Empty Barrel

Empty Barrel

Barrels stolen from a warehouse. Strong and heavy enough to throw on someone from above or to block someone's path.

Main Stats

Rarity

Stars Reward

Health

Melee Damage

Prepare Time

10s

Rage Cost

6

Abilities

Perks

Non-documented:

• 
• 
• Knockback resistance

Special Ability

Damage and durability is increased by 30%

Unlock Requirements

Stars

1

Player Level

Any

Empty Barrel is a slightly-dented blue steel drum.

It's a Star Reward, obtained for free when players collect 1 star and is the first unit reward to be earned.

Overview

Empty Barrel is a primarily offensive Support Item. It's a barrel that can be dropped on enemies to deal melee damage to them. It can also deal damage to human units and other support items. Once it's placed, the barrel acts as an obstacle – if it stands in an enemy's way, they will attempt to destroy it.

Being a support item, EB can be dropped on almost any spot of the battlefield, and has all resistances typical for units of that class.

Special Ability

Empty Barrel's special ability increases its health and damage by x1.3, totalling to 1474 HP and 1786 melee damage.

While it isn't spectacular, this buff still helps with improving Empty Barrel's usability, making it better as a finisher tool. The increased HP also helps against Charged Zombies, making EB capable of tanking two hits from CZs of levels as high as 25. Overall, there's little reason to skip this SA if you are using Empty Barrel in your decks regularly.

Gameplay

Main Campaign

Empty Barrel's uses are versatile. Having offensive and defensive applications allow it to damage or kill cluttered enemies, be placed ahead of time to serve as a stalling tool (one good strategy is placing it ahead of the barricade to protect your melee units from upcoming enemies to make sure they can keep damaging the barricade uninterrupted) or defensive wall to help allies that are low on health or have slow reloads, and eliminate stragglers or running enemies from approaching the bus. Thanks to its combination of very low rage cost and short preparation time, Empty Barrel can be used very frequently and easily.

Sadly, Empty Barrel becomes quite inefficient in the later portion of the game, as enemies have increasingly higher health and damage. It becomes superseded by other support items, namely Red Barrel, which compensates for its higher rage cost with greater health and offensive capabilities. The only applications it has in end-game is to be a cheap option for dealing with Charged Zombies, and to finish off certain dangerous threats, like Insectoids that just landed near a ranged unit.

Trivia

• Before update 2.7.0, Empty Barrel used to be an initially available unit, just like Redneck. It would be unlocked after starting Mission 2.
  • It still technically is as it's impossible to fail the first mission of the game, and upon entering Mission 2, players will be instructed to deploy Empty Barrel.
• According to its description, the Empty Barrel was stolen from a warehouse. Mission 3 takes place at a location called Liberty Warehouse, which could be the warehouse in question. Additionally, several Red Barrels appear in this mission as well, which imply they, too, are also recovered from various sources before being put to use.