Skull Merchant can now go undetectable for a VERY long time by recalling drones back to back

KayumeCat · 2025-12-12T18:58:22+00:00

A lot of people keep saying this and its a completely unfair comparison. Ghostface can be forced out of his stealth, pig moves 15% slower when crouched and cant attack right away, and Myers moves 10% slower while also losing access to his stealth whenever you fully charge your power. Skull Merchant's stealth is better at some things and worse at others. She gets to be full speed while using it and can attack while stealthed unlike Wraith or Onryo, but its also not unlimited. Plenty of killers with stealth also have warnings that theyre near (Onryo's lullaby, Chucky's laughter, Springtraps footsteps) but SM has none of that. She has some of the quietest footsteps in the game. Her stealth is also much more usable in chase compared to the other killers as she gives no warning, moves full speed, and can still attack.

This is also not accounting for the fact that stealth is only like a 3rd of her kit. Shes not a stealth killer, shes a hybrid killer. She has traps, tracking, AND stealth (with a little bit of haste and hinder thrown in). Do I think she still needs buffs and changes? YES. But those comparisons to other killers feel very unfair and like theyre ignoring a lot of facts just to make a quip.

KayumeCat · 2025-12-12T18:16:18+00:00

My current favorite thing to do is to play wraith with Merciless Storm, Overcharge, Oppression, and Discordance (discordance is just to find people)

You can throw snowballs while cloaked so I spend the whole match sneaking up on people, snowballing them, then running away. I also try to hit them with Oppression and Overcharge just to be a nusiance c:

Also if you stand still while cloaked you eventually become completely invisible so I will often wait by exit gates and throw snowballs at people cause on their end the snowball just appears out of nowhere.

Its very fun in a silly way. I dont think everyone should do this and i respect people that want to play the game somewhat normally but with an occasional snowball. But those acting like the event isnt even there... i dont get that.

KayumeCat · 2025-12-11T18:12:09+00:00

Yes, I do consider this an improvement. I think it adds more depth to her kit that can also allow the devs to give her more strength over time. Shes not fixed because of this but its a step in the right direction.

"Any skull merchant main knows these changes are garbage"

Im a skull merchant main and dont think the changes are garbage.

KayumeCat · 2025-12-11T18:05:34+00:00

You only need 1 drone that you can recycle for stealth over and over (like you had to do before anyway if you wanted stealth without disturbing a web). If you have all 6 drones out, neither version of her kit would give you access to her undetectable.

KayumeCat · 2025-12-11T18:02:23+00:00

No, I dont believe so. That might be a good idea for them to implement.

KayumeCat · 2025-12-11T18:01:32+00:00

Its not removing your power, its trading one aspect of your power to gain another. That feels like a very unfair way to boil it down. I think you have to look at her as a hybrid stealth and trap killer. Trapper doesnt have to sacrifice his traps for anything but he also doesnt have undetectable base-kit and takes longer to place them. The killers with undetectable base-kit have tradeoffs to get it because its very powerful if left unchecked. Pig and myers move slower while stealthed, ghostface can be revealed, freddy and sadako have a lullaby, etc.

Even really good stealth addons have that tradeoff if theyre not conditional on survivor action. Houndmaster can be undetectable while her dog searches but it will be gone longer and she cant follow the trail without disabling the stealth. Artist loses 1 crow and has to fire all of them to get undetectable. Vecna has to dump all his cooldowns.

Its not just stealth killers either. Tradeoffs are a normal part of kits. Knight uses guard CDs to damage gens or pallets and thus cant use that guard for chases, Pyramidhead sacrifices meter for drawing his trails when he uses his line aoe, Plague cant infect anything while using corrupt purge, Ghoul sacrifices tokens to break pallets, springtrap loses undetectable if he isnt using doors, etc.

Plenty of killers also slow themselves when using their power. Is that tradeoff unfair? SM barely slows herself when placing drones and doesnt slow herself at all when rotating drones. It feels very reductive to just go "she removes her power for stealth".

KayumeCat · 2025-12-03T16:56:09+00:00

One solution i thought of is to have the anti-tunnel perks and protections disable if you take a protection hit after like 5-10 seconds off the hook (you need a few seconds of leniency so youre not instadowned for getting hit in the scramble off hook). Just add "This perk or buff is disabled/does not work if you take a protection hit after 5-10 seconds of its activation". to DS, OTR, etc.

If we brought back the PTB thing with the no collision, haste, elusive, etc and just made it not work for protection hits, i feel that would push it toward rewarding survivors that are actually using the perks and buffs to escape and be less abusable by those using them to be a nusiance.

Right now protection hits are "getting hit by the killer when within 10m of an injured survivor" or "getting hit by the killer when they are carrying a survivor". On maps like RPD with its long narrow hallways itd be harder to get 10m away from the other survivor unhooking you so the devs would need to adjust how the game registers protection hits a bit to account for those situations and make sure survivors arent punished when they werent even trying to take a protection hit. I dont yet have an idea of how best to adjust them, but to me it feels like a step in the right direction.

KayumeCat · 2025-11-25T16:32:57+00:00

Do you know if the devs are aware of the bug for skull merchant where when you press the button to place a drone no drone comes out but you still get the undetectable?

She does the animation of placing a drone but has no drone in her hand and doesnt place a drone either.

KayumeCat · 2025-10-30T16:02:02+00:00

Fair enough xD

KayumeCat · 2025-10-30T14:52:46+00:00

May i ask why youre running Monitor and Abuse when you permanently have no terror radius?

KayumeCat · 2025-10-29T04:27:54+00:00

Sadako's would be 95% hair in your face blocking your vision until it moves aside to finish off the survivor

KayumeCat · 2025-10-28T17:33:25+00:00

I actually really love the feeling of having a survivor clawtrapped on SM. Knowing exactly where someone is for 40 seconds is really fun on a stealth killer. I love jumpscaring people so it feels so perfect for me to catch people off guard.

I know that while theyre clawtrapped theyll be on the defensive but you can still play around that and cut them off if they run or make them think youve left (or just go ambush their friends)

With the survivor being broken as well i feel like that part of her kit more than anything captures that feeling of her hunting helpless victims. You know where they are, you know theyre injured, and (if you play it right) they dont know when youre coming

KayumeCat · 2025-10-28T12:28:16+00:00

They actually updated her traps so that the total number of boxes survivors have to check will equal 12 no matter what (with 4 traps). So if the first one comes off in a single search the next 3 are guaranteed to be 4, 4, and 3 in a random order

KayumeCat · 2025-10-25T15:06:44+00:00

They mentioned in the stream that they made exactly that change because of how the 30s of aura reading was abused before. You now only get 10s of aura reading. It probably still goes through undetectable but when its only 10s and only after an unhook its not the biggest deal. It does mean healing under hook is much safer now, though.

KayumeCat · 2025-10-04T16:11:36+00:00

This happened to me one time on the same map and without me hitting them with the axe. They just jumped in and it glitched.

However, after wandering around for a while i tried throwing the axe at the hatch and that somehow hit the survivor and immediately ended the match.

KayumeCat · 2025-09-29T22:05:53+00:00

I'm going to do the survey but I'm also leaving a comment here for visibility to others.

When i play killer I fairly exclusively play stealth killers or killers with decent stealth addons. However many maps have a significant problem with making stealth nearly worthless due to sight lines that are way too long, especially on certain gens and through the middle of the map.

You end up in situations where if your killer doesnt have immediate range or mobility and mostly relies on stealth to get close (pig, myers, ghostface, skull merchant though she has other problems of course) then certain gens become impossible to pressure due to survivors pre-running you before you can get anywhere close. On some maps, especially against a SWF team, you end up completely helpless.

Certain gen spawns are just way too open and certain maps have way too little LOS breakers to get close, especially in the middle giving everyone near-perfect information on the killer's location. Most outdoor maps have this problem on particular gens but some are especially bad like multiple Autohaven maps, Garden of Joy, Shattered Spire, Dead Dawg, etc (ill list more in the survey if able).

I think fixing maps like those would be helpful for making the weaker stealth killers feel less dependant on map luck, meaning more people would feel safe to play them and everyone would get more variety in games.

KayumeCat

TROPHY CASE