Sometimes it feels like you’re the one that has to be scared when you’re playing the killer in Dead By Daylight. Every generator being finished at the same time, getting blinded by a flashlight or juked by experienced survivors can be stressful, specially if you’re new to the game.
In this article, I will cover my 25 top tips for new and even seasoned killers so that you can become the fearsome killer the game wants you to be.
25. Choosing the right killer for you
Kill them with kindness.
More often than never, the main thing dragging killers down is the fact that the character they’re playing as isn’t the one that fits best for their playstyle.
There are 24 killers as of now and one is bound to click with you.
Do you like hitting from far away? Try The Huntress or The Deathslinger
Maybe you prefer stealth? They’ll never see you coming while playing as The Pig or Ghost Face
There’s plenty of different ways to play the game and each killer is unique, so if you’re having a hard time hooking survivors, why not try a different killer?
Finding the right killer for you is more important than any perk. It’s the first and most important decision in the match.
24. Know your enemy
Get in the skin of a survivor… no, not like the cannibal does.
Once you’ve got the right killer down, and you’re locked in and ready to mingle, you’ll be thrown into a server, eventually it’ll become filled with survivors.
This is where you would be wise to know at least the basics of each of the survivors’ perks.
Each survivor has 3 exclusive perks and if they’re in your match you can make a safe bet that they might have one of their character perks equipped.
Say there’s a David in the match, it’s a pretty safe bet that he’ll have “Dead Hard” on.
Or how a bill will probably have “Unbreakable” equipped
Playing Survivor will not only let you know how the mind of one works, but also naturally inform you about each of their perks and how to exploit them.
23. Keeping up with the changes
For the times they are a-changin'.
I could go on about which perks to use in certain situations, and don’t get me wrong, I will get to it eventually, however, something that I feel happens in Dead By Daylight more than any other game I’ve ever played, is the constant huge changes in how some perks and items work.
We’re not talking little nerfs and buffs. We’re talking full reworkings of certain aspects of the game.
Maybe you read somewhere that certain perks are amazing but when you tried them they didn’t work so well for you. Chances are that perk USED to be great, and it was nerfed into oblivion.
Keeping up with the community, be it by theSubreddit or maybe a famous Dead By Daylight player (Personally I recommend Otzdarva, a YouTuber and streamer that uploads in-depth analysis of the changes in the game among other things like good perk builds and game plays), is a great way to always be on top of everything related to changes in the meta, and believe me, it happens very often.
22. Starting the match
Enough prepping, let’s get killin’!
When you start a match, the first actions you take are extremely important.
Do not explore one section of the map too much, rather, run around the map, prioritizing the farthest end of the map from where you started the game. If survivors finishing generators before you find one is usually a problem for you, I recommend running the perk “Corrupt Intervention”. It blocks the 3 generators that are the furthest from you, forcing survivors to come to you.
The start of the match is crucial. The decisions you make at the very beginning will drastically affect the outcome of the match. It’s better to prolong the match than end it quickly with a loss.
21. Know when to quit
We’ve all encountered an annoying and colorful Nea player that runs circles around us and wastes our time.
When these situations happen, it’s important to know not to waste time. Sure, if you put in the time, you will eventually down them. However, the victory will be short-lived as you notice how many generators got fixed while you were busy dancing with the survivor.
It might sound counterintuitive, but in these kinds of situations, it’s way better to just move on to someone else. These attention seekers want exactly that, your attention.
It’s extremely likely that if you turn your back and move they will attempt to catch up with you, in which case feel free to get a free hit in but don’t play into their hand and continue chasing them.
Killers have to multitask, and chasing someone for more than 10 seconds becomes a waste of precious time. If you move away and concentrate on breaking gens and chasing less experienced players, then the attention seeker won’t have anyone to do the gens for them.
20. Controlling the map
Don’t spread yourself too thin.
There are 7 generators at the start of every match, and the survivors only have to fix 5 of them.
In most matches, you’re going to have 3 generators to protect, along with whatever amount of survivors you have left.
If you weren’t paying attention there’s a good chance that the 3 remaining generators are spread randomly across the map, the further away the harder they will be to protect, it’s just one of you against potentially 4 of them.
Once you start losing gens, it would be smart to manipulate the situation to have the remaining gens be close to one another by letting them have the furthest one.
If you do this right, and end up with three generators close by, it will become extremely hard for the remaining survivors to win.
19. Knowing when to strike
Don’t be that bloodthirsty.
Sometimes it’s smart to avoid swinging at a survivor, even if you feel like you would probably hit them… you heard that right.
There are many situations that call for this. If the survivor is injured there’s a chance that they have Dead Hard (If you don’t know this perk, it gives injured survivors an extremely short dash during which they have invulnerability) and if you notice them slowly letting you cut the distance with them don’t swing as soon as you get within striking distance.
Bait them by waiting just a little, if they have Dead Hard they will probably waste it, and you’ll get to strike down that annoying survivor after their useless dash.
Also, be aware of your surroundings! Pay attention to any nearby pallets and windows. If you feel like you can maybe hit them JUST before they drop the pallet on you, try this, stop just a second, if they don’t drop it you just continue the chase like nothing happened, if they drop the pallet, effectively wasting it, you avoid being stunned. This is known as “respecting the pallet”
18. Hooking survivors
Call me tinder because I’m about to hook up some survivors.
Obviously hooking survivors is important, but knowing where to hook them is even more important.
If you’ve been hooking survivors willy-nilly, consider this, depending on perks you can drag survivors for around 16 seconds on average, so it doesn’t just have to be the closest hook. It’s extremely context-sensitive, but say you have 3 gens left and 2 survivors, if you down one of them and hook them next to one of the generators now you can guard both the gen and the survivor at the same time!
In other situations, you might want to get them further away so that other survivors have to stop whatever they’re doing to save their ally. This is a better strategy the more survivors there’s left because there are more chances that you’ll spot some of the sneakiest ones as they travel to the hook.
So always keep in mind that you don’t just have to hook them to whatever’s close. This can help tip the match in your favor.
17. Moon walking
Nea are you okay? Are you okay, Nea?
This one SOUNDS like an advanced tip, but it’s really rather simple.
A lot of the time during chases, the survivor is dependent on the killer’s line of sight to know if you’re behind them or not. If you ever played survivor, the line of sight is represented by a red light that covers the player when they’re being chased by the killer.
Whenever a survivor climbs a window or turns a corner, they lose the red light as they leave your line of sight, here’s where you can do something neat.
If you think they’re going to go round a corner, you should moonwalk over to it. What’s the difference?
If you were to walk to the corner whilst looking at it, before you reached the corner, the red light of your line of sight would sell you out to the survivor, and they would turn tail.
But if you walk towards the corner while facing the other way, by the time the survivor sees you it’ll be too late. Just make sure to turn around exactly when you’re at the corner.
This little trick, while it might take some time to master, will tremendouslyincrease the amount of times you hit survivors, specially those really annoying loopers
16. Damaging generators
Ace’s hairline isn’t the only thing that’s regressing.
A lot of killers I’ve played against have lost entire matches to the fact that they would never take the time to kick the generators.
Breaking the generators is one of the best tools of the killer, and You should be doing it more.
If you didn’t know, once you kick the generators, their progress will steadily decrease, effectively nullifying whatever work the survivors had put into it.
Now, if you have 2 or more survivors in one gen, and you chase them away, it’s likely that one of the two will come right back to it when you’re far enough away, presumably still dealing with the other survivor. In this case, kicking the gen is not advised.
But whenever you have a single survivor working on a generator, I do advice to break it, as no one will be there to fix it in the immediate future. This might not sound like the biggest game changer, but if you do it often it adds up, and it could make a big difference in the amount of time you have before reaching the endgame collapse.
15. Invisible rules
Who made you the boss.
There’s a lot of unwritten rules in Dead By Daylight. A lot of words get thrown around like “Tunneler” or “Camper”
Focusing on one survivor isn’t a good idea, but sometimes they’ll make bad decisions and leave themselves too open to ignore.
Say you hook a survivor, and before you even leave the area, someone already came and unhooked them. Now you have to people in front of you, an injured and a fully healed survivor.
Now, a lot of survivors would probably shun the idea of you going to hit the already injured survivor, as they think that’s “tunneling”. Tunneling is the idea of focusing on killing only one survivor in order to quickly get rid of them as soon as possible.
This is looked down upon by most players as this is maybe the least fun way to play, and I agree. But sometimes the survivors make such a bad decision that it would hurt your outcome not to take the opportunity. It’s not really your fault. Not that the survivors will necessarily see it that way.
I recommend you just play whichever way you feel you like most, at the end of the day it is a 4v1, you should use any and all resources to win the match.
14. Camping
I have become what I swore to destroy!
We talked about tunneling, let’s talk camping. Yet another tactic looked down upon by many a survivor.
In reality, there are not only situations that call for someone to camp a survivor, but there’s even perks and killers built with camping in mind!
Now, much like focusing on one survivor is extremely context-sensitive, camping only comes with a specific set of circumstances.
Say you’re on your last 3 gens, and you have someone hooked in between two generators, you turn to a side, you see a gen, you turn to the other, there’s the other gen, look in front, there’s your hooked buddy.
Maybe you hooked someone and immediately notice scratch marks near the hook. You know someone’s right here, why would you leave?
It might feel dirty, but sometimes the situation calls for it. Again, you don’t want to purposely ruin your game just because something feels cheap.
13. Becoming the monster
This meal could use a little more salt.
Again, related to the last two points. I cannot state this enough. Let. Go. Of. Your. Empathy.
One would think you don’t need to tell this to the vicious killer, but I guess sometimes you just got to.
I’m pretty sure almost every rank of killers will sometimes pity a survivor and let them live, maybe avoid hitting them just so that the survivor stays in the match for longer.
However, in the higher ranks you will rarely see this happen, and it’s not a coincidence.
A survivor won’t avoid fixing a generator just because the other ones were fixed quickly. You should treat them exactly the same, worse even, you’re the killer! Be mean!
I’m sure most of you will learn to bathe in the salt that the endgame chat will provide, and maybe enjoy it. Now, there’s a big difference between being toxic and being good at the game.
There will be tons of mislabels thrown your way, don’t let it get to you, as soon as you let go of these self-imposed fake rules you’ll notice a big change in win ratios… and meaner people in the chat.
12. Slugging
How’s the weather down there?
Slugging is the act of downing a survivor and leaving them there crawling and effectively out of the match until another survivor heals them (unless they have the perk “Unbreakable”, in which case they can just heal themselves back to their feet)
Slugging doesn’t affect their hook progress, so it’s basically a time-out. There are many situations that call for you to slug a survivor.
Like if you see many survivors working on a generator that’s almost done. I already covered the idea of you finding two survivors and how one will always come back while you chase the other. But what if you got to down one of them? If you pick them up and carry them to the hook, the other survivor might come back and finish it, try downing them, kicking the generator and staying close to it, this way if anyone else comes you get to hit them and the downed survivor stays close by. Make sure to keep an eye on their whereabouts though!
Another reason to leave a survivor in on the floor is the perk “Decisive strike”, this funky little perk allows a downed survivor to escape the grasp of a killer if it’s the second time they’ve been downed twice in a row in a short amount of time.
Has it ever happened to you that you down someone for the second time, and they actually crawl towards you? If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
So, how do you deal with that possibility? The maximum amount of time that the perk can work for is 60 seconds, so I recommend leaving them on the floor and concentrating on someone else if you’re absolutely sure they have the perk. A dead giveaway that a survivor has decisive strike is that they’ll be the obsession, the perk does not work if they’re not the obsession, so watch out!
Slugging someone could end up saving you a lot of time while also wasting a lot of theirs.
11. Pallets
The killers’ worst nightmare, plywood!
I briefly talked about pallets and how you should avoid getting hit by them. This doesn’t mean you should avoid them, though.
If you find it possible, attempt to herd them towards unused pallets as soon as possible. Once a pallet is broken, it can never be reused. This will make future, more important chases way easier as they have less things to place between you and them.
You don’t always need to break them though, another option is to circle around it and continue the chase, this way you don’t lose any momentum.
The most feared pallet of them all is known by the community as the “God Pallet” This is normally referred to the pallet that’s in the killer’s shack that’s in most stages.
If you manage to make a survivor drop a god pallet near the start of the game, you’ll have a massive advantage nearing the end of the match. This is because the god pallet is the most useful in the stage to lose the killer and there’s no easy way to go around it, you will always have to waste your time destroying it.
Once you rid the stage of most of its pallets, it will be a straight shot between you and them.
10. Loops
Haven’t we been here before?
Loops and pallets go hand in hand, but you can’t get rid of loops!
These are normally the structures formed around where a pallet is located. They’re called this way because a survivor can easily run around this small circuit with the killer behind it and pretty much ensure a momentary safety from them.
Not all the loops are great though, there are excellent loops for survivors and some that are… not so great.
The ones that benefit the survivors are the ones with large L shapes or windows, sometimes even all of those with a pallet around, just in case you wanted a cherry on top of your cake.
A bad loop is commonly referred to loops that are bad for the survivors, same with the opposite.
The bad ones are the ones that are small, and you’re constantly stepping on the survivors’ heels as they run away from you.
If the loop gives you a lot of trouble, it’s advised to destroy its pallet as soon as possible, as this usually cuts the entire loop in half. Getting hit by an annoying pallet is way better than to have them keep it for later in the match.
If you’re dealing with some less useful loops for survivors, you are probably safe to ignore the pallet and deal with the survivor utilizing some of the tips we talked about in this article, this way you’ll be able to successfully outmaneuver survivors in their own turf
9. Listen
Shhh… I’m hunting survivors.
Let’s dive back from the more complex tips into something we take for granted, the game’s audio.
Dead By Daylight has many hints as to where a survivor can be found, scratch marks are probably the easiest to notice. However, one should not underestimate the power of hearing.
If a survivor is working on a generator, you will be able to hear it from 10 meters away. There’s a distinct sound of metal grinding, buttons being pressed, nuts turning. You’ll know it when you hear it. This makes it extremely easy to notice when a survivor is working on a generator, even if you can’t see it.
Another great use of Audio is the fact that once you hit a survivor, they will startmoaning and groaning periodically. This means that if an injured survivor is nearby, you are most likely going to be able to hear them whimpering in pain as you approach their location. If you hear carefully, you can even hear them if they’re inside a locker!
Hearing a survivor can drastically cut the chase time and allow you to down survivors and stop them from working on generators more often,
8. Offerings
Oh boy, here I go killing again.
Let’s delve a little into the realm of offerings. Their uses vary a lot depending on which you get, and how useful they are depended a lot on which killer you play as.
If you’re playing a ranged character you might want to use an offering that sends you to a map that’s open, rather than the closed off maps that take place within a building, these are usually not very good for ranged killers.
If you’re playing a stealthy killer you might want to use an offering that thickens the fog of the stage, this might give you a small advantage.
Of course, we can’t talk about offerings without talking about the “Memento Mori”. Mori are offerings that basically grant a killer the ability to kill a survivor on the spot. Granted, they have gotten into the second hooking stage.
There are various versions of them and what they do is they either: Let you kill the last survivor in the match, Let you kill any one survivor in the match or let you kill all the survivors in the match, again, granted they’ve reached their second hooking stage.
Utilizing offerings grants you to have a better idea of what you’re getting into before you enter the match, use them to compliment your killer and their perks to obtain an even greater advantage.
7. Learning survivor playstyles
Clever girl…
When I say learning playstyles, I don’t mean what perks they might have, we’ve covered that.
What I mean by this is you should learn how each of the survivors play.
Each player will have a different level of experience with the game, it’s wise to take note of how each of the survivors behave as you chase them, as they are sure to repeat the same tactics and mistakes.
Maybe take note and lean towards taking out the least experienced one first. Experience means very little if you’re alone in a team game.
6. Hatches
There was a hole here. It’s gone now.
Once there are fewer generators to fix than survivors alive in the match, a hatch will appear somewhere in the map.
Once this little hatch appears, there are two ways survivors can go through it and escape. When there’s only one survivor left alive, the hatch will open, and they’ll be able to go through it. The other way is that one of the survivors either brought or found a key. This is especially risky as it could mean all the remaining survivors can now escape if they cooperate without you even knowing!
There’s a lot of ways for you to deal with this annoying little hole.
Once it appears for them, it also does for you. If you find it on your travels, make sure to take a mental note of any and all landmarks in the area so that you can run back to it if need be.
Once you hook the second to last survivor the hatch won’t open until the death animation of the survivor is done, this gives you a rather short window of time to go back to the hatch in case the remaining survivor already found it.
If you get to it before the survivor, close it. If you got to after the survivor… close it. Whether the survivor is at full health or injured, there’s still a chance that, if he’s close enough, he can still get inside it before you can pick them up. However, if you time it just right, you can close it right in front of their noses and deal with them the old-fashioned way. If you do this, you’ll be guaranteed a win in that match.
But that’s just one situation. What if they have a key? Before the match starts, make sure to take note of every one of the survivor’s items. If they have a key, that’s a huge red flag. You should also make sure to look at their hands during the match to see if they have a key. If they do, it’s more important than ever to down them.
If you slug a survivor, they won’t be able to drop their items, so that’s how I like to deal with some key bearers. But a slugged survivor can still use their keys, so don’t leave them near a hatch.
Taking note and adapting to whatever the survivors hold at the time is extremely important to deal with the annoying situations that most survivors enjoy placing you into.
5. Perks
It’s time to perk up or shut up.
I wanted to leave perks near the ending part of this list as, like I mentioned, what perks do in this game tends to change rather often. Some nerfed, some buffed, some straight up reworked. I wanted to make a list of tips that could be timeless and effective no matter what changes came into the game. However, it’s just impossible to get into the nitty-gritty of the game without talking perks at some point.
Perks don’t make or break a player, but they sure do help! And choosing the ones that are right for you and compliment your killer is extremely important and can turn a match on their feet in a matter of seconds.
What’s your poison? Do you have trouble keeping people out of generators? Ghost Face has a gift called “Thrilling Tremors” Which blocks every survivor from using any generator that wasn’t being actively worked on for a whopping 16 seconds. And any generator that was being worked on will be colored different, so you know which one to visit next.
Having trouble finding survivors after hooking someone? The Cannibal has a perk called “Barbecue & Chilli” that reveals every survivor’s position for a short time after you hooked someone, granted they’re a certain distance away, if you can’t see someone’s position then they’re either inside of a locker or close-by, so pay attention!
There’s too many perks to count, but I want you to know what, as of now, I consider a good perk set for beginners.
Barbecue & Chilli: Like I explained, this perk lets you know the location of all remaining survivors (granted they’re not close or hiding in a locker) for a short time. Excellent perk to keep up the momentum of the match.
Hex: Ruin: Most survivors despise Ruin, this perk makes every generator regress their progress unless they’re being actively worked on. This means they have to either commit to it or find the totem associated to it. Unfortunately, like every other hex, this useful perk can be destroyed, and once it is, you will not get it back, so take care of it.
Pop Goes The Weasel: What this perk does is make it so that if you kick a generator a short time after hooking a survivor, it’ll make a large jump backwards in progress, immediately nullifying a lot of hard work the survivor put into it.
Blood Warden: If you think survivors hate Ruin, Blood Warden is going to make them pop a blood vessel. As soon as one of the exit gates are opened the perk will activate, and you will be able to see any survivor that’s near either of the exits through walls, that’s not it thought, if you hook a survivor once the perk activates, both exits will become blocked for a maximum of 60 seconds. Plenty of time to turn the tables in a match that seemed lost.
This is, in my honest opinion, the best build for any new killers coming into Dead By Daylight, I even run it whenever I try out a killer I’ve never tried before just because this build I so versatile it just works with most, if not every killer. But don’t be afraid to mix and match, make your research and turn yourself into the great killer I know you can be.
4. Don’t overthink
So, you’re telling me you can go to bed dead and wake up alive?
I am aware that in this article I threw a lot of tips that vary a lot in complexity, however these are things you should slowly adapt into your play style, and eventually you’ll be employing them without even thinking about it.
There’s plenty of mind games in Dead By Daylight from both the killer and the survivor’s side, and you won’t get anywhere if you’re too busy trying to think about whether he’s thinking what you’re thinking and just attempt to naturally react to certain situations a certain way.
If you just take it slow, you will eventually grow as a killer and naturally defeat these horribly clever people.
3. Accepting defeat
I’m bleeding, making me the victor.
Dead By Daylight is a 4v1 game, you will not always kill every single survivor, it would be foolish to think you will.
Accept that sometimes some will escape, maybe even all of them!
What’s really important is that you take this loses as an opportunity to learn from them.
Why did I lose? Which perks weren’t being very effective with my build? What were my very first mistakes?
Ask yourself these questions and gather the experience. A smarter killer means a happy killer.
2. Travel outside your comfort zone
Did I ever tell you what the definition of insanity is?
It’s easy to become a creature of habit once you find the right set of perks and killer for you.
I encourage you to try out different things, try out different killers and perk builds that seem more interested rather than the top tier perks. Sometimes different perk sets become favorites, personally I enjoy using surveillance (a perk that shows the progress of regressing generators and lets you know when a survivor begins working on it) and Ruin (which makes generators regress as long as someone’s not actively working on them). This mix is incredible for keeping track of generators without even being close to them. I used to use those whilst being a stealthy killer, but figured out that a ranged killer might have more use for these.
Winning is one thing, but it’s good to keep the game fresh for you so you don’t get tired of it is what’s more important. Which takes me to my next point.
1. Have fun
Killers just wanna have fun.
If you read all this, you might already be pre-stressed before even opening the game, but I assure you, this game is one of the most fun online experiences I had.
Some of these things will come with time, and at the end of the day the priority is to just do whatever you enjoy. Maybe being top tier isn’t even close to your priorities. Maybe you feel guilty enough being ruthless that you decide not to.
These aren’t bad decisions. Just play whichever way you enjoy more to make sure you get the most out of this amazing game.
So that’s it for this list. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
If you read this and tried out the tips, get back to me and let me know how it went! Did you notice a change? Let me know!
Happy killing!
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