The Dead by Daylight team is happy to announce the release of The Nightmare Rework. As we announced in our presentation of the Rework during the Dead by Daylight Third Anniversary Livestream, we have made some major changes to Freddy’s general gameplay, power and add-ons. We now present The New Nightmare. The Nightmare Rework is available now on all platforms.
SLEEPING MECHANICS
Microsleep
On the verge of falling asleep, Survivors facing The Nightmare constantly dip in and out of consciousness. The Killer is invisible at a distance, intermittently visible from 32 meters to 16 meters, and always visible in close range, making him difficult to track as he approaches.
New Sleep Cycle
Survivors will fall asleep passively. Successfully hitting a Survivor will also pull them into the Dream World immediately. Sleeping Survivors are subject to The Nightmare’s Dream Traps, and the terror radius is replaced with a lullaby, making it difficult to pinpoint how close the Killer is.
The wake-up action can be used on sleeping Survivors. Each time a survivor is woken up with the wake-up action, the next wake up action will take longer. A Survivor can also fail a skill check at any time to revert their sleeping progress.
The Nightmare rework also features a new interactable object, alarm clocks, which allows a Survivor to wake themselves up. Alarm clocks appear around the trial. When a Survivor falls asleep, the furthest alarm clock from their current location becomes active. They can make their way to the alarm clock to wake themselves up but doing so will require them to stop what they’re doing and spend time traversing the map. A Survivor that uses an alarm clock will be jolted awake, pausing their sleep timer for a moderate amount of time.
The Nightmare dwells in the Dream World, granting him unworldly powers. Sleeping Survivors will also be subject to his Dream Traps.
Dream Projection
The Nightmare can project a copy of himself next to a generator of his choice, causing the generator to gush blood in the process. From here, the Killer can choose whether he wants to take the place of the projection or cancel it and use it to force Survivors away from the generator. The cooldown of Dream Projection is reduced for each Survivor that is sleeping.
Dream Snares
The Nightmare can place Dream Snares on the ground, appearing as a pool of blood only visible to sleeping Survivors. When triggered, the snare will reach up and grab the Survivor, causing them to scream and lose their footing, making them run slower for several seconds. While under the effects of a Dream Snare, Survivors cannot fast vault a window.
Add-On: Dream Pallets
Through a selection of add-ons, the Nightmare can replace his Dream Snares with Dream Pallets. These pallets can be placed in any valid pallet location and appear just like regular pallets. Like snares, these traps are only visible to sleeping Survivors. When a Survivor attempts to throw down a Dream Pallet, they will not stun the Killer and instead explode into a shower of blood.
Springwood Map Rework
Over the years, Dead by Daylight has changed significantly, and we have adapted the way we create maps along with it. These days, a lot of work goes into making sure maps feel as fun and fair as possible, and we have developed new tools to help with that. Also, to ensure that older maps aren’t left behind, we have started updating existing maps to implement these new tools and the knowledge we’ve learned over the past few years. The first map update is Badham Preschool - the map that originally launched with the release of CHAPTER VI: A Nightmare on Elm Street™.
Variations
While the maps in Dead by Daylight are procedurally generated, there are a set of rules that the game follows. This includes details like what shape the map should be and where the unique buildings and landmarks should appear. The game then fills in the empty spaces with generic tiles, which are rotated randomly to further add to the variety.
With this update, four additional variations of the Badham Preschool map have been added (for a total of five). These variations share the same buildings and landmarks as the map you’re already familiar with but sport a completely different layout. Having multiple versions of the same maps allows us to take advantage of existing assets while adding more variety to the game.
Additionally, we have created many new generic tiles specifically for Springwood. This gives us the ability to generate a map with no repeating tiles, making the maps feel more unique each time you play them.
With this map update, we have started using new tools to help us better determine the strength of a specific loop, allowing us to factor the strength of a loop into the budget when generating the map.
Above is an example of our new tool in action. The green area on the ground indicates the area that a player can run.
Pallets are rated based on the length of the loop around them. A longer loop is safer for Survivors, giving them a larger margin for error. Shorter loops allow for more skill-based play, where Killers can change directions to either hit the Survivor or force them to drop the pallet sooner.
This allows us to spawn more unsafe pallets and fewer safe pallets while keeping the overall loop budget the same, promoting more skill-based gameplay. While the total number of pallets may be slightly higher than before, most pallets will be more interactive and can be dealt with faster than before. Additionally, randomly spawning objects will not appear along these loops, ensuring that a generator or hook cannot extend the loop.
The final part of the update is a general pass on the remaining aspects of the map. The buildings and landmarks were reviewed with minor changes being made where necessary. These changes–such as the new doorway on the side of the preschool and the gap in the railing of the large house–make the map flow better, giving you more freedom when moving around.
A pass was done on totem spawn locations to ensure they are better hidden and harder to spot from a distance. Lockers were also distributed across the map, often being paired with other lockers to add some unpredictability and encourage locker use. Finally, generators have been reviewed to provide a greater variety in the number of available repair slots, limiting the number of people that can repair a particular generator at once.
The Springwood update aims to introduce more skill-based and interactive gameplay while also adding some variety and improving flow. These changes are included in the mid-chapter update, which is now available on all platforms. We are excited to put our new tools in action for the first time and we look forward to seeing how they affect gameplay. As always, we’ll be keeping an eye out for your feedback.
See you in The Fog,
The Dead by Daylight team
