Dead by Daylight - The Skull Merchant Upcoming Changes Revealed & More!

New changes are coming for Dead by Daylight's new killer, The Skull Merchant:

- The Skull Merchant will now gain a growing Haste effect for each Survivor tracked on her radar. This bonus starts at 3% for one Survivor, raises to 5% for two, 6% for three and 7% for four. Both Claw Traps and active drone zones will contribute to this, and the Killer does not need to inspect their scanner to gain the benefits. This will reward the Killer for efficiently using their Power to keep tabs on their prey.

- Vaulting a pallet with a Claw Trap will cause that pallet to break, destroying the Claw Trap in the process. This was previously part of the common Ultrasonic Trap Speaker Add-on. With this change, being chased with a Claw Trap attached becomes a lot more dangerous.

- Drones are no longer immediately returned to The Skull Merchant once they are disabled. Instead, they will be returned once their respective traps are destroyed. This will make it more difficult to replace disabled drones on these generators.

- To ensure Survivors cannot hold a Claw Trap indefinitely to deny her from using her Power, Claw Traps will now be instantly destroyed as soon as their battery expires, and Claw Trap batteries will no longer refill when entering an active zone. This way, Claw Traps will always return after a set amount of time.

- Drones will enter an unhackable state whenever a Survivor with a Claw Trap is near. This will prevent a single Survivor from running around and disabling every drone, meaning the Killer will always have some combination of four Claw Traps or drones available to them. Combined with the changes to Claw Traps mentioned above, The Skull Merchant will always get value out of her ability whether it’s through deployed drones or traps.

There are also changes to some add-ons:

- Ultrasonic Trap Speaker: Ultrasonic Trap Speaker now reduces the time taken for Undetectable to take effect when inside an active zone by 50%.

- Expired Batteries: Since Claw Traps now provide a Haste effect, this would make the Killer very fast at the start of the match in addition to revealing the Survivors’ positions. Therefore, we have reduced the duration of the Claw Traps Survivors spawn with to 40% of the normal battery life (was 150%).

- Adaptive Lighting: Adaptive Lighting now increases the length of the Undetectable effect by 50% (was 20%).

Finally, there is also a change regarding the screams within the game, in fact they will no longer be 3D screams but 2D screams, this means that it will no longer be possible to tell where the scream is coming from within the map, but it will be possible to hear it from any corner of the map itself.

Excited about all this?