Loads of new heroes have been introduced to Deadlock’s Hero Labs over the last few weeks, including Slork, Holliday, and Viper, but the most recent addition could be the game’s most controversial—because his entire kit revolves around creepy crawlies that people aren’t typically that fond of.
Trapper is available to play in the Hero Labs now and has a kit that is not that dissimilar to heroes like Kelvin and Viscous, as it’s largely used for stunning enemies and healing allies. When thrown, Trapper’s first ability, Bottled Phantasmicide, leaves a pool of poison on the floor, which can damage enemies over time and slow them down if they walk through it. His next ability, Silktrap, also restricts players’ movements by creating a thread of web between two surfaces that, if an enemy walks through, will slow them and inflict damage. The third ability, called Pest Barrier, supports teammates by granting them +200 spirit shield health.
There’s already a ton of crowd control in Deadlock, and almost every hero has some way of stunning, trapping, or slowing enemies. For example, Grey Talon can deploy an immobiliser that confines opponents and then slows them down, and Seven’s Static Charge ability can stun enemies for 0.9 seconds. So Trapper getting two crowd-control abilities out of four isn’t unusual, especially as MOBAs tend to include a lot of crowd control anyway.
But Trapper’s ultimate ability is far more interesting and terrifying. With Crawling Plague, he can unleash “a wave of spectral spiders that chase enemies and explode,” ultimately dealing spirit damage. Deadlock is chaotic enough as is, but the idea of getting chased across the map by a clutter of spiders does not fill me with joy. There’s also no arachnophobia setting in Deadlock as it stands, which may have to be remedied after this update.
Arachnophobia settings are a growing trend in videogames—they’ll pop up just about anywhere a spider does. Recently, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 introduced an arachnophobia setting for Zombies, which just left the giant undead spiders as disembodied floating hunks of flesh. But other games have more quirky solutions to this phobia—like Lethal Company, which will replace spiders with the actual word spider.
Other than hordes of arachnids and loads of crowd control, the recent Deadlock update introduced tons of new features and changes. There are plenty of hero reworks, some item and weapon fixes, a few new building redesigns not that dissimilar to the work done on the Baroness Hotel during the Halloween patch, new private lobbies in the Hero Labs, and the addition of Quickbuy that lets players “right-click items in the shop to add them to your Quickbuy queue,” one of the developers Yoshi says. “When you return to the shop, you will automatically purchase the items you can afford in your set order.”
Obviously, you can check out all of these changes for yourself, including trying out the new hero in the Hero Labs—just try to be kind to any enemies or teammates who dislike spiders.
