Portcullis icon

Portcullis is a daemon which temporarily reduces the effectiveness of breaker programs. While Portcullis is active, programs break 2 fewer firewalls per use, down to a minimum of 1 firewall broken. Portcullis has a duration of 3–5 turns.

If multiple Portcullis daemons are active at the same time, then their effects stack.

Portcullis affects programs which break firewalls immediately upon use, including Wrench. It has no effect on Parasite or Parasite 2.0, which do not immediately break firewalls. It also has no effect on Turing. Portcullis also does not affect firewalls broken by Buster Chips, the Prototype Chip, or by EMP effects on devices with Magnetic Reinforcements, since these are not programs.

Portcullis is found in the Contingency Plan DLC.

Portcullis 2.0 icon

Portcullis 2.0 is an archdaemon which can occur from mission difficulty 5 and onwards in Endless modes. It has the same effect as Portcullis, but lasts for the whole mission instead of a shorter duration.

Depending on the situation, Portcullis might be totally harmless, a minor annoyance, or a hacking blocker similar in severity to Modulate.

Portcullis has no effect on programs which only break one firewall, nor on Parasite, so having at least one such program in your loadout is a good defense. Likewise, Portcullis doesn't matter near the end of the mission when there is nothing left to hack, and it doesn't matter much at lower mission difficulty when most devices have only one firewall.

Portcullis hurts by reducing the PWR efficiency of your breaker programs, especially those which normally break 2 or 3 firewalls per use such as Golem, Mercenary or Wrench 3. The effect is proportionally less on programs which break more firewalls per use; for example, Lockpick 2.0 goes from 1.5 to 3 PWR per firewall, whereas Dagger 2.0 goes from 0.6 to 1. Portcullis can also hurt more for programs with cooldowns, particularly when using Charge, since it reduces the total number of firewalls you can break per turn using programs.

Portcullis stacks with itself, but this only matters to programs which break lots of firewalls in one use; so if there are multiple Portcullis daemons, it's often best to take them together when you can. Likewise, if you expect to be taking a Paradox daemon then a simultaneous Portcullis does no additional harm. A more threatening combination is Portcullis and Modulate, which together may make hacking infeasible for up to 5 turns.

To mitigate the harm done by Portcullis, either take it late in the mission when you won't have much hacking left to do, or take it just before the end of your turn so that its cooldown is effectively a turn shorter. In Endless mode, make sure to get an unaffected program into your loadout before day 5, and a few Buster Chip IIIs for good measure.