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Zombie PvE Strategies
Face it, your highest round was probably 16. How do you pass this massive storm of stardust weavers and diabolists? It doesn’t depend on luck, but how you move and where you move, what weapons and strategies and abilities you choose. It’s all a giant mix of confusing stuff that takes a while to unravel without, say, a guide on how to play zombies better… Well, that’s exactly what you’re seeing!
Weapon Decision Strategies
Now, let’s say you have a Wooden Yoyo, and you have 25000 score to use on either a malaise or a Ghastly Glaive. You would obviously go for a Ghastly Glaive. But if the Ghastly Glaive was replaced with a Blood Butcherer, It’d be hard to decide. The yoyo has more range, but less damage, while the sword has more damage but less range. Well, the yoyo would actually be the better choice. Why? Well obviously it has more range so you can take care of those annoying wandering eyes and slimers, but the reason it’s better is because it’s faster and has less damage. Remember, it doesn’t matter the damage you do, but how many hits it takes to kill the mobs. More hits = more points. This is why really good speed, moderate knockback, and very low damage weapons like the Minishark and Arkhalis are really good for pre - boss (Round 5). You should remember to use those weapons for AS MUCH time as you can, as they are really good point gatherers. This is why you can get a million points before round 10.
Team Strategies
They say to always work as a team. And no offense to you people who hate everybody, but they’re right. What you want to do is to always stay in a group, unless the teammate moves out anyway. Just try to get in the place with most people, unless you’ve actually planned out what you can do, and we’ll talk more about that later. When staying in a group, everybody is trying to attack common targets all at the same time. If you stay with another person, double the power. Another thing to note is donating score. You can donate score in a lobby with “/ts [player] [score]”. For example : “/ts Mr.Bob 5600”. Like this : Say you have a Chain Gun and the other person needs it. If this is middle game (round 9 - 12) and you can buy an S.D.M.G when the other person only needs 200000 more, it would be much better to give the score away, because you both now have a good points farming weapon. This brings me to my next point, when the teammate finally buys the Chain Gun, he shouldn’t only protect himself, but protect everybody he can, because while reviving may be a waste of time at first, it will end up benefiting both because both players simply have more power. Remember, once he’s revived you, you can help him to protect himself while he’s gathering points to get an even more OP weapon than before.
Planning Gameplay
Planning is one of the most important strategies of zombies. In order to get past rounds like 21 or beating the moon lord, you will have to plan most (or the entirety) of the game. A quick way to strategize the first rounds is to use weapons like blade staff or arkhalis. These weapons allow for easy points as reasoned before. However, in the later rounds, it may get a little bit tricky. For example on round 12, if there are no closed spots, sandstorms can spawn and immediately lead to doom if you choose to keep camping. Instead, you will need a weapon to defeat the root of the sandstorms, or sandstorm elementals. As considered the second challenge round, it only tests level two zombies. The level three challenge round, or round 16, introduces the two mobs stardust weaver and diabolists. These mobs together help each other, by forcing you to come close (to defeat diabolists before they cause greater problems) but also forcing you to not get hit by stardust weavers. Even with 6000 health, without a way of countering stardust weavers from close, you will probably die by the end of the round. But this is just level three. When level four challenge starts (round 20), it keeps diabolists and stardust weavers (forcing you to be close to mob spawns or control all of them at the same time) while making the primary unit in the army part of the zombies paladins. The paladins are high health mobs that if not hit fast enough, throw paladin hammers everywhere. This means you need to be close to the mob spawns while having to defeat the paladins fast enough before they reach and kill you. With all of these added up, at the end of the round the boss comes. Yes another boss. Bosses are not really hard bosses instead just random mobs a bit more op than their level. What could it be this time? Moon Lord. Moon Lord comes as the final challenge of the challenge rounds and ends the new mobs. With all of these in mind, you will have to carefully plan out how you are going to beat these rounds. However put together with all the other strategies in this guide, it will become easy to plan out whole games and getting past hard rounds.
Dodging Hard Enemies
Let’s say you get stuck on completing round 6 because of those dang wandering eyes and slimers. But, there’s an easy way to dodge all of these mobs simply because their pathfinding mechanics are not really that good (it sucks). For example, the pathfinding is pretty easy to pin down, so after a while of observing, you can practically always know where the wandering eye or slimer is going to go. So just move away from there. Or let’s say you get stuck on round six because of those hoplites. Just jump over the javelins unless there’s a wandering eye or slimer above you because those always do more damage. If you can’t jump in maps like skelotens, just take cover in a hole or something until the hoplites come and are easy to kill. And don’t tell me there’s no hole; because there is. But if you don’t know where these mobs are going to shoot, like for example the gastropod (they can shoot waaaay out of your view range), just jump up and down. I mean it works for me… Also, for mobs like the sand elemental, those can’t make sandstorms if there is no place to make it via the place being too small for the sandstorm to fit. So just go somewhere they cant make sandstorms. Also, don’t attempt going through sandstorms unless you either have the ankh shield and a good amount of health, or need to get that weapon or life in that chest. Or for example, you want to dodge those FREAKING diabolists. Either you have an ankh shield, or you need to make sure to always kill the diabolists first before any other mob, because their flames can knock you into your doom of a stardust weaver.
Zombies Abilities Strategies
Ability Decision Making and General Strategies
First, one of the most easiest to pin down and strategize (new word that I made up), the Guardian ability. This ability summons a guardian to guard you from any attack, as it might be slow, but it has a really nice amount of knockback allowing it to protect you from any mob from round 4 to round 10 (although the hoplites might disagree). This is useful for maps like skelotens, as you can camp at spawn for some time and use weapons like vilethorn to defeat mobs. Just wait till the hoplites or bone lee comes outta nowhere. This can also be useful for maps like Monster mansion, but as there’s no weapon that can fast and easily kill the diabolists and weavers, round 16 will probably be your doom on that one.
Another easy one is Dual Wield. This ability allows you to shoot double the projectiles (Do note that this doesn’t work on pure melee classes(no projectiles), because it would be too overpowered). This is pretty useful for every map as it gives the ability to defend both sides at once, and switch anytime.
Next, Coward is a passive ability. When your health drops down to half, you get teleported to spawn and the zombies near the spawnpoint immediately die. This can be good for maps like Skelotens or Shadow’s Descent.
An easy to use ability is Barrage. It shoots a large amount of missiles that has decent knock-back, but low damage. This however, can kill your enemy through sheer numbers. It can be bad at first, and can only really be used for gathering points because of the low damage and fast speed, but round 7 and onwards, it becomes OP.
Time warp is a great ability that has two modes. The first one teleports you to where you were moments ago, along with your health bar. This is great for getting out of sticky situations and positioning. The second one “freezes” time. It stops mobs in place once you activate it, gives you the panic buff, and debuffs your teammates with slowness. This is great for keeping your teammates out of trouble keeping you and your allies in a safe position, or saving them if they get cornered.
Telekinesis (obtained by being crew) is an ability that can either push enemies away, pull enemies towards, or give you some great mobility. Scales well late game.
An interesting (albeit a little quirky) ability is Wish. When you use it, it gives a random effect that usually favors your current situation. (e.g. being at full health will favor max HP wishes which gives +50 max HP. Being at low health will favor regen/healing wishes.)
What wish can do
Good Stuff
+Max HP
Heal
Resurrect a random player
HP Regen
Damage Boost
Movement Speed Boost
AAAAAAA
Multiple Debuffs
Receive damage
Kill a random player
Kill your own character
Removes armor
Removes current held weapon
Also, there’s Valiant. Maybe the hardest to unlock ability. Its passive. To unlock it you need defeat round 11 with Coward as an ability. Easy, yeah? Now include that you can’t take damage.
What does it do?
Gives stackable regen buffs, when you're near an enemy. (open to see full list)
1st tier - Regeneration and Honey
2nd tier (around three blocks) - Life Drain.
3rd tier - (around two blocks) - Rapid healing
4th tier (one block) - Life Nebula
BUUUUUUUUT. If you taking damage, you will be granted a debuff. There’s a lot, but the time is near three seconds.
One of the more difficult abilities is the Shaman, it can be really useful for healing and increasing maximum health. If you had 2 shamans farming and getting max health stored and max health in general, the next rounds would be so easy. Until moon lord comes and round 21 puts your life back at 100. This can be a good ability on Catacombs, Beach House, Hill House, and really good for any map.
And the last ability, the Sentry. This ability allows you to create robots that fight for you. There are seven different types of sentries that each have a different purpose.
The minigun is a high speed, low damage with a moderate amount of knockback (PERFECT for points farming). Before T3, it doesn’t pierce, so be careful when putting it in an open space.
The next is the snipe. This sentry shoots slowly (until upgraded to higher tiers) but has high damage. Not that good for points farming, but as mobs like wandering eye don’t give you points until they are killed, it’s good for aerial defense. For late game(r16+), a t11 snipe can kill a spawn point if it has a tank to take aggro. If you somehow upgrade it to t15, it will be shooting at its max speed and will be able to handle 1 zombie spawn on its own.
Next is the emitter. It can confuse enemies and inflict ichor on them time to time, therefore good for dealing with bosses, as it severely lowers their defense with the ichor debuff, and can confuse normal mobs. However making bunches of these emitters still cant stop mobs not affected by the confused like granite golems.
Next is the nade, which is the bomber of the sentries. It has a good amount of knockback and moderate damage, but has slow speed. Really not that good unless you desperately need knockback.
Then we have the Tank, it’s a melee sentry that’s good for a dummy type sentry, which draws mob’s attention while you can go kill of smaller waves of mobs or get some stuff from chests. It’s useful for drawing attention during difficult rounds like r12 and r16+. Diabolists, pirate captains, stardust weavers, and sand elementals will generally target the tank, so long as you don’t have aggro accessories. T12 or higher is recommended for tanking diabolist shots.
Next we have the repair, which takes the damage of other sentries and inflicts it to itself. So if you have a snipe or emitter, good for stopping those from ever dying.
And lastly, we have the bank. This stores score whenever sentries hit, and at the end of the round 30% of the score is given to you. When sentries die, the score used on them is put into the bank allowing for useful refunds. There used to be an aspect about this single sentry that can completely break the point of the game, and allow for OP miniguns, snipes, players, and impossible rounds finally being possible. This aspect allows an exploit: score duplication. (It can practically give you trillions of score before round 16)
Double Banking
Double Banking is when two people have a bank, then they each spend score to sacrifice sentries. So if one spent 2000 on dummy sentries, then 2000 goes in their bank. If the other person did the same, then both banks would have 2000. So at the end of the round, the score from the banks is duplicated and given to both of them, therefore each of them gets 4000 score, x2 the original score. Too bad it has been patched.
Wondering what the top abilities are? Check this other guide to find out.
Combining Ability Uses
If you have a teammate that your fighting with, it would not really be good to use the same ability. Sometimes, various abilities work together in ways unimaginable. The only abilities that are better off together is sentry and shaman. In fact, shaman with anything is good. It regens stuff and gives stuff more health. Anyways, take guardian with sentry. Instead of making as much sentries as you can and upgrading them to fend off mobs before your sentries get killed anyway, the guardian will guard the sentries, while the sentries will kill the mobs.
Or Guardian with Barrage? The Guardian will protect the barrage while the barrage shoots it’s missiles into the air, allowing for the complete negation of the debuffs barrage puts on you.
Coward doesn’t work with anything, soooo
Or how about Dual wield with Shaman? The shaman will provide the health and regeneration needed for the dual wield to become a full weaponized tank.
Other Guides
Zombies Maps Overview
Zombies Abilities
Also if u know some other good strategies, edit them in pls
