Items and Shop

5:06 Deadlock's shop sells 156 items in three categories, Weapon, Vitality and Spirit, each in four tiers that cost 800, 1,600, 3,200 and 6,400 souls, as the game files read on Oct 26, 2026 list them. Items are how a hero turns souls into power: every hero can use every item, and the build you make decides whether your hero kills with its gun, with its abilities, or by not dying. Each hero carries 9 items plus up to 3 more in Flex Slots, which the team unlocks by destroying enemy Walkers, since Valve's Nov 21, 2025 update. The shop works this way after Valve's Shop Rework of May 8, 2025 and the shop tools that City Never Sleeps added on Sep 29, 2026. Deadlock is an invite-only playtest in early development, so all of this can change with the next patch.

Quick facts

Source: game files via deadlock-api and generic data, read Oct 26, 2026; Valve, Nov 21, 2025; Valve's Shop Rework; deadlock-api's measured item stats; shop key from esports.gg.

The three categories

4:54 Weapon items make your gun stronger: weapon damage, fire rate, ammo, bullet velocity and on-hit effects such as slows, shreds and lifesteal, as Dexerto's beginner guide sums them up. The game files list 53 Weapon items: 7, 16, 19 and 11 in Tiers 1 to 4. The full list is on Weapon Items.

Vitality items keep you alive and moving: health, regeneration, lifesteal, resistances, barriers, sprint and stamina, and the cleanses and immunity effects. There are 54 of them (8, 15, 14 and 17 by tier), the largest category. The full list is on Vitality Items.

Spirit items power abilities: Spirit Power, cooldown reduction, range, duration, extra charges, and active spells such as Knockdown, Cursed Relic and Echo Shard. There are 49 of them (8, 12, 13 and 16 by tier). The full list is on Spirit Items.

Actives are items with a key: 44 of the 156 (8 Weapon, 18 Vitality, 18 Spirit), the rest being passives that work on their own. PC Gamer's guide to actives (Oct 10, 2024) warned new players not to skip them, naming Warp Stone, Echo Shard, Unstoppable, Knockdown and Ethereal Shift among the ones worth learning.

Tiers and costs

16:10 Every item in a tier costs the same: 800 souls for Tier 1, 1,600 for Tier 2, 3,200 for Tier 3 and 6,400 for Tier 4, in the game's price table read on Oct 26, 2026. The same table holds a fifth price, 9,999, used only by Street Brawl's Legendary items, which the normal shop does not sell. Older guides quote lower prices (500, 1,250, 3,000 and 6,200), from before Valve's May 8, 2025 Shop Rework; Valve's notes did not print either table.

Every hero starts a match with 600 souls, enough for a Tier 1 item at once. Valve raised the start to 400 in the Shop Rework and to 600 on Nov 21, 2025. Where souls come from after that is on Souls and Economy.

Item slots and Flex Slots

9:25 A hero has 9 base item slots and 3 Flex Slots, and the team unlocks one Flex Slot for each enemy Walker it destroys, the rule since Valve's Nov 21, 2025 update. Before that there were 8 base slots and 4 Flex Slots, unlocked for 3 Guardians, 1 Walker, 3 Walkers and a set of Base Guardians. PC Gamer called Flex Slots "massive power increases" when your team has them and the enemy does not, which is one reason Walkers matter (see Objectives).

Every slot is universal: any category goes in any slot. Before the Shop Rework each slot belonged to one category, and the rework also cut the total from 16 slots to 12. Some guides count a 13th slot; Valve's notes give 9 plus 3, and that is the rule this page follows. Street Brawl has no slot limit since Mar 6, 2026.

Components and upgrading

Many items build from a cheaper one, and owning the component makes the upgrade cheaper: the component is consumed and its price counts toward the new item, as Valve's Shop Rework notes describe. Extended Magazine builds into Titanic Magazine, Extra Spirit into Improved Spirit and then Boundless Spirit, Debuff Reducer into Unstoppable or Spellbreaker. The shop glows an item when you can buy an upgrade of it.

An upgrade shares its component's cooldown, so you cannot use Healing Rite and then upgrade to Healing Nova for a second heal, a change of the May 8, 2025 rework. Components can cross categories: Kinetic Dash (Weapon) builds from Extra Stamina (Vitality), and Ballistic Enchantment (Weapon) from Mystic Expansion (Spirit), as the game files list.

Selling and Quickbuy

Selling an item returns half its price, a rule Valve's Shop Rework notes mention in a fix ("selling items in Sandbox asking if you want to sell for half price"). An item sold right after buying returns its full price: Valve closed an exploit on Feb 25, 2025 in which players bought and refunded items to secure their souls. Valve's notes do not state how long that full refund window lasts.

4:29 Quickbuy queues items so the game buys the next one you can afford whenever you reach a shop. Valve added it on Nov 7, 2024 and moved its key from Shift+B to G in the Shop Rework, which also added a queue panel and a sell priority from 0 to 100 per item in a build: when Quickbuy runs out of slots, it sells the item with a sell priority to make room. Selling late is covered on Builds and Itemization.

Investment bonuses

17:00 Spending souls in a category raises a bonus of its own: Weapon investment adds weapon damage, Vitality adds a percentage of base health and Spirit adds Spirit Power. Since the Shop Rework the bonus depends on the total souls spent in that category, and Valve says the steps are not linear: "maxing out one tree fully isn't optimal bonus-wise."

Source: Valve's May 22, 2026 Gameplay Update, which added the 6,400 line to all three; values as in the game files read on Oct 26, 2026.

The big step at 4,800 souls dates from Nov 21, 2025, when Valve added +20% weapon damage, +12% health and +20 Spirit Power there and highlighted that row. Since Jun 30, 2026 hovering an item in the shop previews what it does to your investment bars.

City Never Sleeps shop tools

12:15 City Never Sleeps (Sep 29, 2026) rebuilt how the shop is browsed, and Valve's update page lists each tool:

• Popular Items narrows the shop to your hero's most often bought items, from live player data, and tooltips say how often and at what phase each item is bought.
• Item Filters filter by stats and modifiers, and filters combine.
• Shop Stats show the effect of a purchase on your stats while you shop.
• Keys 1 to 6 switch shop tabs, with better search, focus, scrolling and navigation.
• The kill feed, incoming chat and the scoreboard work inside the shop.
• Item Pinging tells your team you plan to buy an item, or own it.
• The Build Browser got better previews, copy and paste of builds and instant resizing of categories.
• Item art was updated.

The Broker and Corrupted Items

28:08 The Broker was a merchant who came to New York "for a limited time" with City Never Sleeps and, for a price, turned high-tier items into Corrupted versions, Valve's City Never Sleeps page says, warning that "the Broker's wares always come with a cost". His first shipment arrived about 30 minutes into a match and more came on average every 15 minutes. Each match gave all Corrupted Items random negative attributes from a set list, the same for every player in it.

He left when the first new hero arrived, as Valve promised: Rat King came on Oct 2, 2026. Mobalytics (Oct 13, 2026) says he stood near the Lane Guardians in the middle lane for both teams from Sep 29 to Oct 2, 2026, in Standard and Ranked, and converted one Tier 3 or Tier 4 item at a time for its original soul cost. The game files still list eleven Corrupted penalties, such as -30% fire rate, -40% weapon damage or -350 max health at Tier 3. Valve has not said whether he returns, and Street Brawl still grants one Corrupted item after the Round 5 draft (Street Brawl).

The Shop Rework (May 8, 2025)

The Shop Rework was the update that made the shop what it is: Valve's May 8, 2025 notes reworked every category "including many new items", gave every item icon new art and renamed several items. It made slots universal and cut them from 16 to 12, turned investment bonuses into totals of souls spent, made components discount their upgrades, ordered items in the HUD from cheapest to dearest and moved Quickbuy to G. Shields became Barriers in the same update.

Items keep changing since. Old Gods, New Blood (Jan 22, 2026) added Ballistic Enchantment and Recharging Rush; Mar 6, 2026 added Golden Goose Egg and renamed Backstabber to Stalker; Apr 30, 2026 added Indomitable; May 22, 2026 added Grit. Valve's developer Yoshi renamed Debuff Remover to Dispel Magic and Curse to Cursed Relic on Jan 30, 2026. The latest item change is Radiant Regeneration's spirit scaling, cut from 0.04 to 0.035 on Oct 14, 2026.

Most bought items

Spirit items top the measured buy rates: deadlock-api's item stats for Oct 15 to Oct 26, 2026 put Extra Spirit in 52.6% of hero-matches, Improved Spirit in 50.7%, Superior Cooldown in 39.7%, Mystic Expansion in 37.3% and Extra Regen in 36.1%. The most bought Weapon item was High-Velocity Rounds (27.7%), bought on average at 4.6 minutes. The earliest common buys were Restorative Shot (3.4 minutes on average), Monster Rounds (4.4) and High-Velocity Rounds.

High measured win rates belong mostly to late items. Over Oct 12 to Oct 26, 2026, among items bought over 200,000 times, Siphon Bullets won 58.6%, Scourge and Silencer 58.5% and Lucky Shot 58.3%, partly because teams that are winning reach them; Disarming Hex (41.5%) and Metal Skin (41.8%) were lowest. These are measurements, not a ranking of items.

Frequently asked questions

How many items are in Deadlock? Deadlock's normal shop sells 156 items as of Oct 26, 2026, by the game files: 53 Weapon, 54 Vitality and 49 Spirit items, in four tiers. Street Brawl adds Legendary items that the normal shop does not sell.

How much do items cost in Deadlock? Every Deadlock item costs 800, 1,600, 3,200 or 6,400 souls by tier, in the game's price table read on Oct 26, 2026. Owning an item's component lowers the price of the upgrade.

How many item slots do you get in Deadlock? A Deadlock hero has 9 base item slots and 3 Flex Slots, the rule since Valve's Nov 21, 2025 update. Any item goes in any slot.

How do you unlock Flex Slots in Deadlock? In Deadlock, your team unlocks one Flex Slot for each enemy Walker it destroys, up to three, as Valve's Nov 21, 2025 notes set it. Before that, Guardians and Base Guardians also unlocked them.

Can you sell items in Deadlock? Yes: Deadlock sells an item back for half its price, as Valve's Shop Rework notes mention, and an item sold right after buying returns its full price. Builds can set a sell priority so Quickbuy sells an item when slots run out.

What is the Broker in Deadlock? The Broker was a limited-time merchant of Deadlock's City Never Sleeps update who turned Tier 3 and Tier 4 items into Corrupted versions with random penalties. Mobalytics says he was in matches from Sep 29 to Oct 2, 2026, leaving when Rat King arrived.

What is the best item in Deadlock? Deadlock has no single best item, since builds depend on the hero; the most bought item from Oct 15 to Oct 26, 2026 was Extra Spirit, in 52.6% of hero-matches, as deadlock-api measured. The Weapon, Vitality and Spirit item pages list each category.

What key opens the shop in Deadlock? Deadlock's shop opens with B by default, as esports.gg notes, and Quickbuy is on G since the May 8, 2025 Shop Rework. Since City Never Sleeps, keys 1 to 6 switch the shop's tabs.

Sources

• Shop Rework Update, Valve, May 8, 2025
• 11-21-2025 Update, Valve, Nov 21, 2025
• Map Rework Update, Valve, Feb 25, 2025
• 11-07-2024 Update, Valve, Nov 8, 2024
• Deadlock - City Never Sleeps, Valve, Sep 29, 2026
• Deadlock - Old Gods, New Blood, Valve, Jan 22, 2026
• Gameplay Update - 03-06-2026, Valve, Mar 6, 2026
• Gameplay Update - 04-30-2026, Valve, Apr 30, 2026
• Gameplay Update - 05-22-2026, Valve, May 22, 2026
• Minor Update - 06-30-2026, Valve, Jun 30, 2026
• Listen up, Crumbums! Your King is here., Valve, Oct 2, 2026
• Minor Update - 10-14-2026, Valve, Oct 15, 2026
• 01-30-2026 Update, Valve (Yoshi) on the Deadlock forums, Jan 30, 2026
• Items (upgrades), generic data and heroes, deadlock-api's copy of the game files, read Oct 26, 2026
• Item stats since Oct 15, 2026 and since Oct 12, 2026, deadlock-api (measured), read Oct 26, 2026
• The Broker and Corrupted Items Explained, Mobalytics (dxvis), Oct 13, 2026
• Don't sleep on Deadlock's active items, PC Gamer (Sarah Richter), Oct 10, 2024
• If Deadlock is your first MOBA, here are 6 tips to suck less at it, PC Gamer (Harvey Randall), Sep 4, 2024
• Everything in the Curiosity Shop in Deadlock, esports.gg (Connor Knudsen), Sep 16, 2024
• Deadlock beginners guide, Dexerto (Jeremy Gan), Aug 28, 2024
• Deadlock NEW HERO RAT KING Gameplay - No Commentary, GameMoments4K, Oct 6, 2026 (video)
• The Only Beginner’s Guide You Need for Deadlock (Updated), Metro Deadlock, Oct 1, 2026 (video)
• Complete Deadlock Beginner Guide in 2026, Gart, Oct 3, 2026 (video)
• Deadlock for Beginners in 20 Minutes - Updated Late 2026, Deathy, Oct 8, 2026 (video)
• DEADLOCK CITY NEVER SLEEPS MAJOR UPDATE BREAKDOWN!, Goopy, Sep 29, 2026 (video)
• Deadlock MAJOR Update: "City Never Sleeps", Dead Air, Oct 2, 2026 (video)