three types: traps and turrets, grenades, and miscellaneous powers.

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." Amulets come in Ruby, Golden, Ice, Sapphire, or Moonstone. They are most frequently acquired by defeating Elite enemies or by opening Timed or Perfect Doors. Amulets can also be found within Challenge Rift chests, on corpses, or by rummaging through loot in lore rooms. Amulets carry one or more affixes, grant damage reduction, and can give the player more Stats.

As amulets are leveled items, the gear levels of Biomes affect the quantity and quality of the Affixes on the amulets found, as well as the number of Stats and the % of damage reduction they grant.

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.