Hot on the heels of Alan Wake entering into the world of Dead by Daylight, we already have a brand-new chapter available to play right now!
Chapter 31 is titled “All Things Wicked”, and introduces the goth survivor Sable Ward, the terrifying killer The Unknown, a new map “Greenville Square” alongside a bunch of balance changes.
All Things Wicked originally released onto the game’s Public Test Build on February 20th, and several balance changes have been made since then for today’s release (March 12).
Continue reading to find out everything new in Dead by Daylight’s Chapter 31 update.
When does the DBD Chapter 31 Update Release?
All Things Wicked (aka Chapter 31) releases into the live game on March 12.
The New Killer – The Unknown
What is that? It’s the Unknown! Straight off the bat, I have to say that The Unknown has one of the wildest and creepiest character designs out of all the killers currently in the game. Plus, the Creepy Pasta-style teasers the weeks before its reveal were fantastic. Well done Behaviour, I really like this new killer.
The Unknown’s Power – UVX
The Unknown’s main power is called “UVX”. It’s an alien-looking projectile that is launched towards survivors and explodes into a purplish cloud. The projectile arc is pretty similar to a grenade launcher and can also bounce off of walls and objects before exploding, allowing for some cool shots.
Survivors that are within the blast radius are affected by the “Weakened Effect”. If survivors that are weakened are hit by the blast radius, they will lose a health state. It’s similar to Nemesis’ infection, where you have to be infected first for his whip to deal damage.
It takes two successful shots to injure a survivor with the UVX ability, and a third shot to down them fully. Survivors can look straight at The Unknown to slowly remove their weakened effect, similar to revealing Ghostface when he is stalking.
The Unknown’s Secondary Powers – Hallucinations and Teleport
The Unknown will spawn Hallucinations around the map intermittently, and their spawn time quickens whenever survivors become weakened by UVX. The Unknown can then teleport to these hallucinations, and leave behind a temporary decoy where they teleported from.
As counterplay, survivors can interact with the hallucinations and dispel them, but this will take longer if they are weakened.
The Unknown Perks
The Unknown has three unique perks, that can be unlocked for every other killer once you prestige the Unknown.
The Unknown first perk is Unbound. After a survivor is injured, Unbound activates and gives the killer 5% haste for 10 seconds after vaulting.
With its second perk, Unforeseen, the killer can transfer its terror radius to a generator after kicking it for 30 seconds (at the purple tier). Meanwhile, the killer will be undetectable – allowing the killer to trick and sneak up on survivors.
The Unknown’s final perk – Undone – is probably the best. Every time a survivor misses a skill check, the killer gains 3 tokens, up to a maximum of 30 tokens. When you kick a generator, all your current tokens will be consumed, and regress the generator by 1% per token, as well as blocking the generator for 1 second per token. So if the killer has all 30 tokens, one kick can remove 30% of the generator’s progress and block it for 30 seconds.
Overall, I really like The Unknown’s perks. I think that “unbound” is pretty uninventive, but the other two perks have the potential for some cool plays.
The New Survivor – Sable Ward
After seeing the huge popularity of the witch survivor Michaela Reid last year, Dead by Daylight managed to up the goth-witch-meter to 10 with their newest survivor – Sable Ward.
Aside from her killer style, she has some awesome perks, all of which revolve around the basement area of the maps. Her release also launches a brand-new type of perk: Invocation.
Sable Ward’s Perks
Sable Ward’s three perks are:
- Invocation: Weaving Spiders
- Strength in Shadows
- Wicked
Invocation: Weaving Spiders allows the survivor to interact with an invocation circle in the basement. After 120 seconds, the invocation will complete. All generators will have their maximum required generator progress reduced by 10 charges (1/9 of the total). However, the survivor becomes injured and broken (they cannot be healed) for the rest of the trial.
Strength in Shadows lets survivors heal themselves in the basement without a medic at 70% speed. Once finished healing, the perk reveals the killer’s aura for 10 seconds (at the purple tier).
Using the perk Wicked allows survivors to always successfully to unhook themselves from the basement hooks. On top of this, whenever the survivor unhooks themselves or is unhooked, they will see the killer’s aura for 20 seconds (at the purple tier).
From my initial impressions, I think that Strength in Shadows is probably Sable’s strongest perk, especially combined with Botany Knowledge. But Invocation: Weaving Spiders is a very inventive and original perk, with some good potential in three-generator situations.
New Map – Greenville Square
The new map is called the Greenville Square and is within the same realm as the Withered Isle (the Dredge and Haddie’s map). Excitingly, the map’s main building is a theatre, fitted with a neon-lit arcade and screen room.
Balance Changes
Well, that’s all the brand new content covered, so let’s go over all the gameplay updates featured in the new chapter.
Mangled Nerfs
The biggest gameplay change is the alteration to the mangled status effect, which makes healing a health state take 25% longer. Previously, survivors were inflicted with the mangled status effect until they finished healing.
Now, the status effect will have a timer, meaning that survivors can choose to wait out the status effect to not endure the slower healing. The length of the timer depends on the ability or perk that inflicts this status effect.
This definitely feels like a significant nerf to any perks that relied upon Mangled’s forced slower healing, such as Sloppy Butcher and Scourge Hook: Gift of Pain.
Pig Buff
The developers improved the weakest parts of the Pig’s kit – Ambush – by increasing the lunge’s duration and decreasing its cooldown.
On the other hand, the developers have made it so that the Pig cannot see the auras of the Jigsaw boxes.
In the PTB, the Pig’s reverse bear traps were given an increased timer once activated, meaning that survivors had a larger grace period to remove their traps. This led to many players online viewing this balance change rather negatively. This change has now been reversed, meaning that the changes to the Pig are a net buff (in our opinion).
The Hag Buffs
The Hag received some rather significant buffs to her base kit. Her teleport range to traps is now larger (48 meters, up from 40 meters), and the duration of her traps when activated is slightly longer (6 seconds, up from 5 seconds).
The developers also slightly decreased the time to set traps, the trigger range for her traps, and the time for survivors to wipe away the traps. A bunch of her add-ons were also reworked.
The Clown Buffs
My least favourite killer to play against, The Clown, received a big buff to his bottles. Firstly, he now carries 6 bottles by default (up from 4). The duration of the yellow bottle is now longer and has a shorter activation delay.
Thankfully, they didn’t buff his purple bottles, instead reducing the visual distortion that survivors receive when affected.
The Huntress Buffs
A surprising part of the patch notes was the buffs for the Huntress. She now has 7 hatches by default (up from 5) and her wind-up speed has decreased.
I felt that the Huntress was already pretty strong before this update, but the developers revealed she has the 5th lowest kill rates in the game, probably explaining this large buff.
Other Killer Changes
The Demogorgon received a small buff to his shred cooldowns, and the Doctor (who has the lowest kill rates in the game) saw buffs to his shock therapy.
The Blight received some small changes to his controversial but powerful add-on Compound Thirty-Three.
To see all the killer changes and their exact number updates, view the official patch notes.
Bloodweb Improvements
Last year, Dead by Daylight massively improved their leveling system by adding an auto-complete system for the blood webs. However, one nuance of the new system is that you could not use this feature for survivors who hadn’t reached prestige one yet. This made leveling up new characters just as tedious as before.
Thankfully, they have enabled the auto-complete feature for all characters as long as at least one character has been prestige. Thank you, developers!
And with those bloodweb improvements, that’s everything new coming in Chapter 31 of Dead by Daylight: All Things Wicked. I’m super hyped for this chapter, and I think the new killer, survivor and map all look very cool in their own way. The killer is pretty fun to play already, and time will tell how strong they are.
