Valve Releases Deadlock's Biggest Update: Six New Heroes, a New Map, and a Mysterious Merchant

Valve has released the City Never Sleeps update for Deadlock, already being called the biggest update since the game's launch. The release had been delayed since August, when Valve developer Yoshi warned about the holdup, but the update finally went live on September 29.

The headline addition is six new heroes, each with a distinct look:

• Nurse Harrow, a strict nurse who uses a needle as a weapon;
• Rat King, a crowned rat king who started out as a fan concept;
• Solomon, a chess strategist who floats above the ground;
• Deadman Danny, a skeleton with a rocket launcher;
• Baba, an old witch the developers compare to a character from Home Alone 2, only "actually evil";
• Violet, the game's first painter hero, who fights with a paintbrush.

They won't all arrive at once. Players will decide the release order by voting in the pre-match lobby, and new heroes will arrive two at a time every Tuesday and Friday, starting October 2. Votes from the winning team count double, as does the vote from your first win of the day. Valve hasn't revealed the heroes' abilities yet.

The New York map has been heavily reworked. Each lane now has its own style: a bright city center, a haunted university, and a gloomy stock exchange. The back alleys have been split into four districts: the Theater District, Chinatown, the Haunted Lot, and the Plaza. Other new additions to the map include:

• Sunken Plaza, a hidden high-risk area with valuable rewards;
• Bell Tower, a bell tower in Chinatown with a large concentration of Souls;
• Tough Crates, sturdy crates that can only be broken with a heavy melee attack but give more Souls;
• Steam Vents, which grant invisibility and health regeneration;
• New neutral creatures, including explosive Barrel Mimics, slimy trash bag ghouls, and demonic mushrooms.

Another new addition is the mysterious merchant, The Broker. He appears around the 30-minute mark in different spots on the map and refreshes his stock roughly every 15 minutes after that. The Broker lets players trade powerful items for even stronger Corrupted versions. Each of these items comes with a random negative effect, which is the same for every player in the match. However, the merchant is only temporary: according to Valve, the "authorities" will shut him down a few days after the first new hero releases.

Valve has also completely overhauled the interface, health bars, and shop, which now lets you copy builds and see popular items. The game also gets a dedicated accessibility settings section with auto fire and subtitles, an expanded sandbox with a DPS meter, and more than 15,000 new voice lines for the ping system. Pre-match conversations between heroes have grown from 700 to around 1,500. Under the hood, Deadlock has moved to a newer version of the Source 2 engine, and the developers have improved anti-cheat and performance.