Dead by Daylight Update: Survivor Intent System and Perk Overhaul

Dead by Daylight's newest update brings meaningful quality-of-life improvements alongside a sweeping balance pass that touches some of the game's most foundational systems. Whether you're a Survivor looking to coordinate without voice chat or a Killer whose favourite perk just got a tune-up, there's plenty to dig into here.

Survivor Intent System

Survivors can now send short predefined messages to their teammates mid-trial. Holding the scroll-wheel button on mouse or the right d-pad input on a controller opens a message wheel with eight options. Releasing the input while hovering a message sends it, and all Survivors can see it displayed next to the sender's name on the left side of the screen. Players can customise which messages appear in their wheel via the new Gameplay tab in Settings, and anyone who prefers silence can opt out entirely. A spam-prevention cooldown starts at one second and scales up to five seconds with repeated rapid sends, resetting when the player slows down.

The Match Details screen also gains the ability to mute or unmute individual players, with muting handled discreetly so the muted player is not notified.

Abandon, Surrender, and End Trial Rework

The conditions governing early-exit options have been restructured to reduce incentives for negative play. Two previous triggers have been removed: the Survivor condition tied to repeatedly recovering from the downed state, and the Killer condition related to prolonged generator inactivity.

In their place, the system now breaks into three distinct options:

• Abandon is available to a Survivor when all other human players have been replaced by bots, or to a Killer when all remaining Survivors are bots with at least one not in the Dying State. It counts as an MMR draw.
• Surrender becomes available to Survivors when every Survivor is simultaneously in the Dying State, representing an unwinnable situation. It counts as an MMR loss.
• End Trial is a new Killer-exclusive option triggered when all remaining Survivors are bots in the Dying State. Remaining bot Survivors are sacrificed, and MMR outcomes reflect the overall match results.

General Perk Overhaul

Behaviour has taken a broad look at the starter perk roster, updating perks that had gone untouched for years to better reflect the current state of the game. Many changes bring lower tiers closer in power to tier three, while others add new secondary effects or simplify existing conditions.

Highlights from the killer side include:

• Agitation now grants 14/16/18% Haste while carrying a Survivor, up from a low base of 6%.
• Bitter Murmur extends its aura-reading range and duration significantly across both triggers.
• Dark Arrogance picks up a new effect: missed basic-attack cooldowns are now 15/20/25% shorter.
• Dead Man's Switch introduces a two-second delay before a generator can be blocked, encouraging active pressure rather than passive denial, and gains a new per-hook cooldown structure.
• Distressing now also slows Survivor generator repair speeds within the Terror Radius by 6/7/8%.
• Dominance has been expanded to react to totem blessing and cleansing, now blocking the totem for 25 seconds, triggering a scream, and revealing the Survivor's aura.
• Help Wanted can now compromise up to three generators simultaneously and adds passive regression to non-repaired generators as a second-tier bonus.
• Hex: Nothing but Misery now activates after four basic-attack hits instead of eight, and adds a vault speed penalty on top of the existing Hindered effect.
• Hex: Thrill of the Hunt has been reworked to require an active hook before totem blocking begins, tying its powerful defensive benefit to in-match effort.
• Insidious now grants Undetectable after just two seconds of idling and provides a grace period of 6/7/8 seconds after acting before detection resumes.
• Iron Grasp and Knock Out both receive meaningful numerical improvements to their core effects.

For the complete list of all perk changes and the full developer notes, check the official announcement on Steam.

Read the full patch notes on Steam