Stealthy Survivor Build – Dead by Daylight

Are you sick of the Killer finding you and hooking you? Do you hate looping? Wish your teammates flamed you more in the post-game chat? Well guess what: Killers and your fellow Survivors can’t stand this one weird trick: sneaking! In this guide, we’ll show you how to play as immersed as possible, making sure you get to actually spend more than five minutes in your next trial. Your teammates might hate you, but the Killer will hate you more.

What this build is: A fun way to practice hiding, and something you can try if you’re sick of dying quickly every game. This build is also a good way to earn the ire of your teammates, so keep that in mind, and do try your best to get gens done while running it.

What this build isn’t: The best way to play. While you could probably get to Iridescent grades with it, it’s sub-optimal for sure.

Why people get upset about “immersed” Survivors: When you’re sneaking around the map, it can look like you are prioritizing your survival over the survival of the team as a whole — and that’s not totally wrong. That being said, if everyone played super sneaky, the game would probably be much harder for the Killer, but most Survivors don’t have the patience to do so, or simply don’t enjoy playing hide-and-seek.

On the Killer side of things, some players don’t enjoy trying to find Survivors — to them, the game’s all about the chase. While I personally think the game is most interesting with a balance of both aspects (hiding and running), there’s no accounting for taste.

OK, with the caveats out of the way, let’s take a look at the build!

The Loadout

Being sneaky is mostly a state of mind, but getting a sneaky set of Perks and Offerings will help too.

Perks

For Perks, we’re going to take Iron Will, Urban Evasion, Balanced Landing, and Spine Chill:

• Iron Will makes sure that you can keep sneaking even if the Killer wounds you; you won’t make loud grunts of pain and may be able to lose them with clever use of Urban Evasion.
• Urban Evasion lets you crouch-walk around the map quickly, which is obviously quite sneaky.
• Balanced Landing is there for emergencies; if the Killer does find you, you can run to the nearest drop and then zoom away. You can always swap out Balanced Landing for another exhaustion perk of your choosing, like Dead Hard or Sprint Burst. I’m recomending Balanced Landing here because it’s probably the easiest exhaustion perk to use effectively.
• Spine Chill lets you start crouch-walking towards cover the moment you even think the Killer might be headed your way; the Perk lights up when it activates, which it will do anytime the Killer is looking in your direction and within 36 meters.

Items and Offerings

We won’t take any items, because items make you easier to see. If you really want, you can take a Medkit so that you can heal yourself and stop leaving blood trails, but a big red lunchbox isn’t very stealthy.

For offerings, consider Vigo’s Shroud, which guarantees you start as far away from the Killer as possible. Another good choice is a map offering for a location with lots of drop-offs (and therefore utilize Balanced Landing), such as The Game, Haddonfield, or Grave of Glenvale.

You could also take one of the Reagants that thicken the Dark Mist, since that’ll add to the overall sneakability of the map, but they don’t have a significant impact.

Using the Build

Your goal with this build is to stay alive, do generators, and rescue your teammates from the hook if you can. While sneaking around is a great way to stay off the hook, you probably won’t escape the trial if you don’t actually help your team, so make sure you aren’t sneaking around at the expense of getting stuff done.

Choosing a Generator

Since we don’t want to loop the Killer unless we’re forced to, we’ll have to adjust our usual criteria for what constitutes a “safe” generator. With our build and intended strategy, safe generators are:

• Generators that have lots of rocks, trees, or other line-of-sight blocking objects near them
• Generators that are next to or within a few meters of something you can fall from (a hill, a 2nd story, etc)

Ideally, you want to use cover that you can see over and around, so that you can use your Urban Evasion to move around the cover if the Killer looks for you.

It probably goes without saying, but you won’t always get to pick a perfect gen; remember that it’s better to do an unsafe gen than to do no gen at all. The exception to this is if you’ve already been hooked twice — if you’re on death hook, try to stay hidden until you’re certain the Killer isn’t in the area/is chasing someone else. Only then is it safe to get on a generator.

Using Spine Chill and Urban Evasion Together

New players and scared players tend to hide the moment the kitty lights up, but it’s really better to wait a moment and make sure the Killer is headed your way. Every second counts in DBD, so if you get off the generator every time Spine Chill activates, you’ll end up wasting a lot of precious time hiding when you don’t need to.

If Spine Chill only flickers, stay on your gen. If it lights up for more than a second and stays lit, start Urban Evading to cover (which you should have already identified). It’s important to understand where the Killer is likely to come from. Don’t just blindly move towards cover — constantly rotate your camera to cover all likely approaches, and try to spot the Killer ASAP. Here’s some things to consider:

• Where is the middle of the map? It’s likely the Killer will approach the generator you’re on from the middle of the map.
• Where are the other generators? Sometimes, the Killer won’t approach from the middle. This is usually because they’re coming from another generator, so trying to find and remember the location of the other generators will help you anticipate the Killer’s angle of approach.

The importance of this cannot be overstated: consider the Killer’s line of sight when you try to hide. I cannot begin to count the number of times I’ve (as Killer) seen Survivors crouch-walking in plain view because they didn’t take a moment to examine their surroundings.

Using Balanced Landing

Using Balanced Landing is relatively straightforward: if you fall off something more than 2 feet high, you’ll start sprinting when you land. To get the most value out of Balanced Landing, run in a straight line away from the Killer when you land. If there is a Jungle Gym or a loop with a Pallet, that is of course another great direction to run in.

As already mentioned in the section on generators, you should try and make a mental note of any nearby drops. That way, when you see the Killer coming, you can run to the nearest one — ideally one in the opposite direction of the Killer. Try not to waste Balanced Landing: Pay attention to where you’re going, and don’t fall off anything by accident — take the long way down the stairs or the hill if you aren’t running from the Killer, basically.

Getting Unhooks

Urban Evasion is great for getting stealthy unhooks as soon as the Killer has left the area. If there’s a chase going on near you, try to stay in the area and work on a gen if you can, hiding if they come too close. If the Killer picks up the Survivor, start moving towards them carefully, making sure you’re close enough that BBQ & Chili doesn’t reveal you (if you can hear the heartbeat, you’re close enough).

While it’s ideal to unhook as soon as possible, you don’t want to unhook if the Killer is coming back, since you aren’t running Borrowed Time. If Spine Chill lights up and stays lit while you’re going for the unhook, don’t unhook unless the person is almost dead or about to hit Phase 2 — it’s better to let them stay on the hook a little longer rather than unhooking and having the Killer immediately down and re-hook them.

Final Thoughts

At the beginning of the trial, it’s OK to play super safe, erring on the side of being stealthy instead of useful. As the game progresses, you should play more aggressively, doing generators even if they aren’t safe, and running around the map instead of crouch-walking (especially if you’re certain the Killer isn’t nearby). If you’ve been hooked once or twice, it’s then reasonable to start playing stealthy again, since you aren’t any use to your team if you’re dead.

We hope this Stealth Build guide was helpful! If you have any questions, comments, or just want to flame me for creating a guide that encourages playing immersed, use the comments section below.