Valve has released Violet, the fifth of six new heroes arriving as part of Deadlock’s City Never Sleeps update.
Her Flow State ability sends ink towards danger to deal damage or away from it for a quick escape, while Still Life captures enemies’ likeness. Abstract Landscape, her biggest piece, surrounds Violet and those nearby in what the announcement described as her most ambitious work yet. Nurse Harrow, the last of the six, is scheduled to arrive on October 20th at 2 PM PDT / 10 PM BST. Heroes have been released in pairs each week on Tuesdays and Fridays since the first on October 2nd, with players voting on the release order in the game’s new pregame lobby. Votes from the winning team count double, a player’s first win of the day also doubles their votes, and playing matches earns hero priority tokens. “We want to thank everyone for participating in voting once again, and we’ll see you next week for the culmination of our City Never Sleeps update,” the announcement said.
A new look for the Cursed Apple
City Never Sleeps rebuilt the map into a version of New York City that the game calls the Cursed Apple, taking in Uptown, Times Square, Downtown, Central Park, Umbria University, the Stock Exchange, Seaport Dock and the Old Fairfax Factories. Hidden between the main streets are four districts — the Theater, Chinatown, Haunted Lot and Plaza — which the announcement framed as the livelier corridors of the city. The familiar neutral enemies have also been replaced by new creatures with new behaviours, among them Gutter Ghouls, Barrel Mimics, Stage Hands, Underhands and Crabbage Pots.
New points of interest include the Sunken Plaza, which sits beneath the Plaza District’s main square and drains stamina as players descend, and the Chinatown Bell Tower, which offers a concentrated soul hotspot but rings loudly across the map while rewards are collected. Tough Crates now need a heavy melee to break open, while revamped buff containers hand out permanent bonuses including Spirit Resist, Bullet Resist, Ability Range and Move Speed. Healing snacks are hidden around the map for players to find, and steam vents provide invisibility and a small amount of regeneration to anyone standing on them.
The Broker and corrupted items
The update also introduced the Broker, a merchant who sets up in a different part of the city each time and deals in demon-touched items that the announcement said are banned in New York. Players can exchange high-tier items for corrupted versions, with his first shipment stocked around 30 minutes into a match and further corrupted items available roughly every 15 minutes after that. Every corrupted item is assigned random negative attributes from a predefined set, and while the scale of those attributes varies slightly, they are identical for all players in a given game.
The Broker was never a permanent fixture, however. According to the announcement, he was only due to stay for a few days and would move on once the first of the new heroes arrived, which happened on October 2nd.
HUD, shop and accessibility changes
Away from the map, City Never Sleeps brought a set of interface changes aimed at readability. Healthbars now show ally indicators, real-time health values, stamina tracking, critical health status and icons for when a Rejuvenator or ultimate is available, while a new event feed records killing blows, bounties and soul bags during a match. The shop has been reworked too, adding item filters, a popular items section built from live player data, improved search and sorting, and build copy-pasting.
The ping system received more than 15,000 new and updated lines, alongside minimap and topbar ping wheels, pingable shop items, ability cooldown pings and a typing indicator. Voice work was expanded in step with it, with pre-match conversations between heroes rising from over 700 lines to 1,500 and more than 10,000 non-ping voice lines added. A new dialogue player lets players browse and listen to the game’s voice-over by hero and patron.
The update added dedicated accessibility settings covering visuals, audio and controls. These include subtitles for in-game dialogue with customisable size, colours and font, as well as auto move, auto mantle, auto fire, reduced camera shake and editable colours for enemy UI elements and reticles. Settings and reticles can also be copied as a code and shared with other players, with the option to preview a code before applying it or undo the changes afterwards.
Deadlock’s sandbox has been given new testing tools, among them bot recording and playback, a combat log, a real-time speed graph and a DPS meter. On the moderation side, players are now notified when action is taken against someone they reported, and anyone reported during a match and found to be abusing comms is muted for the rest of that game and issued a 30-day comms ban.
City Never Sleeps also moved the game to the latest version of Source 2, Valve’s engine, alongside improvements to anti-cheat, network prediction, rendering and audio performance. The announcement listed dozens of further changes, from new melee sound effects and updated item art to fixes for individual heroes.
