Dead by Daylight: The Hallowed Blight Event #31DaysofHorror

Dead by Daylight fans know what they want for an event and Behaviour tries new ways to deliver that. We want the chance to get a lot of bloodpoints. We want new game mechanics and exclusive items and skins to the event. And we want that event happening at Halloween.

Too spoopy for me. The Will ‘O Wisp flashlight is back.

Enter The Hallowed Blight event. This Halloween-themed event runs from 19 October to the 2 November and there’s a lot to take in. Most importantly, we see the return of our beloved spooky flashlights and medkits. These were cosmetics added in last year for the previous All Hallow’s Eve Halloween event. They’re not the strongest items, but they’re charming. The flashlight projects an image of a ghost and the medkit has a glowing green skull on the front. These can be picked up in the bloodweb for survivors.

The big draw this year is a wonderful expansion of the lore of the Dead by Daylight universe. The game features quotations under the perks from the journals of previous survivors and killers pulled into the Entity’s realm. One of these characters is Vigo, an inventor and researcher who studied the biology of the Entity at some point. The Hallowed Blight event features 13 new journal entries leading up to Halloween. These journals come from Benedict Baker, another recurring character in the lore who actively hunted down the Entity’s realm and became trapped.

All of the event shenanigans connect to this new lore. Benedict discovers Vigo’s entries during the Entity’s annual purge. Once a year, the realm is stricken with a blight that transforms the landscape into hellscape of oozing pustules. The generators are untouched during the event, but the hooks and rocks can become infected. Gathering samples from these pustules allow you to transform characters in the game, infecting certain killers with the blight and Claudette and Dwight with the desire to research the blight.

Wraith’s cosmetic sees the blight overtake his body in roots.

This is the first time Dead by Daylight has added an extra objective on top of the generators for survivor and it’s a fresh gaming choice. You can interact with the pustules to fill vials of fluid samples. This interaction does not help free you from the killer’s grasp, but does work towards unlocking the new cosmetics. The new mid-chapter patch was all about slowing the game down a little bit and this new objective is really slowing down players’ progress towards escaping.

On the killer side, there are special hooks infected with the blight. You hook a survive on there to collect samples, as well. Each hook only counts once for the event, and you need six hooks to fill a vial.

Here’s the big problem and Behaviour did it to themselves. The Hallowed Blight event features five new killer cosmetics (Trapper, Wraith, Hillbilly, Doctor, Huntress) and two new survivor cosmetics (Claudette, Dwight). Behaviour has decided for whatever reason to create artificial scarcity of the cosmetics. Each full body cosmetic costs 30 vials, but Behaviour is cutting us off at 60 vials total. Throughout the two week event, you can only earn 30 vials as a killer and 30 vials as a survivor. This is such a poor decision. Players are going to grow tired of the event real quick, even with big blood point bonuses, because the new objectives can be completed in a long gaming session.

I checked in on a few streamers who managed to get over 25 vials either as the killer or the survivor over the course of 10-12 hours, including breaks, games where they barely made progress, and long lobby wait times. So now what? They do the same on the other side and finish the event in two days.

Hillbilly’s cosmetic has him covered in bone and muscle growth oozing a glowing pus.

I know most players don’t play for that long in one sitting, but I do know that any event lasting more than a week in the past led to a lot of anger in the community. Killers and survivors tend to be nicer to each other at the start of an event. A killer might let survivors interact with the special objectives before attacking, and survivors might not struggle when the killer is clearly going for an event hook. As more people rush through and complete the objectives, that kindness disappears. Players who don’t get to play for hours on end in the initial weekend usually struggle to get the same objectives even with days and days to complete them. The players who complete the goals are bored and want to go back to normal play.

The only good choice for this event was rolling out the protection of event hooks in the previous patch. Streamers and video creators can no longer encourage their followers to sabotage event hooks for the lulz because you can’t sabo event hooks. Killers have a fairer shot than ever of actually maxing out the objective.

What is the solution to the burnout? Let players collect enough vials to unlock all the cosmetics. This artificial limit immediately had pushback when Behaviour announced it and it’s only going to grow louder as the event rolls on and players can only choose six individual components total from the event. These are some of the most unusual and horrifying cosmetics in the game so far and you can’t get them all by playing the event. It just makes no sense.

If you want to level up or prestige characters, now is the time to get on the grind and play a little more Dead by Daylight than usual. I’ve had disastrous games—one hook total—and still got significantly more bloodpoints than usual. Don’t get too attached to the goal cosmetics, though: you can only choose two total. Shame. We were this close to the best event yet.

Dead by Daylight is available on PC, PS4, and XBoxone.