The Hag in Dead By Daylight is one Killer that is downright frightening to face off against. Her screeching yells and jittery movement as she shambles around the map are incredibly unsettling, and her powers are nothing to sniff at either. Her dark magic gives her a high degree of map pressure and awareness turning every Trial with her into a mind-bending nightmare with nowhere to hide.
The Hag, or Lisa Sherwood as she was known in mortal life, was introduced as part of the Chapter III: Of Flesh And Mud DLC. She’s a teleport and trap-focused Killer that uses Perks based around the game's Hex and Totem system. She’s not as complicated as she first seems and with the right setup, she can be a nightmare to play against. So if you want to use her unholy powers to sacrifice Survivors, then try these simple tips for playing as The Hag in Dead By Daylight.
10 How The Hag Works
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The Hag may seem tricky to wrap your head around at first, but she handles a lot like the Demogorgon, in that she can teleport around the map to spots she marks using her special ability. It’s a simple rhythm of plant, wait and teleport that’s easy to use and quick to master.
Pressing the power button activates her Blackened Catalyst ability which causes this sadistic shaman to bend over and carve a glyph on the ground. This is known as a Phantasm Trap and it has an area of effect that if a Survivor enters, causes it to spawn a Mud Phantasm that yanks its victim's camera towards it, disorienting them for a moment. It emits a fake Terror Radius, tricking players into thinking it’s real, and it also faces the direction of those that tripped it, so you can see where they’ve gone if they run off. Finally, when a trap is triggered you can also teleport onto it and ambush someone.
9 Plant Those Traps
The best way to play as The Hag is to plant as many traps as you possibly can around the map during a Trial. You can have up to 10 at a time and each new one placed after that will replace the oldest, so be liberal with them.
It takes two seconds to drop one and it doesn’t take long to carpet some of the more important areas of the map that Survivors could congregate in. Having as many traps down as possible also means that you have a larger amount of map awareness when it comes to tracking Survivors as well as more mobility since they become fast travel points. So try to spread them out a good distance from each other to cover as wide a space as possible.
8 Get Creative With Your Placement
A downside to the traps is that you can’t teleport to them unless they’re triggered. So if you want to use them in the best way possible, you should try to get a bit sneaky with where you place them. They’re hard to spot and it’s incredibly easy to hide them behind props or key points in the map you're on.
For starters, a great place would be around generators and hooks, or next to door frames as the shape of the trap mark can blend in easier. Although, don’t place them under pallets as Survivors often use this as a way to bait you to teleport to them before stunning you with a pallet drop to the head. Tight corridors are perfect spots as they force a player to trigger the trap in order to progress, plus if it’s discovered it will either deter the Survivor from going that way or delay them as they try to disarm it. So think about good spots to dump them as you’re running around.
7 Protect The Totems
Introduced as part of Patch 1.3.0 in 2016, Totems are a unique mechanic in Dead By Daylight that’s often overlooked despite how beneficial they can be to both Killers and Survivors. In the hands of The Hag, they’re vitally important as her Perks are only active as long as Hex Totems are active in a Trial.
There are five Totems on each map, and Hex Totems are identifiable by the small candles underneath them. There’s normally a handful present at any given time, but if The Hag loses all of them she gets substantially nerfed. So try to keep your eye on where they are as Survivors that are aware of how she works will be gunning for them.
6 Powerful Perks For The Hag
The Hags starting Perks are pretty strong, they buff movement speed, generator regression, and inflict Blindness on Survivors for using her basic attack. But, the fact that they’re tied to Hex Totems being active can make them quite a liability. So as strong as she is, having a character that’s potentially only at max strength for a short period of time can be incredibly frustrating to play as, here are some Teachable Perks that might be worth bringing along instead.
A good place to start would be A Nurses Calling as it reveals Survivors being healed or healing themselves within a set range and it’s a good way to make up for The Hag having no counter to Healing Perks in Dead By Daylight. Corrupt Intervention is another great pick as it blocks the farthest generators at the start of a Trial, forcing players into a much smaller killing field for a while. Finally, use Dragons Grip to turn generators into booby traps that cause Survivors interacting with them to scream, give away their position, and suffer from the Exposed status effect for one minute.
5 The Best Add-ons For The Hag
As far as Add-ons go, The Hag has some pretty decent modifiers to play around with. She of course has the usual collection of stat bumps for her abilities in terms of increasing range, duration, and placement speed. But where things get really fun are with her more exotic and rarer consumable passives.
The most devious of which is the Rusty Shackles. This sneaky item renders Phantasm Traps silent to Survivors and it stops them from spawning Mud Phantasms turning them into silent alarms. There’s also Grandma’s Heart, which reduces your Terror Radius to zero whilst boosting the hologram Hags radius up to 16 meters, allowing you to blend in with your duplicates. Finally, Mint Rag is recommended as it gives you the ability to teleport to any trap at will, removing the limitation of only being able to use her map crossing move when a trap is tripped.
4 Traps Can Be Used To Body Block
An interesting feature of the Phantasm Traps is that they don’t have collision and they’re basically a hologram that Survivors can just run through. But, using the Scarred Hand add-on gives them collision, making them much more useful for dirty tricks.
One pro trick you can do as this Killer is to use them to body block windows and doorways, limiting escape routes for other players. Another trick you could pull is to blend in with the decoys using this add-on and the Grandma’s Heart add-on, to make Survivors constantly have to guess which one is the real you until it's too late.
3 Pay Attention To Your Phantasms
As you’re running around the map, especially during a chase, try to keep an eye on any Mud Phantasms as you pass them. They can make tracking down a player much faster than if you were following scratch marks.
Illusional Hags that are triggered will always face the direction of the player that tripped them. So if you’re responding to an alarm, look at which direction they’re facing and then head off that way. If you have enough of these helpful shades placed around you’ll find that fleeing players are much easier to predict.
2 Mess With Other Players Point Of View
Aside from being a nerve-jolting jumpscare, the Mud Phantasms can also be a great way of causing complete anarchy during a chase. When they’re activated they snap the unfortunate victim that set it off's view to it for a while and it can be quite disorientating, especially if it causes their camera to bug out.
For example, dump a few near some stairs or in a corner on the smaller maps in Dead By Daylight, and when it goes off the player that triggered it will have their camera lost in the geometry for a few seconds. This momentary confusion could also cause them to get turned around, running straight into your waiting arms. It’s a devious little exploit that can turn some of the dream worlds into a nightmare for Survivors.
1 Be A Stealthy Swamp Witch
Although that seems like a very wide and simple point to make, what’s meant by that is The Hag has a very small and thin character model which makes her difficult to spot up close in third-person, let alone off in the distance. Even more so if it’s on a map with a lot of props or trees in the way as she blends in really well.
So try to use stealth more as you wander around, use her odd outline to disappear into the background. Combine this with her teleport ability and certain add-ons like Mint Rag and Grandma’s Heart and you can become a silent map crossing monster. She’s also not too great in chases, so being able to ambush someone will always get you the upper hand when playing as this Killer.