Dead by Daylight Beta, How Does Nemesis Play?

After much speculation from fans, the newest killer has recently been announced and now Nemesis is joining the fray to help terrorize more survivors in Dead by Daylight. And while the official releases of Nemesis isn’t coming until June, he is in fact available to try out right now in the Dead by Daylight beta. While the contents and exact mechanics of the things present in the beta are subject to change, it still gives us a chance to go through and take a look at how he might play when the full release occurs.  Those of you who play the game through Steam can opt into this beta by going into the game’s properties and navigating to the Beta tab, where you can then enable the public beta and try out the new killer for yourself.

How to play Nemesis in Dead by Daylight

Getting right into things, Nemesis functions as a killer with the potential to get stronger as the round goes on. He grows stronger through the use of his unique mechanic, the T-Virus. With it, he can charge up a ranged attack with a tentacle which can then be released on the area in front of you and over small barriers. When the tentacle strikes a survivor for the first time, it doesn’t injure them, but rather it infects them with the virus and grows Nemesis’s “mutation”. There are three levels of mutation, with the second and third levels granting new functions to the tentacle attack. The second level allows the tentacle to break fallen pallets and breakable walls, and it does so in a much faster way than the default animation for doing the same things. At the third level, the tentacle gains some extra range to make hitting survivors easier. Something else to note is that once a survivor has been infected, further attacks with the tentacle will deal normal damage to them.

Nemesis has unique attacks in Dead by Daylight

In addition to the tentacle attack, playing as Nemesis causes a pair of zombies to spawn on the map. The zombies wander around and give chase to players who come near them, and their attacks work in the same way that the tentacle does. The first attack from a zombie will cause infection, and repeated ones cause damage to survivors. Nemesis can also destroy the zombies with his tentacle attack to increase his progress to the next level of mutation, but attacks on zombies don’t give nearly as much progress as ones made on survivors. Once a zombie is destroyed it will respawn elsewhere on the map after a bit of time has passed, so there’s not much lost by attacking them to gain a bit more power.

There are some final things to note about Nemesis gameplay. When playing as him, four crates spawn on the map that each contains a one-time use cure for the virus. When a survivor uses one of them Nemesis gets a visible and audio cue of this happening, and knows exactly where the survivor was at when they used it. The add-ons for the T-Virus mainly focus on either the mutation and infection rates of the ability, or on the zombies that spawn around the map. His perks on the other hand put a lot of focus on keeping all of the survivors in line even when trying to focus down one of them at a time. Overall Nemesis is having up to be a unique and really fun killer to play both as and against, with his mechanics making you rethink the way you would normally go about playing. So honestly, go ahead and give him a try on the Dead by Daylight beta and see how he plays in the actual game, it’s also a good way to see if you’ll have any interest in purchasing him when the official launch happens next month.

Dead By Daylight is available on Playstation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, PC, and Stadia.