What good is a Bethesda game without an overpowered character mechanic that can make mincemeat of NPCs? In Deathloop, that mechanic comes in the form of Slabs. With a handful of Slabs to collect, players are wondering which Slabs they should be using and how to upgrade them. Below, we’ve ranked every Slab in the game, explaining why and when you should use each one.
In Deathloop, Slabs are your off-hand superpowers. They allow you to warp short distances, chain together enemies, and become invisible to the naked eye. Unlock Slabs by killing visionaries and defeating Julianna whenever she invades your world. While you’ll always get the same Slab from the same Visionary, killing Julianna gives you a chance at a random one. Once you kill them, approach their body to find their Slab floating in mid-air. The different slabs in Deathloop are:
By default, Colt is equipped with the Reprise Slab, which gives him a total of three lives per loop. Reprise cannot be unequipped, but you can equip two of the other five Slabs for a total of three.
To upgrade Slabs in Deathloop, return to and kill the Visionary you got the Slab from in the first place. For example, Harriot in Karl’s Bay drops the Nexus Slab. To unlock Nexus upgrades, return to Harriot on the next loop and kill here again. Assuming you infused the Nexus Slab to keep it with you between loops, Harriot will drop Nexus upgrades upon death.
If you kill a Julianna who’s using a Slab you’ve already unlocked, she’ll drop an upgrade for it. So, if you’ve already unlocked Shift and Julianna enters your world using Shift, you’ll find an upgrade on her body if you’re able to kill her.
You can only equip two upgrades to each Slab, and you’ll have to infuse them to keep between loops. However, you only need one copy of each upgrade, so sacrifice any duplicates for extra Residuum.
Here is every Slab in Deathloop, except for the Reprise Slab, ranked from worst to first.
Honestly, the Havoc Slab defeats the purpose of the game. If you’re a run-and-gun player, the Havoc Slab will be fun. If you’re trying to play a more stealth-centered game, the Havoc Slab has little use for you. The Havoc Slab decreases your power rather than your health as you take damage, and the effects of the Havoc Slab end once you run out of power. Equip the Withdrawal upgrade to regain power by damaging enemies while Havoc is active. Otherwise, you risk running out of juice before taking down every enemy shooting at you.
In short, Havoc is only useful when surrounded by a group of enemies all shooting you at once. However, if you find yourself in that position, you probably did something wrong.
While it’s fun to toss enemies around like ragdolls, Karnesis isn’t as helpful as the remaining three Slabs. Why? Because unless you push enemies off a roof or the side of the map, Karnesis doesn’t guarantee a one-shot kill. You can equip the Slam upgrade to pull enemies back down, which will kill them, but you’ve effectively eaten up two bars of power just to kill one enemy.
Karnesis makes for a good laugh. In practice, it’s not a Slab you should be running, especially if you’re trying to be as efficient as possible.
The Shift Slab and the No. 2 rank are interchangeable depending on what you’re doing. If you’re running errands around Blackreef or sneaking into Dorsey Manor, then the Shift Slab will make your life much easier. Equipped with the Airborne and Reach upgrades, you’ll be traveling around Blackreef like Spiderman. Airborne freezes you in mid-air when using Shift. Reach allows you to travel further with each use.
You probably found Shift to be lackluster when you first used it. Believe us — the Reach upgrade makes all the difference. Shift gets you to those otherwise unreachable vantage points and makes for an easy escape plan in a pinch.
In a game so focused on stealth, it’s not surprising that a Slab that turns you invisible falls in at No. 2. The Aether Slab will get you past attentive guards and is especially useful when sneaking into the pumping station to kill Fia and Charlie. Aether also acts as a wanna-be Havoc Slab when equipped with the Phase upgrade. Phase decreases damage taken while Aether is active and doesn’t deactivate Aether when you deal damage.
We keep Aether in our back pocket and use it when things get hairy. Aether comes in hand when Julianna is on the prowl, too, especially if she’s already started shooting at you. Turn a corner, trigger Aether, and let her run right by you. Now the ball’s in Colt’s court.
The Nexus Slab is the best Slab in Deathloop. We’ll even go as far as calling it the best utility in the entire game. Thankfully, it’s one of the first you’ll unlock since Harriot is a pretty easy target in Karl’s Bay. Nexus chains nearby enemies together. What you do to one will affect the others. So, if you chain three enemies together, you only need to headshot one to take them all down. You can even link two Visionaries together, like Fia and Charlie in Fristad Rock or Egor and Wengie at Aleksis’ party.
Equip the Nexus Slab with its Parasite and Influence upgrades for max productivity. Parasite regenerates your health when you kill someone affected by Nexus. Influence creates spontaneous connections between enemies, effectively increasing the range of your Nexus Blast. In the image above, you’ll see every dancing Eternalist at Aleksis’ party, including the man of the hour, about to be taken down with one bullet thanks to Nexus.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.