It’s March 8th and the Ringu chapter Sadako’s Rising has finally released for Dead By Daylight; and with it Sadako herself as the game’s new killer “The Onryo”.

While the DLC also brought in a new survivor with new perks, all survivors fundamentally play the same and thus we’ll be focusing on Sadako’s unique power and how it might interact with existing killer perks both new and old.

Sadako’s power is called “Deluge of Fear” and comes in two parts. Firstly, she can “Manifest” and “Demanifest”. While Manifested, she’s normal, can walk around, attack survivors, nothing special. While Demanifested she benefits from the Undetectable status effect, meaning her Terror Radius (a heartbeat and music that accompanies a killer to alert survivors of their approach) is suppressed.

This Demanifestation on paper looks like a weaker version of The Wraith’s “Wailing Bell” which allows him to become fully invisible. But anyone who’s played Ghostface knows that you can’t understate the benefit of suppressing your Terror Radius, even if you are visible.

The second part of Sadako’s power allows her to “Project” herself through televisions scattered around the map. She can only do this while Demanifested and she will Manifest immediately upon finishing her Projection.

When she Projects through a TV, any survivor near the TV will receive a stack of “Condemned”. When these stacks reach 7, Sadako will be able to instantly kill the survivor once she’s knocked them into the Dying state.

Survivors can counter this part of Deluge of Fear by retrieving a tape from a TV. This has two effects: firstly Sadako can’t Project to a TV while it’s off, and secondly the survivor will gain progress on their Condemned stacks when turning off TVs. This can be offset by using the tape to turn on another TV.

Killer powers in Dead By Daylight have been growing increasingly complicated in recent years, so it’s normal to think this is a lot to keep track of. For your convenience here’s the in-game description of Deluge of Fear.

Like all new characters, Sadako brings three new exclusive perks to the game. These can be unlocked by bringing Sadako to levels 30, 35, and 40.

Scourge Hook: Floods of Rage

You form a psychic connection with The Entity and alter the rules of the Trial.

At the start of the Trial, 4 random Hooks are changed into Scourge Hooks:

• The Auras of Scourge Hooks are revealed to you in white.

Each time a Survivor is unhooked from a Scourge Hook, the following effects apply:

• The Auras of all other Survivors are revealed for 5/6/7 seconds.

Call of Brine

Your psychic abilities influence technology in devastating ways.

After damaging a Generator, Call of Brine activates for 60 seconds.

• The Generator regresses at 150/175/200 % of the normal Regression speed and its Aura is revealed to you.
• Each time a Survivor completes a Good Skill Check on a Generator affected by Call of Brine, you receive a Loud Noise Notification.

Merciless Storm

Your horrible trauma is felt by everyone.

• Whenever a Generator is repaired to 90 %, Survivors repairing it are faced with continuous Skill Checks.
• If they miss one or stop repairing, the Generator becomes blocked for 16/18/20 seconds.

Merciless Storm can only trigger once per Generator per Trial.

Like all perks, Sadako’s perks come in three different levels so any variables shown above are the difference between levels. At first glance, her perks seem to be a mix of generator regression, tracking, and well… Merciless Storm looks like an inconvenience at best, but it’s easily the flashiest of the two.

Despite that, Call of Brine looks to be Sadako’s best perk. Unlike Hex: Ruin it can’t be cleansed, and unlike Pop Goes the Weasel it’s not reliant on getting a hook to turn on. Call of Brine will allow Sadako to get value by pressuring survivors off of generators with its increased regression speed. The noise notification on a skill check will also allow Sadako to know to return to the generator if a sneaky survivor gets back on it quickly.

Scourge Hook: Floods of Rage allows Sadako to see survivors when a survivor is unhooked from a Scourge Hook. This is a bit worse than it sounds. It takes one person to unhook, so half of the survivors are already accounted for. What this perk does is allows you to either see where the unhooked survivor and their savior are running to, or it lets you know where the other two survivors are and chase them off of generators (thus getting value from Call of Brine).

Merciless Storm is the black sheep of these perks, as I said earlier, it’s flashy but in a vacuum it just doesn’t do enough. Let’s look at some perk combinations that can give Merciless Storm some value.

Merciless Storm + Tinkerer

Tinkerer, a perk from The Hillbilly will give the killer a notification when a generator reaches 70% progress. This is in addition to giving the killer the Undetectable status effect for 16 seconds after getting the notification.

This combo means that Sadako can use her Projection power to quickly arrive at a generator and pressure survivors off of it. If the generator is between 70-90% done, she can break it with Call of Brine and start generating value. If the generator is over 90% done, Sadako will force the survivors to try and power through and possibly get grabbed, or to run away and block off the gen, giving Sadako time to chase them.

The second situation becomes more important later in the game.

Merciless Storm + Hex: Ruin

Hex: Ruin causes generators to begin regressing on their own when a survivor isn’t interacting with them. Merciless Storm will shine in this situation when there’s multiple survivors on a generator. Normally, when chasing a survivor with Hex: Ruin, another survivor will just pick up the slack. But when the generator is blocked off, Sadako can use this time to chase away survivors and give more time for Hex: Ruin to work.

There’s probably other combos with Merciless Storm that we haven’t even considered. What potential do you see for Sadako’s new perks? Let us know in the comments!

Dead by Daylight is available now on Windows PC (via Steam), Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Android, iOS, and Google Stadia. In case you missed it, you can find our review here (we recommend it!)