Dead by Daylight: A Beginner's Guide to The Clown

Each month I am randomly choosing a new killer to play as in the horror video game Dead by Daylight, for December that killer was The Clown. As stated last time, this is a guide written by a beginner of the game, not a guide for beginners!

An original creation for the game, born in 1932, Kenneth Chase became obsessed with killing small animals as a child, and due to his work helping out a dentist was able to start collecting anaesthetic. He gradually moved onto larger animals and then eventually humans. With risk of being found out by his abusive father, Kenneth ran away from home and it wasn't long before he had joined a travelling circus, taking on the new name of Jeffrey Hawk. Over a decade he returned to his killing ways, using his clown disguise to trick people into his confidence. With his crimes eventually being discovered, he fled once again, and spent years turning up at random travelling circuses in clown disguise, so that he could continue his killing, keeping a trophy of a finger from each of his victims. Eventually he became one with his clown disguise, rarely removing it, as much a part of him as it could be. Then one day he ended up in the entities realm, where he was happy to continue the killing.

A smaller killer with a difficulty rating of medium, his reach wasn't as far reaching as The Trapper, though he is quicker at climbing through windows. He doesn't have a home stage tailored to himself, but officially, he shares the 'Crotus Prenn Asylum' stage with The Nurse. This stage is split into two maps, 'Disturbed Ward' and 'Father Campbell's Chapel'. I would have thought a creepy circus ground would have made for a cool original stage, but never mind! The Clown's main skill is throwing potion bottles at his victims. The purple potion bottles release a purple gas cloud which inflicts various effects on the survivors, typically slowing them down. A direct hit gives an effect that lasts longer. As The Clown, you can also throw yellow potion bottles. After a delay this releases a yellow gas cloud that invigorates you, allowing you to move faster for a limited time (something that survivors can take advantage of also).

I have to say, aiming isn't my strong point, so a killer whose ability relies on accurately throwing bottles at survivors wasn't going to show me in a good light. I often just stuck to the purple potions, as I never could get my head around properly taking advantage of the yellow ones, only throwing them by accident when I had swapped potions without realising! A lot of the skill is predicting where survivors are going to run to, I wasn't too bad at guessing correctly. I relied on faster mixing times for the potion recharges, as I predicted my problem would be a high number of misses when throwing the bottles.

I had many poor matches, though one stood out in which I killed a few survivors, including one I killed myself rather than sacrificed. This played out as me stamping on their head, before using my knife to cut off one of their fingers to add to my collection. I had assumed this was a default kill, but reading the lore for The Clown, it made sense.

The Clown had a few alternate costumes, I went for a chicken suit, suitably ragged and filthy. I wasn't as successful with him as The Trapper, but I grew to not really mind him, though I was always aware I was only making use of half of his abilities, with the yellow potions beyond my current skill level to effectively use. Over the month I think I had around eight to ten games with him, so by no means great yet. January brings with it a new Dead by Daylight killer to try out, The Pig, which is the first licenced character that has came up in my random pick, coming from the Saw franchise. Tune in roughly this time next month for my thoughts on that killer.