morose code

When I created my first zombie for Urban Dead, there was no Corpse class, so I had to do it the hard way: find a building with a view and jump out a window. However, I didn't create the character that would become my zombie with brain munching in mind. I had rolled up a Consumer and was disappointed with how limited it was and decided to switch teams. If I were to start again, I'd do things differently.

A good way to begin would be with the Corpse class. No need to waste any turns finding a Tower or someone willing to beat you to death, and you start with Vigor Mortis, meaning you won't have as hard a time leveling right off the bat. However, I want a zombie with a little panache, the Hero Zombie that you'd be cheering for in a movie, the badass zombie. This means starting out as a Human.

Of all the choices of Humans with a zombie transformation in mind, there's really only two that are a good fit. While the Military classes have the benefit of leveling their fighting skills rapidly, there's no guarantee that in the future the undead will be able to evolve enough to use guns. It seems logical enough considering the Memories of Life skill, but it's not for certain. Science so far appears to have little practical value for the walking dead, either. That leaves the Civilians.

Consumers as I've already stated is pretty lame for a zombie. You start off with the ability to search specific stores in the Malls as well as a cellphone, both of which will be useless if the Memories of Life tree doesn't get upgraded, and even then will be only marginally less so. This leaves the Cop and the Firefighter.

Off the bat, the Cop has a flak jacket which, as the future target of many bullets, will be very helpful. While it's not something essential for a zombie since when you die you can just get right back up, having a zombie with a flak jacket means in the long run you'll be able to get in more attacks and earn more XP faster. Plus you're even more of an unstoppable juggernaut. While you do get a gun and can handle it fairly decently, again, as the undead it'll most likely be useless to you. Living, I've found that without the additional Pistol or Shotgun training, it's a very tedious process of finding enough ammo to offset all the times you'll miss.

The Firefighter, however, has fire axe. I've found that, between the two, the trained axe wins out over the pistol any day. Even though the accuracy and damage are a little less, you don't have to worry about running out of ammo at the last second or making your way to a PD to scrounge up more bullets. As a firefighter, you'll want to make your way to a PD to find a flak jacket. This will protect you until you're ready to switch sides, and it's good to have as a zombie.

Don't forget to give your Human a good sounding Human name. This way people will go out of their way to help you when you're still alive, and this makes the time you spend before turning easier. Plus, if you ever decide to stay alive or get revived, you won't be walking around with a stupid name.

Regardless of which class you picked, what you'll want to do is the same thing: rack up some XP. There's nothing wrong with turning immediately after getting the jacket, but the jacket alone isn't enough of an incentive to offset starting as a Corpse with Vigor Mortis. Instead, you'll want to put your first level into Body Building. Again, like the flak jacket, it's not necessary at all to have it, but it lends some style to your zombie. Yours is the one that people are going to remember if they're lucky enough to get away.

At this point your character should be doing pretty good for itself. One of the benefits of being alive is that you can't lose XP. If a Zombie Hunter comes along and kills your zombie, you'll lose your XP. If anyone comes along and prematurely kills your human, you've still got the XP. So, you might as well earn as much of it as you can while still alive since it'll carry over fine into your next life. This will also make the transition to zombie fighting skills easier.

Once you're a zombie, your method of operation is pretty straight forward. Find a human and eat him. While using your fists may seem to be the attack of choice, Biting is actually much better. Double the damage for slightly less in accuracy means in the long run you'll be doing more harm that way than with your fists. Generally, the only time I ever use them over the Bite attack was when I got someone down to 2 or less HP, had a limited number of AP left, and hadn't upgraded my bite attack.

The first skill you'll want to purchase as a zombie is Vigor Mortis. If you went the Corpse route you've already got this, but if you just turned, hopefully you did so with enough XP to immediately pick it up. If not, you're in for a slow time gathering enough hits, especially now that most people are barricading themselves indoors in large groups of heavily armed gun nuts.

The second skill you should pick up is Neck Lurch. It's better to get this sooner than later as it will increase the likelihood of you doing damage and speed up your leveling throughout your new, undead life. The third skill I bought was Digestion. However, I didn't have a flak jacket nor the Body Building skill, and at the time people were just standing around in the street, waiting to be picked off. At this point you have basically have three choices.

Number one is Scent Fear. This is good if you're in an area where there are lots of people and you need to know which ones to pick off first. With it, it means there's a chance they'll stand up and join you as a zombie, helping you thin out the other survivors. There's also a bonus for killing someone, so if you can weed out the weak, you'll get stronger, faster.

If there's not a lot of fresh meat around, Memories of Life is a good choice. It will allow you to open doors and peek inside buildings. It's more likely that people are shacked up the Hospitals, Police Departments and Malls, and this will help you get at them. Another benefit to this is that, even if you're still pretty weak combat wise, if there are other zombies nearby, you can open the doors for them.

The third choice is Lurching Gait. Originally zombies moved just as fast as the humans did, at the expense of 1 AP per block travelled, but that's since changed to 2 AP per block. This really takes a bite out of your available moves if there's no prey around and you need to start migrating. Lurching Gait sadly doesn't do much for you other than speeding you back up to 1 AP per block, but I think it's worth it. Scent Fear without either of the other two really isn't that great of an advantage since it will take you forever to find sneak up to someone, and they can always just run far away and hide in a building. I would go with the speed bonus.

By this point you'll have an extra tough zombie that can do some serious damage and has no real drawbacks other than not being able to open doors. Now is a good time to look at the other skills and see which would be the best choice.

Digestion is a pretty neat skill that allows you to heal yourself for every bite you inflict on someone else. Like the flak jacket and Body Building skills, it will make you tougher and harder to kill, reducing the number of times you have to waste an AP to stand up. But is that minor inconvenience worth the 100 XP right now? Probably not at this stage, but certainly worth getting later on in the game.

Having Memories of Life opens up the Death Rattle skill. One of the bigger disadvantages of the zombie class is the inability to organize. No one has really come to a consensus on what the various default zombie moans should be used for. Death Rattle helps alleviate this, but currently it doesn't seem to be all that impressive.

The final skill available is Brain Rot. I can't see any real advantage to the zombie character in having this. Realistically, the odds of someone reviving you are slim although it does exist. However, you can easily fix that without spending 100 XP. The other thing Brain Rot does is makes it harder for NecroTech technicians to earn XP by scanning your DNA. Again, this might be useful, but it certainly isn't overwhelmingly an advantage to you when you can easily be munching on most of these characters and earning XP doing it. Unless things change, I don't see myself purchasing this skill any time in the near future.

At this point you need to take a look at the neighborhood you're in. If there are a lot of other zombies around, chances are that someone in a pack will have Memories of Life. Take note of any mobs that are outside a building with open doors. If there aren't any, perhaps now would be the time to invest in a little manual dexterity. If there are, however, Scent Fear would probably be a better choice. Plus it allows you to purchase Scent Blood and Scent Trail later on, two skills that are very useful.

Scent Blood is basically a souped up version of Scent Fear, making it the zombie equivalent of Diagnosis. Scent Trail allows you to track down characters that have hit you while you were recharging AP. Did some army soldier manage to kill you again? Track him down to his safe house and show him a thing or two.

Figure out which one will be the most useful in the near future. The other probably should be your next choice, followed by Scent Trail, Scent Blood, and then the lesser skills, Digestion, Death Rattle and Neck Lurch.

By now you'll have a kickass zombie, and there will no doubt be some new skills to look into. In the meantime, don't forget to pop into churches since most players seem to forget that their doors can't be closed to keep you out.

To summarize: choose a Firefighter and make your way to a PD for a flak jacket (-20% damage to you from gunshots). Rack up as much XP as you can with the axe and invest in Body Building (+10 HP points). As soon as you have at least an extra 100 XP, turn and start buying zombie skills in this order:

Vigour Mortis (+10% to zombie melee)
Neck Lurch (+10% with bite attacks)
Lurching Gait (1 AP per block instead of 2)
Memories of Life (can open doors)
Scent Fear (tags weaker humans)
Scent Trail (track humans you've encountered)
Scent Blood (shows exact HP of nearby humans)
Digestion (heals HP equal to bite damage)
Death Grip (+20% with hand attacks)
Death Rattle (can groan a bit better)
Brain Rot (can't be revived, hard to DNA-scan)

When you reach level 10, your zombie will be pretty formidable: 60 HP, a flak jacket, 30% chance to hit for 4 damage that also heals you, can open doors and walk as fast as a human, as well as be able to track down and know exactly how healthy your prey is.