Few dare speak The Lich's true name, for fear that he may hear... or worse. His personal perks, Weave Attunement, Languid Touch, and Dark Arrogance allow him to exploit used items, exhaust those who disturb the crows, and increase vault speed.
"Bound with the skin and flesh of men, the Book is packed with spells both forbidden and wicked." SPECIAL ABILITY: VILE DARKNESS Press and hold the Secondary Power button to open the Spell Selection. Move the cursor towards one of four available Spells in order to select it: • Fly: Grants the ability to fly across the environment for up to 4 seconds and allows The Lich to ignore dropped Pallets and Windows. • Flight of the Damned: Grants the ability to conjure 5 Flying Entities that can pass through obstacles and damage Survivors in their path. • Triggers Killer Instinct on Survivors downed by this Spell for 5 seconds. • Cannot hit crouched Survivors on level terrain. • Dispelling Sphere: Grants the ability to cast a moving invisible Sphere that reveals Survivors through Killer Instinct and disables their Magic Items for 60 seconds upon contact. • Causes the specific type of Magic Item to become visible to The Lich on the Survivor HUD while they are disabled by the Spell. • The Cool-down duration of Magic Items is indicated to all Players with a timer on the Survivor HUD. • Mage Hand: Grants the ability to create a Magical Hand that lifts dropped Pallets back upright in 0.5 seconds or blocks already upright ones for 4 seconds. Each Spell is on its own independent cool-down. SPECIAL TREASURE CHESTS: MAGIC ITEMS 6 Treasure Chests containing special Magic Items for Survivors to equip spawn in the environment. These include Boots or Gauntlets of: • All Magic Items reveal the Aura of The Lich for 1.5 seconds, when he casts their associated Spell. • The Skyguard: Reveals the Aura of The Lich during Fly. • This effect lingers for 0.25 seconds. • The Nightwatch: Reveals the Auras of the Flying Entities during Flight of the Damned. • The Archivist: Turns the Dispelling Sphere visible. • The Interloper: Reveals the Auras of Pallets affected by Mage Hand. • Grants a +7 % Haste Status Effect for 3 seconds. Beware of Mimics though, they may bite. Survivors can have both a Boot and a Gauntlet equipped at the same time. Unlucky Survivors may only find a regular Item inside a Treasure Chest that is either depleted or half-depleted. SPECIAL ITEMS: HAND & EYE OF VECNA Rarely, Treasure Chests contain either the Hand of Vecna or the Eye of Vecna. Healthy Survivors can use those Items to gain a special ability at the cost of a Health State and triggering Killer Instinct after use: • Hand of Vecna: Rushing into a Locker teleports the Survivor to a different Locker that is at least 10 metres away. • Triggers a Loud Noise Notification on the target Locker and Killer Instinct on them for 5 seconds. • Eye of Vecna: Rushing out of a Locker has the following effects for 12 seconds: • Suppresses their Aura, Scratch Marks, Blood Pools and Grunts of Pain. • Grants them complete invisibility. • Grants +25 % Haste. • Triggers Killer Instinct for 3 seconds after becoming visible again. SPECIAL INTERACTION: RECOVER ARTEFACT Survivors attuned to the Eye of Vecna or the Hand of Vecna with an accumulated 2 Hook Stages are vulnerable to The Lich recovering his Artefact from them. Press the Attack button while standing over the downed Survivor to execute them on the spot, performing a Mini-Mori. Power Trivia[] Movement Speeds: Main Article • Charging Spells: 4.0 m/s • Post-Casting Spells: 3.68 m/s for 2 seconds • Post-Fly Cool-down: 2.3 m/s for 2.5 seconds • Walking: 4.6 m/s • Flying: 6.92 m/s All Spells: • Charge time: 0.2 seconds • How long it takes to charge a Spell before it can be cast. • Cool-down Charge threshold: 0.1 seconds • Buffer that prevents any cool-downs from applying by accidentally tapping the button. • Initial Cool-down duration: 15 seconds • Applies at the start of the Trial, starts after the initial camera pan is completed. • Regular Cool-down duration: 38 seconds • This cool-down is applied individually to each Spell after casting and not shared. • Cancellation Cool-down duration: 1 second • Applies after cancelling a Spell after charging it, instead of casting it. • Spell Cast Cool-down after casting: 2 seconds • Fly is an exception with an increased Cool-down duration of 2.5 seconds • Spell Cast Cool-down after cancelling: 1 second • Magic Item Aura-reveal duration: 1.5 seconds • The time the Aura of The Lich is revealed to a Survivor wearing a Magic Item that matches the cast Spell. • For the Fly Spell, the Aura-reveal lasts for the entire duration of it. Dispelling Sphere: • Activation time: 0.75 seconds • The time between The Lich casting the Spell and the Dispelling Sphere launching. • Trajectory Previewer Distance offset: 1.75 metres • The distance the Trajectory Previewer of the Dispelling Sphere is placed in front of The Lich. • Trajectory Previewer length: 10 metres • Trajectory Previewer width: 0.4 metres • Trajectory Previewer height offset: 1 metre • Movement speed: 11 m/s • This is the maximum speed the Dispelling Sphere could move at with Add-ons (currently not obtainable). • Lifetime: 25 seconds • The Sphere despawns over 2 seconds after travelling for that duration. • Initial radius: 0.07 metres • This is used for the mini-sphere while The Lich is charging the Spell. • Eventual radius: 6 metres • Killer Instinct duration: 3 seconds • Disabled State duration for Magic Items: 60 seconds • This is indicated as a timer on the affected Survivors' HUD Portraits. Flight of the Damned: • Activation time: 0.25 seconds • The time between The Lich casting the Spell and the Flying Entities spawning. • Summoning time: 0.5 seconds • How long it takes for the spawned Flying Entities to go from inactive to active and start flying. • Maximum Flight speed: 9 m/s • Maximum Flight length: 22 metres • Flight height: 1.4 metres • The height above the ground that the Flying Entities spawn and travel at. Survivors located below this height (i.e. when crouched) cannot be harmed. • Despawn time: 2 seconds • Distance offset 4 metres • How far in front of The Lich the Flying Entities spawn. • Trajectory Previewer length: 10 metres • Trajectory Previewer width: 0.45 metres • Trajectory Previewer height offset: 0.7 metres • Survivor Aura-reading distance: 2 metres • This refers to the maximum range at which Survivors can see the Auras of the Flying Entities. • Killer Instinct duration when downed: 5 seconds Fly: • Flying Movement speed: 6.92 m/s • Speed Curve Transition time: 1 second • This refers to how long it takes The Lich to reach his maximum Flying speed and also to go back zero after ending the Fly Spell. • FOV Transition time: 1.5 seconds • Maximum Flying time: 4 seconds • Flying can be interrupted at any point by pressing the Attack button. • Collision-Loss linger duration (Vaultables): 1 second • This applies to the collision with Vault locations, not the one with Survivors, after The Lich ends the Fly Spell. Mage Hand: • Range: 16 metres • Survivor Highlight range: 8 metres • This refers to the highlight indicating to a Survivor that a Pallet is affected by Mage Hand • Pre-Block Wait time: 0.35 seconds • This is how long the Mage Hand waits before blocking an upright Pallet. • Block duration: 4 seconds • Pre-Lift Wait time: 0.5 seconds • This is how long the Mage Hand waits before lifting a dropped Pallet. • Lift duration: 0.5 seconds • Post-Lift Block duration: 0.15 seconds • This applies only when the Pallet was lifted.
The Lich
The Lich
The Lich
The Whispered One. Lord of the Rotted Tower. The Master of Secrets. Few dare speak his true name, for fear that he may hear—or worse. Even as a young wizard, Vecna’s command of magic was matched by none. While others spent decades committing to and perfecting one school of magic, he effortlessly mastered each one of them. After his mother’s execution for witchcraft, his focus became obsession as he studied the darkest school of magic—necromancy, the magic of life and death. As his power grew, so did his ambition. Over the centuries, he shed his mortal shell and ascended to lichdom. His power gave rise to a great empire, ruled over from his Rotted Tower. His thirst for dark knowledge to fill his Book of Vile Darkness led him to many realms and planes. But it was in his own realm one of his servants found something—a spell, perhaps, torn from an ancient tome—written in a language he had never seen. From it he could sense an incredible dark energy. Without any document of the language, he had to spend months painstakingly analyzing its syntax, its phonetics, its form. He documented every stroke of every letter, scrutinizing and theorizing on their meanings, in a massive book hidden in his chambers. When his lieutenants came to him with problems in their domain, Vecna told them to deal with it themselves. He had more important matters to attend to. Countless nights were spent memorizing the strange script, attempting to make it make sense. Only occasionally would he leave his keep to investigate rumors of people who had disappeared without a trace in the night. At these scenes, he could sense the same foreign magic that emanated from the torn page. He was convinced that whatever was killing these people had also written this strange script. He was confounded, which made him furious. The scenes, few and far between, had no pattern, no common motive. No sign of struggle, no body, and only a lingering hum of dark energy. To what end did they need these bodies? One dark night, he had a breakthrough: a word he had been interpreting as “dying” made more sense as “disappearing.” Perhaps these people were not being killed at all: perhaps they were being taken alive. He applied this substitution through his notes and everything seemed to fall into place. He copied what he had learned to a fresh piece of parchment, written phonetically. He began to speak the words aloud and the room darkened. It filled with a creeping black fog. He felt himself displacing, going somewhere else. Vecna resisted, incanting memorized spells, holding the fog at bay. But as he gazed into the darkness, he felt that alluring energy from it; a despair, an evil he could scarcely imagine. A sick curiosity overcoming him, he dropped his concentration, and let the fog take him. Whatever it was, wherever it was, he understood that the only way to harness it was to submit to it. He knew, in his cold, unbeating heart, that its dark secrets would one day be his.
Vecna carries four spells on separate cooldowns, and the skill ceiling is knowing which one wins the current second. Mage Hand lifts or blocks the pallet mid-loop, Flight of the Damned sends spectral projectiles through walls, Dispelling Sphere reveals and disables magic items, and Fly turns dead time between chases into repositioning. No other killer has an answer to this many situations — if you are willing to learn the toolkit.
Treat Mage Hand as your core chase spell: casting it the moment a survivor reaches for the pallet denies the stun and usually the health state. Flight of the Damned is best thrown where survivors expect safety — over low walls and through obstacles mid-vault. Watch for looted magic items: boots and eyes give survivors real counterplay, which is exactly what Dispelling Sphere exists to erase. He has no built-in slowdown, so pair the spell kit with generator pressure the way our "Arcane Tempo" build does. On open maps, Fly aggressively; it is the closest thing to killer teleportation that still surprises people.
— DBD Builds Team
1 builds · grouped by playstyle
The best The Lich build in patch 10.0.2 is “Arcane Tempo” — Scourge Hook: Pain Resonance + Dead Man's Switch + Barbecue & Chili + Corrupt Intervention.
