Enemies

During the game, the player encounters a wide variety of enemies on their way, logging each newly encountered foe in a special journal known as the Zombiepedia. It records how many unique enemies have been encountered, the total number of enemies killed, and players' total playtime. Newly encountered enemies will have a pop-up window that displays their zombiepedia image and description. Most enemies will be encountered during missions, but can also be encountered across the various game modes and events.

While killing all enemies present is not necessary for mission completion, most of the time it's simply unavoidable, as enemies block the path towards the barricade, which must be destroyed to progress to the next destination.

Currently, there are 72 documented (but only 71 encounterable) enemies, and 3 bosses.

Some enemies and 1 boss, however, are not listed in the Zombiepedia:

Enemies without Zombiepedia entry
Marauder Vehicle	Pumpkin Zombie	Fast Pumpkin Zombie	Pumpkin Girl

Mechanics

Similarly to units, every enemy has a set number of parameters that determine how much of a threat they pose to players. The main characteristics are health, damage, and movement speed. In most cases, the higher the number is, the more dangerous the enemy is as well. Movement speed is randomized to be higher/lower by up to 10% from each different enemy's documented number. Enemies can be affected by a special effect called Red Aura, which increases their damage and movement speed, but at the same time makes them drop more Rage on death.

Enemies can also have special abilities of their own, varying from various resistances, knockback, stun, critical hits, exploding on death, causing fires, ranged attacks, and even having the power to instantly kill humans with little provocation.

Almost every enemy's main goal is to destroy the player's bus. Any that don't are likely supporting the others from a distance in some way or another. Almost all zombies will move in a straight line, and a large majority of them never intentionally target human units, only fighting back if they stand in their way. The same applies to stationary units as well, i.e., Generator. Almost every marauder will move to face and attack the closest human unit in their way. The same only applies to a select few stationary units, while others will be ignored. Unlike zombies, most marauders will walk around fire pools.

Some relatively large swarms of enemies can inspire fear into susceptible human units. Some may require more enemies nearby to scare them. Runner-type enemies tend to have a higher fear inspiration rate, so they need fewer of them in a swarm to terrify units.

Final Wave

Final wave is a term used to describe a huge horde of zombies that appear when a mission goes on for too long and the countdown ends.

The horde itself is separated into waves, each having 9 instances of each of the two enemies.

Witches will always appear as part of the wave. They will be accompanied by another enemy that depends on what stage the player is currently at.

• Stage 1-3: Runner
• Stage 4-8 up to Mission 139: Armored Skeleton
• Missions 140 and 141: Locust

The number of waves changes the further the player goes into the campaign:

• Missions 2-27: 1 wave
• Missions 28-43: 2 waves
• Missions 44-141: 3 waves

If the player manages to defeat the final wave horde, all enemies will cease to appear for the remainder of the mission, excluding any that appear after any units are killed and eventually turn. This leaves players free to destroy the barricade without any trouble.

Enemy Levels

Enemies' health and damage can be increased with leveling, just like on the player's units. This is made by applying a special formula on these stats: ceil(baseValue * (1 + 0.2 * level)). baseValue represents their base health or damage.

When a unit revives, the resulting zombie copies its level. For example, a Ram who revived from a level 7 Chopper will also be level 7. The same principle applies to enemies spawned by others – they will copy the level of their creator. For instance, level 6 Putrid will spawn three level 6 Rottens on death.

Stats

When an enemy is spawned, their stats will be randomized like so:

• Agility adds/subtracts -5 up to 5
• Aggression adds/subtracts -5 up to 5
• Speed is changed by the next formula: Speed * -0.1 up to 0.1
• Critical hit chance adds/subtracts -0.1 up to 0.1

If an enemy is inspired/has a red aura, their Agility and Aggression stats will be set to +5, and their speed and damage will be increased by 20%.

Enemy Types

Currently, there are two types of enemies: zombies and marauders.

Zombies

Zombies are undead beings. They are mindless creatures who have no other goal than to spread the plague by killing living beings.

Marauders

Marauders are human bandits who have been exposed to the plague for a very long time, with some showing signs of their prolonged infection exposure. Still, they try to survive by fighting off the undead, just like Sheriff Bill and the other units. However, they refuse to cooperate with anyone else and won't hesitate to kill those who intrude their areas.

Just like player units, Marauders will target zombies when prompted to, and will turn into zombies after dying.

Trivia

• Before update 2.7.0, it was possible to trigger a special mechanic called "noise level." Before it was removed, having a lot of ranged units (including Turret) presented on the battlefield and firing at the same time would eventually cause a noise meter to appear. It would slowly increase with continuous shooting and was impossible to be decreased. After the meter was full, small hordes of Zombies would come onto the field.