As a survivor, your main goal is to repair five generators so you can open the gates and exit. Because of that, it’s good to know how you can speed up repairing them.
A generator takes 90 seconds to repair if you don’t fail any skill checks. That time can be reduced with a toolbox that comes with charges and a speed increase. While both reduce the time it takes to repair a generator, it’s not obvious what a charge does for you. Before I can explain this, there are a few things you need to know.
- The normal repair speed for a generator is one second per charge.
- A generator has 90 charges, so it takes 90 seconds to repair (as long as you don’t fail any skill checks).
- If you have a toolbox with 16 charges, the toolbox is good for 16 seconds (1 second per charge). This means 74 charges will be spent without the toolbox (90 charges in the generator -16 charges in the toolbox).
- The repair speed will decrease the time it takes to go through each charge in the toolbox.
If you have a Worn-Out Tools toolbox with 16 charges and a repair boost of 50% (0.5), 0.5 and will be added to the seconds per charge (1+0.5=1.5). This means that the toolbox will last 10.666 seconds (16/1.5=10.666). And if you pass every skill check, you’ll have 17.777% of the generator repaired (16/90*100=17.777) in that time.
The calculations are spelled out below.
- 1 + Boost Percentage in Decimal = Seconds per Charge
- Toolbox Charges ÷ Seconds per Charge = Toolbox Duration
- Toolbox Charges ÷ Generator Charges x 100 (to get the percentage) = Precent of Generator the Toolbox will Repair
Skill Checks
While Skill Checks are an annoyance, they can help speed up repairs. Great Skill Checks give a 1% (.01) progress bonus, which can add up if you get more than one. The only problem is that a failed Skill Check will reduce your progress by 10% (0.1). So, to make sure get a great Skill Check, you might want to bring along a perk or two.
If you’re not good at hitting Skill Checks, you can add Teamwork: Full Circuit (Duston Henderson). This perk makes the Good Skill Check zones 15% larger and give you a 5% boost when working on a generator with another player.
If you want to safely hit Great Skill Checks, add Stake Out (Detective Tapp). This perk will give you 1 token for every 15 seconds you’re in the killer’s terror radius. You can only collect up to 4 tokens; one will be consumed for each skill check. For every token, one successful Basic Skill Check will be turned into a Great one. That can give you a 4% progress bonus. And if you’re in the killer’s terror radius while doing a generator, you can build them up as you use them.
Teaming Stake Out with Hyperfocus (Rebecca Chambers) is a real treat. Hyperfocus will give you a token for every Great Skill Check, which will give you an increase in progress for every token, depending on the tier of your perk (10%/20%/30%). You can only collect a max of 6 tokens.
If you need more information on perks, read Dead by Daylight: Perks for Beginners.
Diminishing Returns
You can stack perks that will increase your repair speeds, but they’ll be affected by Diminishing Returns, which I discuss in Dead by Daylight: Patch Notes for Beginners. What this means is if you have a perk that speeds your repairs by 10% and a second that increases it by 5%, the lesser of the two will be cut by 50%. Because of this, your generator repair speed will be increased by 12.5% instead of 15%. If you have three perks that do the same thing, the third will be decreased by 25% and a fourth would be 12.5%.
Diminishing Returns will only come into play if you carry multiple perks and add-ons that do the same thing. Give this some thought when putting your build together.
Hopefully you found this post helpful. As always, feel free to reach out to me on social media with questions, comments, or just to say hello.