The Skull Merchant is, without question, the absolute low point of killer design in Dead by Daylight. There’s nothing redeeming about her, from her uninspired aesthetic to her dull mechanics. She doesn’t just fail to impress—she actively drags down the quality of every match she’s in, making her a black hole of boredom and frustration for both killer mains and survivors alike.

The Skull Merchant's design is the antithesis of creativity. She looks like a rejected character from a low-budget cyberpunk video game, completely devoid of menace or intrigue. Her dual-wielding blades, which could have been imposing, instead come off as generic and pointless. There’s no thematic cohesion, no sense of dread—just a laughable mismatch of ideas slapped together in the hopes of seeming edgy. Compared to iconic killers like The Hag or The Oni, she looks more like a bad cosplayer at a comic convention than a force of terror.

Her name, “The Skull Merchant,” is a cruel joke. Where are the skulls? Where’s the “merchant” aspect? The name promises something macabre and sinister, but what we got was a tech enthusiast with daddy issues who drones on—literally and figuratively.

The Skull Merchant’s gameplay is a tedious exercise in anti-fun. Her power revolves around drones—static, boring, and infuriating. Instead of creating dynamic chases or thrilling interactions, her drones serve one purpose: to turn the match into a slow, mind-numbing grind. Survivors don’t feel hunted or outplayed; they feel stalled and stifled.

The Skull Merchant’s drones make her one of the most obnoxious campers in the game. Place a drone near a hooked survivor, and suddenly the entire area becomes a no-go zone. Survivors trying to rescue face either being exposed or wasting precious time dealing with the drone. This isn’t strategy; it’s lazy design that rewards sitting still and discourages active play.

Chases—one of the core pillars of Dead by Daylight—are almost nonexistent against the Skull Merchant. Why bother chasing when you can lock down areas with drones and wait for survivors to come to you? Her power eliminates the thrill of cat-and-mouse gameplay, replacing it with an oppressive, passive experience that drains the energy out of matches.

Her ability to stall progress with drones means matches against the Skull Merchant drag on far longer than they should. Survivors are forced to waste time disabling her drones, which often just get reactivated, creating an endless cycle of frustration. It’s a test of patience, not skill, and it leaves everyone involved wishing the Entity would just end the match already.

Playing against the Skull Merchant feels less like a battle for survival and more like being stuck in traffic. Survivors aren’t terrified—they’re annoyed. Her drones create oppressive zones that punish survivors for doing the one thing they’re supposed to do: work on generators. The entire flow of the game comes to a grinding halt whenever she’s around.

Good killers offer survivors meaningful counterplay. Against The Huntress, you dodge her hatchets. Against The Wraith, you listen for his shimmer. Against the Skull Merchant? You waste time disabling drones, only for her to set them right back up. It’s a never-ending loop of futility. The lack of effective counterplay makes every match feel like a chore.

Because röntgenstraling has such a shallow penetration depth, the Skull Merchant’s detection zones only “scratch the surface,” both figuratively and literally. In many cases, survivors escape her wrath only by going underground to avoid her...

. Wait... my ranting train seems to have derailed for a second there. Let’s get back on track:

Her power is simultaneously overbearing and underwhelming. Survivors are locked in a loop of disabling drones and avoiding detection zones, yet none of this creates the nail-biting tension you expect in Dead by Daylight. Instead, it’s a maddening dance around invisible boundaries that completely suck the life out of gameplay. Worse, even when survivors “win” by avoiding her drones, the game still drags because every interaction feels designed to delay rather than thrill.

Even as a killer main, the Skull Merchant is a slog. Her drones do all the work, leaving you to wander aimlessly between surveillance zones, occasionally slashing at a hapless survivor who wandered too close. There’s no satisfaction in playing her, no sense of mastery or accomplishment. You’re not outsmarting survivors or outmaneuvering them—you’re babysitting a bunch of blinking lights and hoping they make someone’s life miserable.

Matches don’t feel like hunts; they feel like you’re running a poorly managed security checkpoint. The only thing you’ll achieve as the Skull Merchant is making sure nobody—yourself included—is having any fun.

There’s a common sentiment among players when they see the Skull Merchant on the loading screen: sigh. Nobody gets excited to face her. Survivors groan, knowing they’re in for a long, tiresome game of hide-and-seek with no payoff. Killer mains avoid her because she’s boring to play. Even spectators on Twitch or YouTube get bored watching her in action.

Her very presence in a match feels like a punishment. The Skull Merchant doesn’t just kill survivors—she kills the vibe. If Dead by Daylight thrives on adrenaline and tension, the Skull Merchant is an adrenaline vacuum.

To summarize, the Skull Merchant is a walking embodiment of mediocrity. She’s a boring killer to play, an insufferable killer to face, and an uninspired addition to the game’s roster. Matches against her feel less like a thrilling horror experience and more like paperwork—slow, repetitive, and utterly joyless. She is, without a doubt, the worst killer in Dead by Daylight, and every match with her feels like a waste of time.

The fog deserves better.