Dead by Daylight Maps: Every DBD Map and Realm, Ranked Best to Worst

Maps in Dead By Daylight decide a lot of the match before the first generator starts. A killer who dominates on Coal Tower can feel powerless in the Raccoon City Police Station. A survivor team that chains loops for days on Eyrie of Crows gets caught in dead zones on Shelter Woods within seconds. The map that loads shapes chase length, generator defense, hook access and the endgame more than any single perk or add-on.

This page does two jobs. First, it lists every Dead by Daylight map currently in the game, grouped by Realm, with the official map names and a one-line note on each layout. Second, it ranks every map from best to worst based on how it plays at mid to high MMR: loop quality, generator spread, traversal and balance between killer and survivor. It is not a ranking of looks. RPD is gorgeous and Midwich nails the Silent Hill mood. Neither makes them good to play on.

Free Dead by Daylight tools: Theory-craft loadouts with our free Perk Builder, then compare the meta in our Killer Tier List and Survivor Tier List.

How Many Maps Are in Dead by Daylight?

As of October 2026 Dead by Daylight has 45 maps across 20 active Realms. Two counting rules explain why other sites show different numbers:

• Badham Preschool counts once. It used to load in five numbered versions (I to V). Versions II to V left the public pool in 2025 and survive only in custom games, so only Badham Preschool I appears in normal matches.
• The original Raccoon City Police Station counts separately. Behaviour retired the full two-wing RPD in Patch 6.2.0 and replaced it with the smaller East Wing and West Wing maps. The original came back later, but only for 2v8. That leaves 44 maps in the normal 1v4 rotation.

If a list says 21 Realms and 46 maps, it is still counting Haddonfield. The Halloween chapter left the in-game and platform stores on 19 January 2026, and Behaviour confirmed the Haddonfield Realm and its one map, Lampkin Lane, would no longer be accessible. Sleepless District arrived two months later, so the game still has 20 active Realms, just not the same 20.

Every DBD Map Name, Listed by Realm

Each Realm shares a visual theme and a tile pool. The maps inside it differ in shape, main building and generator spawns. Here is the full list as of Patch 10.2.0.

Retired: Haddonfield (Lampkin Lane), removed January 2026. Coming next: The Mall, an original map Behaviour revealed at the 10th anniversary broadcast, planned for December 2026.

DBD map layouts at a glance

What each map is like when it loads, Realm by Realm.

The MacMillan Estate. Industrial woodland with the most consistent tile pool in the game. Coal Tower is compact and built around a central tower with a window. Groaning Storehouse centers on a large storehouse. Ironworks of Misery has the ironworks building and its strong window. Suffocation Pit is laid out around a mine entrance. Shelter Woods has no real main building and a lot of open ground.

Autohaven Wreckers. Scrapyard maps full of car and truck loops. Azarov’s Resting Place is long and narrow. Blood Lodge has a lodge as its main building. Gas Heaven’s gas station was moved closer to the middle and the map was shrunk in Patch 6.7.0. Wretched Shop has a small shop building. Wreckers’ Yard is the smallest and most open of the five.

Coldwind Farm. Farmland with corn. Fractured Cowshed has the cowshed, Rancid Abattoir the slaughterhouse, The Thompson House the farmhouse and combine harvester, and Torment Creek its creek and open fields. Rotten Fields has the most corn and the most spread out generators.

Crotus Prenn Asylum. Disturbed Ward puts a large asylum building in the middle. Father Campbell’s Chapel is smaller, with the chapel as its main building.

Backwater Swamp. The Pale Rose is built around a moored riverboat. Grim Pantry has a pantry shack on uneven swamp ground. Both have patchy hook spawns.

Léry’s Memorial Institute. Treatment Theatre is a fully indoor hospital of offices, corridors and the central theatre room.

Red Forest. Mother’s Dwelling is one of the largest maps in the game, with the Huntress’s house. The Temple of Purgation is centered on its temple.

Springwood. Badham Preschool is a suburban street with the preschool, its basement and several houses.

Gideon Meat Plant. The Game is a two-floor indoor meat plant packed with pallets, most of them unsafe.

Yamaoka Estate. Family Residence and Sanctum of Wrath use wooden buildings and bamboo, which makes short-wall loops with plenty of mindgames.

Ormond. Mount Ormond Resort is a ski resort with a strong lodge. Ormond Lake Mine is a snowy mine map that launched with the Bone Chill event in December 2024.

Hawkins National Laboratory. The Underground Complex is an indoor two-floor lab around the Rift Lab. It returned in November 2023 after two years out of the game.

Grave of Glenvale. Dead Dawg Saloon is a small western town with the saloon, the gallows and breakable walls.

Silent Hill. Midwich Elementary School is a two-floor indoor school with a courtyard.

Raccoon City. The East Wing and West Wing maps each hold one half of the police station plus the Main Hall. The full building only loads in 2v8.

Forsaken Boneyard. Eyrie of Crows has long walls and a strong main building. Dead Sands joined it in Patch 8.6.0.

Withered Isle. Garden of Joy has a two-story house and garden. Greenville Square is a town square. Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, added with the Five Nights at Freddy’s chapter on 17 June 2025, is a run-down pizzeria with party tables and balloons. Fallen Refuge arrived in Patch 9.1.0.

The Decimated Borgo. The Shattered Square launched with Forged in Fog in November 2022. Forgotten Ruins came with the Dungeons & Dragons chapter on 3 June 2024.

Dvarka Deepwood. Toba Landing came with End Transmission in June 2023 and Nostromo Wreckage with the Alien chapter in August 2023. Nostromo Wreckage has its own map offering.

Sleepless District. Trickster’s Delusion is the first urban map: neon streets, a marketplace, shops and a two-story nightclub, released 17 March 2026 with All-Kill: Comeback.

What Makes a Dead by Daylight Map Good or Bad?

Ranking maps needs consistent criteria. A map can have strong loops for survivors and tight generator clusters for killers at the same time. The best maps balance these factors. The worst stack several of them in one direction.

Map size is the biggest single factor. On a map that is too large, the killer physically cannot patrol all seven generators, so survivors get free progress. On Mother’s Dwelling a killer without mobility who finishes one chase on one side of the map often finds two generators done on the other. Small maps like Coal Tower or Dead Dawg Saloon compress the action and let any killer keep pressure on the whole spread.

Pallet count on its own means little. The Game has pallets everywhere, but most are unsafe short-wall pallets a killer can play around, so it is fairer for killers than it looks. Eyrie of Crows has fewer pallets, but they link to long walls and strong windows, so each one is worth more.

Main building strength has the biggest single-tile impact. Garden of Joy’s house turns one structure into a huge time sink against any killer without an anti-loop power. Ironworks of Misery also has a strong window, but the tiles around it are exposed, so killers can zone survivors away from it. A main building that is too strong warps the whole map, because good survivors always run toward the safest structure available.

Dead by Daylight Map Types

Most maps fit one of five archetypes. Knowing which one loaded tells you what kind of match to expect.

Small indoor maps break the normal chase. Sight lines are short, pallets are short, and killers with stealth or ambush powers get a big edge because survivors cannot see them coming. Ranged killers like Huntress and Deathslinger lose most of their angles to walls. Indoor maps are also where camera settings matter most, which is why we wrote a separate guide to FOV and stretched resolution in Dead by Daylight.

Large open maps punish killers without mobility. A Trapper or Clown on Mother’s Dwelling walks huge distances while survivors hold gens on opposite sides. Blight, Nurse and Hillbilly offset some of that, but even they feel the space.

Loop-heavy outdoor maps let survivors chain safe structures for far longer than most killers can afford. Eyrie of Crows is the clearest case: long walls and a strong main building let one survivor eat a minute of chase. Mount Ormond Resort plays similarly, with strong windows in the lodge and good pallets across the rest of the map.

Balanced mid-size maps produce the healthiest games. Coal Tower, Dead Dawg Saloon and most Autohaven Wreckers maps have loops that reward skill, gens a killer can defend without a mobility power, and sight lines that give both sides information. These are the maps where the better team usually wins.

All Dead by Daylight Maps Ranked From Best to Worst

This is our ranking of all 44 maps in the 1v4 pool, from best to worst, based on balance between roles, skill expression and how consistently each map produces a fair match. “Role Lean” shows which side the map favors at competent play. A survivor lean does not mean killers cannot win there. It means the map hands survivors more built-in advantages.

A note on the provisional maps. Forgotten Ruins, Nostromo Wreckage, Toba Landing, Ormond Lake Mine, Dead Sands, Fallen Refuge and Trickster’s Delusion are newer than the rest of the pool or have been adjusted since launch, and opinion on them has not settled the way it has on Coal Tower or RPD. Rather than guess, we hold them in the middle of the table and will move them as their reputation firms up. Trickster’s Delusion in particular has been live only since March 2026.

The ranking reflects the game as of Patch 10.2.0 in autumn 2026. Lampkin Lane is gone, so it is not ranked. Maps that were reworked, such as Gas Heaven and the Coldwind Farm set, are judged in their current form.

Best Dead by Daylight Maps

The top maps share the same traits: a compact size that lets the killer apply pressure without stripping survivor safety, readable tiles that reward map knowledge, structures with counterplay for both sides, and gen spacing that forces real decisions about which three to protect.

Coal Tower is the closest thing the game has to a perfectly balanced map. Every killer in the roster can patrol its generators, yet survivors have enough pallets and windows to fight back in every chase. The central tower loop can be played well by either side depending on position, and the surrounding MacMillan tiles are ones every experienced player can read. Three-gens form naturally without becoming unbreakable, and the exit gates sit far enough apart to keep the endgame interesting.

Dead Dawg Saloon balances things differently. The map is small, the western buildings give killers clear sight lines, and breakable walls change the loops. A killer who breaks the right walls early opens the map up and tilts it toward killer. A killer who ignores them leaves survivors strong loops in the saloon and around it. That trade of time now for pressure later is a strategic layer most maps lack. It leans killer, but only slightly.

The Shattered Square shows where Behaviour’s newer map design is heading. Its structures are varied, so no two areas play the same, and the links between them let survivors move from loop to loop without long dead zones, yet never chain endlessly. Its moderate size keeps killers without mobility powers in the game.

Ironworks of Misery has one of the best-known structures in DBD: the ironworks building and its strong window. The tiles around it are fair and include dead zones where survivors moving between structures can be caught. Survivors have to decide when to head for the building, and killers have to decide whether to chase there or cut survivors off in the weaker areas.

The MacMillan Estate as a whole fills the upper ranks because its tile pool is sound. Shelter Woods is the exception, too open and killer-sided, but Suffocation Pit, Groaning Storehouse, Coal Tower and Ironworks of Misery all give both sides agency. If every Realm played like MacMillan, map balance in DBD would be far better.

Mid-Tier Dead by Daylight Maps

Mid-tier maps work, but their strengths and weaknesses shift with the killer in the match. This is where character selection matters most.

Autohaven Wreckers is the classic DBD outdoor experience. All five maps share car loops, truck loops and standard jungle gyms, and the main building is what sets them apart. Wreckers’ Yard is the smallest and most killer-friendly. Gas Heaven plays tighter since Patch 6.7.0 moved its main building toward the center and reduced the map’s size. None of these maps are exciting, but they are consistently fair, which counts for a lot.

Coldwind Farm went through a rework that addressed many of the old corn and visibility complaints. Torment Creek and The Thompson House play the fairest. Rotten Fields is still the most survivor-sided because of its size and corn cover. The cowshed on Fractured Cowshed is strong but no longer oppressive.

Yamaoka Estate maps use bamboo and wooden buildings that make short-wall loops. The bamboo blocks sight lines for stealthy survivors, and it gives killers more room to mindgame than tall solid walls do. Family Residence plays fairer than Sanctum of Wrath because it is more compact.

Crotus Prenn Asylum maps are middle-ground outdoor maps defined by their main buildings. Disturbed Ward’s asylum can be very strong when the window spawns well. Father Campbell’s Chapel is smaller and fairer.

The Game and Treatment Theatre are the defining killer-dependent maps. Stealth killers like Myers, Ghostface and Pig thrive on the constant line-of-sight breaks, and the Doctor’s static field is at its best in small rooms. Huntress loses her hatchet angles and Deathslinger’s sight lines are blocked. On The Game, trap killers like Trapper and Hag excel because survivors are funnelled through predictable paths between floors. Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, built to keep the cramped feel of the first FNAF game, and the indoor Underground Complex fall into the same bracket: the killer you face matters more than the map.

Lowest-Ranked Dead by Daylight Maps

The bottom of the list shares one problem: these maps remove meaningful counterplay from one side, so the result feels decided by the map rather than the players.

The Raccoon City Police Station wings sit last. Behaviour retired the original two-wing map in Patch 6.2.0 and replaced it with the East Wing and West Wing, which are much smaller but still multi-floor indoor mazes of narrow hallways, doors and offices. Killers without movement powers spend far too long walking between generators, and players who have not memorized the layout get lost. The Main Hall and office loops let survivors hold chases for a long time. Even killers who work indoors, like Wraith or Myers, lose efficiency because the map is so hard to patrol.

Midwich Elementary School frustrates both sides, which is its own kind of achievement. Killers often hear a generator directly above or below them with no quick way up or down. Hook spawns are inconsistent, sometimes leaving whole sections without a hook on the right floor, which forces long carries and wiggle escapes. Survivors have it rough too: classroom loops are mostly unsafe, hallways are easy to zone, and the courtyard is a dead zone good killers use for quick downs.

Garden of Joy is low almost entirely because of its main building. The two-story house has a loop and vault that let a survivor waste huge amounts of time, and a survivor who knows it can run a killer without an anti-loop power for 40 to 60 seconds without dropping a pallet. Fences and structures outside add more connections. Killers either give up a big piece of the map or commit to chases they cannot win.

Eyrie of Crows has long walls and open sight lines that sound good for killers but mostly help survivors. The walls connect to windows and pallets, letting survivors chain resources around the edges of the map, and the main building has several vaults. Outer generators are hard to defend. Mobility killers cope, but for M1 killers (basic attack killers without chase powers) it is one of the most survivor-sided maps in the game.

Best DBD Maps for Killer and for Survivor

If you want the short version by role, these are the maps that favor each side most in the current pool.

How Dead by Daylight Maps Affect Killer and Survivor Strategy

The loading screen should change your plan. A killer on Mother’s Dwelling needs a different approach than the same killer on Coal Tower, and survivors on Shelter Woods must play far more carefully than on Eyrie of Crows.

On large maps, killers should build a defensible three-gen rather than walking corner to corner. Pick three gens that sit close together, protect them and let the other four go. Pop Goes the Weasel and Overcharge buy more time on large maps because survivors take longer to return to a regressed gen.

On killer-sided maps, survivors cannot waste pallets or take chases in dead zones. Do gens fast (Prove Thyself helps), stay hidden when you can and save strong pallets for when the killer commits. Solo queue players should run Kindred or Bond, because knowing where the killer and teammates are stops you walking into danger.

Best Map Types for Different Killers

A Nurse whose blinks ignore walls has a very different map list from a Trapper who needs chokepoints. Knowing which traits suit your killer tells you when an offering is worth it and how to adapt when the map is random.

Mobility killers are the most forgiving. Blight’s rush lets him patrol even Mother’s Dwelling, Hillbilly’s chainsaw sprint covers ground fast, and Nurse ignores walls and pallets so completely that she is the only truly map-agnostic killer at the top level.

Stealth killers peak indoors. Myers can stalk through doorways and reach Tier III unseen, Ghostface can mark around corners, and Pig’s crouch becomes a real approach tool instead of a slow walk everyone sees from 40 meters away.

Trap and setup killers need survivors funnelled through predictable paths. Trapper on The Game has few routes between floors to cover, and Hag’s traps gain value wherever chokepoints force survivors across them.

Recommended Perks by Map Type

Map type changes which perks earn their slot. For a full breakdown of individual perks and their rankings, see our Dead by Daylight perks guide.

Corrupt Intervention is one of the best killer perks on large maps because it blocks the three farthest generators at the start, shrinking the map while you find your first chase. On Mother’s Dwelling or The Temple of Purgation, survivors otherwise spread to all four corners right away.

Windows of Opportunity is close to mandatory for survivors on indoor maps. Outdoors you can see pallets from a distance. Indoors, turning a corner into a dead end with no pallet means a down. The perk shows pallets and vaults through walls so you can plan the route before the chase starts.

On loop-heavy maps, Bamboozle blocks a window after you vault it, which turns the strong windows of Eyrie of Crows or Mount Ormond Resort into quick downs. Spirit Fury with Enduring is the other answer: shorter pallet stuns, and the pallet breaks on its own after two stuns.

Solo Queue vs SWF: How Map Strength Changes

The ranking assumes competent play, but coordination shifts the balance. Large maps reward SWF most. A solo team on Mother’s Dwelling might stack two players on one gen and leave a free three-gen, while a voice-comms group splits across gens and calls the killer’s position, which can be worth two or three generators by the end.

Indoor maps narrow the gap. Even a SWF struggles to give useful callouts in Treatment Theatre’s corridors. Solo players running Kindred or Bond get close to the same information there.

Strong main buildings get worse for killers against SWF, because a coordinated team sends the chased survivor to the building every time. That deliberate use is part of why Garden of Joy ranks so low. Killer-sided maps like Shelter Woods change least, because comms cannot create pallets that do not exist.

How Map Selection Works in DBD

You cannot pick the map in public matches, but you can influence it:

• Map offerings give a flat 20% chance of sending the match to their map. Since Patch 9.0.0 they no longer stack when several players burn the same one, and they stay hidden during the burn.
• Equal weighting. Patch 9.6.0 in April 2026 set every map to an equal chance of loading.
• Realm Repeat Prevention, added in Patch 8.5.0, stops the same Realm loading twice in a row and makes recently played Realms unlikely.
• Custom games let you pick any map, including the Badham Preschool variants that left the public pool.

Dead by Daylight Map Tips for Beginners

New players focus on killer powers and perk selection and ignore map knowledge. That is a mistake. Running one loop correctly adds more survival time than any perk.

• Learn one Realm at a time. Start with The MacMillan Estate. Its maps share a tile pool, they are among the most balanced, and the basics transfer everywhere else.
• Run Windows of Opportunity until you know pallet spawns. It is training wheels, but the information is invaluable while you learn.
• As killer, check the generator layout first. Ten seconds spent reading the spread stops you from handing yourself an impossible three-gen.
• Learn safe versus unsafe pallets. A safe pallet has walls on both sides. An unsafe one has an open side the killer can walk or lunge around. Throwing unsafe pallets early wastes them.
• Find the main building on every map and learn if it is strong or weak. Survivors should head for a strong one and avoid a weak one. Killers do the opposite.
• Check for dead zones before you run. Running into open ground against a good killer is a guaranteed down.
• As killer, break key walls early. Dead Dawg Saloon and the Borgo maps have breakable walls that make safe loops if left up.
• Learn floor transitions. On Midwich, The Game and the RPD wings, knowing the stairs and drop-downs decides whether a chase is productive or wasted.

The fastest way to learn maps is to play both sides. A killer main who plays 50 survivor matches understands why certain loops are strong. A survivor main who plays killer sees why some maps feel hopeless from the other side.

You can also explore additional tools that help you learn map layouts faster and build game knowledge more efficiently.

Why Map Knowledge Matters

Map knowledge multiplies every other skill. A survivor with perfect chase mechanics who runs into a dead zone still goes down. A killer with an ideal build who chases into the strongest building on the map is wasting time a map-aware killer never would. Perks, add-ons and DBD characters are the tools. Map knowledge decides how well you use them.

The maps at the top of this list are not maps where one side always wins. They are maps where the better player wins. The maps at the bottom feel decided before they start, which is the clearest sign of a bad map. The pool keeps changing: Haddonfield left in January, Trickster’s Delusion arrived in March and The Mall is due in December, so expect this page to move with it. Until then, knowing which maps help you and which work against you is one of the most valuable things you can learn in Dead By Daylight.