Sometimes updates land with a whimper, a few changes and alterations here and there, and everyone carries on as before. Other times, patches land like a grenade tossed into a room, and the next one for Dead by Daylight looks to be the latter. September’s developer update is now out in the wild, showing everyone what Behaviour Interactive is working on, and it looks like it’ll be one of the most impactful updates the game has seen in a long time.
The primary incoming change relates to moris, animations that killers can trigger that end a survivor’s life in a Dead by Daylight match, somewhat akin to Mortal Kombat’s finishers. Previously these were activated by taking certain offerings when going into a trial, with killers able to slay survivors after they had been hooked twice. That’s all going to change now, as the horror game will incorporate a type of mori offering into killers by default – making them more predictable, but potentially seen much less often.
In the next major update for the game, killers will only be able to mori the last survivor in a match and will be able to do that without taking an offering. Mori offerings will instead give bloodpoint bonuses for killing the final player. This means that generally speaking, players will see these bloody animations much less frequently – though it will be pretty much guaranteed to occur in all matches where all survivors die.
Away from moris, there’s plenty else to chew over coming soon. The Skull Merchant, one of the game’s least popular killers, is getting some massive nerfs. She’ll no longer gain haste when scanning survivors, will make opponents incur less of a hindered penalty, and her drones will be much easier to disable or avoid. Almost her entire toolkit has been reduced in efficacy, and it’ll be interesting to see how much this affects this already deeply unpopular character’s pick rate in the game.
The Twins and Hillbilly have both received minor nerfs to combat particular playstyles their previous versions encouraged, and The Unknown has been altered in a few different ways to incorporate a popular addon into its basekit and to give its players more clarity on teleporting and cooldowns.
The big news doesn’t stop there as perks have also come under fire from the alteration beam of Behaviour Interactive. For example, Teamwork: Power of Two and Teamwork: Collective Stealth have both been buffed considerably, with cooldowns removed, ranges increased, and their haste/scratch mark suppression abilities lingering for a time when out of range of their targets. There’s plenty more changes to perks also found in the update, but the biggest for many will be the Distortion rework.
This survivor perk would shield the player from having their aura become visible to the killer, with each time it activated using a token. Those tokens could be recharged by being close to the killer, which in effect led to survivors becoming entirely stealthy, sneaking near the killer to remain invisible to their aura reading abilities.
That type of gameplay is why Distortion has been retooled, with it now lasting longer each time it activates but its charges being removed entirely. It’ll only work once, with that singular charge being restored by being chased by the killer. This means it won’t be possible to simply hide forever with this perk, and killers who have several aura reading tools will be able to find them without having to burn through a stack of charges. It’s a drastic change, with many fans already lamenting that it marks the end of this perk being useful.
There’s no date for the Dead by Daylight September 2024 patch just yet, but players can play the updated Lights Out – Castlevania modifier between Thursday September 12 and Thursday September 19. If you’d like to learn more about what’s coming to DBD, head over to the Steam announcement to get the full lowdown.
Should you need a little help on your journey, our guide to all current DBD codes will help you get your hands on some free stuff, while our DBD killer tier list will keep you up to date with the best and weakest opponents in the game.
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