This guide is for newer players or those who struggle to win against DM and want a quick reference on this. I don’t consider myself a professional gamer since I still miss my raygun shots a lot but I do have more than 200 hours in the game with two and a half teens being 3 star’d so I know what I’m talking about.
Basics
All credit goes to paid actor !
I’d like to start with dollmaster’s stats and abilities breakdown. To begin with, he has a smaller tension track/terror radius/whatever you call it than other monsters, so he will detect you sooner than you can hear him approaching. (if anyone knows the exact number – let me know, since it is nowhere to be listed, base tension track radius is 32 meters, but you actually start hearing this at 30 meters or closer) This is mostly for balance issues since he doesn’t have any oppression abilities with his own body. Instead, he uses dolls for this purpose.
Without any mutations he has a maximum 5 dolls at his disposal that he can place anywhere on the map. These dolls glow yellow if a teen is within 22 meters of them and DM can possess them at any time if he has a possession ready. You can disarm a doll to remove it and prevent any issues that it can cause for your team until DM replaces that doll. You have to approach an unactive doll crouching, otherwise you will trigger it and it will scream, giving a sound queue to the monster and gaining instantaneous possession or teleport for that doll (which is not what you would like to happen in most cases). After it has finished screaming and hasn’t been possessed it will disappear and go bact to the monster. When the doll is controlled, it acts as a normal monster with a tiny hitbox and the jump ability, which also means it can (and should be) destroyed by a weapon unless it’s a last stigma kill, but it’s already an advanced bs and we will come back to that later. If a doll gets disarmed or killed by a weapon the DM will get stunned, revealed and have his max doll count reduced by 1 which can’t go lower than 1 doll anyway, but at least it hinders his map control a lot. If a doll is being possessed, instead of a tension track (which is different for a doll actually and not many people pay attention to this until they hear a walking sound of a doll) you will hear his lullaby that doesn’t count as a tension track so you cannot gain a free charde for your enigma, however the DM gets a visual queue when he is possessing a doll and a teen with a charged weapon is within a 22 meter range of his body. If the body gets banished, he will return back to the original max doll count (which is 5 if there are no mutations changing this number) and starts at square one.
With the overcomplicated stuff done, the last trick up his sleeve is left is a teleport to any doll on the map. This removes a doll from the place he teleported to, but doesn’t decrease the doll count. You will hear a wind and bone sound if he hass teleported AWAY and a loud blunt hit sound if he has teleported TO a doll. The teleport ability has the longest cooldown in the game by far, so you should play around it more often.
As you can see, there isn’t that many defense options for a dollmaster except for a get out of jail free card but even that is somewhat copium option since teens will be after him anyway, but it wastes time.
Push Tactics
If you didn’t fall asleep while reading Basic ♥ Knowledge About The Monster, then I admire your determination to learn how to play against him. I actually wouldn’t blame you skipping the entire section since I had an aneurysm writing all of this and making sure I din’t skip or forget anything.
A push tactic for the dollmaster involves one ore more people going on a witch hunt leaving the rest of the team by their own. Ususally I’d recommend the first person to have a weapon to go and find the body ASAP and the second to protect any active crafts. Actually, have a leader and voice comms since people with no comms will have less chances than those who actively talk about the map info. The one thing that DM is strong against is unorganized team of lone wolfs. So, you did get into his lullaby range, what’s next? Try not to get baited into a free hit since DMs have to play very cheeky in order to even have a chance and try to be obnoxious and constantly step on his toes until your teammates gather for the party.
If a dollmaster teleports, try to identify where did he go: look at which direction he was looking before the TP or try to guess according to your team’s position, status or info, they will hear the TP and if they don’t then rule out their rooms and look for those that no teens are around. DMs are in love with extra chokey spots like the basement on school and hotel or med bay at the eviscerator but this might also be their biggest weakness. If a dollmaster plays defensively about his camping spot then you should craft push weapons like RC flyer or the eye. Speaking of which,..
Weapons
This might be the most important one since the majority of weapons are quite situational against him, except for maybe the cross and shock sphere. I will go through every single strat that DMs can throw at you and I will tell about all weapons that you should use in these scenarios.
The most normal dollmaster player will be going around in his dolls frequently, placing dolls that check multiple stations at once and camping holy stations especially. This DM just h a t e s crosses, flamethrowers and beam weapons to an extent since they are the easiest weapons to get rid of a doll with. Any push weapons will be great against his body but you shouldn’t really spend them on dolls since it will be a waste of a push, but some occasions might force you to use those to kill a doll. The push weapons are RC flyer, the eye and shock sphere since while this weapon is active a teen is mostly safe because they are far away controlling it in a safer spot or just invincible for the duration of their active power. And about enigma: the reason why enigma is so bad against dollmaster is because tension track is transferred to a doll for the duration of the possession, so finding and stalking said doll may be a bit tricky and thus it’s already slow charge rate becomes even slower and leaves you and your team vulnerable until you charge it in 2 minutes or so. Since DMs have an addiction to claustrophobic places, you need at least 2 people blocking multiple exits so the dollmaster cannot leave the area if he doesn’t teleport. To do a lockdown, you might need to cycle between multiple entrances and walls and props to keep him at bay and to not let him esc- well at this point just use a ♥ solar fare
Then we have the camper. Yeah, that guy who will place 4 dolls on his station of choice and will not leave it until banished. Their gameplay usually comes down to blocking all entrances of their room with dolls and then creating a doll and sending it towards a suspected craft. This is more annoying rather than a viable strat, but if teens don’t know how to approach it then it is lowkey busted. Solar flare HARD counters this playstyle since with a dancing spark equipped you can just launch it and DM is forced to leave his safe house and unless nobody takes a hit he is out of his comfort zone and vulnerable to a kill. If you don’t have dancing spark though and prefer flame charmer, you better block 3+ exits so your teammates can launch an eye or a shock sphere in the room or send an infiltrator to do a sneak attack. I highly recommend not using sword, staff, enigma and raygun in these scenarios since it will be abysmal to pull off at least a stun on a doll unless you are the infiltrator. Molotov, area denial and push weapons are your best friends.
Well, how about the aggressive TP dollmaster? To begin with, this strat actually sucks because monster is effectively handicapping himself and this bs works only because people don’t expect it in the first place. Your weapons of choice will be default kiting ones and I highly discourage using any oneshot weapons or if you insist, use them when you are certain that his TP is on cooldown.
Microtips and Decision-Making
This section I expect to be a quick reference rather than an in-depth thingie, so let’s get through all of the stuff I didn’t cover in other sections.
Dollmasters will always spawn within the first 5 seconds of a match, if they don’t they are new and clueless players, but not all monsters that do so are going to be dollmasters. Use evil eye or listen to your teammates to ensure this is a dollmaster, but chances are still quite big.
Don’t rush crafting kill weapons. This will make you lose more often than not since it doesn’t cost the DM that much to just keep sending dolls after your station. Spam stuns and defend your team’s crafts. This will make it harder for the monster to track and slap your teammates.
Prioritize weapons over heals unless you are critical. A single injured teen with a weapon is better than no teens and all of them are healthy, especially with the fact that once your team is out of weapons you will just keep getting slapped over and over again.
Don’t waste kill weapons when there are two or less stigmas left. It’s generally a good idea to use a weapon on a doll, but if you already got one, just let your teammates with stun weapons do it for you. If you waste it, you might not be able to get another one.
Communicate! You have no idea how many times I lost because of lack of information on where the monster is or not listening to someone saying that they hear the body, someone with a kill come here and deal with it. Really, dollmaster puts your teamwork at a test more than anything and if you cannot work with other people you will find it very hard and frustrating to play against this monster.
Sometimes you might want to not remove the last doll, but this is a high level play and you better listen to your team leader wether you need to remove it or not.
Be the first to comment