In Dead by Daylight, killer players go through several phases. Which of these 13 phases are you currently in?
The asymmetrical horror game Dead by Daylight can be quite exhausting. It has not only a complex system of perks and abilities but also an extremely steep learning curve. If you don’t grind through the tough early phase for several dozen hours, you will never get a foothold. And yet, there are a lot of parallels between individual players. We will show you the 13 phases that every killer player goes through over the course of their life.
Phase 1: You try your hand as the Trapper and the Spirit. You are just getting started and are at Rank 20, but immediately realize that you don’t belong here. Even though you have virtually no perks, you repeatedly get 3 or even all 4 survivors. Killers seem to be quite OP in this game – or are you just too good?
Phase 2: You have completed 10 games by now. You want to play the Nurse. Although it says she is “hard” to play, you are a gamer. How hard can “hard” be when you have rolled over all survivors so far as if there was no tomorrow? After all, the Nurse can teleport, so there shouldn’t be any problems.
You get completely annihilated by the survivors, don’t hook a single one, and decide never to touch the Nurse again.
Phase 3: You reach Rank 15 and encounter your first Nea with a flashlight, who keeps shining it at you provocatively. You get completely crushed – either because you refuse to give up the chase against the Nea or because the whole group consists of smurfs playing together as friends.
The constant blinding from the flashlight is annoying, but the teabagging at the exit gate hurts your soul.
Phase 4: Until now, survivors were your opponents. Now they are your enemies. You mercilessly chase the next player with a flashlight. You don’t even realize that he just looted the flashlight from a chest and is otherwise a total newbie. The frustration over the last round runs deep. You camp the hook of poor Dwight with his flashlight until he dies.
Phase 5: Slowly, you start losing more and more games and realize that the game is not as simple for killers as you thought. The survivors you encounter know exactly how to loop you around objects for a long time, use pallets more strategically, and support each other more frequently and effectively.
Phase 6: You reach Rank 10. Slowly, you feel confident that you understand the game correctly. You consider yourself quite good. You think that you finally understand enough to be successful as the Nurse.
You play a round as the Nurse.
You get completely annihilated.
You decide not to play the Nurse again.
Phase 7: You reach Rank 7 and play against the first survivors in ranks 4-1. You don’t hook them all anymore, but in every round, you at least get a few of them on the hook. Your perk collection is large and you experiment. While you initially relied on NOED, you start experimenting more and more with other perk combos that help to take one or two survivors out of the game.
Phase 8: You feel great since you disabled the endgame chat. You have a good feeling and can play acceptably well with every killer (except for the Nurse). Slowly, you start approaching the red ranks. You fall a bit, climb back up. But in the end, day by day, it’s a gradual upward trend. Flashlights, friend groups, keys – nothing can stop you.
Phase 9: You have reached Rank 2. You are a god. Survivors tremble when they see your name. At least you think so. You have understood which perk combinations are completely overpowered and which addons drive survivors insane. Whether as the Trapper, Spirit, Huntress, or Legion – you clear the field.
You can do it all.
(Except play the Nurse).
Phase 10: For the briefest moment, you are happy because you have reached Rank 1.
But something is not right.
It seems that the survivors have become smarter. Better. More ruthless.
Where you used to end a chase after 30-40 seconds, it now takes several minutes. Have survivors always been this fast? How do they manage to loop you around the same hut for so long and evade you so well?
You realize that Rank 1 is not necessarily the same as Rank 1. Apparently, the skill range of survivors at Rank 1 varies from “waffler with disconnection syndrome” to demigods. And unfortunately, the second group predominates.
Phase 11: You read forums, watch YouTube videos, and educate yourself. Everything points to the fact that there is only one answer to regain the upper hand. You need to learn this one killer that everyone calls the best.
You decide to pick the Nurse and learn her. It is a painful and exhausting process. You lose ranks. One, two, three, four. It just keeps going downhill.
- It takes 20 games until you have a sense of how far a teleport goes.
- 40 games until you can also gauge your second teleport.
- 60 games until you time your teleport so you land near a survivor.
- 80 games until you sometimes hit survivors.
- 100 games until you hit survivors twice in a row.
Phase 12: Finally. You are at the top. Rank 1 as the Nurse. You don’t need perks. You don’t need addons. They only make your job easier. Every one of your teleports is precise. You can only smile tiredly at pallets. You have even started occasionally packing NOED again – just to teach the survivors that they should really get rid of totems.
From now on, you have the wonderful position of not caring about anything. No matter what bugs or nerfs come into the game. With the Nurse, you can achieve anything.
Phase 13: You give Dead by Daylight a chance on console as well.
You play the Nurse because you are good at it.
You sell your console.
Have you recognized yourselves in the phases? Or were you born as the “Nurse God” and never had any problems?
