Zorinth's Guide to Zombie Skills
Apr 10, 2013 17:07:04 GMT -5
Post by ZombieGeorge on Apr 10, 2013 17:07:04 GMT -5
Given the amount of skill suggestion requests we've had here in the past, and the fact that we're getting more folks who are new to the game, I felt it prevalent to make an FAQ and suggestion thread for skills. I'll start with what they do, since that'll be faster. Since most of them are pretty self explanitory, I'm just going to copy and paste what's normally on the skill chart and go into more detail on the ones that need it.
Scent Fear (Survivors with less than 25HP are shown as 'wounded', less than 13HP are 'dying'. Both are asterisked on the map.)
Scent Blood (The HP values and infection status of nearby survivors are displayed next to their name.)
Scent Trail (Zombie is able to sense the new positions of survivors it's had recent contact with.)
Scent Death (Zombie can sense nearby zombies and corpses, including members of its group, and distinguish revivifying bodies.)
|This skill is interesting. When used, the Scent Death button displays a grid with varying shades of green and red. Red is dead bodies, green is zombies. Unfortunately, despite the change to the skill being over a year ago, we still don't know exactly how it works in terms of numbers. According to the wiki talk page for it, there also appears to be random 'background static' that appears.|
Digestion (The zombie gains HP equal to its bite damage, when biting a survivor or feeding on a fresh corpse.)
Infectious Bite (Bitten survivors become infected and lose 1HP per action until cured.)
Vigour Mortis (Zombie gets +10% to hit with all non-weapon attacks.)
Neck Lurch (Zombie gets an extra +10% to hit with bite attacks.)
Death Grip (Zombie gets an extra +15% to hit with hand attacks.)
Rend Flesh (Hand attacks deal an extra 1 damage.)
Tangling Grasp (If the zombie hits with hands, its further attacks on that victim are at +10% to base attack until it loses its grip.)
|We're actually not sure that this skill works properly. It's been suggested that there's a bug with it that actually causes it to reduce claw hit chances by 10% instead of improving them. I'm currently unaware of the results of the research.|
Feeding Drag (Zombie is able to drag dying survivors (those with 12HP or less) out into the street.)
Memories of Life (Zombie is able to open doors to buildings.)
Death Rattle (Zombie is able to communicate through a limited, groaned form of speech.)
Feeding Groan (If faced with a survivor, the zombie can emit moans audible outside up to six blocks away.)
Ransack (Zombie is able to damage the interior of abandoned buildings, rendering them unbarricadable and harder to search, until repaired.)
Flailing Gesture (Zombie is able to gesture towards people, objects, buildings and compass directions.)
Lurching Gait (Zombie can walk as fast as the living.)
Ankle Grab (Zombie only spends 1AP standing up.)
|The description is misleading. You only spend a base of 1 AP to stand up, headshots still add a 5 AP cost, bringing it to a maximum of 6 AP to stand up.|
Brain Rot (Zombie is harder to DNA-scan, and can only be revivified in a powered NT building using NecroNet access.)
Flesh Rot (Zombie has a maximum of 60 Hit Points, and takes reduced damage from firearms.)
|This skill combines a flak jacket and the survivor skill Body Building, for zombies that took the rot before they got either. Extremely useful if you already have the rot.|
NecroTech Employment (Player is able to operate DNA Extractors, and can identify NecroTech offices from the street.)
|While you can't operate DNA Extractors as a zombie, you can still identify NecroTech, or NT, buildings. This can be useful if you have brainrot and want a revive, or just really want to destroy an NT building.|
Diagnosis (The HP values of nearby survivors are displayed next to their name.)
Body Building (Player has a maximum of 60 Hit Points instead of 50.)
|This is a very useful skill if you're not planning on getting the rot. Combined with a flak jacket, it gives you much more survivability. I've lived and died by 1 HP before.|
No other skills have any use while a zombie.
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Well, okay, not really a chart. More of a dialog. Sorta... just keep reading.
The skills you buy will entirely depend on what you want, and your personal tastes. This 'chart' is merely a suggestion, based on my years of experience. The skills you buy will also be largely dependant on your surroundings. If you're getting headshot daily, it's a pretty good idea to skip combat skills in lieu of 'getting the hell out of here' skills.
I will be assuming you're starting as a zombie. All of my dedicated zombies started as zombies, though you don't have to, so they all had a leg up on the competition - mainly their combat hit chances didn't suck completely.
Level 2 is one of the hardest skill selection decisions in the game as a zombie, with 3, 4 and 5 usually falling in line behind it. Lurching Gait, Memories of Life and the combat skills loom over you like a great big looming thing. Skills cost 100 XP as a zombie, regardless of your starting class, so your first skill should not be taken lightly. It may be a few more days before you can get another 100 XP to buy whatever it is you didn't before, sometimes longer if you have IP hit issues, get headshot constantly, or just can't find any damn thing to eat.
Lurching Gait is one of the handiest skills you can buy. This literally doubles your movement AP, making it cost 1 AP to move to any adjacent square. Very useful if you're having to move around a lot to find food, or just need to get the hell out of dodge. Its subskill, Ankle Grab, is probably the biggest AP saver you'll ever throw XP at. This reduces the cost to stand up by a flat 9 AP, meaning that a headshot will no longer drain over 1/5th of your max AP. These two skills are ones you should definately have by about level 6 or 7, though I usually buy them early. If you're having difficulty finding food and are getting killed a lot, these two will allow you to search a larger area and are definately worth it.
Memories of Life is a required skill for zombies. Mainly because, you can't open doors without it. And even a 1st level survivor can close doors, making them safe from harm from the hordes of zombies that don't have this skill. If you're having to break into buildings completely by yourself, this is definately a skill to pick up. If, however, you're following a horde around that has at least a few members with this skill, it's not as required as you can usually expect them to rip open the doors for you. As such, this is a skill I either get early, or after I get all my claw skills up. The subskills have varying uses, although the two most useful are Feeding Groan and Ransack. These skills are not useful to a zombie fighting by itself, and should be skipped until you have the claw and movement skills.
The combat skills are always attractive. After all, what could be better than dramatically increasing your hit percentage and damage? This is a sure-fire way to increase your XP gain... but they might not be the best 2nd level choices. Surroundings come into play again here. If you're having to run around alot, you should come back to these skills after you've picked up your Lurching Gait. If you're also getting headshot constantly, you should grab Ankle Grab before these. It's great to be able to increase the damage you deal, and thereby experience you gain, but that all amounts to a hill of beans if you can't find anybody. Nevertheless, these are core skills that are required to be as deadly as you can be, and if you're staying within a small area and aren't having to worry about dieing so much, jump on these skills pretty quick. I'll break these skills up a bit more, since they're all clumped together.
Claw skills are important. Claw skills are what nets you the big XP. Death Grip and Rend Flesh are very very important skills. Your claws are the workhorse of your zombie machine. Claws have the best hit percentage. Claws can rip down barricades, whereas teeth cannot. Claws give the best XP per AP at base percentage, with Vigour Mortis, and with full combat skills - and with Rend/Grip, but that's obvious.
Teeth skills are great... but mainly great once you've got the extra XP to spend on something you're not going to use all that often. I use my bite for one purpose. To infect survivors. That is the only reason I use my bite - except on the rare occasion they have 5 HP, then I do it for the hilarity of a 1 HP survivor that's infected - because the hit percentage, frankly, sucks. Claws have about a 20% better hit chance, and deal 3 damage to the bite's 4 at full combat skills. Even with just Vigour, they have a 15% hit chance bonus and deal 2 damage, still a better deal than the craptacular hit chance of a bite, even though you get half the XP.
The final verdict on this, is that getting the claw skills before the teeth skills is highly suggested, but you shouldn't buy the claw skills until either A, you've bought your movement skills or B, you're pretty sure you've got a good few blocks to feed on. My zombies tend to get pretty well screwed on spawning positions and I usually have to run them out of the area. Being able to move all of 25 blocks is a serious hinderance, especially when that 25th block contains a street sleeper.
The rest of the skills, including the Rot, are personal choices. Because of the impact on play that most of them have - mainly very little - they're not suggested as early picks. While some skills, like Feeding Drag and Infectious Bite/Digestion, are very handy in the right situations, leveling up they aren't as big of a concern as the previous skills.
I'll post my normal choices for skills in an ideal situation. These change, of course, depending whether I need to move to a new feeding area or the like.
Level 1, Vigour Mortis auto-skill. Level 2, Lurching Gait. Level 3, Death Grip. Level 4, Rend Flesh. Level 5, Memories of Life. Level 6, Ankle Grab. Level 7, Feeding Groan. Level 8, Scent Fear. Level 9, Scent Blood. Level 10, Neck Lurch or Tangling Grasp. Level 11, Digestion or Neck Lurch. Level 12, Infectious Bite or Digestion. Level 13, Tangling Grasp or Infectious Bite. Level 14, Feeding Drag. After this it's entirely up to whether I get a revive or not. If not, I fill out zombie skills. If so, I buy Body Building, Necrotech Employment, find a flak jacket and take a high dive.
This isn't a suggested path, just my usual choices given an ideal setting. I've moved these skills around before, and Zorinth got the Rot at level 6, so they're all subjective.
Zorinth Edit: Jesus, ZG. You didn't even open the posts up and copy the formatting. Shame shame.
Zombie Skills
Scent Fear (Survivors with less than 25HP are shown as 'wounded', less than 13HP are 'dying'. Both are asterisked on the map.)
Scent Blood (The HP values and infection status of nearby survivors are displayed next to their name.)
Scent Trail (Zombie is able to sense the new positions of survivors it's had recent contact with.)
Scent Death (Zombie can sense nearby zombies and corpses, including members of its group, and distinguish revivifying bodies.)
|This skill is interesting. When used, the Scent Death button displays a grid with varying shades of green and red. Red is dead bodies, green is zombies. Unfortunately, despite the change to the skill being over a year ago, we still don't know exactly how it works in terms of numbers. According to the wiki talk page for it, there also appears to be random 'background static' that appears.|
Digestion (The zombie gains HP equal to its bite damage, when biting a survivor or feeding on a fresh corpse.)
Infectious Bite (Bitten survivors become infected and lose 1HP per action until cured.)
Vigour Mortis (Zombie gets +10% to hit with all non-weapon attacks.)
Neck Lurch (Zombie gets an extra +10% to hit with bite attacks.)
Death Grip (Zombie gets an extra +15% to hit with hand attacks.)
Rend Flesh (Hand attacks deal an extra 1 damage.)
Tangling Grasp (If the zombie hits with hands, its further attacks on that victim are at +10% to base attack until it loses its grip.)
|We're actually not sure that this skill works properly. It's been suggested that there's a bug with it that actually causes it to reduce claw hit chances by 10% instead of improving them. I'm currently unaware of the results of the research.|
Feeding Drag (Zombie is able to drag dying survivors (those with 12HP or less) out into the street.)
Memories of Life (Zombie is able to open doors to buildings.)
Death Rattle (Zombie is able to communicate through a limited, groaned form of speech.)
Feeding Groan (If faced with a survivor, the zombie can emit moans audible outside up to six blocks away.)
Ransack (Zombie is able to damage the interior of abandoned buildings, rendering them unbarricadable and harder to search, until repaired.)
Flailing Gesture (Zombie is able to gesture towards people, objects, buildings and compass directions.)
Lurching Gait (Zombie can walk as fast as the living.)
Ankle Grab (Zombie only spends 1AP standing up.)
|The description is misleading. You only spend a base of 1 AP to stand up, headshots still add a 5 AP cost, bringing it to a maximum of 6 AP to stand up.|
Brain Rot (Zombie is harder to DNA-scan, and can only be revivified in a powered NT building using NecroNet access.)
Flesh Rot (Zombie has a maximum of 60 Hit Points, and takes reduced damage from firearms.)
|This skill combines a flak jacket and the survivor skill Body Building, for zombies that took the rot before they got either. Extremely useful if you already have the rot.|
Survivor Skills That Transfer
NecroTech Employment (Player is able to operate DNA Extractors, and can identify NecroTech offices from the street.)
|While you can't operate DNA Extractors as a zombie, you can still identify NecroTech, or NT, buildings. This can be useful if you have brainrot and want a revive, or just really want to destroy an NT building.|
Diagnosis (The HP values of nearby survivors are displayed next to their name.)
Body Building (Player has a maximum of 60 Hit Points instead of 50.)
|This is a very useful skill if you're not planning on getting the rot. Combined with a flak jacket, it gives you much more survivability. I've lived and died by 1 HP before.|
No other skills have any use while a zombie.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Skill Suggestion Chart
Well, okay, not really a chart. More of a dialog. Sorta... just keep reading.
The skills you buy will entirely depend on what you want, and your personal tastes. This 'chart' is merely a suggestion, based on my years of experience. The skills you buy will also be largely dependant on your surroundings. If you're getting headshot daily, it's a pretty good idea to skip combat skills in lieu of 'getting the hell out of here' skills.
I will be assuming you're starting as a zombie. All of my dedicated zombies started as zombies, though you don't have to, so they all had a leg up on the competition - mainly their combat hit chances didn't suck completely.
Level 2 is one of the hardest skill selection decisions in the game as a zombie, with 3, 4 and 5 usually falling in line behind it. Lurching Gait, Memories of Life and the combat skills loom over you like a great big looming thing. Skills cost 100 XP as a zombie, regardless of your starting class, so your first skill should not be taken lightly. It may be a few more days before you can get another 100 XP to buy whatever it is you didn't before, sometimes longer if you have IP hit issues, get headshot constantly, or just can't find any damn thing to eat.
Lurching Gait is one of the handiest skills you can buy. This literally doubles your movement AP, making it cost 1 AP to move to any adjacent square. Very useful if you're having to move around a lot to find food, or just need to get the hell out of dodge. Its subskill, Ankle Grab, is probably the biggest AP saver you'll ever throw XP at. This reduces the cost to stand up by a flat 9 AP, meaning that a headshot will no longer drain over 1/5th of your max AP. These two skills are ones you should definately have by about level 6 or 7, though I usually buy them early. If you're having difficulty finding food and are getting killed a lot, these two will allow you to search a larger area and are definately worth it.
Memories of Life is a required skill for zombies. Mainly because, you can't open doors without it. And even a 1st level survivor can close doors, making them safe from harm from the hordes of zombies that don't have this skill. If you're having to break into buildings completely by yourself, this is definately a skill to pick up. If, however, you're following a horde around that has at least a few members with this skill, it's not as required as you can usually expect them to rip open the doors for you. As such, this is a skill I either get early, or after I get all my claw skills up. The subskills have varying uses, although the two most useful are Feeding Groan and Ransack. These skills are not useful to a zombie fighting by itself, and should be skipped until you have the claw and movement skills.
The combat skills are always attractive. After all, what could be better than dramatically increasing your hit percentage and damage? This is a sure-fire way to increase your XP gain... but they might not be the best 2nd level choices. Surroundings come into play again here. If you're having to run around alot, you should come back to these skills after you've picked up your Lurching Gait. If you're also getting headshot constantly, you should grab Ankle Grab before these. It's great to be able to increase the damage you deal, and thereby experience you gain, but that all amounts to a hill of beans if you can't find anybody. Nevertheless, these are core skills that are required to be as deadly as you can be, and if you're staying within a small area and aren't having to worry about dieing so much, jump on these skills pretty quick. I'll break these skills up a bit more, since they're all clumped together.
Claw skills are important. Claw skills are what nets you the big XP. Death Grip and Rend Flesh are very very important skills. Your claws are the workhorse of your zombie machine. Claws have the best hit percentage. Claws can rip down barricades, whereas teeth cannot. Claws give the best XP per AP at base percentage, with Vigour Mortis, and with full combat skills - and with Rend/Grip, but that's obvious.
Teeth skills are great... but mainly great once you've got the extra XP to spend on something you're not going to use all that often. I use my bite for one purpose. To infect survivors. That is the only reason I use my bite - except on the rare occasion they have 5 HP, then I do it for the hilarity of a 1 HP survivor that's infected - because the hit percentage, frankly, sucks. Claws have about a 20% better hit chance, and deal 3 damage to the bite's 4 at full combat skills. Even with just Vigour, they have a 15% hit chance bonus and deal 2 damage, still a better deal than the craptacular hit chance of a bite, even though you get half the XP.
The final verdict on this, is that getting the claw skills before the teeth skills is highly suggested, but you shouldn't buy the claw skills until either A, you've bought your movement skills or B, you're pretty sure you've got a good few blocks to feed on. My zombies tend to get pretty well screwed on spawning positions and I usually have to run them out of the area. Being able to move all of 25 blocks is a serious hinderance, especially when that 25th block contains a street sleeper.
The rest of the skills, including the Rot, are personal choices. Because of the impact on play that most of them have - mainly very little - they're not suggested as early picks. While some skills, like Feeding Drag and Infectious Bite/Digestion, are very handy in the right situations, leveling up they aren't as big of a concern as the previous skills.
I'll post my normal choices for skills in an ideal situation. These change, of course, depending whether I need to move to a new feeding area or the like.
Level 1, Vigour Mortis auto-skill. Level 2, Lurching Gait. Level 3, Death Grip. Level 4, Rend Flesh. Level 5, Memories of Life. Level 6, Ankle Grab. Level 7, Feeding Groan. Level 8, Scent Fear. Level 9, Scent Blood. Level 10, Neck Lurch or Tangling Grasp. Level 11, Digestion or Neck Lurch. Level 12, Infectious Bite or Digestion. Level 13, Tangling Grasp or Infectious Bite. Level 14, Feeding Drag. After this it's entirely up to whether I get a revive or not. If not, I fill out zombie skills. If so, I buy Body Building, Necrotech Employment, find a flak jacket and take a high dive.
This isn't a suggested path, just my usual choices given an ideal setting. I've moved these skills around before, and Zorinth got the Rot at level 6, so they're all subjective.
Zorinth Edit: Jesus, ZG. You didn't even open the posts up and copy the formatting. Shame shame.
