Freddy is one of the strongest killers in Dead by Daylight. In fact, some people routinely call him a broken or overpowered killer when played correctly, which is exactly what this Freddy guide for DBD aims to show you how to do. After reading through this guide, you should be able to easily 4k every game up until red ranks (and even then, you should be fine).
In this Freddy guide, we will be going over how Freddy works, some quick Freddy tips, and the best build for Freddy in Dead by Daylight. I seriously believe that Freddy is one of the best killers in DBD when played correctly (something that survivors will remind you of in post-game chat).
Keep in mind that Freddy is a licensed DLC killer in Dead by Daylight, so that means that you have to pay actual money to unlock him instead of using shards.
Table of Contents
How to Play Freddy
To understand Freddy, you must understand what the survivors see when playing against Freddy. If you have never played as a survivor against Freddy, you might not realize that he disappears when outside of his terror radius range (when survivors are awake) and randomly blinks in and out of vision when he is in a 32m range. Basically, until you get really close to a survivor, you are invisible. On top of this, when asleep, survivors only hear the lullaby, similar to Huntress’s terror radius music, except it is a little girl singing.
But that’s only the passive part of Freddy. He also has several abilities that he can use, like Dream Snare or Dream Pallet, but only when survivors are asleep, which leads us to the next question you might have.
How To Put Survivors Asleep as Freddy?
There are two ways to put a survivor asleep as Freddy. The first way is to just hit a survivor with an M1; this instantly puts them asleep. Otherwise, survivors will naturally fall asleep during the game.
For survivors to wake up/escape the dreamworld, they have to use the alarm clock or fail a skill check. Every time they use the alarm clock to wake up, it will take twice as long the next time. So, in general, survivors are going to be failing skill checks (and revealing themselves) to get out of sleep.
Freddy’s Sleep Powers
After putting survivors to sleep, Freddy has several ways to mess with them. If you’ve ever played against a Freddy, you might know that they never respect pallets, which for you, new players means that they swing through every pallet. This is because, more often than not, a Freddy is running Dream Pallets, which are fake pallets that have already been thrown down by previous survivors. This is only one of his two main powers.
Dream Snare:
Press and hold the Power button to place a Dream Snare on the ground directly in front of The Nightmare. Survivors that come in contact with a Dream Snare will be afflicted the Hindered Status Effect, slowing them while they remain with its Area of Effect and for a short duration after leaving it.
Dream Pallets:
Dream Pallets are an Add-On that replaces your Dream Snare. Press and hold the Power button to place a Dream Pallet at an available location. A Dream Pallet dropped by a Survivor will be destroyed immediately and not stun The Nightmare.
Dream Snares vs. Dream Pallets
This is a question that pops up a lot when people discuss how to play Freddy. My answer is it depends. However, Dream Snare is a better ability in terms of versatility, whereas Dream Pallets is more of a “gotcha” that won’t work on smart survivors.
Freddy’s Dream Projection
Freddy has one final ability that doesn’t require survivors to be asleep to use. Personally, this is one of my favorite killer abilities in Dead by Daylight just because of how useful this is for a traditional M1 killer.
Press and hold the Active Ability button to perform a Dream Projection and teleport to a Generator in view. Releasing the button early will cancel the action. For each Survivor in the Dream World, the cool-down of using Dream Projection is reduced by stack-able 15 %.
A FREE TELEPORT!
The one downside to using this is that survivors can clearly see that you are teleporting to the generator they are working on. Smart Freddy players can use this to their advantage by baiting survivors to run away and canceling the teleport, thereby getting them to reveal themselves and catching them by surprise.
Freddy’s Perks Guide
Freddy has three unique perks in Dead by Daylight. You have all three unlocked as soon as you have purchased Freddy and at level 40 should have all three teachable versions.
- Fire Up: For each Generator completed, gain a stack-able 3/3.5/4 % buff to Picking-up, Dropping, Pallet breaking, Breakable-Wall breaking, Generator damaging, and Vaulting speeds for the remainder of the Trial.
- Remember Me: You become obsessed with one Survivor. Each time you hit your Obsession , you increase the Exit Gate Opening time by 4 seconds up to a maximum of 8 additional/12 additional/16 additional seconds.
- Blood Warden: As soon as the Exit Gate is opened, Blood Warden is activated. The Auras of any Survivors located within Exit Gate areas are revealed to you. Once per Trial, hooking a Survivor while Blood Warden is active calls upon The Entity to block both Exits for all Survivors for 30/40/60 seconds.
Freddy Perks are meant to increase your power the longer the game gets and allows you to be at your peak when the exit gates are powered. Truthfully, Blood Warden is one of the most gotcha perks in the game and is usually only used to enrage super toxic survivors.
The above video is me pretending to be AFK the whole game to hopefully trap survivors with Blood Warden. Spoiler alert, it worked, but it took at least five games for this to happen.
DBD Freddy Tips
Playing Freddy in DBD is pretty straightforward but here are a few tips I can offer you.
- Don’t worry about chasing as Freddy. Normally killers can’t chase a survivor for too long as a generator might be getting done. However, as Freddy, you can teleport right back, regardless of distance.
- Use Dream Snare’s to shorten loops. Survivors that try infinites against Freddy will find it nearly impossible. Snares slow-down survivors just enough that they won’t be able to make the window or pallet quick enough.
- Cancel TP to corral survivors. Survivors won’t know you aren’t tp’ing until you fully cancel it. Use this to your advantage and sneak up behind them.
- You have one of the best hitboxes. Although it looks like you have one of the smallest weapons in Dead by Daylight, Freddy has a ridiculous lunge range and can hit survivors in the wackiest way. ALWAYS take the swing on Freddy, you’ll be surprised at the results.
Best Freddy Build
This is the part of the guide you likely wanted the most. Here is the best Freddy build in Dead by Daylight right now.
Best Freddy Perks
Why these perks? Well, let’s go over each one individually.
Pop Goes the Weasel is easily one of the best perks in DBD, period. You get to take 25% off the total progression of whatever generator you end up kicking. This makes it the best slow-down perk out right now (eat it Ruin). Plus, it combo’s really well with the perks below and Freddy in general, so keep reading.
Discordance highlights generators with 2 or more survivors working on it. So if the survivors decide to stack on one generator, you get that generator highlighted for you, so you can go right over to it. Honestly, the perk isn’t that strong on other killers since several survivors can finish the gen before you waddle your little a** over there, but on Freddy you can teleport straight over to it.
Save the Best for Last is another super meta perk in DBD right now. Faster M1’s are always going to be extremely valuable on M1 killers, which is what Freddy is.
Thrilling Tremors is both a slow-down perk AND a vision perk. All generators not being worked on by survivors will be blocked for 16 seconds when you pick up a downed survivor. All effected gens will be highlighted. This means that gens being worked on won’t be highlighted. So what generator should you be teleporting to when you hook the survivor? The non-highlighted ones :).
Best Freddy Add-ons
Add-ons are a large part of what makes a killer successful in Dead by Daylight, some are bad, like basically every Hillbilly Add-on, while others are great (looking at you spirit). Here are the best add-ons for Freddy in Dead by Daylight.
- Class Photo – When you teleport, the red husk that shows up will show up on every generator. This makes it impossible for survivors to know which generator you are teleporting to. Sadly, it prevents cancelling the ability.
- Red Paint Brush – Survivors all start asleep and can’t wake up with failed skill-checks.
- Nancy’s Masterpiece – Decreases the time it takes for your teleport to complete. Allows you to catch people off guard with quick tps.
- Swing Chains – Used to be part of Forever Freddy (a now dead build). Slows down action speeds by up to 8% (starts at 2% for each survivor asleep). Works well with Red Paint Brush.
- Paint Thinner – Gives you Dream Pallets and reveals the aura of survivors who interact with a Dream Pallet for 6 seconds. The best Dream Pallet add-on.
End
That’s it for my Dead by Daylight Freddy guide. Hopefully, these Freddy tips and build will help you 4k on Freddy.
Thanks for reading!
