The Broker and Corrupted Items in Deadlock: What They Did and Why They Are Gone
For four days after City Never Sleeps, a shady merchant called The Broker turned late-game items into Corrupted versions with absurd buffs and a random catch. Then he quietly left. Here is how he worked, what Corrupted items did and where you can still try them.
Written byMax CalderDeadlock journalist
Published3 min read
How The Broker worked
His first stock arrived around the 30-minute mark, with restocks about every 15 minutes after that.
The HUD announced when he opened and restocked, and each restock let you corrupt one more item.
There were two mirrored Broker shops, one for each side of the map.
A countdown showed when he was about to leave town again.
What Corrupted items did
Every Tier 3 and Tier 4 item, 90 in all across weapon, vitality and spirit, had a Corrupted version. Each one kept its normal effect, pushed its numbers far past normal limits, and added one random downside. Exact values varied a little from match to match.
Normal against Corrupted: the biggest jumps
Item and stat
Normal
Corrupted
Glass Cannon: weapon damage
+80%
+150%
Fortitude: health
+375
+1,000
Boundless Spirit: spirit power
+30
+50
Refresher: cooldown
300 s
140 s
Knockdown: cooldown
35 s
16 s
Unstoppable: cooldown
60 s
30 s
Echo Shard: cooldown
30 s
15 s
Shadow Weave: cooldown
37 s
22 s
Leech: lifesteal
28%
50%
Corrupted Ricochet
Corrupted Rapid Recharge
Corrupted item cards from The Broker's shop.
The catch: one random downside
Each Corrupted item rolled one debuff from a pool: ability cooldown, ability range, ability duration, spirit power, stamina, stamina recovery, move speed, max health, bullet resist, spirit resist, weapon damage or fire rate. Tier 4 items rolled bigger downsides than Tier 3.
How big the downsides got
Downside
Tier 3 item
Tier 4 item
Max health
-298 to -403
-468 to -633
Weapon damage
-34% to -46%
-47% to -64%
Move speed
-1.7 to -2.3 m/s
-2.3 to -3.2 m/s
Two rules kept it fair-ish: the downside rolls were the same for every player in a match, and an item could not roll a downside against a stat it grants outright. Reading the match's rolls before you corrupted was half the skill.
Why he disappeared
Valve said The Broker would leave once the first new hero arrived, and he did: on October 2, the day Rat King released, the Broker shop was switched off in Standard and Ranked. On October 4, Street Brawl's free Corrupted item after the round 5 draft was removed too. Neither change came with patch notes; both were found by players tracking game files.
Will he come back? The official story text only hints that he turns up somewhere new months later. There is no date and no promise. If he returns, our patch notes page will say so first.
FAQ
FILE No. 01
No. He was switched off in Standard and Ranked on October 2, and Corrupted items left Street Brawl on October 4. Valve has only hinted that he may return months later.
FILE No. 02
Every Tier 3 and Tier 4 item, 90 in total across weapon, vitality and spirit.
FILE No. 03
Only in the sandbox, which has a shop modifier for Corrupted items. They are not available in Standard, Ranked or Street Brawl.
Everything in Deadlock's City Never Sleeps update: the reworked map, Haunts, Bell Tower, Sunken Plaza, The Broker, six new heroes and what it means for ranked.
How to use Deadlock's sandbox tools from City Never Sleeps: the DPS meter, combat log, falloff guides, bot recording and free shop to test builds before ranked.
Deadlock Street Brawl explained: 4v4 best of five, item drafts instead of souls, three-minute rounds, the latest changes and whether it affects your rank.
