Cephalopods

Cephalopods
In-Game Zombiepedia
No description.
Main Stats
Health	28,665 (documented) 12,000 (factual)
Fire Damage	Electrical bolt: 999 (units and items) 80-150 (zombies) Afterburn damage: 10 per tick
True Damage	Phase transitioning laser beam: 999 (documented) 9,999 (factual, to units and items) 65 (factual, to bus)
Speed	4 (documented) 0 (factual)
Charisma	-112
Resistances
Fire	100%
Bullet	90%
Explosion	100%

Cephalopods is a giant robot-like, spherical pod. It appears to be heavily damaged but still active. It has a laser cannon and only one remaining functional leg for support. It resides in large mounds of blue energy and is covered in it itself, both of which constantly pulsate. What appears to be eyes and a skull are among the more noticeable details of the blue energy that it's covered in. It serves as a replacement to the barricade as well as the final boss of location 8 and the game.

Cephalopods is the original source of the plague, and destroying it is the primary goal of DA:ZW.

Overview

Cephalopods is a stationary enemy that functions as a barricade replacement. Similar to them, it's immune to explosives and fire, and can't take critical damage. Additionally, it's immune to the stun debuff. However, it can take damage from ranged attacks, with a 90% resistance to bullets.

This boss has three phases, which change depending on how much health it has left:

• Phase 1 – 12,500 - 9,375 health (100 - 75% health left): Does nothing.
• Phase 2 – 9,375 - 6,250 health (75 - 50% health left): Upon its health going down by a quarter or less, it fires a big laser that damages the bus and destroys everything else, before dragging itself back to its original position. After that, it fires an incendiary bolt every ~20 seconds.
• Phase 3 – 6,250 - 0 health (50 - 0% health left): When its health reaches to a half, it fires another big laser, after which a minute countdown begins. If Cephalopods survives this minute, it destroys the bus with another laser attack.

Incendiary bolts fired by Cephalopods deal fire damage. The big lasers deal true damage, ignoring all resistances.

At the start of the mission, two Eggs are pre-placed. Swarms of Blue Runners, Undeads, Charged Zombies, and Energy Spheres will constantly attack the bus throughout the fight. Every other cycle, a Warthog will be present in one of the enemy waves.

After Cephalopods is destroyed, players are shown a short ending cutscene with Bill getting off the bus, spitting once, and then saying "So easy."

Strategy

See: Cephalopods/Strategies

Trivia

• This is the fourth and last boss that has been added, others being Paramedic, Boss, and Marauder Vehicle.
• Cephalopods can be attacked by Welder. However, Builder and Saw's special abilities, and the tier 3 Builders synergy won't provide a damage buff against it.
• Every stat shown in Cephalopods' Zombiepedia entry is incorrect. Why such values are used is unknown.
• In-game Cephalopods looks different to its Zombiepedia page. The image appears to be of lower quality and lacks many details that appear in actual gameplay.
• Cephalopods used to be one of the few enemies to face left in the Zombiepedia, however, this was changed in a later update.
• Throughout stage 7, broken objects that look similar to Cephalopods appear in the background. However, these versions of Cephalopods have a few tentacles-like attachments and appear to be deactivated.
• After defeating Cephalopods while some enemies are still present on the battlefield, they will be dealt 2,147,483,647 damage and die immediately. However, reviving enemies such as Undead will not be destroyed if they are currently lying on the ground, and remain unaffected even after the revive.
• Cephalopods' laser attack reuses assets from the Railgun in the original Dead Ahead.
• For some reason, during its transitional lasers it seemingly does 229 damage to something in front of it. It was assumed to be self damage but its HP doesn't change.
• Similar to most boss-type enemies, Cephalopods drops 50 rage, which is redundant since destroying this enemy ends the level, precluding any rage use.
• During the 2023 Reddit Q&A, it was said that Cephalopods is a collective image of extraterrestrial enemies from many popular culture works, taking bits of inspiration from many of them.
• Visually Cephalopods starts off inactive, but then quickly becomes active after Bill arrives. It has some "eggs" besides it that are active during the entire battle, but upon reaching the 2nd stage (50% HP) and after it fully fires its laser, the eggs on the side will play an agitated animation.
  • The agitated animation on the eggs can be skipped entirely by killing it too quickly and not letting it play the animation fully.
• Prior to update 3.8.2, Cephalopods was not immune to stuns, making Willy and Nitrogen notable counters to the boss.

Gallery

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  Journal entry prior to being updated.

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  Cephalopods' journal entry.

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  One of the inactive Cephalopods-like machines in the background of a mission in stage 7.

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