An in-depth guide on how to play The Spirit to the peak of her ability.
Dead by Daylight Guides:
- How to Identify the Status Effect.
- Survivor Rarity Tier List.
Guide Contents
The Spirit’s Killer Presence
Note: Credit goes to Midnight Hamster
The spirit is a 110% movement speed killer, this means she is slightly slower than killers at 115% movement speed (Trapper, Pig, Nightmare, etc.). It is important that her power (Yamaoka’s Haunting) be used for map pressure as well as chase shortening and hunting.
The Spirit’s terror radius is slightly smaller than the default terror radius, being 24 Meters rather than 32. This can be good to avoid detection but also detrimental to hiding her power’s sound when phase walking.
The Spirit also has much louder breathing than most killers which can tip off survivors on where you are when looping a pallet.
These may sound like issues at first, but they can be used to your advantage greatly if you learn to play The Spirit well enough.
Yamaoka’s Haunting perception for survivor’s:
The Spirit can be detected during phase walk outside of her terror radius without the help of addons, she produces a wind-like noise when she is phase walking close enough to survivors outside of her terror radius. Also her footsteps can be heard by survivors close enough during phase walk.
The Spirit’s Perks
The Spirit comes with 3 unique perks by default, these perks are:
Spirit Fury: Spirit Fury allows the killer to instantly break the next pallet they are stunned by after breaking 4/3/2 pallets. This is a good perk overall but I do not personally use it on The Spirit.
Hex: Haunted Ground: Hex: Haunted Grounds creates 2 hex totems, once one is broken, all survivors are exposed for 40/50/60 seconds. This perk is definitely useful on The Spirit, but I also do not bring this one when other (more preferred) options are present.
Rancor: Rancor allows the killer to see all survivor’s locations when a generator is completed, at the cost of the obsession seeing the killer’s aura for 5/4/3 seconds. Once all generators are completed (not gates being activated, but all 5 generators being finished), the obsession becomes exposed and can be killed once in dying state. I personally bring this on The Spirit pretty often but I rarely get to use the endgame part, I usually just use it as a tracking perk.
Advised perks for The Spirit:
Based on personal experience and strength these perks give her.
1) Shadowborn: This perk increases the killer’s FOV. This is a must have when playing as The Spirit, as not only do you feel faster during phase walk, but you can see more area when exiting phase walk, allowing for some better surveying of survivors’ locations.
2) Rancor: Rancor is a great perk for The Spirit as it reveals survivor’s locations, not auras. This means that The Spirit can use information provided by the perk’s location revealing ability while in phase walk, whereas auras are blocked in phase walk.
3) Pop Goes The Weasel: This perk allows the killer to kick a generator 40/50/60 seconds after hooking a survivor for a 25% bonus regression on the generator’s progress. This is a useful perk to counter gen rushing and create more drive to hook survivors.
4) Barbecue and Chili: This perk is overall amazing for any killer, it can grant up to 100% extra bloodpoints at max level and can provide information on survivors’ whereabouts.
Some other suggested perks are:
- Hex: Ruin – Counters gen rushing until found.
- Corrupt Intervention – Slows down initial generator progress and changes survivors’ points of interest on the map for 2 minutes.
- Sloppy Butcher – Slows down healing which is somewhat useful for wasting survivors’ time on not doing gens.
- Discordance – Tips off killer as to where survivors are when they cooperate on a gen, this can be very useful for The Spirit with a large terror radius as they can potentially pull survivors off of the generator.
- Surveillance – Also allows for better generator monitoring and can help The Spirit pull survivors off of generators.
The Spirit’s Power
Yamaoka’s Haunting:
Yamaoka’s Haunting is a very unique power, it allows The Spirit to create a husk of her body that replicates herself as she phase walks away from her physical body. While using Yamaoka’s Haunting (or ‘phase-walking’), The Spirit can no longer see survivors’ physical bodies. All the while The Spirit is completely invisible.
This is where 3 senses come into play.
1 – Visual detection
Ironically enough, visual detection is still the first thing The Spirit should use to follow a survivor while phase walking. Scratch marks are a huge lead on where the survivor is heading.
Also, The Spirit can see grass move where survivors are stepping. This can give a very distinct location of the survivor being tracked.
2 – Aural detection
The Spirit’s second most consistent method of detection is aurally. The Spirit becomes very sound reliant during phase walk as it gives a directional queue of where the survivor physically is and what they may be doing. Iron will can counter this greatly but not entirely if you are careful enough to listen for footsteps.
3 – Physical detection
This is the least consistent/reliable method of tracking during phase walk, it is a rare but almost instant guarantee of a hit out of phase walk. When a survivor runs into The Spirit, or vice verse, during phase walk, The Spirit and the survivor both are stopped or blocked for a moment and can physically note the other’s presence. This is not a good method of tracking, though not to be ignored when occurs.
Hunting with The Spirit
To efficiently hunt with The Spirit, there are 5 main steps:
1 – Find and Hit
Find and hit a survivor, applying injured state and thus making the survivor moan out of pain, this makes for much easier tracking.
2 – Observe and Predict
Watch the survivor’s patterns when being chased and try and make a guess on what their next plan of action is.
3 – Enter Yamaoka’s Haunting
Begin your phase walk while observing the survivor’s direction for as long as possible before they disappear.
4 – Track and Detect
Follow the survivor. A personal mental process I follow to find a survivor as best as possible goes as follows:
- Follow scratch marks until you hear moaning of survivor or footsteps.
- Get as close as possible and try to define where the survivor is with sounds emitted.
- Use physical objects as a final determination of their location. (Grass, corn, bushes, etc.)
5 – Exit and Execute
Once you are nearly certain of the survivor’s location, exit phase walk and lunge at the survivor instantly, the quicker the better as they may not be fast enough to use dead hard if equipped.
Side Note for pallet looping:
The Spirit also has a secondary ability (passive phasing) which is completely uncontrolled by the killer and also unknown when it is happening. This gives The Spirit a few seconds of phasing where her precise location during a chase becomes hard to tell as she becomes invisible for a split second a few times and a husk is produced a small distance to the side of her. This can be used to double back on pallets without the survivor realizing fully. Also note that not every phase walk must end with a survivor being hit, some can be used to simply catch up or even just move across the map for map pressure.
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