Dead By Daylight 21.5 Update Release Time: Mikaela Reid, Hour of the Witch Mid-Chapter Changes & More

KILLER UPDATES

THE TRAPPER

Starting things off with a bang (or rather, a snap), we’ve made a series of small changes to The Trapper.

Did you know that the number of bear traps that spawn on the map is random? That’s right, each trial will spawn between 4-6 bear traps at random. Now you can take this interesting little fact and completely forget about it because that’s no longer how it works: The number of traps that spawn in the map will now automatically spawn 6 traps per map (not including the traps that you bring into the map with you). This takes away some of the random element in playing The Trapper and makes each match feel more consistent.

Having more traps is great and all, but wouldn’t it be nice to carry more than one? We sure think so. The Trapper will now be able to carry—and start with—two bear traps by default. This will help you get up and running quicker without relying on add-ons. The Trapper’s bag add-ons have been adjusted or repurposed accordingly.

Finally, on the subject of add-ons, we’ve done a pass on some of his least used add-ons and either increased their effects, removed their downsides, or gave them new effects entirely.

THE SPIRIT

The Spirit has been a popular Killer since her release and with that in mind, we’ve made some changes that aim to increase her skill ceiling whilst also giving Survivors some counterplay.

When close to The Spirit’s husk, Survivors will not receive any indication that The Spirit is phase walking. Originally this was intended to be a fun mind game (“Is she using her power, or is she faking it?”), though in practice, it often doesn’t feel that way. This lack of feedback forces you to make a guess and hope it pays off, which can be great when it works out in your favour, but can also feel awful when it doesn’t.

To add more skill into The Spirit’s counterplay, we’re making two changes:

1. Any Survivor within 24m of The Spirit will now hear a directional phase sound. This lets you know whether or not she is phasing and also gives you a rough idea of which direction she’s coming from.
2. The Spirit’s footsteps will now kick up dust while she is phasing. Keen Survivors may be able to pinpoint where she is, but tall grass and other obstacles may make it difficult.

These two changes aim to add more skill into playing as and against The Spirit and reduce the reliance on ‘coin flips’ (where you make a guess and hope it pays off).

Additionally, we’ve done a pass on some of The Spirit’s add-ons to bring them more in line and make the lesser used add-ons more appealing. Like The Trapper, some of these changes are small tweaks while others are completely new effects.

KILLER ADD-ONS UPDATE

What does moderately mean? How much more is tremendously compared to considerably? If you ever found yourself in this situation, you’re not alone. We used descriptive words like these to keep descriptions simple, but they end up causing just as much confusion since it’s not immediately clear how much they’re doing. With that in mind, we have done a pass on all Killer add-ons to list their exact effects. We plan to extend this to the rest of the game—Items, perks, etc.—in the future.

On top of that, Killer add-ons that apply a status effect will now have a brief description of what that status effect does.

While our designers were going through hundreds of Killer add-ons one by one to update their descriptions, they also noted down a few for changes as well. There’s far too many to list here, but we’ve changed some add-ons for the following Killers:

• The Hillbilly
• The Nurse
• The Shape
• The Hag
• The Oni
• The Blight
• The Wraith
• The Pig
• The Ghost Face

These changes focus mostly on unused add-ons, or add-ons that are too weak/powerful.

PERKS UPDATES

Variety is the spice of life, and incidentally, Dead by Daylight matches too. In an ongoing effort to give you more options to choose from, we’re updating a huge list of perks. Without further ado, let’s run through some of them quickly: 

Vigil

Nice and simple: We’re increasing the recovery rate from 10/15/20% to 20/25/30%. Additionally, Vigil will now increase the recovery rate of the Broken, Exposed, and Oblivious status effects as well (where applicable). In short, more situations where it’s useful, and even faster recovery too.

Babysitter/Guardian

Another small tweak: The rescued Survivor will now receive a speed boost for 4/6/8 seconds in addition to not leaving Scratch Marks or Pools of Blood. The aura reading duration has also been doubled.

For the People

For the People can create some amazing moments, but the trade-off of being Broken can make it very risky to justify using. We’re decreasing the duration of the Broken status effect from 110/100/90 seconds to 80/70/60 seconds.

Hex: Retribution

Previously, Hex: Retribution would only make a Survivor Oblivious if they cleansed a dull totem. Now, interacting with any kind of totem will make them Oblivious. Additionally, we’ve increased the aura reading duration once a hex totem is cleansed to 15 seconds.

Hex: Blood Favor

This perk shipped with very safe conditions so it didn’t get out of control. Upon reflection, we feel comfortable with removing some of these restrictions. Hex: Blood Favor will no longer have a cooldown, and will also activate upon successful Special Attacks as well.

Hex: The Third Seal

Just like the above, we’ve added Special Attacks to Hex: Third Seal as well. This should make the perk more practical on Killers that focus more on using their power.

Hex: Thrill of the Hunt

With Boon perks making their way to the game, we decided to give Thrill of the Hunt some love by extending the speed penalty from Cleansing to Blessing as well.

ITEM & CHARACTER KILL SWITCH

Last but not least, let’s talk about a game health feature: The Item & Character Kill Switch. With over 50 playable characters and their cosmetics, nearly 200 perks and hundreds more add-ons and offerings in the game, sometimes things do break. Rarely, things will break in a way that makes them exploitable, and that can make the next week or two before a fix really rough.

Enter the Kill Switch. (It’s actually a lot nicer than it sounds!)

The Kill Switch allows us to disable anything that’s causing an issue without needing an update. When something breaks and becomes exploitable, we switch it off until it is fixed. This is something we’ve been able to do with maps for a while now to great effect. Disabled items & characters will be clearly marked and cannot be selected.

What this means to you: When that one thing breaks and people start to abuse it, you won’t have to play against it for a week or two until there’s a fix

KILLER UPDATES

THE DEATHSLINGER

We’ve kept an eye on The Deathslinger since his release last year, and we have a few small changes aimed at (haha, get it?) his power.

Currently, there is almost no delay between aiming down sights and being able to fire your weapon. Likewise, there is almost no delay between cancelling your shot and going for a basic attack. This creates lose-lose situations for the Survivor where there is nothing they can realistically do to avoid getting hit. For example, if they vault a window, you can easily aim down sights and fire without giving them a chance to dodge your shot. But if they decide to not vault the window, you can easily cancel your shot and hit them with a basic attack instead. Additionally, since there’s almost no delay, the Survivor must constantly dodge and run erratically just in case the Killer decides to shoot.

With that in mind, we’ve made the following changes:

• You can no longer shoot until you have fully aimed down sights
• Increased the delay after cancelling your shot before you can start a Basic Attack
• Decreased movement speed penalty while aiming down sights

Since The Deathslinger would spend more time aiming down his sights than before if you quickly aimed and fired, we felt it was only fair to increase his movement speed while aiming down sights to compensate. This will cause you to lose less ground while aiming and keep up with the Survivor a little longer.

Last, but not least, we’ve increased The Deathslinger’s terror radius to 32m. The Deathslinger is the only ranged Killer that does not have a "lullaby", which meant terror radius reducing perks like Monitor & Abuse could allow you to get close enough to surprise and hit a Survivor without them getting any warning whatsoever.

Like usual, we have also gone through a few of The Deathslinger’s add-ons and given some small buffs to the least used/powerful ones.

THE PLAGUE

The Plague has been in the game for a while now and hasn’t seen a whole lot of change, but that ends today: We’re making a series of quality-of-life changes that should make her more effective and more fun to play.

First, we looked at infected objects. Previously, interacting with something would cause your infection to increase faster. We’re adding an additional penalty to interacting with something that is currently infected, meaning your infection will increase even faster than before. Additionally, we’ve increased the base infection duration on objects (like generators) from 35 seconds to 40 seconds. These changes will make infecting objects feel much more impactful.

Next, we turned to her Vile Purge. The Plague takes a massive hit to her movement speed whenever she is on cooldown (after purging or cancelling her purge). We’ve increased her movement speed from 2.3m/s while on cooldown to 3.6m/s. This will cause her to lose far less ground when she does so.

One of the things that felt really bad for the Killer was when you let get of your power button a little too soon, causing your power to be cancelled entirely. Now, tapping the button or letting go before the minimum threshold will cause your power to continue charging until the minimum amount has been reached. (Basically, it now works like the Huntress’ hatchet.)

Finally, we’ve increased the time it takes to cleanse at a fountain from 6 seconds to 8 seconds.

Like the other Killers that are changing in this update, we’ve revisited The Plague’s add-ons as well and did a complete pass on some of the less powerful or rarely used ones.

SURVIVOR ITEM ADD-ONS UPDATE

Surprise! We also updated the description of item add-ons in this update as well. Like we’ve done for Killers, each Survivor item add-on will now list their effects with numbers rather than descriptive terms like moderately, considerably, and so on. Additionally, add-ons the grant a Status Effect will also have a brief description of what that Status Effect does.

PERK UPDATES

Oh, did you think the list last week was all of them?

Windows of Opportunity

Much like Zanshin Tactics, we’re removing the cooldown from this perk entirely. We’re also increasing the range to 24/28/32m as well. Go away, cooldown, we don’t want you here!

Repressed Alliance

Repressed Alliance has the potential to save a good chunk of progress when timed well, but due to the high requirements for the perk to activate, it can often not be ready by the time you need it. With that said, we’ve reduced the time required to activate the perk to 55/50/45 seconds.

Built to Last

This perk shipped with fairly safe numbers to make sure it couldn’t get out of hand, but that ended up making it a pretty unpopular choice. We’ve reworked it to be far more effective at what it’s meant to do.

Hiding in a locker for 14/13/12 seconds with a depleted item in your hand will cause it to refill 99% of its charges. Each use of Built to Last reduced the number of charges refilled by 33%.

Any Means Necessary

Previously, we reduced the cooldown of Any Means Necessary and saw more people start to use it. It’s still not quite where we’d like it to be, so we’ve added an aura reading effect on all dropped pallets. This way, as soon as it’s ready, you’ll know exactly where you can use it!

No Mither

No Mither allows you to trade a health state for other bonuses, but these bonuses aren’t strong enough to warrant using the perk. We’ve increased the Grunts of Pain reduction to 25/50/75%. Additionally, we added a 15/20/25% increase recovery speed while in the dying state.

Side note: Yes, we know a lot of you use this perk as sort of a “hard mode”. We’re not looking to completely get rid of that, as silly as it may be.

Mindbreaker/Fearmonger

This is a simple one: Survivors who are working on a generator will now suffer from Blindness in addition to Exhaustion. This’ll cause the perk to not only prevent the use of Exhaustion perks, but also any aura reading that the Survivor may have.

THE HATCH & KEYS

The hatch, and keys by extension, have long been very contentious topics, leading to some heated debates. We have some changes incoming to make them a little fairer.

First, the hatch will no longer spawn if there’s more than one Survivors in the trial. This means you’ll never have to worry about the last three Survivors vanishing when there’s still one generator left.

Additionally, the hatch will now take a few seconds to open with a key once it is closed. Progress does not reset when the Survivor cancels the interaction. This eliminates the problem where a Survivor can simply sprint straight at the hatch and instantly open it and escape.

With that said, these changes will make the “Where Did They Go!?” achievement impossible to obtain, so it will be changed to ‘Escape through the Hatch using a Key.”

BOON TOTEMS

As promised in the Anniversary Live Broadcast, we are introducing some new gameplay around Totems, these will add an extra objective around the map and much like Killers Hex Totems, are tied to Survivor Perks.

Survivors will be able to bless a totem to change it into a Boon Totem and these blessings are designed to offer comfort to the Survivor Team, a small safe haven. However, unlike a Hex Totem, the Killer can also quickly interact with the created Boon Totem to completely remove the associated blessing, once again turning it into a dull totem, they will also be able to hear the Boon Totem when in its range.

Each Survivor can only have one Boon Totem active at a time. This Boon Totem will combine the effects of all of their equipped Boon perks.

This will add some more strategic decisions for survivors to make when it comes to their interactions with Totems.