Status Effects

Status effects are unique ailments and conditions that can affect both enemies and units. Some of these effects are only available either to units or enemies.

Some effects occur naturally while others are caused by certain attacks and abilities.

Natural Effects

Both units and enemies on the battlefield can have effects related to their morale. These effects can be applied only via random and unique conditions.

Inspiration

Inspiration (units with this effect are also referred to as lucky or courageous) is a positive effect that can be applied to units at a 10% chance whenever they spawn. Inspired units have their movement speed increased by 3, and their agility and aggression increased by 5. These stats will also not get affected by natural randomization.

Inspired units have a faintly glowing laurel hovering above their head. They will also briefly glow yellow when they gave this effect.

Aside from natural chance, inspiration can be granted to units through abilities of Cap and Pepper. In both cases, the inspiration gets applied to all units present on the battlefield, except for Cap and Pepper themselves.

Fear

Fear (units with this effect are also referred to as scared) is a negative effect that can be experienced by humans, specifically player units and marauders. Fear decreases entities' agility and aggression, as a result making them suffer from worse reaction speed and causing them to pause more often in combat.

Fear is triggered whenever a human's valor drops below zero, and gets removed once the stat returns to positive values. Valor is decreased by standing next to enemies – each enemy's charisma value is subtracted from the unit's valor.

Visually, units that are affected will have a scared, screaming face over their head, and will glow purplish-blue.

Each individual unit is affected by fear differently – the strength of the debuff is determined by hidden agility and aggression modifiers, which have varying values from unit to unit, making some less affected by fear than others. Marauders have these stats as well.

Red Aura

Red aura is a positive effect that can be applied to most enemies at a 10% chance whenever they spawn. Enemies that are afflicted get +20% to their movement speed, and have an increase in damage that varies from 20 to 25%. This percentage varies for a majority of enemies, and the received buff is naturally rounded up to whole numbers.

Enemies emitting a red aura always grant an additional 15 points of rage on top of their usual amount when killed, totaling up into one number.

Visually, enemies that are affected will glow red and emit small particles. Because of an increase to movement speed, their walking animations will also be faster. The glow has a fixed size, and therefore might be obstructed on enemies with particularly large sprites.

Sergeant and Undead are capable of randomly gaining / regaining red aura after reviving. Enemies spawned by other zombies, either through unique abilities or dying, can have red aura as well. Certain enemies and most bosses are unable to gain this effect.

Damage Effects

Both units and enemies are capable of delivering harmful damage effects that can affect combat in varying ways.

Fire

A burning Prisoner.

Fire is a DoT (Damage over Time) debuff effect that can be used against both enemies and human units. Those that are afflicted take damage every second. Fire damage always fluctuates, dealing slightly more or slightly less of the documented amount of damage with each interval.

Visually, those that are affected immediately darken and gradually turn darker and darker as their health diminishes, to the point that they char into a solid black color right before they die. Small fire particles rise from their feet to their torso and smoke particles emit from their bodies just like those from fire pools.

Units with the fire resistance perk will completely ignore fire damage. Enemies can either be fully or partially fire-resistant. Both units and enemies become fire-resistant during rainy weather, as both groups cannot take additional fire damage. Nitrogen is capable of removing the fire debuff from affected units and enemies, although they will remain visibly darkened in appearance. Reversely, if Nitrogen stuns enemies or units, fire cannot deal damage or inflict the fire debuff until the stun wears off. Healing from things such as Medkit, Chopper's manual ability, or Paramedic Nancy's healing ability can fix damage done by fire but cannot remove it, making it a temporary measure at best to extend a unit's survivability.

Fire is most commonly created in the form of a fire pool. Zombies will always walk mindlessly through them and inflict themselves with the fire debuff. Units and marauders will simply walk around fire pools to avoid unnecessary damage if they lack fire resistance. There are two exceptions, Mechanic and Crazy. While Mechanic can also avoid fire pools, he won't if he's currently charging in to perform his additional damage attack. Crazy, on the other hand, will always run through fire pools without fail. Only a level 13 Carlos with his special ability unlocked, Flamethrower, and Swat can deal fire damage directly with their weapons; out of all three only Flamethrower deals pure fire damage.

Fire is capable of entirely destroying bodies. Ultimately being killed with fire or a fire-based attack reduces its victim to a pile of ashes. Fire pools are capable of burning unit and marauder corpses on the floor to prevent them from turning into a zombie. This won't work if the corpse belonged to someone that naturally possess fire resistance such as Firefighter and Biker, or those that possess infection resistance such as Specops. Both Sergeant and Undead can be burned to ashes to prevent them from reviving.

A unique property of fire is that the effect can indefinitely stack in certain cases. Each bullet from Swat or a level 13 Carlos that ignites an enemy will be treated as an individual source of fire, allowing for fire damage to essentially stack on top of each other. Multiple fire pools can similarly stack as well. However, Flamethrower's weapon cannot stack fire damage.

Poison

A poisoned Mechanic and Sonya.

Poison is a damage over time effect applied by some zombies, namely Epidemiologist and Slob, onto human units. Poisoned units take a fixed amount of damage based on the enemy's level at set intervals, and persists until the unit has been destroyed.

Visually, units that are affected have their health bar and damage display number turn blue. Units will curiously bleed out small blue droplets every time they take damage and emanate floating blue particles from their bodies, similar to enemies such as Dark Skeleton or Medic who naturally emit the same effect. Formerly, poisoned units would have a green health bar.

There are a few ways to get around poison. All units with the poison resist perk are actually immune to it. Glenn's ability to resurrect himself and units revived by Paramedic Nancy are able to get around because poison does not carry over during each revive, although it does not grant immunity to the effect again. Failing that, healing sources like Medic, Medkit, Chopper (manual ability) and Nancy will be able to partially counter it by recovering lost health.

Medkit's special ability removes this effect from ally units.

Stun

Willy stunning Ram.

A group of "frozen" zombies.

Stun is a damage effect that can be used against both enemies and human units. Those that are afflicted will have their movement inhibited in general. There are two forms of the stun effect; the first is an electricity-based paralyzing stun that causes a very short, full movement halt and the second is a severe slowdown that affects movement and attack speed. Jailer, Willy, and Rogue utilize the first form of the stun effect while Nitrogen, Dr. Norman and all enemies with the ability to stun utilize the second form. Nitrogen's stun duration can be upgraded while everyone else has a fixed stun duration.

Stun durations are calculated independently. In the event multiple instances of such attacks connect with their target, only the latest one applies.

Visually, enemies that are successfully afflicted by Willy/Jailer/Rogue's stun effect will flash a cyan color. Both enemies and units affected by Nitrogen/Dr. Norman stun effect will glow a bright white. This also occurs for units who are stunned by enemies.

Willy, Jailer, Dr. Norman and Rogue's stun abilities apply to every enemy they hurt with said attacks. No units or enemies are directly resistant or immune to enemy stun effects. Nitrogen will not stun burning targets, instead extinguishing all fires on them.

Originally, Cephalopods was immune to all stunning/“freezing” capabilities, being utterly immune. But, it was later changed within an update, making Cephalopods able to be stunned.

Freeze

Freeze stuns have some extra unique characteristics from a normal stun, such as:

• Gives temporary ignite resistance
• Paramedic cannot use its counter attack (lightning strike when hit by melee attacks)
• Forces character to go idle and disallows all movement
• Sets aggression and agility to 0
• Prevents sandstorm from moving it
• Disallows usage of abilities

Hypnosis

A hypnotized Mechanic.

Hypnosis is only applied by Hypnotist, it is visualized by a purple swirl spinning over the unit's head. Units that get hypnotized will cease everything they're currently doing and idle (or remain aiming if they were doing that when they got hypnotized) until they either: take any amount of non-status effect damage, the Hypnotists that applied it to that unit dies, or till the hypnosis effect wears off. Player activated abilities, such as Grenadier or Queen's grenade, aren't able to be activated while the unit is hypnotized.

Knockback

Knockback is a damage effect that can be used against both enemies and human units. Those that are afflicted will be pushed some distance away from their attacker.

Units with the undocumented knockback resistance perk and enemies with the knockback resistance ability can either completely or partially negate knockback. Units under the Heavyweight class, most bosses, and certain zombies are unable to be knocked back at all. Some units, most of which are in the Damager class, and some zombies have varying amounts as to how much knockback they suffer. When units are knocked back, they will momentarily idle before moving again.

Many units and enemies can cause knockback. While most units deal knockback with their critical hits, some can deal it with every attack regardless. The same applies to enemies that deal knockback, but there are also very few enemies who can only cause knockback with only their regular attacks and not their critical hits. Psy is the only enemy who can cause a varying amount of knockback depending on how close a unit is to him when he performs his psi attack.

Trivia

Pre-3.0.0 poisoned Chopper.

• Before update 3.0.0, the poison debuff used to turn the health bar and damage display number of poisoned units green instead of blue. This was likely changed to prevent confusion for unit healing numbers introduced in the same update, which were also green.

Several inspired Sergeants.

• In the past, when an inspired unit dies, the zombie they turn into will somehow keep the bonus.
• If Glenn is inspired, he will always keep the effect after reviving, meaning inspiration is never lost even after death (as proven by the courageous zombies previously mentioned). Glenn also has a chance to revive with the inspiration effect if he didn't have it before.
• Interestingly, Slob and Epidemiologist cannot poison marauders, though this is only observed when they are spawned through third-party tools.
• The effects of fear are not limited to just human units. Fear can affect other living entities. These include most marauder enemies and Princess.
  • In the case of Princess, she just runs to the bus and dodges everything in her way, so fear has no effect on her.
  • In the case of most marauder enemies, fear does have an effect in their ability to fight as their attack speeds will suffer. However, unlike player units, the effects are slight and almost unperceivable in some cases. Some possess a bit of fear resistance and may require more than one unit with the fear inspiration perk to affect them. Uniquely, if there are enough marauders near each other, they can reduce the effectiveness of the fear inspiration perk. They can even counteract the effects entirely if there are enough of them standing close to each other. Crazy is the only fear immune marauder.

Quarantine red aura effect on a Soldier (Zombie).

• The red aura effect for enemies used to have a different appearance.
• In update 4.1.8, Inspiration and Red Aura had their movement speed increases changed to +3, however, in the 4.1.9 patch released a few days later, Red Aura had its movement speed buff changed to +20%.