How To Play As The Houndmaster Killer In Dead By Daylight

Chase Command is your primary weapon, ordering Snug to charge forward in a (mostly) straight line by holding your Power button to aim and then tapping your Attack button to release. Snug is smart enough to move around curved obstacles and can leap over windows and pallets in his path. You can see the path that Snug will take and if he’s going to jump over anything along the way.

If Snug connects with a Survivor, he will Grab them, giving them the Hindered and Incapacitated status conditions and dragging them towards the spot where you were when you issued the Command.

If you want to ferret out where the Survivors are hiding (or if you’re in a location that would be hard for Snug to move through), you can use her Search Command to send Snug on a scouting mission. Holding your Power button charges up Search Command, allowing you to send him further and further away, as shown by a target on the ground.

While Snug is following a Search Command, he has an aura of Houndsense that gets larger with distance traveled. If a Survivor enters the Houndsense radius, they will be revealed by Killer Instinct and receive the Houndsense status condition. Healthy Survivors who become Injured while affected by Houndsense gain the Deep Wound status, and Injured Survivors who are Downed leave more Pools of Blood and make louder Grunts of Pain. Any Survivor who is affected by Houndsense will glow bright red to The Houndmaster.

Finally, while Snug is heading toward the target of his Search Command, he leaves behind a Search Path. If The Houndmaster moves along the Search Path, her movement speed increases over time, ending when she steps off the Search Path.

Common

Increases Snug’s chase speed by five percent.

Uncommon

Increases Snug’s initial Chase distance by 20 percent.

Uncommon

Reduces your Power’s cooldown by five percent.

Rare

Gives the Mangled and Hemorrhage status conditions to Survivors who are Injured while Grabbed for 45 seconds.

Rare

Increases Snug’s Redirected Chase distance by 20 percent.

Very Rare

Applies Houndsense to Survivors within 20 meters of a Grabbed Survivor when they are Grabbed.

Very Rare

Increases your Terror Radius by four meters when Snug is with you. Decreases your Terror Radius by four meters when Snug is away from you.

Enemies on land and sea learned to tremble before your might.

After falling from a high place, All-Shaking Thunder activates for 16 seconds. While active, your Lunge distance is increased by 75 percent. This Perk then goes on cooldown for five seconds.

Every skirmish ended with a relentless volley of cannon fire, leaving no doubt who was superior.

When a Survivor reaches 75 percent healing progress while healing themselves, No Quarter activates, causing them to receive continuous difficult Skill Checks until the healing is completed.

If they fail any of these Skill Checks, or if the heal is interrupted, that Survivor is Broken for 30 seconds.

Sometimes the compass points north. Other times it points somewhere else entirely.

At the start of the Trial, four Hooks are changed into Scourge Hooks. When you Hook a Survivor on a Scourge Hook, the Aura of the Generator with the most progress turns yellow for ten seconds.

In addition, whenever a Survivor is Unhooked from a regular Hook, it becomes a Scourge Hook for the rest of the Trial.

While carrying a Survivor, any other Survivors who enter your Terror Radius gain the Exposed condition. After you Hook the carried Survivor, or after they leave your Terror Radius, the effect lingers for 30 seconds. After you stop carrying a Survivor, this Perk goes on cooldown for 60 seconds.

This effect is strong in isolation, as you can often use Chase Command to catch nearby Survivors after hooking one, but it gets even better with the Ship Figurehead add-on to increase your Terror Radius.

After downing a Survivor with a Basic Attack, nearby Generators explode, losing 8 percent of their progress immediately and regressing from there.

As The Houndmaster exclusively uses Basic Attacks to injure Survivors, being rewarded for Downing a Survivor with some free Generator regression is a great deal – especially if they went down in one hit due to being Exposed or unable to heal.

After a Survivor is Unhooked, the Survivor who rescued them suffers a 50 percent healing speed debuff.

This Perk capitalizes on The Houndmaster’s ability to interrupt healing by making it take significantly longer. And if you find Survivors regularly play around this effect by healing themselves, you can bring No Quarter to counter them.

At the start of the Trial, four Hooks are changed into Scourge Hooks. When a Survivor is Unhooked from a Scourge Hook, see the Auras of all other Survivors for seven seconds.

If the Unhooked Survivor is being healed under the Hook, you can interrupt them with Snug. If they leave the area, you can follow them. And if you bring Scourge Hook: Jagged Compass, you’ll have plenty of Scourge Hooks to go around.

Hitting a Survivor with a Basic Attack causes them to receive the Mangled and Hemorrhage conditions for 90 seconds. In addition, Survivors leave more Pools of Blood than normal, and the healing regression from Hemorrhage is increased by 25 percent.

Landing a cheeky long-range Lunge is good, but applying a nasty status effect at the same time is even better. Keep in mind that this Perk does not stack with the Spiked Collar add-on or any other source of Mangled.

When you hit a Survivor who is not the Obsession with a Basic Attack, you gain a Token, up to a maximum of eight. For each Token this Perk has, you gain a four percent boost to Basic Attack recovery speed (the animation that plays after you hit with a Basic Attack). If the Obsession loses a health state via a Basic or Special Attack, you lose two Tokens. If the Obsession is sacrificed, you can no longer gain or lose Tokens.

This Perk makes your chase even stronger, allowing you to get more uses out of All-Shaking Thunder’s limited durationand potentially send Snug out sooner for a follow-up hit. Combine with the Smoked Snapper add-on for maximum efficiency.

While within your Terror Radius, Survivors heal 50 percent slower, and healing Skill Checks move 50 percent faster.

As if receiving constant Skill Checks wasn’t difficult enough, Coulrophobia makes actually hitting those Skill Checks much harder – and since you’re slowing down the Survivor’s healing speed, they’ll need to make twice as many. Combine this with the Ship Figurehead add-on, the Perk Distressing, or any Killer with a naturally large Terror Radius (such as The Mastermind/Wesker) for best results.

At the start of the Trial, four Hooks are changed into Scourge Hooks. When a Survivor is Unhooked from a Scourge Hook, they suffer from the Mangled and Hemorrhage conditions for 90 seconds. If they are healed back to Healthy, they suffer a 16 percent penalty to repair and healing speed until they become injured again.

This one is a triple-whammy: it slows healing speed, causes them to lose progress if they get interrupted, and sticks them with a repair speed debuff if they power through the first two parts. This gets even better with Agitation or Scourge Hook: Jagged Compass to make your Scourge Hooks more convenient.

At the start of the Trial, four Hooks are changed into Scourge Hooks. The first time a Survivor is Hooked on a Scourge Hook, the Generator with the most progress explodes, losing 20 percent of its progress immediately and regressing from there.

If you’ve used this Perk before, you know that its biggest downside when compared to other popular slowdown Perks is how unreliable it can be. If you Down a Survivor across the map from all of your Scourge Hooks, you simply cannot make use of it when you need it. Jagged Compass fixes that issue by creating new Scourge Hooks as the match goes on, and its secondary effect of pointing you toward the Generator with the most progress usually means telling you which one Pain Resonance just hit. If you’re lucky, you might be able to interrupt the Survivors before they can stop the regression.

After you Hook a Survivor, the first Survivor to stop repairing a Generator causes that Generator to become blocked for 50 seconds. You can see the outline of blocked Generators in white.

Best case scenario: you find the Survivors still on the highlighted Generator, you scare them off, and Dead Man’s Switch prevents them from finishing it. Worst case scenario, someone across the map lets go of a low-progress Generator instead. Even in that case, you’re still applying pressure to at least two Survivors – and you know which Generator they might look to complete next.