Dead by Daylight's Black Banquet Turns Snacks Into a Gamble

Dead by Daylight's returning anniversary event has turned every plate of food on the map into a small psychological experiment. In the Black Banquet, survivors who spot a morsel on a banquet table have to decide, in the split second before a killer closes in, whether that snack is a lifeline or a trap. Killers spend the round loading poison into the same tables, plus pallets, generators, and portals, or flinging it straight at survivors, so a meal that promises instant healing or a burst of speed can just as easily wreck a survivor's sprint the moment they bite into it. The event marks a milestone for Behaviour Interactive's horror staple, which has now crossed 70 million players, and runs June 25 through July 16, with new challenges rolling out weekly.

A banquet built on bluffing

The core twist of Black Banquet is that food is never obviously safe. Morsels turn up around the map for survivors to eat on the spot or set out on banquet tables for teammates, and different dishes carry different effects, from immediate healing to a temporary speed boost. Killers counter this by seeding poison charges onto tables, pallets, generators, and portals, or throwing them directly at survivors, and a poisoned morsel saps a survivor's sprint the instant it's consumed. That tension only sharpens with the Toothy Torte Offering, an event-exclusive Bloodweb item that hands survivors a morsel at the start of a trial while cranking the killer's poison charges to their max, effectively raising the stakes on both sides before the round even really begins. The gamble doesn't last the whole match, though. Once four generators are powered, or only one survivor remains, morsels and poison charges stop appearing altogether. From that point, banquet tables become a guaranteed reward rather than a coin flip: interacting with one grants a Haste boost, the Elusive or Undetectable status, Endurance, or immunity to Blindness. It's a deliberate shift from risk to relief, rewarding survivors who make it to the endgame with a clean buff instead of another round of dinner roulette.

Quests, coins, and a shared goal

Alongside the poisoned-plate mind games, Behaviour has stacked the event with progression systems. Thirteen quests are live now, with more arriving each week, split between milestone quests that escalate into tougher versions of themselves and completion quests that unlock once a set number of others are finished. Clearing them earns free cosmetics for Dwight Fairfield and The Trapper, on top of the event's limited-time Banquet Coins, which convert to Bloodpoints for anything left unspent when the event ends. Every reward costs 1,375 coins, and the first wave of quests already puts 1,100 within reach, with two more waves still to come. The community has also been handed a collective target: complete 100,000,000 Black Banquet trials across the three-week event, with a payout of 20,000 Bloodpoints and 20 Rift Fragments for everyone if the goal is hit. Players wasted little time getting started, logging more than half a million trials shortly after launch. For players chasing extras beyond the free track, four "Dearest" skins, Claudette's, The Doctor's, The Legion's, and Kate's, are available in the store for 1,080 Auric Cells each, roughly $10 apiece, while anyone tuning into partnered Twitch streams during the event can pick up a free outfit, mask, and weapon for The Oni without spending a coin. With three weeks of quests, a growing community tally, and a menu that keeps survivors guessing, Black Banquet gives Dead by Daylight's audience plenty of reasons to keep pulling up a chair through July 16.