There’s a surprising amount of customisation in Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Between altering attributes and enhancing your abilities, you can take a brutal killer like Cook, and bend them to fit just about any role. As you level up, however, you will be able to progress through the ‘Skill Tree’ and gain powerful perks for your loadout. Finding the best perks for your build is all part of the fun.
Perks fall into stat-related categories and can affect a wide variety of things. If you want more damage, there are perks for that. How about new and interesting ways of tracking down your prey? There’s a perk for that too. Maybe you want to sync with your team more and take advantage of their skills. Well, there’s a perk for that too. In this guide, we are going to go through the perks that really stand out when customising your killer.
For some more on the game, check out our killer tier list and survivor tier list. We've also got a look at if the game is crossplay, plus the current server status.
Surgical
An often-overlooked aspect of Texas Chain Saw Massacre is Grandpa. New and old players have a tendency to get caught up in the thrill of the chase and forget that dropping off vials of blood can increase your odds of victory substantially. Surgical allows you to harvest more blood when you attack a survivor, which is very powerful on characters like Johnny or Leatherface who are actively hunting people.
Even if you weren’t using that blood to fuel Grandpa, Surgical combos with other perks that require blood, giving it a surprising amount of utility.
Universal Donor
Another blood-related perk, Universal Donor focuses on boosting the amount of blood gathered from buckets. This is very similar to Surgical, however, it plays better with different killers. For example, Sissy and Hitchhiker vastly prefer this perk as they specialise in supporting the Family.
With Universal Donor they can fill their vials without having to hunt down survivors, and they can fill them quickly. Like with Surgical, Universal Donor can be used to fill vials to combo with other perks.
Vial-ent
Vial-ent is one of our favourite perks because it offers a lot of damage with a very minor drawback. To activate Vial-ent, you must have a full vial of blood. Once activated, you will gain a substantial boost to your damage. In fact, the damage gained from Vial-ent overshadows every other damage-based perk.
Vial-ent is excellent on just about anyone. Killers who are focused on, well, killing, love this as they can escalate the damage and become more dangerous. Support characters also like Vial-ent because they are gathering blood constantly. Vial-ent lets them flex into a more damaging role should the need arise.
Dinner Bell
Dinner Bell only works if Hitchhiker is on your team, and even then, only if the person playing Hitchhiker is good. Every time a survivor stumbles into a trap, they are highlighted and you gain a stamina boost. The information gleaned from this perk is game-changing, hence why it’s on this list despite its list of drawbacks.
It goes without saying, but if you are playing Hitchhiker, Dinner Bell is a perk you want to prioritise on almost any build.
Scout
Scout is very powerful but requires a lot of work. At level one, it grants a 5% increase to your movement speed. However, it also reduces your damage by 30%. This damage reduction is brutal when playing a character like Johnny, even if the movement boost is very good.
Once it hits level three Scout comes into its own. Your movement speed is increased by 15% whereas your damage is reduced by only 10%. This perk is excellent when maxed out on any character. You can offset the damage reduction with any other perk, and that movement speed is far too good to pass up.
Big Swings
Big Swings offers a fairly substantial damage buff but increases the amount of stamina you use per attack by 300%. This is a massive drawback that will require other perks to offset. However, Big Swings is great to dabble in on any character and is particularly nasty on a character who likes to kill.
As a general rule, we prefer Vial-ent, but Big Swings has its place. Heck, you can even combo its downside into a positive if you want to get fancy. Oh, and nobody said you can’t bring Big Swings and Vial-ent together for even more carnage.
Hysterical Strength
Hysterical Strength is there for those last-ditch efforts; those final swings that you are hoping trigger an execution. This perk triggers when your stamina is below 15% and provides a damage boost for your troubles. This works well on its own as attacking naturally takes up a lot of stamina.
Things get spicy when you combine it with Big Swings as you can gain stacking damage buffs. Throw on Vial-ent for a laugh in conjunction with a high savagery stat, and you are taking survivors down nightmarishly fast.
Tracker Tagged
Moving away from damage, we have Tracker Tagged. This is a powerful perk that highlights survivors who were recently attacked by you. This highlight extends to the entire family and is great for drawing attention to someone and getting some backup. This perk is excellent for any character.
Super simple perk, but one that provides massive benefits.
That’s all we have on killer-themed perks in Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Feel free to check out our tips and tricks for surviving as the survivors.