Dead By Daylight 20.5 Mid-Chapter Update: Leaks, Release Date & Everything We Know So Far

Dead By Daylight Chapter 20 is in full swing with fans also enjoying the many benefits that have come from the 5th Anniversary too.

But as with any chapter, there's always a big update around the corner. The next will be for the game's customary mid-season update (patch 20.5 for anyone keeping track), which will no doubt bring with it some balance changes - potentially to the Nemesis - as well as new content to keep fans satisfied.

We doubt it's going to be anything substantial, but it could be enough to alter the tier lists which determine the Best Dead By Daylight Killer.

Who knows, maybe the games dataminers might uncover more clues as to what is coming in Dead By Daylight Chapter 21, which at the moment could feature anything from The Candyman, Hellraiser or maybe an original killer of Behaviour Interactives own creation.

DBD Mid-Chapter Latest News

27 July, 2021 [4pm BST] -

The 5.1.0 update for Dead By Daylight has started rolling out on all platforms, bar Nintendo Switch.

Tome 8 Starts July 28.

You'll find the latest Dead By Daylight Patch Notes on the link.

26 July, 2021 [10pm BST] -

Dead by Daylight has announced that the games next update, version 5.1.0, will not be released on Nintendo Switch along with the rest of the game's platforms.

Behaviour Interactive explained that this was done "to further resolve some issues related to performance."

This delay will not affect tomorrow's planned release on other platforms, but it means that players on Nintendo Switch will not be able to enjoy Tome 8.

For more details and some FAQ, follow the link: https://bit.ly/3i2Afyq

26 July, 2021 [11am BST] -

The mid-chapter update for Dead By Daylight looks to be coming tomorrow, July 27. The developers have kept relatively quiet on the matter following their announcement on July 13. We suspect we'll hear something from the team later today, perhaps with release times for the new patch, or potentially further tweaks to the patch notes that were originally released by the development team.

More to follow, hopefully later today...

13 July, 2021 -

The developers have announced that they have fixes coming for "the most significant performance issues", which are coming to the game on 27 July. The tweet then referenced some rewards available to players "before the mid-chapter releases".

This either suggests the update is coming before the imminent arrive of the mid-chapter update, or if it's coming on 27 July specifically. More details will potentially arrive next week.

Dead By Daylight 20.5 Update Release Date

[Update - Please see latest news. Patch arrives 27 July]

Original Story - As the name suggests, the mid-season update arrives halfway between when the current chapter launched and when the next chapter is due to arrive.

Chapter 20 was launched on June 15 and Chapter 21 is expected to arrive towards the end of August or early September.

This would suggest that the mid-season update for Chapter 20 is due to arrive in the next few weeks from the middle to end of July.

As It's also worth remembering that normally a new Tome event is released almost immediately after the Mid-Chapter update hits live servers.

So we can expect to see Dead By Daylight Tome 8 coming to the game fairly soon too.

Dead By Daylight 20.5 Update Leaks

So far the majority of leaks have focussed on some of the games shop cosmetics.

According to @DBDLeaks, fans can expect to see a return for Greek Legends cosmetics alongside a few new cosmetics.

Kate, Jeff, Elodie, Nurse, Zarina and Blight are mentioned as possible characters receiving new Greek Legends cosmetics.

There will also be a special Log-in Event that is also Greek Legends themed.

Here's a bit more info:

SURVIVOR VISUAL UPDATES

The devs are planning yet more Survivor model updates with the Mid-Season update. These visual updates are part of The Realm Beyond, our ongoing effort to improve the visuals of the game.

Our goal with these changes is not to change the characters significantly, but rather to bring them up to date. We’ve been playing with these Survivors for years, and some of us have grown very attached to them (some of you a little too much, we’ve seen the THAT art you’ve made). This is part of the reason why we’ve been sharing previews for so long: We’ve been combing through your feedback to make sure that the updated versions of each Survivor are as similar as possible to ones you know and love. - Behavior Interactive Community Manager DeathByGiggles

Here’s a quick taste of what you can expect in case you’ve missed the many teasers. (Note: These are work in progress images and some changes may have been made since.)

Dead By Daylight 20.5 Update Patch Notes

Here's an early look at some of the patch notes based on what is currently being worked on and made available in the upcoming Mid Chapter update, as per a blog post from Behaviour Interactive.

Trickster Buffs

Now that it has been a few months since the launch of the All-Kill Chapter, it is time for The Trickster’s post-launch review. This is something we do for all new Killers once they’ve had a few months to settle into the game. Reviewing the data, The Trickster tends to fall on the lower end of the roster (even among the top few percent of Trickster players), so we feel comfortable making some improvements to him to bring him up a few spots.

We’ve made several changes to laceration to make it a more tense back-and-forth battle. For starters:

• The number of knives required to damage a Survivor has been reduced to 6 (down from 8)
• The delay before laceration decay starts has been reduced to 10 seconds (down from 20 seconds)
• The rate of decay for laceration has been increased to 0.3/s while running and 0.4/s all other times (up from 0.235/s and 0.175/s respectively)

Together, these changes should make chases quicker and more interesting: The Trickster will be able to down Survivors much faster, but a good Survivor may be able to break line of sight for long enough to start decaying their laceration meter.

Additionally, we’ve reduced the amount of laceration lost for hitting a Survivor with a basic attack from 4 to 3. (We’ve all accidentally run into a Survivor while throwing knives before. Swing away.)

Next, we looked at Main Event. Main Event would activate fairly frequently, but the long activation time often meant that the Survivor could break line of sight before you had a chance to start throwing knives again, making it difficult to use at times. With that in mind, we’ve made the following changes:

• Main Event activation time has been shortened to 0.5 seconds (down from 1.5 seconds)
• The number of knives required to activate Main Event has been increased to 30
• Increased the amount of time you can hold Main Event to 30 seconds (up from 10 seconds)

With these changes, we aim to make Main Event less frequent, but more meaningful when it does activate. By increasing the time it can be held before it must be activated, you’ll have more freedom to choose when to activate it and be able to use it more effectively when you do thanks to the lowered activation time.

Last, but certainly not least, it could sometimes be difficult to tell when your Blades were hitting a Survivor. To improve the feedback, we have added hit indicators that appear where the Survivor was hit.

With base changes out of the way, we also needed to look into a few of his add-ons. Most add-ons are behaving as expected, but there are a few outliers that fall significantly above or below the rest that we needed to adjust.

Melodious Murder

With the number of knives required to injure reduced to 6, leaving this add-on as is would be a little too much. With that in mind, we’ve reworked this add-on completely to give increased reload speed at lockers instead.

Fizz-Spin Soda

Previously: Granted the effects of having already thrown 3 knives.

This one is a slight tweak; the bonus has been decreased to the effect of 2 knives. The initial rate bonus granted before was a little too high which made it an obvious choice every time.

Iridescent Photocard

Now, when a Survivor is two or fewer Blade hits away from the maximum, they will be Exposed. This will give you a larger window to work with.

Death Throes Compilation

This is another one that needed to change due to the lower laceration meter to prevent things from getting out of hand. Now, Death Throes Compilation will replenish The Trickster’s knives when Main Event ends.

Lucky Blade & Waiting for You Watch

These add-ons didn’t see much use before, so they’ve been reworked with a completely new effect. Hitting a Survivor with a Blade during Main Event will extend Main Event’s duration.

Last but certainly not least, we reviewed The Trickster’s perks and made changes to both No Way Out and Hex: Crowd Control.

No Way Out

This perk can do quite a bit, but it can also be very inconsistent. If you’re missing a token or two, or if the Survivors are preoccupied when the gates are first powered, it’s possible they’ll completely miss the effect. With that in mind, we have:

• Increased the base time of the perk to 12 seconds
• Increased the bonus time for each token to 6/9/12 seconds
• The perk only activates whenever a Survivor interacts with an exit gate for the first time, and you’ll receive a loud noise notification when they do

These changes increase the potential maximum time from 46 seconds to 60 seconds, and ensures that it will have a noticeable effect.

Hex: Crowd Control

A simple adjustment, but one that should have a big impact:

• Increased the time a window stays blocked from 10/12/14 seconds to 14/17/20 seconds

HUD IMPROVEMENTS

One of the most common requests we received following our previous changes was the ability to customize the HUD. While full customization is still just a twinkle in a designer’s eye, we have added the ability to toggle on and off some non-crucial parts of the HUD. In the settings menu, you’ll find new options to toggle:

• Killer hook counter
• Score events
• Player names (in-match)

Each can be toggled independently in case you want one but not the rest.

PALLET HITS & GRABS

In this Mid-Chapter, we aimed to address some of most frequent and annoying issues you can run into while playing. One of the things topping that list is getting hit through a pallet well after you’ve dropped it.

[These changes are mostly due to latency issues and we recommend reading the Dead by Daylight blogpost for a full breakdown of why this happens and the changes coming to the game]