The Skull Merchant is the newest killer in Dead by Daylight. She has deployable drones that excel at guarding locations around the map, notably generators, totems, and looping structures such as the main building. This guide compiles some of the Skull Merchant’s current best and most fun builds to make the most out of her cool abilities. Make sure to test out these builds and see how you do!
Skull Merchant Hex Totem Build
With this hex build, the Skull Merchant can place her drones over the hex totems. If the survivors decide to cleanse the hex totem, the drone will expose them and reveal their aura to the killer, allowing the Skull Merchant to interrupt.
If the survivors do manage to cleanse the totems, then the Skull Merchant can resurrect the totems with Hex: Pentimento and slow down the generator and healing speeds. Furthermore, if the survivors decide to just completely ignore the hex totems, then they will soon be in great danger due to Hex: Devour Hope and Hex: Plaything.
Hex: Devour Hope (The Hag perk)
Gain a token each time a survivor is rescued from a hook when the killer is at least 24 metres away. At 3 tokens, survivors are permanently exposed, and at 5 tokens the survivors can be killed.
Hex: Undying (The Blight perk)
When another perk’s hex totem is cleansed, its hex is transfered to this hex totem along with its tokens.
Hex: Pentimento (The Artist perk)
The auras of cleansed totems are revealed to the killer, and can be resurrected. For each totem resurrected at once, Pentimento gains a token. The number of tokens adds on the corresponding number of effects:
- Decrease all survivor’s repair speed by 30%.
- Decreases all survivor’s healing speeds by 30%.
- Decreases all survivor’s recovery speed by 30%.
- Decreases all exit gates’ opening speeds by 30%.
- All totems are blocked and cannot be cleansed.
Hex: Plaything (The Cenobite perk)
If there is at least one available dull totem, Hex: Plaything activates on a random totem each time a survivor is hooked for the first time. Plaything makes the hooked survivor suffer from the oblivious (cannot hear the killer’s terror radius) status effects until Hex: Plaything is cleansed.
For some added spice, throw in Hex: Haunted Grounds instead of Hex: Plaything to further punish survivors for cleansing totems.
Skull Merchant Generator Defence Build
The Skull Merchant can also use her drones to defend generators, and when combined with regression perks, can make generators very difficult to complete for survivors.
Jolt (General killer perk)
When a survivor is downed, all generators within 32 metres will explode with 8% progress loss and begin regressing.
Deadlock (The Cenobite perk)
When a generator is completed, the generator with the highest progress is blocked for 30 seconds.
Corrupt Intervention (The Plague perk)
At the start of the match, the three furthest generators will be blocked for 2 minutes.
Scourge Hook: Pain Resonance (The Artist perk)
4 random hooks will turn into scourge hooks. Each time a survivor is hooked on a scourge hook, the generator with the highest progression will explode and lose 15% progress and start to regress.
The perks Jolt and Scourge Hook: Pain Resonance will repeatedly regress nearby or high progress generators, and placing drones over the generators can further hinder survivors trying to complete them. Survivors can either waste time deactivating the drones, or risk getting downed from being exposed in the drone’s radius.
Corrupt Intervention and Deadlock work by blocking generators, making survivors waste more time waiting for the generators to be unblocked or finding another, meaning that the Skull Merchant will have lots of time to chase and set up drones without survivors doing generators too fast.
The Best Chase Build for the Skull Merchant
The Skull Merchant’s drones are strong at denying survivors’ access to strong looping locations on the map, such as the main building. If you use the Randomized Strobes and Prototype Rotor add-ons, they will slow down survivors and speed up the Skull Merchant’s movement within the drones’ radius, punishing survivors who enter the radius in chase.
Save The Best For Last (The Shape perk)
When you hit a non-obsession survivor, you gain a token. Each token (up to 8) reduces the recovery period by 5% after hitting a survivor. This allows you to quickly recover and hit the survivor again.
Play With Your Food (The Shape perk)
When you chase the obsession and let them escape, you can a token (up to 3 total). Every token gives you a 5% speed increase, but hitting a survivor loses a token.
Hex: Blood Favour (The Blight perk)
Whenever a survivor loses a health state, all pallets are blocked from being pulled down within 32 meters of the survivor for 15 seconds. This is a fantastic combination with the faster recovery from Save The Best For Last.
Lethal Pursuer (The Nemesis perk)
The auras of all survivors are revealed at the start of the match, and all survivor’s auras have an extended duration of 2 seconds.
This build’s perks allow for the Skull Merchant to quickly down survivors by blocking pallets with Hex: Blood Favour and Save The Best For Last, and Play With Your Food is great for an added speed boost. Lethal Pursuer also offers good utility to check the survivors’ locations at the start of the match and set up your drones without wasting time.
Since this build has no generator slow-down, the Skull Merchant can also put drones over generators to act as a built-in slow-down, as the survivors will want to destroy the drone before getting on the generator.
Skull Merchant Anti-Healing Build
Anti-healing builds can be fun to run on every killer, as you can catch survivors when they are at their most vulnerable and get an easy down. With the Skull Merchant in particular, you can catch healing survivors off-guard by entering into her drone’s radius to become undetectable and still see survivors’ auras.
A Nurse’s Calling (The Nurse perk)
The killer can see the auras of survivors healing/being healed within 28 meters.
Sloppy Butcher (General killer perk)
Basic attacks inflict the hemorrhage (lose partial heal progress by 7% per second) and mangled (25% longer healing time) status effects, and increase the speed at which partial healing progress is lost by 25%.
Unnerving Presence (The Trapper perk)
Whilst a survivor is inn the killer’s terror radius, the trigger odds of skill checks is increased by 10% and the success zones of skill checks is shrunk by 60%.
Coulrophobia (The Clown perk)
Whilst a survivor is in the killer’s terror radius, increases the rotation speed of healing skill checks by 50%, and reduces healing speed by 50%.
By using A Nurse’s Calling to see the location of healing survivors, the Skull Merchant can approach the survivors and make their skill checks quicker and harder with Coulrophobia and Unnerving Presence.
If the survivors stop healing, the progress will regress with Sloppy Butcher. Putting drones in safe looping areas will force survivors to heal in more obvious locations, and so interrupting their healing will ensure a quick down.
Using the Iridescent Unpublished Manuscript add-on, which gives your drones a terror radius after being set up, you can apply the terror radius perks to survivors near the drone, still getting value whilst the Skull Merchant is doing other things.
That completes our list of some of the best Skull Merchant builds in 2023. Remember that Dead by Daylight is just a game, so try to find a fun build that suits your playstyle! And if you don’t feel like playing Killer, check out some fun survivor builds to run in Dead by Daylight.