A nerf for killers has incidentally buffed the most annoying item in Dead by Daylight. Survivors can now almost always guarantee their escape.
The latest patch of Dead by Daylight is live and brought the “Resident Evil” chapter. This not only introduced the new, cool killer Nemesis with his zombies, but also a small but hidden buff for the survivors. The already annoying key has become even stronger due to a perk change with the killers.
What is the key? The key is a versatile item in Dead by Daylight with different abilities. The key can temporarily show a lot through addons, such as:
- Showing the aura of other survivors
- Showing the killer’s aura
- Showing the aura of the current obsession
- Showing additional auras
Additionally, it has the most important ability that rare and very rare keys come with by default, while green keys require an addon:
- Open the hatch.
What has changed? The change was made to the killer perk Franklin’s Demise. This perk was altered so that survivors drop their items upon being hit, and the item loses all its charges within a few seconds, making it unusable in most cases.
Previously, a hit survivor would drop their item, and if it wasn’t picked up again, it would be devoured by the Entity after a while and thus disappear from the game.
What effect does this have? Since the key only loses its charges, it remains as an item in the game world. No charges are required to open the hatch. A “blank” key is sufficient for that. Killer players have thus been robbed of their only means to remove a key from the game entirely.
What problem does this create? A rather large one: Especially in the best ranks (Rank 1-5), there are now many groups that bring along 3 or even 4 keys to guarantee their escape through the hatch. As the killer has no chance to prevent this – except to “slug” all survivors so that no one can open the hatch – many games now end prematurely and rather unspectacularly due to the hatch. For survivors, this is of course a nice thing, but for the killer, it is quite frustrating – especially since some endgame perks, like Blood Warden, can be circumvented directly as a result.
However, the developers announced some months ago that they would overhaul keys and the hatch. When and how this will happen is still unclear.
What do you think of this change? Good and well thought out? Or somehow silly?
