I'm sure we are all too familiar with being at the mercy of a pallet loop as a killer. If you destroy the pallet, they'll run away or blind you, and if you try going the long way around, they'll just go the opposite way or jump the pallet.

Thankfully, there is an incredibly simple solution to this! Most of the time, newer players will take advantage of a pallet loop, and since they're too busy being a mischievous self-absorbed prick, they'll trust their instincts when it comes to the biggest decision they must face during a pallet loop; to pallet, or not to pallet.

What I'm about to recommend comes particularly in handy in smaller quarter pallet looping situations, where it's possible to close in on them but they'd just barely be able to make it over the pallet. When such an event arises, you should charge the side the survivor is on but then double back immediately to your side when you either get close enough for them to panic or you see/hear them about to or in the act of pallet vaulting. If you're successful, the survivor should give into instincts and vault the pallet, during which you're able to return to your side of the pallet that they're currently vaulting to, leaving them temporarily vulnerable.

Always prioritize hitting them over trying to pallet grab them. While it might be possible to grab them as they once again try to vault over to the safe side of the pallet, there's a good chance you'll end up not grabbing them in time, and after they're safe again, they will likely never fall for the pallet psychout for the duration of the trial. Hitting them on the other hand, is a 99.9% guarantee of success, as even if they're in the process of vaulting over the pallet again you have a 1-2 second window to hit them as they're doing it.

I would like to once again clarify that this is most effective in close-quarter loops. The larger the area you'll have to go around to fake them out, the harder it will be to make it back in time to hit them. This is not to say that it isn't possible, it's just more difficult and might end up embarrassing you more than if you never tried it in the first place. You could also try a similar strategy with windows, but there aren't many loops in any of the maps that will make it easy, or even possible.


Flashlights have been constantly nerfed since their introduction, but unfortunately it still hasn't stopped it from being the bane of virtually any killer (especially Wraith). Aside from during pallet stuns, the only other time a survivor is likely to attempt to blind you is immediately after you begin to pick someone up.

When you pick someone up, the animation takes about 1-2 seconds, giving a nearby survivor just enough time to position themselves accordingly and ruin your day. Now, your first instinct would likely be to try to turn away as soon as you finish the picking up animation, but the odds are 75/25 that you'll successfully be able to look away in time.

A tactic I've found to be surprisingly effective is to essentially dupe the nearby flashlight wielding survivor into believing you're right about to pick up a downed survivor, which will cause them to spring forward and aim their flashlight at your face. This will leave them temporarily vulnerable, and you'll have maybe a second to lunge forward and hit them before they realize what's going on. A good way to ensure that they fall for it is to walk towards them, let them back away, and then turn back to the downed survivor and begin walking over to them. The flashlight wielding prick will then follow closely behind and get into position, giving you an incredibly small window to do a 180 and lunge at them. If you can time it right, you'll get an almost guaranteed hit, as this would all happen in less than a second, and they wouldn't have enough time to lower their flashlight and turn tail and run before you'd be right on top of them. Injuring them will cause them to panic and flee, leaving you to pick up and hook your downed survivor in peace.

If you manage to pull it off, they'll likely be much more wary of trying to blind you during grabs for the remainder of the trial. However, even if you fail, it will likely have spooked them enough to at least think twice before trying to blind you another time.


Now obviously the word "tunneling" will have made some of you wince, and I wouldn't blame you. Thankfully for both of us, I'm not advising you to tunnel, but rather, trick others into thinking you are. Once a survivor is unhooked, if their savior isn't in an injured state, they will likely attempt to take a protection hit. Interestingly enough, I've discovered that if you give them the protection hit, but then continue after the person you previously hooked, there is a decent chance that the newly-injured person will tail behind you. Listen carefully for groans of pain and sobbing, if you can hear it not only from the person you are pretending to chase in front of you, but also behind you, the deception will have worked. Immediately after you're certain that you've lured them into your trap, do a 180 and immediately lunge behind you. Much like the flashlight trick, they will have neither expected or prepared for your attack, and you'll likely be able to down them.

It goes without saying that it can get pretty frustrating trying to play Dead By Daylight as a killer against cocky, crafty, or bold survivors. Especially if they're doing a "Survive With Friends". However, it is absolutely crucial that you don't let any taunting, mocking, mind-games, looping, or any other form of survivor torment get to your head. You won't be able to think clearly or strategically if you're becoming frustrated, angry, or emotional, which is incredibly detrimental for you and incredibly easy for them to take advantage of.

• If you have been chasing a survivor for more than 15 seconds, it's best to back down and find someone else to pounce on. Prolonged chases will often lead to irritation towards the survivor you've been chasing, and if you've been chasing them and them only for a decent period of time, the other survivors will likely start popping off generators, making you even more irritated. If you're getting nowhere chasing a specific survivor, go find one of their friends to hunt instead. While it might not seem like it, a change in prey is a great way to recharge your batteries towards that particular survivor. Don't let your pride or emotions get the better of you and make you insist on hunting that one survivor down. The only thing that'll lead to is a poor trial.
  
  
• Ignore any taunting directed towards you. This might seem like an obvious one, but it's surprisingly easy to unconsciously let mocking survivors get under your skin. If it persists, consider finding someone else to go after.
  
  
• If a survivor is blatantly standing in front of an upright pallet , walk away and find someone else. It's better than them possibly getting you and ticking you off.
  
  
• If you had a bad trial, and the survivors in it were particularly rude or taunt-inclined, sit through the recap but then return to lobby immediately. Waiting around isn't a good idea, as they might start harassing you or making fun of you in chat, which would only serve to make a bad experience worse.

Most of you have probably seen the meme "never let them know your next move". This is something you should take to heart when playing as a killer in Dead by Daylight. If you're constantly attacking people from the same angles, going after the same survivors, patrolling the same place, attacking the same gens, and doing the same things, the survivors will quickly catch on to your algorithm. And once they do that, they will exploit and abuse it for every ounce it's worth.

Obviously, the solution is to be inherently and utterly unpredictable. Approach survivors from different directions each time, constantly cycle who you're chasing and downing, do different patrols around different areas at any time and every time, attack generators at random, and basically do everything else you would normally do, except in different ways each time.

Survivors will find it harder to concentrate or plan if they're constantly having to be on the lookout, holding their breath until your next strike. While it's getting ever harder for a killer to have the element of surprise on their side, the element of unpredictability might just be all you need.

Don’t try to be too random though, make sure to have some sort of rhythm, but make sure to constantly alter it so that survivors can’t catch on to it. There’s a difference between being spontaneous and being careless.

One of the most important aspects a killer should be focusing on during a trial is pressure. Stressed o it survivors who have to keep their head on a swivel are much more prone to making mistakes and being less efficient than survivors who have breathing room. But in order to effectively pressure survivors, you need to know where to pressure them, and when the right time is to do so. While it might be tempting to apply a heavy amount of pressure as soon as possible, you’ll find that holding off in certain areas until later actually ends up being a lot more effective than doing it as early into the trial as you can. In this segment, I will be discussing both ways to put pressure on the survivors and when you should do it.

While it might not seem the most obvious or efficient choice to be focusing on during the beginning of the trial, making your opponents a hand short not only makes it harder for them to get things done, but also makes bold actions a lot riskier. In fact, it’s easy to fall under the impression that it doesn’t really make a difference. In order to show you why it makes a difference, I want you to think about it this way: if you’ve got four survivors, and you down and hook one, there’s three people still out there, meaning that two can stay on generators while a third goes to save the hooked survivor. And should the third survivor also go down, the other two can split up and go to both hooks. You can’t be two places at once, and unless you’ve got both survivors in the basement, you can’t 100% prevent an unhook between the two of them. However, if there are only three survivors left, only one can stay on a generator as the other goes for the unhook, and should the person attempting a rescue also go down, it’ll all fall on one person to make or break the trial for the survivors. This would obviously put a tremendous amount of pressure on the only survivor that isn’t hooked, and also put pressure on the second survivor going for an unhook, because they know that if they get downed, they’ll have put the other remaining survivor on the spot.


While it’s true that this means that you’ll be spread more thin, it also means that you’ll always have light pressure on the entire map rather than heavy pressure in one or two areas. This’ll make it so that all survivors repairing generators will have to keep their head on a swivel, rather than the ones repairing generators in the heavily patrolled areas. You will also be much more likely to encounter survivors if you’re patrolling the entire area and not just certain parts, as survivors won’t be able to simply avoid certain areas they know you heavily patrol, since you’ll be roaming the entire map. This will also make them have to consider where they do things, such as heal, repair, sabotage, cleanse, and create boons, because if they’re too out in the open, they’ll run the risk of being spotted.


Pallets give survivors not only breathing room, but leverage as well. Not only does it give them ways to put distance between them and you during a chase either by blocking your path or stunning you, but it also allows them ways to stall you, such as pallet looping or standing in front of a pallet, daring you to try to lunge at them in time. Pallets become more crucial to survivors as the trial progresses, since once you get down to the last stages of the trial, time becomes increasingly more vital to the killer, and pallets are an excellent way to waste said time. Plus, the less pallets there are, the more likely you’ll either win a chase or injure a survivor during one, as they have less obstacles to use, and considering how pallets are spawned in chokepoints, they give survivors a strategic advantage.

I will be frequently updating, improving, and expanding this guide, and will likely be putting in demonstration videos in the near future to better represent and visualize what I've been describing. I know it's a sort of a long read, but I hope that maybe some of my advice and tricks will prove useful to you as you continue your murderous rampage across the Entity's hundreds of realms. If you have any contributions, suggestions, questions, or more, please let me know in the comments below and I would be more than happy to see what I can do. I'm always open to adding other peoples strategies, tricks, tips, and ideas to this guide. Thanks for reading!