Night Hunter

The Night Hunter is a player-controlled infected featured in Dying Light. He is exclusively seen in Be The Zombie multiplayer mode.

Description[]

The Night Hunter is a player controlled fearsome predator who watches over hives of incubating Volatiles. He is a force to be reckoned with and should always be on the lookout for.

Like survivors, he has a skill tree which can improve his attacks, movement, and other abilities. The Night Hunter can howl which reveals the survivors globally, which serves as an improved survivor sense. As the Hunter levels up, he will gain skill points that can be used to purchase new skills from the skill tree. Their tendrils allow them to traverse at fast speeds and never runs out of stamina, except in the presence of UV light. The Night Hunter's primary attack is the pounce which can only be used at full stamina. He wraps his tendrils around the targeted survivor, delivering a fatal bite on their necks and instantly killing them. When in danger, the Hunter can ground pound, knocking enemies away in order to escape from UV light and other threats.

As the Night Hunter levels up, He gains the ability to spit four different projectiles. All spits will explode after a short delay besides the Toxic Spit.

The Night Hunter has 3 stages/mutations, Each mutation unlocks new skills that were locked on the previous mutation. To mutate, you need to max out all the skills that are "unlocked" by skill points you gain from playing matches. However, upon each mutation, abilities that were bought with the skill points will need to be achieved again.

AnyConv.com Mutations — https://twitter.com/astrogaming/status/605227355427250176

Stage 0^[1] is the most basic form of the Hunter, the starter phase. It has bits of clothing including torn up pants and a ripped t-shirt. Stage 2 is the first mutation a player does, the hunter is turquoise has horns/bones sticking out of the back and top head, and the t-shirt is completely removed while the pants are torn up even more. In stage 3 the hunter is a green-ish color with the same ripped up pants but has longer horns and has more exposed flesh and back. Stage 4 is the final form of the hunter, it is very brown and has a lot of skin removed, the horns on the head are shaped up to be a crown, to represent the "Apex" or "King" of living things. There's a lot of bones on the arms as well as the back.

The Night Hunter has a variety of abilities, the ones listed below are moves that were created to be offensive.

Pounces: This is the first ability the hunter will have along with the tendril locomotion without purchasing it with skill points. The pounce is an instant kill move that gives out 200 XP for killing the human. However it can be interrupted with a UV flashlight or a UV flare. But strangely, UV light in safe zones do not interrupt pounces, but the hunter will take damage when entering a safe zone.

Horde Summoner Spit: After the explosion, all survivors hit will be chased down by Suiciders. This is a useful tactic for forcing survivors onto rooftops, sending them into disarray, and causing them to separate. It lasts up to 18 seconds. There is a bug in the game right from release that hasn't been patched, called "telebombers". It teleports the Suicider on top of the roof, that kills survivors instantly. This is most prominent on top if the warehouses in the Slums.

UV Suppressor Spit: Disables all UV lights (including flares) in an area for 18 seconds. It creates chaos since the survivors are vulnerable without their main source of protection against the Night Hunter. Good survivors will know to throw a UV flare, specifically known as a "Flare" that lasts up to 8 seconds, and an efficient version called the "Zaid's Flare" that lasts up to 12 seconds, this provides temporary protection for the survivors against Pounces.

Sense Suppressor Spit: Disables the Survivor Sense for 5-6 minutes, making it harder for the Survivors to find the Night Hunter, causing panic. This does not disable the survivor's in game sound, so it can hear you growling, tendril, or howling. In later updates, this was replaced by Concussive spit. Concussive spit: upon hitting a human with this spit it will knock them down temporarily which makes it easier to kill them, however they can still defend themselves from a pounce, so hit them from the back instead.

Toxic Spit. This spit allows the Night Hunter to shoot a toxic puddle at the Survivors dealing damage when they stand in it; much like toxic puddles found around Harran except it lasts for a minute. It is used to deny access to an area since they would take damage standing in it.

The Night Hunter has secondary attacks that are used for direct damage, comparable to survivors' attacks such as the ability to tackle enemies, which can be used to fling survivors large distances and deal fairly high damage, especially if they fall long distances. It can also be used to tackle a survivor into spikes much like the survivor tackles infected into spikes. The Light Hunter also has the ability to use Ground Pound in which it will slam his fists against the ground, causing knockback and damage to survivors. Missing a Ground Pound can be an effective way of getting killed as you take a long time to recover after missing but it can cancel the attack if it deems the plan ineffective. If the survivor is weak, a Night Hunter may use its claws. It does relatively less damage than other attacks and more used as a desperate attack or a finisher. It can also be used to completely kill a downed survivor. Ground pounds, even though is used as a getaway move, can be used to start a combo attack, such as a ground pound + spit, or a ground pound + tackle.

Keep in mind that the UV heal skill unlocked at Mutation 3, can allow you to recover from missed ground pounds faster and effectively.

Much like the survivors, the Night Hunter has its own tricks up their sleeve with support abilities. Its UV Shield ability blocks incoming UV light and is best used as a defense instead of an offense since pouncing will deactivate it although it can be exploited into being used as offensive support as the Night Hunter will take no stamina damage from UV. The Night Hunter can also use UV Heal which allows the Night Hunter to block UV light and heal its health and regenerate its stamina bar but uses up a UV Shield. It is mostly used when the Night Hunter has taken severe damage, which it may flee, heal, then return to the battle. In a desperate measure, the Night Hunter may use UV Heal during a battle to instantly return to full HP then continue although it isn't recommended since it is vulnerable during the time it is healing.

The Night Hunter has some extra abilities that aren't really used for direct support but more used as passive support that it either continuously uses or just an extra ability.

Spit support: UV Suppressor Spit x2 and Horde Summoner Spit x2 are abilities that allow the Night Hunter to upgrade to carry one more spit of either type. The duration can be upgraded with Horde Summoner Spit Upgrade and UV Suppressor Spit Duration which both increase the duration from 18 seconds to 25 seconds. The spits themselves can be upgraded with Spit Charging which allows you to charge the spit to shoot longer distances, effectively sniping survivors. The Spit Smash upgrade combines a Ground Pound with spits that cover the target in the selected spit after being knocked down.

Ground Pound Support: The Night Hunter can upgrade its Ground Pound with Aerial Ground Pound which allows it to start the attack in the air. It can also gain Ground Pound Movement which allows the Night Hunter to move with the attack active until released. The Ground Pound effect can be upgraded with Ground Pound Knockback which knockbacks the survivors farther.

Tackle and Pounce Support: The Tackle knockback can be upgraded to be increased using Tackle Knockback Pouncing can gain the ability to have knockback with the Pounce Slam ability which can disturb a ground of survivors. The Night Hunter can also become more dangerous even when it pounces on a survivor with the Leapfrog ability which allows it to "leapfrog" from one survivor to another.

Speed & Tendrils: Increases the speed of the Night Hunter's sprint and increases range of tendril locomotion, as well as increases the speed by sprinting when tendril hits the ground (A.K.A Tendril Sprint) Combining speed, tackles, spits and ground pounds together makes the survivor's survival chances low.

Main article: Be The Zombie

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Trivia[]

The Night Hunter is the only infected that can swim.
In the demo quest Public Face, the Night Hunter's pounce attack is different from the main game; when the Night Hunter jumps on the player, it slams its arms into the player, ripping out their guts and eating them.
1. The Night Hunter’s fingers are fused together in the retail version of the game. However, in the public demo, The Night Hunter’s fingers aren’t.
The sound effect displayed when the Night Hunter uses Ground Pound is the male Viral's scream, but higher pitched.
A lot of the Night Hunter's abilities are extremely similar or just identical to abilities in-game used by Kyle Crane. These are: Howling/Survival Sense, Tendrils/Grapple, Tackle/Dropkick, Ground Pound, etc. Also the animation for the Night Hunter's main attack is the exact same as seen in the boss fight with The Mother, moments before Kyle completes his transformation. However, the reasoning behind these similarities is only to keep the Be The Zombie mode gameplay balanced for both Humans and Night Hunters.
1. This has lead to the community theorizing the possibility the Kyle Crane could be the Night Hunter, but not enough evidence suggests that he is, and reused animations and assets unfortunately don’t count as evidence. There’s more logical evidence that proves Kyle Crane is a Sentient Volatile.
The Night Hunter's howl can be heard during the night in single player. This only occurs when Invasions are turned off, and a pop-up notification prompt will appear showcasing the option to turn on invasions while playing the Night Hunter howl.