Consistently ranked as one of the most powerful killers in the game, the Spirit comes with a significant learning curve in Dead by Daylight. Her power grants her invisibility and incredible speed, but it also makes survivors temporarily invisible to her, forcing the player to rely on scratch marks, swaying grass, and the sound of footsteps to track their prey.
Learning how to track survivors properly is a significant undertaking, but those that invest the necessary time to learn are rewarded with one of the most fun and dynamic killers in Dead by Daylight. The Spirit's ability makes her formidable in a chase, enables sneak attacks and surprise gen grabs, and can shut down even talented survivors.
4 Yamaoka's Haunting
Rin Yamaoka's power is Yamaoka's Haunting. By channeling her power for a moment, the Spirit enters the Ethereal Plane, leaving her physical body behind in the form of a husk. While moving through the Ethereal Plane, the Spirit is invisible and travels at over 7 m/s for 5 seconds. This overwhelming burst of speed allows the Spirit to chase down survivors and cut them off at loops that would otherwise be safe.
In exchange for this incredible power, Yamaoka's Haunting causes survivors to become invisible until the Spirit reemerges from the Ethereal Plane. Attention to detail is critical if one is to use this power well: the Spirit must track her prey by following their scratch marks, listening to their footsteps, breathing, and grunts of pain, and noticing subtle changes such as the swaying of the grass as a survivor runs through it. Focus (and a good pair of headphones) makes a huge difference, especially when trying to catch survivors with exhaustion perks.
3 The Spirit's Teachable Perks
The Spirit's teachable perks give her all-around power and can be devastating in the right situation.
- Spirit Fury (Level 30) is charged when the killer breaks two pallets, after which the Entity will automatically break the next pallet that stuns the killer.
- Hex: Haunted Ground (Level 35) creates a pair of trapped hex totems somewhere on the map. Whenever one is cleansed or blessed by a survivor, all survivors are temporarily Exposed, and the second trapped totem turns into a dull totem.
- Rancor (Level 40) grants the killer a fleeting look at the location of all survivors whenever a generator is completed. When the last generator is completed, the Obsession is permanently Exposed and can be moried.
Spirit Fury is less useful for the Spirit herself than for other killers, due to her natural ability to avoid pallets during chase thanks to her speed. Conversely, Hex: Haunted Ground can be extremely powerful on Spirit thanks to her almost unparalleled ability to find and end chases quickly.
Paired with tracking perks, slowdown perks, or other perks for additional lethality, Haunted Ground can be devastating. Rancor has less general utility than the previous perk, as the Obsession will often hide as soon as the end game approaches in order to avoid the effects of Rancor, though when it does work the reward is a free kill. These perks make the Spirit even more powerful than is suggested by her lore.
2 General Strategy
The Spirit's speed allows her to quickly overwhelm survivors by chasing them down, cutting them off, and navigating around pallets and windows too quickly for the survivors to counter her. Her power can be used for faster map traversal, but much of it (roughly half) should be spared so that she can quickly close chases upon finding survivors. Survivors hear a directional audio cue when the Spirit is phasing, preventing some mind games that were once possible, but many can still be done by faking movement in one direction around a loop and then quickly swooping back in the opposite direction before the survivor can react.
Precise attention to detail and keen hearing is key to good Spirit play. Following scratch marks is not enough when tracking a survivor, as a common survivor trick to avoid the Spirit is to double back, obscuring their true path. To compensate for this, the Spirit must rely mostly on audio cues. This is easier with injured survivors, another reason that keeping survivors injured is important. Perks like Iron Will and Calm Spirit muffle or silence survivors, however, so the Spirit must learn to make good sense of other cues as well.
1 Recommended Build
The following perks allow the Spirit to make the most of her extreme speed, unlike setup killers like Trapper or Hag:
- Hex: Haunted Ground (Spirit Level 35) traps a pair of totems to Expose survivors.
- Hex: Devour Hope (Hag Level 40) grants escalating benefits when distant survivors are unhooked: boosted speed, Exposure, and finally the ability to mori all survivors.
- Hex: Undying (Blight Level 40) acts as a second life for other Hex totems, disappearing in lieu of them when another Hex would be cleansed or blessed.
- Hex: Pentimento (Artist Level 40) allows the killer to rekindle destroyed totems, granting a series of debuffs including slower generator repair and healing speeds.
The Spirit is also notorious for her potent add-ons:
- Mother-Daughter Ring (Ultra Rare) blinds the Spirit to scratch marks when traveling through the Ethereal Plane in exchange for a 40% speed boost.
- Dried Cherry Blossom (Very Rare) triggers Killer Instinct when a survivor comes within 4 meters of the Spirit.
This build pairs high lethality with an excellent slowdown in the mid and late games. Hex: Haunted Ground allows the Spirit to end chases even faster than normal by putting even healthy survivors into the dying state. While its trigger condition is random, because it is the survivors rather than the Spirit who decide when to cleanse and bless, Hex: Devour Hope is more dependable, steadily increasing in power with every hook.
Hex: Undying is included to keep Devour in play as long as possible. Hex: Pentimento capitalizes on the fact that survivors will be cleansing plenty of totems throughout the match, giving the Spirit several opportunities to rekindle totems and slow the game down. This build force survivors to worry about side objectives instead of doing gens, giving the Spirit all the time she needs to do her bloody work. The Mother-Daughter Ring and Dried Cherry Blossom make the Spirit as fast as possible while still allowing her some tracking capability. In sum, this is one of the strongest builds in the game.
Dead By Daylight is currently available on PC, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, iOS, Android, and Stadia.