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 and are a type of derived undead. They are considerably slower, stupider, and clumsier than whatever they were when they were alive and are unable to heal, but on the flip side, they do come with undead resistances to cold, poison, and negative energy.
Zombies may appear in the Crypt and a few of the dungeon's other branches as random monsters. They may be created by players by Animate Dead, Yredelemnul, and the unrand Sword of Zonguldrok. As servants, zombies are extremely useful for characters who need meat shields; they last indefinitely until you leave the floor. Hiding behind your zombies and waiting or using a polearm is a good strategy in battle against strong foes. Despite having significant disadvantages, zombies can still be very strong, especially when massed up.
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. Zombies could also spawn randomly in the main Dungeon. Reanimated zombies kept their weapons and armour.
- Prior to 0.26, raising a zombie meant losing out on the chunks the corpse provided.