For beginners, Dead by Daylight is tough. However, it is all the more satisfying when one finally succeeds – or at least that’s what Cortyn thinks.
Those who are new to Dead by Daylight will often lose. In the first ten, twenty, or thirty matches as a survivor, you will likely be the person who gets found and killed first. You panic, reveal yourself to the killer unnecessarily, or run directly into their arms. This can be frustrating quickly, and those who want to overcome this tough period need endurance and the will to learn from every match.
If you want action, you must learn patience
Although Dead by Daylight is a brutal game that relies on action in some moments, you need a lot of calm to understand the game mechanics with all its nuances. Especially newcomers have to endure a very long “spectator phase” to really participate.
Once you are out of the game, you get tossed into the lobby and have the option to leave the game directly or continue to observe the ongoing match. You can watch the other survivors and experience the game from their perspective, learning many things:
- How do they move?
- How do they turn their camera?
- When do they make noise?
- How do they outsmart the killer?
All these things can either be learned over hundreds of hours or you take the first 20 matches to not click “leave game” in anger immediately after dying, but instead observe and learn.
Learning jukes and outsmarting the killer
Some of my best “jukes” I learned from YouTube videos, where you can also learn a lot. My favorite is quite simple to perform, but it puts a satisfied grin on my face every time it works.
You basically need a long wall with an open window, which is freely accessible at least on the “exit side” of the window. The survivor jumps through and runs a few meters in a desired direction. However, once the killer also climbs through the window, you turn around, crouch down, and sneak directly to the killer’s “feet”.
Since the killer is “trapped” in their camera perspective while climbing through the window, they do not see the survivor. The YouTuber Ussylis demonstrates this in his video:
Please note that many other tricks from the video may no longer work due to mechanic changes.
There are many gameplay “tricks” like this, and mastering them to defeat the opponent with mind games is the essence of Dead by Daylight.
Have you seen the first images of the latest killer with split personality?
Killers also need to learn
Those who get “beaten up” as survivors and constantly end up dead might think that being a killer in Dead by Daylight is much easier. But that’s simply not true. If you kill a few “complete noobs” in your first two or three rounds, as you might still be one yourself, you’ll quickly find yourself playing against frustrating survivors.
Again and again, they will disappear without a trace or slam a pallet in your face, only to dance behind it with some good teabagging and mock you. That hurts and is painful, but it helps. Gradually, you learn from these mistakes, and over dozens of hours, you will become a killer that survivors fear.
Which killer is currently the strongest is revealed in our tier list of killers.
Both sides form a picture
Those who are struggling as survivors and are constantly overwhelmed by killers or even tend to say that killers are all “op” should try playing as a killer. As a killer, the perception is entirely different – you play from the first person perspective. Additionally, due to the viewpoint and slight desaturation of color, the gameplay feels different.
If you want to be a good survivor, you should definitely play a few rounds as a killer to understand what a killer sees and what they do not. The same goes the other way around, but to a lesser extent. A killer should also know how survivors see the game world and why they often seem to “vanish” without a trace.
The biggest challenge is that in Dead by Daylight there is no “kindergarten” mode where the game holds your hand. Although there is a tutorial, it only explains the basic mechanics and only roughly. How many nuances of the game work, you learn the hard way.
I hope that many more players can “push through” the tough initial phase and dive deeper into Dead by Daylight. Because right now, the game seems to me to be as fair and balanced as it hasn’t been for a long time. The perfect time for newcomers.
I don’t want to discourage anyone from trying out the game – but it does require time. Dead by Daylight has a brutal entry phase that has caused many in my circle of friends to never launch the game again after a handful of matches.
This tough entry phase makes Dead by Daylight much more intense and satisfying when you finally become a “good player”.
