The world is a stage in
TheaterDistrict
Haunts: Stage Hands
City Never Sleeps
The Cursed Apple is ever changing, and these streets are nothing like you remember. A massive visual update to the map and neutrals, six new heroes, a mysterious figure known as The Broker, HUD updates, numerous quality-of-life additions, accessibility options, and more.
- 6New heroes
- 4New districts
- 40Haunt camps
- 9Haunt families
- 90Corrupted items
- 15,000+New voice lines
And now …
Meet the Locals
You vote on the release order — and you can already take every one of them for a spin in our3D upcoming heroes viewer, models, animations, and voice lines included.
Voting now live
Who'snext?
All six heroes have released: Rat King, Baba, Solomon, Deadman Danny, Violet, and Nurse Harrow. Nurse Harrow completed the lineup on October 20, 2026.
The lineup is complete. Thank you for voting!
Live standings
4,768 votes cast on the Lockbuilds ballot so far.
Rat King1,55232.6%
Baba82717.3%
Solomon82517.3%
Deadman Danny56811.9%
Violet52210.9%
Nurse Harrow4749.9%
Release schedule
The City Never Sleeps lineup is complete. All six heroes are now playable.
All six heroes have released.
- 1Rat KingFri, Oct 2 · 2:00 PM PDT
- 2BabaTue, Oct 6 · 2:00 PM PDT
- 3SolomonFri, Oct 9 · 2:00 PM PDT
- 4Deadman DannyTue, Oct 13 · 2:00 PM PDT
- 5VioletFri, Oct 16 · 2:00 PM PDT
- 6Nurse HarrowTue, Oct 20 · 2:00 PM PDT
- New vote in Pregame
- All voting is now done in the new Pregame lobby. Convince your allies to make the only correct choice — the winning team's votes count as double.
- First win of the day
- Your first win of the day gives you double the votes.
- New hero priority tokens
- Starting with the first hero release, playing will earn you priority tokens.
- Campaign posters
- Demonstrate your support for your favorite upcoming hero.
An updated visitor's guide to New York City
AnewNew York
Break a leg on the tour: three lanes — Broadway, Greenwich, and York — now run through real neighborhoods, every neutral camp is a Haunt camp, and the streets are full of new things to break, eat, and hide in.
The blue lane
Uptown
Our first stop on the tour. If you need to get going somewhere, this is your quickest route to where the action is.
Times Square
The beating heart of the city. Everyone should see it at least once in their life, and hopefully not just this once.
Downtown
The busiest stop in town. Citizens of the Cursed Apple have been reporting strange rumblings coming from deep beneath the subway line.
The green lane
Umbria University
Home to the nation's finest Bibliomancy program, Umbria offers an elite occult education.
Central Park
300 years old and still growing. This aptly named Hangman's Elm has been in the city longer than almost any other living creature.
The Brownstones
Visit the Brownstones for some quality family time, and if you're lucky, a history lesson worth not repeating.
The yellow lane
Stock Exchange
See the high-stakes financial playground where the warlocks of Wall Street ply their trade making trades.
Seaport Dock
Preserving New York City's maritime heritage hasn't quite been the same since this vessel docked at Pier 16.
Old Fairfax Factories
The beating heart of the Occult Industrial Complex comes from humble beginnings.
Venture off the beaten path
The4Districts
Hidden between the main city streets are the 4 Districts to explore with a little something for everyone. The Theater, Chinatown, Haunted Lot, and Plaza make up the more “lively” corridors of the Cursed Apple.
It's going down in
ChinatownDistrict
Haunts: Festival Spirit, Crabbage Pots
Watch your step
Haunted LotDistrict
Haunts: Shrooms
Get to the bottom of
PlazaDistrict
Haunts: Underhands
Watch out for
Meet theHaunts
The neutral creeps you knew are gone. Every camp on the new map is a Haunt camp — 40 camps across nine families, and each family's eyes tell you its tier: teal for tier I, yellow for tier II, red for tier III.
Gutter Ghouls
York lane
All those dark and dirty thoughts that humanity would prefer buried and thrown away, given form.
Underhands
Plaza District
Grasping hands always find their ways into unexpecting pockets. While the ritual burns high in the sky, some decrepit souls can't help but stay low.
Stage Hands
Theater District
Graceful bodies floating across the stage can be mesmerizing. In such a historic theater, one couldn't be blamed for wanting to leave their bloody mark all the way across the deck.
Specimen
Times Square
Some call it magic, others call it science. It doesn't matter what you call it when it's a disembodied hand crawling on your kitchen floor in the middle of the night.
Festival Spirit
Chinatown District
Souls are kindled with hopes and dreams of the wishes they may light into day. You never think about how some of those hopes and dreams are violent and want to kill you.
Crabbage Pots
Chinatown District
People always tell you there's something in the water whenever anything bad happens. There's a ritual going on outside. Something's in the water.
Past Dues
Umbria University
A good story can bring respite in trying times. For those less inspired, the pages of a book may serve better as a sleep aid.
Barrel Mimics
York lane
Gunpowder was originally invented while on the search for an elixir of immortality. The spirits seem to make good use of both.
Shrooms
Haunted Lot District
New York is a melting pot of families from across the globe. It just so happens that when you combine a family of fungi and demonic energy at high temperature, it starts to walk.
The new Must-Do's of the city
Assorted gameplayupdates
There's a lot going on around here. These are the stops worth planning a route around.
Sunken Plaza
Found in Plaza District
Shrouded beneath the district's main square lies the city's Sunken Plaza. With high risk comes high rewards because as you descend to its depths, the sounds of the outside world fade away along with your stamina.
Bell Tower
Found in Chinatown District
Ascend to the top of the Chinatown Bell Tower for a highly concentrated soul hotspot. Keep in mind that while collecting your rewards the bell will ring loudly throughout the map.
Tough Crates
These Tough Crates require a Heavy Melee to break open, but the extra souls will make it worth your while.
Buff Containers
Revamped golden statues now also include Spirit Resist, Bullet Resist, Ability Range, and Move Speed as permanent bonuses.
Healing Snacks
Hidden around the map, these healing snacks allow keen-eyed players to heal up in a pinch.
Steam Vents
Duck in and out of veiled cover with your team to navigate the city streets in refreshing secrecy. Provides invisibility and a small amount of regen while standing on it.
New York has something for everybody. For those in search of truly terrifying power, there's a guy — a mysterious merchant known only as the Broker. One day you might find him uptown operating from the end of a dark alley; a few months later, an abandoned storefront in Chinatown. Nobody knows where he'll appear next, and he won't stay long: his supply of demon-touched items and modifications is banned in New York. For a price, the Broker can turn the mundane into the extraordinary — but buyer beware, his wares always come with a cost, and it's rarely measured in mere souls.
Exchange your items
While supplies last, you can exchange your high tier items for a Corrupted version. His first shipment is stocked around 30 minutes, and additional Corrupted Items arrive, on average, every 15 minutes after that.
Here's the catch
Each match, all corrupted items are assigned random negative attributes from a predefined set. The degree of negative and positive attributes varies slightly, but they are the same for all players in a given game.
He comes and goes
Corrupted Items are banned on the streets of New York. He'll only be around for a few days — authorities will be out in full swing once the first new hero makes their arrival.
Beyond the city
Everythingelsethat's new
The map is the headline, but the update touches nearly every screen in the game — HUD, shop, pings, voice lines, accessibility, sandbox tools, and settings.
The picture of health
New health bars
Enemy health bars now say far more than a shrinking bar — names, resources, and how close they are to dying.
- Player names
- Find your party members quickly in the heat of combat.
- Resource indicators
- Icons show Rejuvenator charges, ultimate availability, stamina pips, and critical health status.
- Live health values
- As you deal damage, you see their health value decrease in real time, with cumulative damage options in Settings.
- Haunt and objective info
- See the soul value and comparative difficulty of NPCs — objectives get health bars too.
Know your surroundings
HUD enhancements
A number of interface improvements aimed at improving game readability across the whole match.
- Ally indicators
- You can now more easily see your allies, no matter how far away they are.
- Improved stats
- Gain a better understanding of your power level throughout a match — in combat and while shopping.
- Targeting mode
- A cleaned up targeting mode means less UI between you and your prey.
- Respawn timers
- In-world timers show when Haunt camps or Midboss respawn, plus a Midboss timer in the topbar.
Wait, who did what?
Event feed
A new way to look at the important moments during a match.
- Killing blow information
- The event feed now displays a breakdown of what item or ability landed the killing blow.
- Bounties
- Players can now see the full bounty of a target, as well as their personal share of the kill.
- Soul bags
- Don't forget to secure the Soul Bag from your kills, before your ally does it for you.
The shop
Popular items and better filters
An improved shop to help players find what they need, when they need it most.
- Popular items
- Using live player data, the shop narrows down the most frequently purchased items on your hero, with purchase rates and game-phase timing on the tooltip.
- Item filters
- Filter the shop down to only the stats you're looking for, and mix and match filters for the modifiers you want most.
- Shop settings
- Improved search, focus, scrolling, and navigation — pressing 1–6 jumps between shop tabs. Kill feed, chat, and scoreboard are visible while shopping.
- Build improvements
- Better build browser previews, build copy/pasting, instant category resizing, and more.
Pings & communication
Say more with pings
Quickly share a game plan with your team with the reworked ping system.
- Ping wheels
- Expanded interactive pings on the minimap and topbar wheels.
- 15,000+ new lines
- Over 15,000 new and updated ping lines, including detailed dynamic ability pings for cooldowns.
- New pingable targets
- Troopers, neutrals, ziplines, the Rift, bridge buffs, shops, and more now react to pings.
- Smarter enemy pings
- Relay critical health, death status, or respawn timing — pinging a cluster even calls out how many enemies are there.
Character voice lines
Listen to every word
The cast has a lot more to say, and you can finally hear all of it.
- Pre-match conversations
- Conversations between new and existing heroes increased from over 700 to 1,500.
- 10,000+ new lines
- Added over 10,000 non-ping voice lines across the roster.
- New dialogue player
- Browse and listen to all of the available VO in the game, from your favorite heroes and patrons.
Accessibility features
Dedicated accessibility settings
Dedicated settings for visuals, audio, and controls so the game reads the way you need it to.
- VO subtitles + customization
- Subtitles for in-game dialogue with customizable size, colors, and font.
- Enemy UI color
- Modify the colors used for certain elements in the UI.
- Auto move, mantle, and fire
- Double-tap to keep moving forward, auto-mantle ledges, and toggle continuous fire.
- Reduced camera shake
- Reduce camera shake from impacts and explosions, plus reticle fill/border colors and cursor size options.
Advanced tools
Sandbox upgrades
New and improved testing tools to hone your skills.
- DPS meter and combat log
- Track your DPS and total damage, with an exact breakdown of every damage instance and modifier in a fight.
- Speed graph
- Graph the differences in movespeed during varied combat scenarios and movement techniques.
- Bot recording
- Record and playback bot actions — loop them, share them, and command bots to use any ability or item.
- Falloff guides
- See where your weapon damage starts to fall off and where it bottoms out.
New settings features
Share your setup
More customization options and requested features.
- Shareable codes
- Copy your reticle and keybind settings as a code to share, or apply someone else's — with preview and undo.
- Keybind map
- See every key and mouse button you have bound, which are free, and what each does.
- Per-hero settings
- Numerous settings can now be customized per hero, with a hero selector in the settings nav.
- Cloud-save
- Previously local settings are now cloud-saved, and multiple players on one PC keep separate settings.
Behavior & reporting
Reports that answer back
Flag toxic or rule-breaking behavior during and after a match.
- Report notification
- You now get notified when an action was taken on a player you reported.
- In-game comms ban
- A player reported mid-match and found abusing comms is muted for the rest of the match and issued a 30-day comms ban.
Questions
City Never SleepsFAQ
When do the new Deadlock heroes come out?
The first of the six arrives on October 2, 2026. After that, two heroes release each week on Tuesdays and Fridays at 2:00 PM Pacific, in the order players vote for in the Pregame lobby.
Who are the six new heroes?
Nurse Harrow, Deadman Danny, Baba, Solomon, Rat King, and Violet. You can inspect all six — full 3D models, animations, and voice lines — in our upcoming heroes viewer.
What are Haunts?
Haunts replace the old neutral camps. There are 40 camps across nine families — Gutter Ghouls, Underhands, Stage Hands, Specimen, Festival Spirits, Crabbage Pots, Past Dues, Barrel Mimics, and Shrooms. A camp's eye color shows its tier (teal I, yellow II, red III), which sets its health, damage, and soul value.
What is the Broker?
A temporary merchant who trades your high-tier items for stronger Corrupted versions carrying a random drawback. His first stock arrives around the 30-minute mark and refreshes roughly every 15 minutes. He leaves once the first new hero is released — browse all 90 Corrupted items in our Broker item tool.
What changed on the map?
New York City was rebuilt: three renamed lanes (Broadway, Greenwich, York), four new Districts between them — Theater, Chinatown, Haunted Lot, and Plaza — plus new objectives like the Bell Tower, Sunken Plaza, Tough Crates, healing snacks, and steam vents that hide you.
Additional update notes
Also in thispatch
- Updated engine code to the latest version of Source 2
- Improved anti-cheat
- Network prediction improvements
- Rendering and audio performance improvements
- Ability and item use is now instant the moment the button is pushed
- New death, respawn, and killstreak music tracks
- Updated item art and new hit registration effects
- Street Brawl grants you a corrupted item after the item draft in Round 5
- New footstep sounds for over a dozen heroes
- Heroes now look at points of interest in the Hideout