Chopper

Chopper

Regular

Psychos

Rednecks

Police

Woodcutting skills are still useful to this day. Can heal 50% of his health while eating.

Main Stats

Type

Heavyweight

Rarity

Stars Reward

Health

1200

Melee Damage

240

Crit. Chance

30%

Crit. Damage

10%

Speed

7

Prepare Time

40s

Courage Cost

30

Special

• Self-healing: 12.5% of max. HP
• Self-healing pulses: 4

Behavior Stats

Agility

80

Aggression

100

Detection Range

80

Agility Penalty

50%

Aggression Penalty

50%

Morale Stats

Charisma

400

Valor

600

Charisma Radius

120

Abilities

Perks

Knockback Strength

• 5 (normal)
• 15 (crit)

Ability Cooldown

60s

Special Ability

Adds 30% health

Unlock Requirements

Stars

80

Player Level

Any

ChopperClown ChopperRural ChopperMountie

Chopper is a lumberjack who uses his woodcutting skills for survival in the apocalypse. He is armed with a woodcutting ax, and dressed in a red and black plaid short-sleeved shirt, blue pants, gray gloves, and a red cap. He sports a blonde beard. When healing, he pulls out a labeled can of food.

Clown Chopper is Chopper's first exclusive skin. He is armed with a double-sided ax and dressed in a gray short-sleeve clown suit with red buttons, a ruffled white collar, and gray gloves. He sports a blonde beard, his face is painted with red and white clown makeup, and his hair sticks out towards the sides with ends resembling horns. When healing, he pulls out a labeled can of food.

Clown Chopper has a different idle animation.

Rural Chopper is Chopper's second exclusive skin. He is armed with a woodcutting ax and dressed in a white T-shirt, blue overalls, and a yellow wide-brimmed hat. He has a piece of straw in his mouth. He now sports a brown beard. When healing, he pulls out a labeled can of food.

Mountie is Chopper's third exclusive skin. He is armed with a woodcutting ax and dressed in a Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Red Serge uniform consisting of a scarlet tunic with shoulder sleeve patches and black epaulettes, midnight blue breeches with yellow highlights, a dark brown Sam Browne belt with a yellow buckle, a dark brown satchel, black boots, black gloves and a beige campaign hat. He now sports a light brown mustache. When healing, he pulls out a labeled can of food.

He is a star reward, obtained for free when players collect 80 stars.

Overview

Chopper is a melee Heavyweight, and has average stats for his class. His attack speed is sluggish, with critical hits being especially slow. His preparation time is one of the highest for a melee unit.

Chopper has a manual ability that activates four healing pulses. Each burst of healing is equal to 12.5% of his max. health, totalling into 50%. The ability can only be activated if Chopper is below 50% HP himself.

Chopper's attacks have extended reach, and he can start assaulting enemies without being right in front of them vertically.

Chopper's attacks cause slight knockback. It becomes stronger on critical hits. Chopper himself is also fully immune to knockback. Some time after dying, he will turn into a Ram.

Special Ability

Chopper's special ability multiplies his base health by x1.3.

Getting this ability can prove fruitful if you are frequently using Chopper in any of his teams. It's especially useful because of its synergy with the two item sets that are most optimal for him (see item section for more).

Gameplay

Main Campaign

Chopper is a powerful melee unit for low-medium level players once he's unlocked thanks to his huge base health and high damage. He has a slightly longer range of attack and knocks enemies back with every hit, which compensates for his slow attack speeds. Enemy attacks are also unable to push him around. This makes him suitable to face against a small horde of enemies or act as a tank against more dangerous foes such as One-armed Soldier, Charged Zombie, and even his own infected counterpart, Ram. With his heal ability, he can self-sustain himself in a fight for a bit longer, though it is still advised that he is supported as the ability has the longest cooldown for a manual ability at 60 seconds.

Despite his strengths, Chopper may become unviable in the long run, mostly due to his lack of any useful damage resistances, a disadvantage that sets Chopper apart from all other heavyweights. While his healing ability is good on paper, it becomes less impactful as the enemy grows more dangerous. The time it takes for him to heal can be enough to get him killed, or deal enough damage to undo most of the healing almost at the very least. Like all unit manual abilities, the button to activate it will not appear while Chopper is stunned. Additionally, if Chopper is stunned during his heal animation, the healing is also delayed. Support from Medkits would be preferred at this point as it doesn't pause Chopper mid-fight. His slow attack and movement speeds, the fact that he turns into a dangerous zombie on death, and long preparation time end up hindering his overall effectiveness to the point players would rather use disposable fighters or damagers instead.

Skirmish

In League, he is one of the worst units to use in any level of Skirmish due to a multitude of reasons. His awfully slow movement makes him a slow and easy target for all ranged units. His lack of any useful resistances renders his very high health almost worthless. His manual healing ability activates automatically at half-health, and is mostly useless as it will make him both target practice and a punching bag for enemy units who can easily negate any healing he does, likely leading to his death since he can't retaliate while standing still to heal. All of his attacks are very slow, making it difficult for him to land even a single hit. His high courage cost can hinder team composition. Finally, his special ability, if unlocked, is useless as any damage increase will hardly be able to make a difference in any and all cases. At best, he can serve as a unit in only the lowest levels of skirmishing since there, his role as a tank may at least be of use against low-level enemy ranged units and actually being capable of fighting some enemy melee units competently enough.

Item Sets

The only currently viable sets for Chopper are either Surgery, or Big Boy, both taking advantage of his high HP and survivability. However, Big Boy is more appealing out of the two, as it can consistently keep Chopper's damage boosted by up to 45% with the use of substats and his SA, which is also beneficial as it encourages the user to take advantage of Chopper's one and only strong aspect – his health.

For obvious reasons, preparation time watches are the best choice for Chopper. Boosting his agility a little is also recommended. +% Health increases are highly beneficial for reasons discussed above. +% Melee damage buffs are also acceptable. Books of those two kinds are the best options as well. Focusing on increasing Chopper's crit chance and damage requires some commitment to make the most out of since they do make Chopper slightly more vulnerable with how often he will be winding up for his sluggish crit attack.

Skins and Synergies

Chopper, along with his respective skins, is part of four teams: Northerners, Psychos, Rednecks and Police.

Name	Chopper	Clown Chopper	Rural Chopper	Mountie
Skin
Unlock Req.	80	Obtain via gacha during Halloween Event	300 / 5000	Obtain via gacha during Christmas Event
Team	Northerners	Psychos	Rednecks	Police

Chopper tends to be a poor choice for most of the teams he is a member of, because of his inadequate preparation time and attack speed. This is best demonstrated in Northerners, the crit. focused powers of which end up limiting Chopper's viability by crippling his DPS. The effect of 5/5 tier is also not significant enough to offset Chopper's courage cost.

For Rednecks, Chopper's high health doesn't compensate for his very long cooldown. Even if the courage drops from 2/2 and healing from 3/3 are factored in, Redneck is generally a better option to roll with unless Paramedic Nancy is also in use. Rural Chopper only gets to shine in the 5/5 decks, since they tend to have an excess of resources.

Mountie also fails to add anything to the already strong Police team. His very high health might greatly synergize with the 3/3 power, but Policeman Diaz can fulfill the tank role more effectively. His slow attack speed also prevents him from causing a great impact in 5/5 builds. As for 2/2, he is a bad choice even as a filler, since there are better ways to get access to this power on a budget.

Psychos are the only team where Chopper can see meaningful use, which is thanks to most other units in the deck being even worse than him. He can be used to kickstart spamming of Saw and Berserker through the 2/2 power, acting as one of the better tag-alongs for them in 3/3 decks. He can also be used together with Austin in a "budget" tier 1 build, allowing to use the otherwise-unplayable shooter for general purposes.

Trivia

• Before version 3.6.3, Chopper's special ability increased his damage by 5% for each kill, and it could stack infinitely. It was later repurposed for the Big Boy set.
• In the game files, the frames related to Chopper's healing ability are referred to as "tomato".
  • The overall design of Chopper's can, while much simpler in appearance, is fairly similar to an unused tomato can item in the game files.
• The Clown Chopper skin is a reference to It, also known as Pennywise the Dancing Clown, from Stephen King's 1986 horror novel of the same name. Its design, in particular, is inspired by the recent film adaptations of the novel.
• Chopper's Mountie skin is inspired by Reddit user u/MicrowaveSon's post.
• Chopper's Clown skin features and shows his eyes being visible. While Dead Ahead's artstyle has every human character's eyes hidden in some way, Clown Chopper breaks this format, which means he has the only visible eyes in the entire game.
  • This was later changed with him being the only one, with Dr. Norman breaking this now too via death. Dr. Norman’s end death has it to where he dies with his eyes closed, which decay off of him when he turns into Slob.
• Before update 2.7.0, Chopper had to be purchased with coins. The bus had to be level 4, and his price was 350 coins.
• During the 3.7.4 Update, Chopper's ability cooldown was accidentally removed due to a bug, allowing him to heal indefinitely under ideal circumstances. This got fixed soon after.
• Chopper's Mountie skin and its association with the Police Team are based on the RCMP, the national police service of Canada.
• With his Special Ability factored in, Chopper has the highest base health of all units.

Gallery

• 

  Chopper's prerelease sprite
• 

  Chopper's sprite prior to update 1.4.3
• 

  Wooden house with a shovel sign in Dead Ahead: Quarantine preview images. Previous appearance of the first mission in the game prior to update 2.7.9.
• 

  Chopper eating.
• 

  Clown Chopper eating.
• 

  Clown Chopper's unique idle animation.
• 

  Chopper as seen in a Christmas preview image alongside Runner and Fast Zombie
• 

  Sheriff Charlotte and Chopper in the Christmas update teaser image.
• 

  u/MicrowaveSon's fanmade sprite used as inspiration for Mountie's design.
• 

  Mountie and Maria posing together in a festive forest, made in the leadup to Christmas 2023.
• 

  Xmas 2023 art with Mountie and Maria.
• 

  Spritework of Chopper killing a Naked during the Corn Farm event.
• 

  Artwork of Rural Chopper fighting against Naked and many other marauders.
• 

  Artwork of Rural Chopper fighting against Naked and many other marauders.
• 

  Promotional Halloween Spritework of Clown Chopper, Turbo and Bunny Charlotte.
• 

  Promotional Halloween Spritework of Clown Chopper, 2 Rednecks, Turbo, Bunny Charlottte and Turbo.
• 

  Promotional Halloween Spritework of Clown Chopper, Nurse Hirsh, Worthy, Court Jester, Andrea, Bunny Charlotte and Turbo.