Zombie
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| A corpse raised to undeath by necromancy.
"It seemed that while the zombie came from the grave, it was neither a ghost, nor yet a person who had been raised like Lazarus from the dead. The zombie, they say, is a soulless human corpse, still dead, but taken from the grave and endowed by sorcery with a mechanical semblance of life-it is a dead body with is made to walk and act and move as if it was alive. People who have the power to do this go to a fresh grave, dig up the body before it has had time to rot, galvanize it into movement, and then make of it a servant or slave, occasionally for the commission of some crime, more often simply as a drudge around the habitation or the farm, setting it dull heavy tasks, and beating it like a dumb beast if it slackens." |
Zombies are the reanimated corpses of once-living creatures. As a type of derived undead, their stats are based on what the monster had in life.
Useful Info
Zombies are slower, stupider, and clumsier than their alive counterparts. However, they have good durability for a derived undead. Zombies of certain monsters may be more durable than their non-undead selves.
- HP: (HD)d5 + 6*HD
- AC: Original - 2
- EV: Original - 5
- Speed: Original - 2 (at least 3)
- Melee attack damage: 80% of original
- Attack flavour: None
- Resists: rC++, rPois+++, rN+++, rTorm, rHoly-. Loses all other resistances or vulnerabilities the monster had in life.
- Special: Does not regenerate, cannot traverse stairs. Loses all spells and abilities (except for krakens).
Friendly zombies may be created by Animate Dead spell or Yredelemnul's passive reaping. Hostile zombies may be found the Crypt and in various vaults.
Strategy
As servants, zombies are great meatshields. Despite being weaker than the base monster, a mass of zombies can be quite effective. Most monsters are glass cannons (relative to the player), so 80% damage is still significant.
Even the weakest zombies can be used as retreat fodder. Keep these zombies behind you, and when things go poorly, go behind the zombies. The fodder will block shots and allow you to escape from attacks of opportunity. You can also attack behind zombies with Polearms or smite-targeted attacks.
Your zombies will crumble when you leave the current floor.
Identifying Zombies
Although zombie versions of each monster will have different stats, Crawl tends to lump them together, making identification at a glance difficult. In console mode, zombies will be separated into zs and Zs, representing large or small zombies. Tiles mode is more specific, providing unique tiles for several categories of monster, but there is still a lot of possible variation within those categories. In either mode, you can always press x and highlight the zombie in question to determine exactly what type of monster you are dealing with.
Below are all the categories of zombies in tiles mode:
Horrors
Humanoids (small)
Humanoids (large)
Quadrupeds (small)
Quadrupeds (large)
Quadrupeds (winged)
Spiders (small)
Spiders (large)
History
- Prior to 0.29, zombies required a corpse item to be raised by Animate Dead, which implicitly forbid monsters like Slimes from being zombies. Reanimated zombies kept their weapons and armour. Zombies could also spawn randomly in the main Dungeon.
- Prior to 0.26, raising a zombie meant losing out on the chunks the corpse provided.