Dead by Daylight’s mid-chapter updates rarely move this many numbers at once. Patch 10.2.0 went live on 6 October 2026 and rebuilt the General-perk catalogue — the free, always-unlocked perks a new player starts with — while also adding an in-trial text channel called the Survivor Intent wheel, reworking the options that let players leave a match early, and opening a new Rift. Eight days later, patch 10.2.1 cleaned up the crash list; Haunted by Daylight had already opened its Void Portals across every map on 13 October. Here is what actually shipped, and what it changes for the people who have to play against it.
What changed: Behaviour’s pre-patch Dev Update put the size of the 10.2.0 perk pass at “58 perks are changing”, grouped as 26 perks affected by the Diminishing Returns system, 23 General perks, and 9 that either promote unhealthy playstyles or are oppressive. Why it matters: The pass rewrites the free perks that teach new Survivors and Killers how the game works, compresses the spread between perk tiers, and gives solo Survivors their first native way to coordinate inside a trial without voice chat. Who should care: Anyone whose build leaned on Agitation, Whispers, Resilience or Windows of Opportunity; solo-queue Survivors; and players coming back for the Haunted by Daylight event.
The perk pass, by the numbers
Behaviour previewed the work in a Steam news post titled “Dev Update | 10.2.0 Perks Update”, which opened: “Today we wanted to talk to you about some of the perk changes (spoiler alert: 58 perks are changing) and content that you can expect in the next PTB, as well as the reasonings behind them.”
The same post framed 10.2.0 as the delayed bill for an earlier system change rather than a standalone balance sweep: “Back in update 9.6.0, we added Diminishing Returns to the game. You may have noticed that this feature did not ship with exponential balance changes to accompany it; we wanted to ease players into the change, monitoring the impact on perk selection first.” The 10.2.0 pass is where that came due, and the Dev Update split it three ways: “Overall, we will have 26 perks affected by these changes”; “we are making changes to 23 general perks to breathe new life into them”; and “We’re also adjusting 9 perks that either promote unhealthy playstyles or are oppressive while avoiding the impacts of Diminishing Returns.”
The General-perk group is the one that reaches the widest audience. The 10.2.0 patch notes describe it as “a pass on General Perks - the perks new players gain access to when they begin their journey,” adding: “We want to update them because a lot of them haven’t been updated in a long time.” Two goals run through it — giving the old free perks a reason to be picked over premium ones, and closing the spread between perk tiers. The Dev Update says the team is “bringing Tier I and Tier II values closer to what players can expect from a fully upgraded perk to support our newer players.”
| Perk (role) | Before 10.2.0 | After 10.2.0 |
|---|---|---|
| Agitation (Killer) | 6/12/18% Haste while carrying a Survivor | 14/16/18% |
| Whispers (Killer) | hear whispers within 48/40/32m of a Survivor | within 28/26/24m, plus 5% Haste while outside that range |
| Fire Up (Killer) | 4/5/6% faster per token | 6/7/8% faster per token |
| Deerstalker (Killer) | the Survivor with the least chase time sees your Aura for 3s | 4s, and the reveal is now reciprocal |
| Resilience (Survivor) | 3/6/9% faster injured action speeds | 7/8/9% |
| Better Than New (Survivor) | 12/14/16% faster to the Survivor you just healed | 40/45/50% |
| We’ll Make It (Survivor) | 100% faster healing for 30/60/90s after an unhook | same 100% speed, for 70/80/90s |
| Calm Spirit (Survivor) | Totem, Chest and silence actions 40/35/30% slower | 8/9/10% faster |
| Windows of Opportunity (Survivor) | Auras of Pallets and Windows | Auras of Windows within 24m, 10% faster vaults, 40/35/30s cooldown |
Every value above is a direct before-and-after from the published patch notes, not a projection.
What the pass actually changes
The tier compression is easiest to see on the Survivor side, where several flat percentage perks were lifted past their old ceiling. Better Than New is the biggest single jump: the buff it hands to the Survivor you finish healing — to their blessing and cleansing, their healing speed and their Chest unlocks — went from 12/14/16% to 40/45/50%.
Resilience is the clearest illustration of the “close the tiers” goal. Every injured action speed it touches — healing, repairing, vaulting, unlocking and rummaging Chests, sabotaging Hooks, unhooking, blessing and cleansing Totems, opening Exit Gates — moved from 3/6/9% to 7/8/9%. A fully-tiered Resilience gained nothing at all; a Tier I Resilience nearly tripled. Two players at opposite ends of the upgrade tree now get a similar payoff from the same slot.
We’ll Make It was changed in duration rather than magnitude. It has always healed other Survivors 100% faster after an unhook; the window for that heal went from 30/60/90 seconds to 70/80/90 seconds, which mostly matters for the Tier I copy a new player owns.
Calm Spirit inverts its own cost. It used to make Totems, Chests and scream-avoidance interactions 40/35/30% slower — the perk punished you for running it. It now makes blessing, cleansing and Chest-opening 8/9/10% faster while keeping the crow and scream prevention that players actually take it for.
On the Killer side, the pattern is the same: lift the low tiers. Agitation’s carrying Haste moved 6/12/18% → 14/16/18%, so Tier I gained the most and Tier III was untouched. Fire Up’s per-token speed went 4/5/6% → 6/7/8% across pallet breaks, Generator damage, pick-ups and vaults. Deerstalker gained a second of aura reveal, from 3s to 4s, and the reveal now runs both ways — “While a Survivor sees your Aura, you see their Aura.”
Whispers is the exception: it changes behaviour rather than degree. Its detection range was cut hard, from 48/40/32m to 28/26/24m, and it picked up a new effect — 5% Haste while there is no Survivor inside that band. The patch-note dev note explains the intent: “We want to give Whispers a new benefit to distinguish itself from being exclusively about information. The intention behind the added Haste is to help better traverse the map while looking for Survivors.”
Windows of Opportunity, Dark Sense and the map-learning job
The highest-profile rework in the pass is Windows of Opportunity. The perk used to show Survivors the Auras of both Pallets and Windows within range — a utility so universal that the 10.2.0 notes describe it as having “long reigned as one of the most used perks” for its visibility on resources. It now shows the Auras of Windows within 24m, speeds up Window vaults by 10%, and starts a 40/35/30s cooldown after each vault.
Its old job was reassigned. The dev note states plainly that “Windows of Opportunity’s benefits have been added to Dark Sense,” and gives the reason: “Learning maps and pallet spawns is core to improving at Dead by Daylight, so we want this to be available to anyone joining us in the Fog with a general perk!” Dark Sense, a General perk, now reveals Pallets and Windows within 32m, other Survivors’ Auras and the Killer’s Aura when the Killer closes to within 20m for 13/14/15 seconds after a Generator completes.
Behaviour kept the rework through PTB feedback. The “PTB to Live Changes” post says: “While we understand that there were many concerns about this change impacting newer players, we do believe that Windows was doing too much and overshadowing other perks, so we will be keeping these changes. We hope that making other Survivor perks more useful will make up for this, even with different activation conditions – such as Dark Sense.” The same post confirms Borrowed Time was reverted: “we’ve reverted Borrowed Time back to its Live iteration.”
Survivor Intent: eight messages and a cooldown
Survivor Intent is the update’s flagship feature. It lets Survivors send and receive short text messages during a match: hold the scroll button on a mouse, or the right d-pad input on a controller, to open the messages wheel, then hover and release to send one of 8 predefined messages. Inputs are customisable, and sent messages appear to all Survivors next to their information on the left side of the screen.
Anti-spam is built in. A 1-second cooldown applies when players send messages too quickly, and “if a player keeps spamming, their cooldown will increase up to 5 seconds”; waiting resets it to its shortest duration. The system is enabled by default and can be switched off in Settings, on a new Gameplay tab under “Messages”. Players who opt out are flagged with a “no” icon in Match Details so teammates can see at a glance who can read them. Players can also mute and unmute others in Match Details — and “muting is not communicated to the muted player.”
One line buried in the wiki’s “Changes from PTB” section deserves more attention than it got: “Bots now listen to Intent messages sent by players, and will change their goals accordingly.” That makes the wheel a coordination tool for the bot-filled matches that the same update made easier to leave.
The design problem is familiar to anyone who plays team games with strangers — PUBG shipped a comparable fix for its own comms gap, as covered in PUBG 43.2: Vehicle Spawn Balance and New Radials. Dead by Daylight’s version is deliberately narrower: 8 preset messages, no free text, and an opt-out that preserves the solo experience for players who want it.
Haunted by Daylight: Void Portals and roaming Haunts
The Haunted by Daylight event started on Tuesday, 13 October at 11:00am Eastern, per the 10.2.1 notes. The Void Tile from previous years is gone — “The Void Tile from previous years is no longer accessible, however Void Portals and Void Haunts are present in all trials.”
| Event element | What it does |
|---|---|
| Void Portals | Paired up; using one sends you back and forth to its partner |
| Void Rifts | Open a new pair of Void Portals that stay open for the rest of the trial |
| Roaming Haunts | Slowly traverse the map, seeking out Survivors to Hinder them |
| Void Energy | Collected in-trial and spent on Event Abilities — no crafting required first |
| Void Crystals | Survivors start with them; drop Smoke Bombs or place the crystal on a Generator to repair it remotely |
| Empowered Breaks | A Killer event action that makes kicking faster |
The risk-and-reward hook is the portal economy. Survivors can use a Void Portal to gather “lots of Void Energy at once, but risk the Killer being able to teleport directly to that Portal and jumpscare them.” Killers get their own tools — launching Void Haunts and using Empowered Breaks. Behaviour also removed a step from last year’s loop: “Players no longer need to craft in the Void to gain Event Abilities. They can use Void Energy as soon as they have gathered enough to use an Ability.”
10.2.1 and the leave-a-match cleanup
Patch 10.2.1 landed on 14 October. Its headline change is the Abandon/Surrender/End Trial tidy-up. A Survivor now gets the Surrender option “when there are no other human survivors, and at least one bot”. A Killer gets End Trial “when all remaining Survivors are bots” — the older “in the Dying State” requirement was dropped.
The 10.2.0 notes had already explained what each option is for: Abandon “gives a Survivor/Killer the opportunity to leave a Trial if conditions do not promote fair or engaging gameplay (i.e. too many bots)” and counts as an MMR draw; Surrender is for a “outcome [that] is inevitable and unfavourable” and counts as an MMR loss; End Trial lets a Killer finish a decided match, and its “MMR outcome depends on the total match results.” Two older conditions that could be gamed were removed — one for a Survivor repeatedly recovering from the Dying State, and one that triggered when no Generator had been “completed or worked on for a prolonged window.”
10.2.1 also changed the HUD for stack-based Killer powers, so that a depleted Huntress or Trickster power shows “0” instead of a looping arrow icon, and adjusted The Mastermind’s Virulent Bound redirection.
A short known-issues list shipped with the mid-chapter and is still worth carrying forward: This is Not Happening is modifying several special Skill Checks, Stake Out is losing tokens during several special Skill Checks, Hex: Thrill of the Hunt is causing Totems to appear blocked when they are not, Dark Arrogance is missing its increased blindness, The Huntress’s axe can be broken by throwing it out of bounds, The Judgment’s Divine Light can detect Survivors hiding in Lockers, and the Demogorgon and Xenomorph models can be seen while travelling between floors.
What to watch next
Hotfix 10.2.2 is listed as TBA. The near-term question is behavioural, not numerical: whether the buffed free perks actually displace premium picks, or whether they just raise the floor for players who never bought them. The Surrender and End Trial conditions are the other thing to watch — they are the first update in a long while that treats bot-heavy matches as a normal end state rather than an edge case, and the 10.2.1 notes make the trigger easier to reach in both directions. Behaviour has also said it intends to keep iterating on Survivor Intent, “including adding more selectable messages” — so the eight-message wheel is a starting point, not a ceiling.