Today, Behaviour Interactive released Dead by Daylight Chapter 31: All Things Wicked. The Chapter adds a new Killer and Survivor into the mix, as well as a brand new map to explore across all Trials. While the main focus for most fans will be on the new characters, the update released alongside this Chapter does a lot to freshen up the experience.
Dead by Daylight Patch 7.6.0 ushers in Chapter 31: All Things Wicked
Behaviour Interactive is notorious for publishing massive patch notes for its updates, and Dead by Daylight 7.6.0 is no exception. Below, I’ve listed the highlights for these patch notes. These are the most important and impactful changes that I believe you’ll notice as a player. I recommend checking out the full patch notes when you have the time to scan the list of the hundreds of fixes this update adds.
New Killer: The Unknown
Chapter 31 adds The Unknown Killer to Dead by Daylight. This amalgamation of folklore cryptids is the scariest Killer in the game and lethal in a Trial. The Perks it adds are helpful, but there are a few different builds players can use to make the most of its hit-and-spit combo ranged attack and Hallucinations.
I really love The Unknown, and not because of the Willy Wonka Experience Glasgow. It borrows teleportation abilities from other Killers and combines them with a ranged attack that doesn’t maim. Instead, that ranged attack weakens, forcing players to make the most of every attack it has to offer.
The Unknown Perks
- Unbound: Activates for 24/27/30 seconds after a Survivor is injured. After vaulting through a window, the Killer gains 5% Haste for 10 seconds, but that effect won’t stack.
- Unforeseen: Performing a break action on a generator applies your Terror Radius to it, but fixes it at 32 meters. The effect lasts for 22/26/30 seconds and gives you Undetectable for that time before requiring a 30-second cooldown.
- Undone: Gain 3 Tokens for every missed healing or repair Survivor skill check for a total of 18/24/30, depending on rarity. If you have any Tokens when you next break a generator, it’ll suffer an additional 1% progress damage and become blocked for every Token. Once unblocked, it’ll regress right away. This Perk has a 60-second cooldown timer.
New Survivor: Sable Ward & Invocation Perk
Sable Ward, best friend to Dead by Daylight‘s resident witch Mikaela Reid, has entered the fog. While she brings with her a few Perks that could be useful in your next Survivor meta build, it’s Invocation Perks you should really care about. This is a new type of Perk that requires players to enter the Killer’s basement and sit by a salt circle to activate them.
However, the 120 seconds or so that these Perks require to be activated is more than worth it. I just used Invocation: Weaving Spiders and completed two generators solo afterward. It helped that I geared my build towards injured efficiency because Invocation Perks might be powerful, but they apply crippling debuffs for their use.
Sable Ward Perks
- Invocation: Weaving Spiders: You’ll need to head to the salt circle in the basement and spend 120 activating this Perk before you can benefit from it. Other Survivors can join you to speed this up by 50% without the Perk or 100% with it equipped. Once active, the Perk reduced the maximum required generator progress for completion by 8/9/10 charges. The Perk will also put you into the Injured State and inflict the Broken Status for the rest of the Trial.
- Strength in Shadows: This Perk activates in the basement. It allows you to heal without a Medkit at 70% of normal healing speed. Finishing healing in the basement reveals the Killer’s aura for 6/8/10 seconds.
- Wicked: Self-unhook attempts in the basement always succeed. When unhooked by your own attempt or another Survivor, you see the Killer’s aura for 16/18/20 seconds.
New Map: Greenville Square
Greenville Square is an expectedly creepy map and home to The Unknown. It feels incredibly disjointed, with arcade machines scattered among the grass, trees, and large rocks. At its center, a huge movie theatre dominates the scene, hosting a fun little route to dodge Killers in and the basement.
Ultimately, a map is a map, but I appreciate the variation in Dead by Daylight. It feels as fun to play on as the best maps in the game, and I can’t really see a downside to it. What I’d love to get out of future Chapters is more of this style of map that feels as though it matches the Killer. The Unknown is a creature pretending to be a human, and this map feels like it’s pretending to be a welcoming place but just comes across as unsettling.
Mangled Update
Mangled, a Status Effect applied to Survivors for various reasons; usually Killers, has seen a huge update. For years, it’s been a status you’ve had to heal before you can heal out of the Injured State. Now, though, it’s got a timer. This means that you can either wait out the Mangled Status and heal after it’s over or heal through it and push on to heal that Survivor all the way to Healthy.
Personally, I’ve always found Mangled to be a bit of a pain, but it’s a necessary one. I like how this changes up the flow of a Trial. It forces you to think on your feet and make a choice as to what you’re going to do with that survivor who has found you or is being chased in the distance.
Killer Updates
A few Killers have received updates alongside Dead by Daylight Chapter 31: All Things Wicked. These are changes Behaviour Interactive is making based on player feedback and how they’re being used. The goal is to make the game more enjoyable, but that does mean ruining cheesy Killers at times.
The Blight
The Blight’s Rush can now be performed only three times instead of two. The duration and turn speed of Rush have been altered to 33%. This should make the Killer a little more viable because prior to this change, only expert Blight mains could use him.
The Clown
The Clown’s Afterpiece Antidote duration and activation delay have been tweaked to 6 and 2 seconds, respectively. This will keep the flow of the game running smoother, as will The Clown’s bottle number being upped from 4 to 6, meaning he can reload and chase for longer. Although, I feel he was able to chase hard enough before. the last change decreases the visual impact for Survivors hit by Afterpiece Tonics, which has been sorely needed since the Killer’s introduction because that stuff makes it impossible to see.
After being recently added back into Dead by Daylight, The Demogorgon’s getting a couple of small buffs. The Shred’s successful hit cooldown is now 2.7 seconds instead of 3, and the Shred pallet break cooldown is 1.8 seconds instead of 2. The associated Add-Ons have also seen a similar buff. This Killer’s weakness has always been pallets and Survivors breaking the line of sight. Its leap is its best attack, so this could make it a bit easier to hunt down those skilled Survivors with more map knowledge than you.
The Doctor
The Doctor, one of my favorite Killers, has had his Shock Therapy increased from 10.7 meters to 12. Its detonation has also seen a cut from 1 second to 0.8. Both of these changes combined make it a lot easier to hunt down Survivors using The Doctor’s powers. Usually, you need the rarest Perks and Add-Ons to make this guy work effectively, but these changes bring him in line with the most powerful I’ve ever seen him using items. I am not looking forward to playing against him.
The Hag
The Hag has always felt like a bit of a joke Killer to me, but she’s received quite a few changes that might make her lethal the next time I run into her. Phantasm Trap’s teleport range is now 48 meters instead of 40, and its setting time is down from 1 second to 0.9 seconds. This seems like a light change, but it’ll make her a much faster Killer and way more trouble to deal with.
That’s not all that’s happening to Phantasm Trap, though. Once triggered, the trap will last for 6 seconds instead of 5, but the trigger range has been decreased to 2.7 meters instead of 3. It will also now take Survivors 4 seconds instead of 3.5 to wipe a trap away. This second half of the changes to the ability only makes it more efficient, in my opinion. The balance changes feel fair to Survivors without negating the advantages The Hag has sorely needed.
The Huntress
I don’t think that Dead by Daylight‘s The Huntress needed any help being a better Killer, but Behaviour Interactive gave her a buff anyway. She now packs 7 hatchets instead of 5, and her wind-up speed is now 0.9 seconds instead of 1 second. If you play against The Huntress now, she can hold you down while launching hatches at you for longer and do it faster.
However, I think Survivors will easily adjust to this timing and loadout change. Of all the changes in these patch notes, The Huntress’s feel the most pointless. I’d have liked to see the developer increase that wind-up time instead because it would slow her just enough to make her a bit easier to play against.
The Pig
Before this update, the Pig’s changes were much discussed in the Dead by Daylight community. Her Ambush attack timer has increased from 2 seconds to 2.3 seconds, and the successful cooldown has decreased to 2.7 seconds from 3. The miss cooldown has also seen a buff, decreasing from 2 seconds to 1.5 seconds.
This Killer’s crouch speed, which she uses while primed for an Ambush attack, has been increased from 3.6 meters a second to 3.8 meters a second. The time it takes to crouch has been rounded down to 1 second from 1.3 seconds, but the Killer can now no longer see Jigsaw Boxes. This feels fair because it makes The Pig considerably faster, but without that locational information, it’s much harder to sneak up on Survivors in locations where they’re definitely going to be heading.
Interestingly, the Bloodpoints earned for setting Reverse Bear Traps and using Ambush have been increased, showing that the developer wants us to use The Pig’s unique abilities much more. The Reverse Bear Trap timer change that did make The Pig much more lethal has been reverted since the PTB. As we all agreed, it made her a bit too powerful, but it still would have been nice to see.
Features
The final few changes in this update relate to three core areas. First, the Bloodweb auto-purchase node is now available to all characters after you Prestige any of them. This is a godsend because it makes rushing those levels so much easier. There’s also now a way to skip level screens by holding the relevant button. Again, this is great when you’re trying to rush those levels.
Selecting an empty Perk Slot no longer resets to the first Perk page, meaning you can continue browsing and adding them more continuously and less jarringly. Perks can now also be searched, which is great if you know what they’re called. I scan each one for its effect still, and I’m 200 hours deep, so I don’t think there’s any saving me with this feature.
