Skull Merchant is a brutal killer in Dead by Daylight that developer Behavior Interactive even admits is difficult to master. While its ability seems daunting, it’s finding the right perks and plugins that you’ll have trouble with. This guide outlines the best setup for The Skull Merchant so you can take out survivors on your first run with it.
Related: How Teamwork Survivor perks work in Dead by Daylight
Best build for The Skull Merchant
We tested a few builds with The Skull Merchant and found this one, with possible minor variance, to be the best. In each section below, we explain how to get the most out of perks and add-ons, so you’re not left in the dark as soon as you start hunting.
Best Profit Compilation for The Skull Merchant
Gamepur screenshot
The perks we recommend you use with The Skull Merchant and why are as follows.
- Dissolution: When you damage a Survivor, this buff activates for 20 seconds. Destroy any pallet a Survivor quickly jumps onto while in your Terror Radius while active. You’ll be hunting a lot with The Skull Merchant, and this buff punishes Survivors for going too far. It also helps ensure that chases run smoothly, guaranteeing a hit.
- To profit from: Hooking a survivor gives you a token up to 10 total. Then when you hook a Survivor, the buff kicks in, reducing the rate at which Survivors can heal by 5% for each token you have for the next 30 seconds. If an ordeal lasts too long, you’ll hook more survivors, and this perk prevents them from healing as quickly as they would like. Many drop out, which means you can take them down the next time you see them.
- Shake: When you put a survivor into a kill state with a basic attack, all generators within 32 yards will explode and start knocking back. They also take an initial burst of damage to add insult to injury. When Survivors enter the detection range of your drones, they activate an effect that will allow you to take them down with a single hit. This augments Jolt and makes him essential for The Skull Merchant.
- iron fist: The effects of a Survivor’s combat are reduced and the time he has to fight out of range is increased. This makes your life easier, as you can end up with several survivors to connect with quite quickly.
This loadout of perks takes full advantage of The Skull Merchant’s ability: eyes in the sky. To get the most out of this killer, you need to place drones near generators in a trial and then run towards them when survivors activate them. A Survivor is exposed if they can’t disarm a drone or stay in range too long, meaning you can shoot them down in one shot. Jolt ensures you get the most out of this hit, and the leverage causes Survivors to be more risky, so even if they escape the drone’s radius, they’ll still come across one. Disbanding just helps you get to a Survivor faster and without getting stunned, and Iron Grasp is great for hooking up Survivors and moving on. You can’t place drones near a hooked survivor, so you’ll need that extra time to find one farther away from your established drones.
While we think this is the best set of perks to use with The Skull Merchant, we can suggest an alternative. Instead of using leverage, you can trade Scourge Hook: Monstrous Shrine. This turns four random hooks into Scourge Hooks, which progress faster when you’re out of their radius. The leverage is great as it hinders the Survivor’s ability to heal, but the Blight’s hooks can go so fast that a Survivor is sacrificed before anyone can save them.
The best additional compilation for The Skull Merchant
Gamepur screenshot
Of the two additional slots it has, there are two that work best with this build. We have described them below.
- Expired batteries: Forces all Survivors to start with a Claw Trap and increases the batteries of all Claw Traps. Although they can be removed by Survivors once the batteries are depleted, they recharge within a drone’s radius. These items allow you to track Survivors across the map, even when they are not near a drone, and will push them into the Exposed state faster. This instantly eliminates a survivor within the first minute of the event.
- Advanced Motion Prediction: Any Survivor who enters the active area of a drone has their aura revealed for a short time. This is incredibly powerful because you get an audio notification for that survivor and you can easily see it on the map. This is very useful when trying to get survivors away from generators and force them to keep moving within a drone’s radius, recharging their claw traps.
- Offering – Cut Piece: We think Cut Coin is the best offer to use with The Skull Merchant because it further limits the options available to survivors. With the leverage advantage, most medkits will not heal a survivor. The whole team has to work with what they brought to the Test, and that doesn’t last long. That’s a lot, as it plays off what The Skull Merchant does in real life, stripping away the advantages of competitors until only the basics remain.
These add-ons and the offering make it very difficult to be a survivor in the next trial. You’ll have to spend a lot on Bloodweb to acquire enough to use for each trial, but it’s worth it. We found that survivors barely used items against us because they were focused on working on generators or just didn’t want to be found. The thing is, these addons make them easy to find, download, and plug in, which means very few Survivors will walk away from you. Even when the exits are active, you can use drones on the doors to push back and get additional kills.
Source