On January 27, Dead by Daylight developer Behaviour Interactive released a new DLC pack, Stranger Things Chapter 2, for its hit multiplayer horror game. This latest collaboration with Netflix introduces Vecna—known in the game as The First, a nod to the character’s history as the first test subject at Hawkins Lab—as the new killer.

Joining him are two new survivors with unique perks, Dustin Henderson and Jane “Eleven” Hopper, both of whom are rocking their 1987 looks from season five. You’ll also have the option to purchase new Legendary Outfits that add additional characters to the game: the fan-favorite Eddie Munson (costume for Dustin) and Robin Buckley (for Nancy Wheeler). 

The biggest star of the DLC, however, is Vecna and what he brings to Dead by Daylight. His movement speed makes him one of the slower killers in the game, but his powerful ranged abilities can quickly turn the match in your favor if you learn how to use him well—and that’s where our handy guide comes in. 

Vecna’s Dead by Daylight attacks

Vecna’s first ability is Vine Attack. This allows him to summon the twisted pulsating vines from the Upside Down to attack anyone who crosses its path (represented as a glowing red circle on the ground that you can freely aim). The best part about Vine Attack is its low cooldown, so even if you miss your shot, it won’t take long before you can use it again. Hitting survivors will give them one Worldbreaker token, which we’ll talk more about later. 

His second ability allows him to tear a hole through the ground and move quickly through the map via the Upside Down. While there, he’s able to pass underneath pallets, windows, and breakable doors. When you pop back up to the surface, you trigger the Undergate attack, a huge area-of-effect skill with protruding tentacles. Anyone caught in its radius receives two Worldbreaker tokens. 

Undergate is perfect for targeting a group of survivors or just lone players who are backed into a corner and can’t run away. The biggest drawback to it is its long cooldown. That’s why you need to use both of your abilities in tandem to stack the tokens, which helps unlock the true power of Vecna’s toolkit. 

Once a survivor is inflicted with two or more tokens, Vecna enters Worldbreaker mode—you’ll immediately hear a loud clock chime as the sky turns red and the Worldbreaker Timer appears on top of the screen. During this mode, Vecna can damage survivors with Vine Attack and Undergate attack, giving him more options to down them and place them on the sacrificial hooks (players are eliminated from the match after being hooked three times).

The timer, meanwhile, lets everyone know how many seconds are left before Vecna is depowered again. But survivors can speed up this countdown by interacting with any of the four grandfather clocks—a reference to how Vecna manipulated some of his victims in the show—scattered across the map. 

Worldbreaker is also a great opportunity to use Vecna’s brutal finishing moves, special one-hit kills that Dead by Daylight refers to as moris. 

These kills require some setup. His first mori needs a Memento Mori Offering in his loadout, which are rare in-game items you can obtain via their Bloodweb skilltree. For this kill, Vecna levitates a downed survivor and gruesomely snaps their bones and pops their eyeballs with his psychic powers—just like he did to the teenagers in season four.

But Vecna also has a hidden mori that’s equally satisfying to pull off. It can only happen under a very specific circumstance: the survivor must have already been hooked twice, they must have four Worldbreaker tokens, and you must down them with either Undergate or Vine Attack. The final attack causes their body to float in the air and when you approach them you can use the Mind Break mori, where Vecna twists their neck by clenching his hand.

Tips for Vecna and the survivors in Dead by Daylight

What makes Vecna so dangerous (and also so fun to play) are the frequency of his ranged attacks. You can aim Vine Attack through walls too, which is helpful for targeting survivors if they’re hiding behind a building, vaulting through a window, or just taking an educated guess on where they’re running to next. If you want to get better at attacking through walls, start learning the layouts of Dead by Daylight’s maps: the more you know, the more accurate you’ll be with your predictions. 

Vine Attack is also useful for faking out survivors during a chase and pushing them in other directions. For example, if they’re running down a hallway, you can launch Vine Attack a few steps ahead of them to force them to turn around (if there’s no other way out) and hopefully you’ll be able to catch them off guard and strike them with a melee attack instead.

But Vecna isn’t the only one who can play mind games. To counter his Vine Attack predictions, survivors have to make sure they aren’t running down the most obvious routes. On a recent livestream for the Stranger Things DLC, a developer from Behaviour suggested that when you break Vecna’s line of sight and turn a corner around a wall, stop and wait for a second to see if he attacks, and then run toward a different direction to lose him. 

Vecna’s Upside Down traversal can be scary to see, but this ability also has some limitations. There are a lot of objects he can’t pass through while in this mode, including walls, bushes, generators, and fences. If you see him approaching as a dark shadow on the ground, start zigzagging between as many of these obstacles as you can to slow him down. Just make sure to get out of the way when his Undergate attack appears. 

If you’re playing as Dustin, you can also buy more time through his Bada Bada Boom perk. This ability allows you to booby-trap a window for a limited time after filling the repair bar of any generator by at least 20 percent. If you can lure Vecna to one of these windows while he’s chasing you on the surface, it will significantly slow him down for six seconds, which is plenty of time for you to hide. 

Above all, you have to limit the amount of time Vecna spends in Worldbreaker so he doesn’t build up any momentum with hurting and hooking survivors. It doesn’t matter which of the grandfather clocks you interact with since they all contribute collectively to the timer. 

The ultimate Stranger Things playground 

Dead by Daylight: Stranger Things Chapter 2 is a strong addition to Behaviour’s long-running multiplayer game. It offers players even more characters from the main cast, building on the collaboration from 2019 that brought in the Demogorgon as a killer, Nancy and Steve Harrington as survivors (along with Jonathan Byers as a Legendary Outfit), and the Hawkins Labs map.

You can now fill up all four slots of a survivor party with different characters from the show, and create your own Stranger Things matchups with Vecna or any of the other killers in the game. In fact, this isn’t even the first time a version of Vecna has been playable in Dead by Daylight. 

In 2024, Behaviour worked with Wizards of the Coast to introduce the original Vecna, the infamous villain from Dungeons & Dragons (and whom Stranger Thing’s big bad is named after), as a killer. This Vecna is known in the game as The Lich, and his abilities were inspired by decades of lore from the tabletop game. 

This melting pot of pop culture horror universes is part of what makes Dead by Daylight so entertaining, and the ongoing updates have kept the game fresh and relevant for the last decade. If you’ve never played DBD before, you can jump in with the full game and both Stranger Things packs in the Dead by Daylight: Stranger Things Complete Edition on the Epic Games Store.