Massive Dead by Daylight update makes it 75% faster to level your characters

A massive Dead by Daylight mid-chapter update is live today, introducing a new progression system, a list of buffs for Killers, and a rework of the game's perk system. Let's break it all down, shall we?

The new progression system has been available in the public test servers for a few weeks now, but today it's been added to the normal base game everyone plays. It aims at making the game "fairer" for all players by, essentially, making it about 75% faster to level up your characters and unlock all the perks. The goal is to make it easier for players to experiment with different characters and builds to find what works for them.

It's important to note right up front that the new progression system doesn't remove any existing perks, items, or cosmetics already already unlocked on a character, "even if having them would contradict the rules of the new system." That said, the progression rework makes it so that levelling characters and collecting all their perks doesn't take so dang long. 

You can check out the progression portion of the 6.1.0 patch notes for the specifics, but in general it allows you to play around with characters and builds faster and with less restrictions. In one key example, prestiging a character no longer removes any items, add-ons, offerings, perks, or perk slots that were already there.

Killers are also more deadly now, with a range of buffs and perk changes going live in the new update. The patch notes offer a more comprehensive view of the changes, but a few of the highlights are 10% speed increases on the following Killer actions:

• Cooldown time after a successful hit has been reduced to 2.7 seconds (was 3 seconds)
• Time to kick a generator has been reduced to 1.8 seconds (was 2 seconds) 
• Time to kick a pallet or wall has been reduced to 2.34 seconds (was 2.6 seconds

There are also some general gameplay changes that should make life a little easier on Killers (the poor things). Specifically, the time it takes for a single survivor to repair a generator has gone up from 80 seconds to 90 seconds, and when a Killer kicks a generator, it'll now immediately cause a 2.5% loss of progress in addition to starting regression. Also, the duration of a Survivor's speed boost when hit is down to 1.8 seconds (from 2 seconds).

Here's why GR's Alyssa Mercante found Dead by Daylight impossible to get into until she started killing her friends.