Best Builds for The Skull Merchant (2024)

The predatory killer with eyes everywhere, the Skull Merchant, came in the fog with the Tools of Torment DLC for Dead by daylight. With the ability to place deadly drones on the maps, the Skull Merchant can prove to be a deadly territory killer, able to stalk and harm survivors from afar if they stay within a drone’s radius for too long. So, to truly succeed in the Entity’s Trials, players should bring advantages that complement the Skull Merchant’s playstyle. Dead by daylight.

This guide covers the best builds for use with The Skull Merchant in Dead by daylightwith learnable and unlearnable advantages to suit both newbies and experienced players.

Updated on August 23, 2024 by Lewis Smyth: The controversial Skull Merchant will be getting another rework in the coming months, but until then, this updated guide will show you the most powerful perks you can use with her, as well as her best add-ons.

The Skull Merchant: Best Beginner Build (2024)

While the Skull Merchant’s base kit perks offer some interesting gameplay possibilities, they are quite situation and playstyle specific. Therefore, the base perks that best harmonize with her power are Keep injured survivors by providing a punishing healing speed for each hooked survivor. Whispers allow you to track nearby survivors and potentially Surprise them with your drones. Meanwhile, Hex: No One Escapes Death will cause trouble during the End Game Collapse.

• Leverage (The Skull Dealer) – Each time you hook a survivor, you will receive a token (up to 30). For each token, healing speed is slowed by 5% for 30 seconds after hooking a survivor.
• Sloppy Butcher (General Advantage) – Basic attacks inflict the Maimed and Bleeding status ailments for 90 seconds, slow healing by 25%, and reverse healing progress if left unchecked.
• Hex: No one escapes death (General benefit) – After the final generator is completed, all survivors will suffer from the Endangered status ailment and gain a 4% speed boost until the Hextotem is cleansed.
• Whisper (General Advantage) – This perk icon lights up and you hear the Entity’s whisper when you are within 32 meters of a Survivor.

The Skull Merchant: Best Build (2024)

The Skull Merchant’s power is to set up drones in loops to ensure that survivors cannot travel any distance without being hurt. Therefore, the best builds are based on powerful scourge hooks and aggressive slowing. The Skull Merchant is also a powerful user of The Dredges Perk Dissolution, as her ability to hurt survivors from a distance with her drones can be used to Deny resource use.

• Scourge Hook: Pain Resonance (The Artist) – The Killer starts with four tokens. For every other Survivor hooked to a white Scourge Hook, you lose one token and explode the generator with the most progress, causing it to lose 20% of its progress.
• Resolution (The Excavator) – 3 seconds after a Survivor is injured in any way, this perk activates for 20 seconds. While active, any pallet that a Survivor quickly jumps over within your Terror Radius will instantly break; this perk is then deactivated.
• Corrupt Intervention (The Plague) – At the start of the attempt, the three generators furthest from the Killer’s starting location will be blocked for 120 seconds or until the first Survivor is killed.
• Pop goes the weasel (The Clown) – 45 seconds after a Survivor is hooked, damaging a Generator will wipe 20% of their current progress.

The Skull Merchant: Best Add-Ons

Skull Merchant’s add-ons all offer interesting gameplay features, but only the strongest can turn the tide. This section of the guide lists The best add-ons from The Skull Merchantin order of rarity in the Bloodweb.

Ultrasonic speaker

Perhaps the best add-on of The Skull Merchant. This ordinary ultrasonic speaker reduces the Immunity to drone scan lines by 25%. This effectively means you can hurt them faster from a distance, better enabling the popular laser tag playstyle where players quickly switch the rotation of drones to tag survivors.

Charge

Survivors stuck in a Claw Trap cannot heal, are slowed when scanned by drones, and can be tracked by the Skull Trader’s radar. With the Supercharge add-on, Survivors stuck in these Claw traps last 15% longerwhich makes it a nice little upgrade.

Stereo remote microphone

Survivors can disable the Skull Merchant drones by approaching them and performing a QTE minigame. While it is generally better to recall disabled drones to restore pressure in an area, it is helpful when you are not nearby to Drones reactivate slightly faster to waste the survivors’ time and endanger them when the pursuit begins.

Adaptive lighting

The Skull Merchant’s base kit, Undetectable, is a hugely powerful aspect of her abilities and can be used to stay one step ahead of unsuspecting survivors. The Adaptive Lighting add-on increases the duration of their undetectable effect when she places a drone by 20%, making her a more effective stealth killer.

Vital target processor

When survivors in the Claw Trap are scanned by a drone, their movement speed is reduced and you gain Killer Instinct for their location. The Vital Targeting Processor increases this disabled effect by 3%so you have more time to catch up.

Infrared upgrade

Knowing the location of a survivor is half the battle in Dead by daylightand aura reading skills are key to finding them. With the infrared upgrade, every time a claw trap is removed, you can See the survivor’s aura for 4 seconds.

Brown noise generator

The Brown Noise Generator makes survivors in the claw trap clueless until the trap is removed. This add-on combines well with the Adaptive Lighting add-on and other hidden extras to scare survivors and trick them into making mistakes.

Random flashes

Like the Vital Targeting Processor, Randomized Strobes enhance the Skull Merchant’s ability to slow down survivors caught in claws by increasing the Duration of drones’ obstruction effect by 1 second.

Geographical display

Matching The Trapper’s Brutal Strength, the Geographical Readout increases the speed of interrupt actions by 20% for 8 seconds after using a drone. Not an insignificant effect, but remember to recall those remote drones after using this power.

Advanced motion prediction

For those who have not yet mastered the tracking ability of the Skull Merchant, there is the add-on Advanced Movement Prediction shows the location of survivors who receive a claw trap for 6 seconds. This and The Nemesis’ deadly tracker allow you to better trick survivors by detecting their movements through walls.

Dazzling unpublished manuscript

Disabling drones is one way for survivors to thwart the Skull Merchant’s traps. Using the Iridescent Unpublished Manuscript, a deactivated drone reaches a terror radius of 32 meters for 15 seconds, during this time They will no longer be recognizableThis power can thoroughly disorient survivors and works wonders on Dead by daylight‘s smaller interior maps.