In Dauntless, the Middleman is an NPC character that deals with cells. He can sell you cells for platinum or aether and allows you to use cell fusers to combine cells for even stronger ones. You should become familiar with him and what he can do early in the game as the cells he works with are really worth pursuing.
What Are Cells and How Are They Used?
Cells are special items that you can place on your equipment to gain extra abilities and damage bonuses. There are three tiers to the cells from +1 to +3 with the higher tiered cells being more powerful. These cells can then be placed in your weapons and armor for powerful boosts. The Middleman can take lower-tiered cells and fuse them together into a higher tiered cell.
How to Get Cells?
The main way to get cells is from slayer cores, which themselves have several tiers from bronze to gold. You get slayer cores by completing quests, increasing your mastery levels and from the hunt pass.
Every time you get a slayer core you need to go to the core breaker to open it up. You can see that you have unopened cores from the gold symbol on top of the core breaker. When you break a core you will get a few random cells depending on the tier of the core.
You can also get cells as loot from killing behemoths, but against lower-tiered behemoths, these are generally few and of the weaker variety. And finally, you can buy up to three cells from the middleman every week for platinum.
How Does The Middleman Cell Fuser Work?
You start out with a single cell fuser that you can use. You can add a couple more for a total of three, To use the cell fuser you need to have at least 2 cells that you are willing to fuse together. You need to click on the fuser and there select the two cells you intend to fuse together. When you have selected them, simply hold the Fuse button at the bottom of the screen for a couple of seconds and the cell fusing starts.
After this, you have to wait for 21 hours before the process is done. There is however an option to speed up the fusing by spending ace chips, which you need to buy for platinum in the store. One ace chip reduces the wait time by one hour.
Which cells you should fuse together is something you should also consider. It’s not good to just randomly jam together cells. You should take a look at the list of cells that are in the game and see which of those you think would suit your playstyle the most.
Now for the important part. To get a higher tiered cell you need to fuse together two cells of the tier just below. So to get a tier 2 cell you need to fuse together two tier 1 cells. And for a tier 3 cell you need to fuse together two tier 2 cells. If you use two cells of the same type you are guaranteed to get the same type of cell out of the fuser.
However, if you use two different cells, but of the same group (power, defense, utility, etc) you get a random cell from that group but of a higher tier. Finally, if you place two cells from different groups together you just get a random cell at the next tier.
Cell Fusing Results
- Tier 1 + Tier 1 = Tier 2 — Time: 21 hours.
- Tier 2 + Tier 2 = Tier 3 — Time: 1 day and 21 hours.
- Two identical cells used = A single one tier higher cell of the same type.
- Two cells from the same class = A single one tier higher random cell of the same class.
- Two cells from a different class = A single one tier higher random cell.
For example, you want to get a +3 tough cell you would need to place two +2 tough cells into the cell fuser and then wait for 42 hours. Or you could take a chance and place one +2 sturdy cell and one +2 warmth cell (both are defense cells) and hope to get a +3 tough cell.
Is it Worth Platinum to Invest in the Middleman’s Cell Fusers?
Personally, I’d say yes. For a one-off cost, you can get access to another two additional cell fusers. This means you can get your cells fused three times faster than normal, assuming you have the cells to do so. And seeing as a single tier 3 cell takes at least 42 hours to make, that investment should pay off quickly.
So that’s about it for the middleman in Dauntless. If you found this information useful then please share it with your friends and allies in Dauntless and feel free to check out my other Dauntless guides.
Good luck on your hunting.
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