Dead by Daylight: Best General Killer Perks

Key Takeaways

• Insidious is vital for stealth builds, granting undetectable status after standing still.
• Thrill of the Hunt slows survivor actions for cleansing totems and gives bonus Bloodpoints.
• Spies from the Shadows turns crows into killer allies to alert of nearby survivors.

When contemplating what killer gamers want to play in Dead By Daylight, they need to take into consideration their choice of perks just as much as the killer and their power. With over 100 perks, opening up many potential builds, deciding on which ones to choose can be overwhelming for those with access to all the DLCs.

For those who maybe don’t have access to all the crossovers, or want to challenge themselves by not benefitting from paid perks, they could always look to the general perks Behaviour have given to every player. These free perks appear in the players’ bloodweb with no need to shell out for DLC or by purchasing from the shrine of secrets.

7 Insidious

A must-Have for Stealth Builds

• Grants the Undetectable Status Effect after standing still for 4/3/2 seconds.
  • This effect lasts until you start moving again.

Undetectable is a useful status effect for killers who want to go unnoticed, as it silences the terror radius, and smothers the red stain that shows the direction they are looking in. This makes it harder for survivors to tell if the killer is nearby if their line of sight is obstructed, and that is exactly what Insidious does.

This perk is the key ingredient of the infamous Basement Bubba build popularized by certain Leatherface players. They will hook a survivor in the basement and stand in the corner, ready to spring on unsuspecting survivors who have come to rescue their teammate.

6 Hex: Thrill of the Hunt

Perfect for Hex Builds

For each Totem remaining in the environment, Hex: Thrill of the Hunt is granted 1 Token.

• For each Token, all Survivors suffer from a stack-able 8/9/10% Action Speed penalty to Cleansing and Blessing Totems, up to a maximum of 40/45/50 %.
• Grants a stack-able 10 % bonus Bloodpoints for actions in the Hunter Category per Token, up to a maximum of 50%.

Hex builds are just as the name suggests, putting a hex perk into each available perk slots. Though No One Escapes Death stands out as the strongest general hex perk, Thrill of the Hunt isn’t too much of a terrible pick, either.

They may want to protect other hexes, which Thrill of the Hunt can definitely do, as it makes survivors take longer to cleanse or bless totems on the map, including those that are hexed. As such, killer smight be able to chase survivors off of their hexes before they can finish cleaning or blessing them, leaving their hex in play.

5 Spies from the Shadows

The Crows Now Act for the Killer

• Whenever you are within 20/28/36 metres of a Crow that was startled by a nearby Survivor, you are alerted with a Loud Noise Notification.

In each realm, there are murders of crows scattered around, spectators to the bloody spectacle with unrelenting apathy, until someone gets a little too close. Should a survivor approach the crows, they will be spooked and fly away, cawing their displeasure and potentially alerting the killer.

With Spies from the Shadows equipped, the crows now work for the killer, alerting them whenever a survivor has startled a nearby crow so they know for sure if they are on the right track hunting down survivors. For those games where the survivors are a little too spooked and are constantly treating the trial like a game of hide and seek, this is the quintessential perk for flushing them out of their hiding spots.

4 Scourge Hook: Monstrous Shrine

Put More Pressure on Survivors

At the start of the Trial, four random Hooks, as well as the four Basement Hooks, are changed into Scourge Hooks:

• The Auras of Scourge Hooks are revealed to you in white.

Whenever a Survivor is hooked onto a Scourge Hook, the following effect applies when you are farther than 24 metres from the hooked Survivor:

• Accelerates the Sacrifice Process by 10/15/20%.

Scourge hooks were a new addition to the game alongside the release of the stand-alone killer, the Cenobite, from the Hellraiser movie series. Since then, new scourge perks have made their way into the game, or old ones have been reworked to scourge hooks, such as Monstrous Shrine.

Now, Scourge Hook: Monstrous Shrine highlights the hooks in white so that the killer can easily find them, and any survivors who are hooked on them now have less time to live. This not only ups the odds that the hooked survivor will die, but also rushes the other survivors into action to avoid losing a precious teammate, bringing themselves into the killer’s line of sight.

3 Bitter Murmur

Seek Out the Survivors Who are Focused on the Objectives

• Each time a Generator is completed, the Auras of all Survivors within 16 metres of that Generator are revealed for 5 seconds.
• Once the last Generator is completed, the Auras of all Survivors are revealed to for 5/7/10 seconds.

There are many survivors who will do their damnedest to get through the trial as quickly as possible by ‘gen-rushing’, running from objective A to objective B and using tools and perks geared around repair speed, and interacting with the killer as little as possible.

For these sneaky gen jockeys, it could always be worth equipping Bitter Murmur. With this perk, killers could see those survivors that are focused on pushing through objective, and see exactly where they are headed to next thanks to the aura reading. Killers could potentially cut them off and down them before they could even touch the next generator, slowing them down enough to even the playing field.

2 Hex: No One Escapes Death

Gives Killers an Edge in the Endgame Collapse

Once the Exit Gates are powered, if there is still a Dull Totem remaining in the environment, Hex: No One Escapes Death activates and lights it:

• Grants a 2/3/4% Haste Status Effect.
• Causes all Survivors to suffer permanently from the Exposed Status Effect.

Hex: No One Escapes Death remains inactive if no Dull Totems are available.

Once the Status Effect is revealed to Survivors, Hex: No One Escapes Death reveals the Aura of its Hex Totem to all Survivors within 4 metres and gradually expands that range to 24 metres over the course of 30 seconds.

There is little worse than reaching the end of the trial with no sacrifices to speak of. For those who want the security, Hex: No One Escapes Death is the perfect perk for them. Exposing the survivors means it takes only one hit to put them into the dying state, and the added haste means they can chase down survivors with more efficiency.

1 Sloppy Butcher

Impede the Survivors Healing

• Wounds inflicted by Basic Attacks cause Survivors to suffer from the Haemorrhage and Mangled Status Effects for 70/80/90 seconds.
• Increases the Bleeding frequency of injured Survivors by 50/75/100% for the same duration.
• Increases the Regression rate at which partial Healing Progression is lost because of Haemorrhage by 25 %.

Inflicting status effects is just one of the many ways killers can make the game that much harder for survivors. Sloppy Butcher allows killers to apply two for the price of one just by successfully hitting them with a basic attack, inflicting mangled and haemorrhage, making it tougher for them to heal fully by slowing down healing and making it so they lose progress if it is interrupted.

This makes it that much easier for killers to finish the job even when confronted with a particularly slippery survivor. The increase to the bleeding frequency makes them all too easy to track, and it is next to impossible to heal up completely before the killer catches up to deliver the killing blow.