Dead by Daylight Updates New Skull Merchant Killer

Dead by Daylight's newest Killer, The Skull Merchant, is getting updated soon with intent to put the Killer in a better spot by addressing some of the frustrations players have been experiencing with the character since her release. Those frustrations include a perceived lack of power during chases and when it comes to Claw Traps, though from the Survivors' side of things, some players feel the character excels too strongly at holding down a trio of generators. This update in question is scheduled to release at some point next week and will bring more changes than just these, but The Skull Merchant is the current focus.

To start, Behaviour is making it so that The Skull Merchant gets a Haste bonus for every Survivor that's being tracked via a drone or a Claw Trap. Another chase-related change will make it so that Survivors who vault a pallet while inhibited with a Claw Trap will break that trap, but the pallet itself will also break. While this change does result in the Claw Trap being removed which is somewhat beneficial, it also can cause loops to come to a quick end with no more pallet to vault over.

For the Survivors, The Skull Merchant's power in regards to holding down three or so generators will be weakened. Instead of having the drones sent right back to The Skull Merchant once they're disabled, they'll only now be sent back once the devices' respective Claw Traps have been destroyed. On the flip side of that, Claw Traps will now be instantly destroyed once their batteries expire so that players don't run into a situation where Survivors hang onto their Claw Traps for longer than anticipated in order to deny The Skull Merchant her drones. Survivors will also no longer be able to disable subsequent drones if the Survivor is already affected by a Claw Trap.

One of those changes, the one where pallets break whenever someone with a Claw Trap vaults them, was previously an effect of an add-on called "Ultrasonic Trap Speaker." Since the effect is part of the character's base kit now, that add-on gains a new effect.

"Ultrasonic Trap Speaker now reduces the time taken for Undetectable to take effect when inside an active zone by 50%," Behaviour said.

These changes will go live in Dead by Daylight's update planned for next week.