Dead by Daylight Dev Tracker

Today, we want to dig into a topic that we know many of you have been yearning to know more about: our vision for the future of The Skull Merchant!

REEVALUATING THE SKULL MERCHANT
We know that Skull Merchant is a divisive Killer who, regardless of her performance in a Trial, carries a lot of history and strong feelings among players.

Many players feel she’s not fun to play against and her kit is exceedingly complex. This scares away potential Killers from trying her and makes it difficult for Survivors to consider counterplay without dedicated research.

As we look to reworking Skull Merchant, our aim is to:

1. Strike a balance between being fun to play as and against
   
2. Preserve the intel focus of her kit, while making it intuitive to understand for both sides
   
3. Move away...

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Last year, we tested out a new way to gather feedback with the Design Preview. In it, we shared a sneak peek at proposed changes for The Trickster with the goal of gauging how you felt about these changes very early in the design process.
We wanted to quickly follow up on how we're changing up the Design Preview process moving forward and give a little update on The Trickster’s preview.

WHAT IS A DESIGN PREVIEW? Coming away from last year's Design Preview, a couple things stood out to us:

1. When it comes to bigger changes like reworks, specifics matter. It’s important that we compare the perspectives of both Killers and Survivors to help inform decision-making.
   
2. While it’s one thing to ask for feedback, the original Design Preview concept didn’t let you know how we’re using your feedback, and it’s important to us that you have ...

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Important

• Progress and save data information has been copied from the Live game to our PTB servers on March 4th 2025. Please note that players will be able to progress for the duration of the PTB, but none of that progress will make it back to the Live version of the game.

Content
NEW KILLER - THE GHOUL
Killer Power - One-Eyed Terror

SPECIAL ABILITY: Kagune Leap

Use the Power button to charge and launch the Kagune, tentacles that attach to any vertical surface within range and quickly pull The Ghoul forward.

After completing a leap, The Ghoul has a window to perform a second consecutive Kagune Leap or put Kagune Leap into cooldown by using the active ability button.

Kagune Leap enters cooldown once The Ghoul has consume... Read more

Miss the PTB? Not on our watch ⌚ With North America switching to daylight saving time over the weekend, we're making sure you're all set for tomorrow's test build.

EDIT: Updated the Good Guy changes and dev note to clarify that the quicker acceleration will also apply to the start of Slice and Dice.

With the 8.6.0 Update quickly approaching, it's time once again to give you a look at the notable gameplay changes you can expect from the Public Test Build next week.

Read on for all the details:

STATUS EFFECT UPDATES


[CHANGE] Decreased self-mending time to 10 seconds (was 12)
[CHANGE] Decreased altruistic-mending time to 6 seconds (was 8)

DEV NOTE: We know that Deep Wound can be a frustrating mechanic to come up against as it slows down the pace of the game for Survivors. By reducing mending times, we hope to reduce this fric... Read more

Dead by Daylight will be undergoing a substantial Quality of Life Initiative, which should address many longstanding concerns and frustrations our players have been experiencing.
This Initiative will take place over the course of two phases. The first runs from April to June, while the second runs from July to December. For a full look at what’s scheduled, check out the roadmap below.



To accommodate for the scope of this Initiative, we have decided to delay several of our upcoming releases – including Chapters, Rifts, Events Modifiers, and Collections. That means there will not be a PTB tomorrow, but rest assured that we did not make this decision lightly.
We feel confident that delaying our upcoming releases to prioritize this Quality-of-Life Initiative will ultimately make Dead by Daylight stronger than ever. We’re always listening to our players, ... Read more