ZKer
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ZKer is short for "Zombie Killer," a term used to describe zombies who kill other zombies. See also PKer.
Many low level zombies resort to ZKing to gain XP, as they cannot open doors and lack the mobility to search for humans trapped outside the barricades. On average, ZKing gives more XP per AP than bashing barricades, but less than zombie attacks on humans.
ZKing (or at least fellow-zombie-attacking) was often used by zombies who had large numbers of XP and were afraid of falling victim to a headshot (during the period when headshot took away XP) before leveling up, or, as of now, falling victim to a headshot that may inflict an extra 5 AP penalty upon standing up.
ZKing also takes place often at revive points by zombies who are competing for revivification, or by zombies who want to further delay the recovery of a recently attacked suburb. This practice stems from many factors: the easy targets of zombies who lack the zombie skills to serve as a threat towards more experienced zombies, the fact that the fewer standing zeds there are at a revive point, the more likely the zombie is to be revived itself, and that waiting for revivification can slow down character leveling, and so it is used by zeds to pass the time and gain a little bit of XP. However, after the first revive point ZKing, generally the victim stands back up, fairly irate, as it may have been passed up for revivification while dead, or the mere indignity of being killed at a revive point, and then attempt to retaliate, ZKing another zombie. Often, this is the wrong zombie, and the original ZKer is still slowly swaying back and forth. The newly ZKed zombie often does the same thing as the first, while the original ZKer repeats the action. This tends to lead to a zombie riot, where ZKing, while frowned upon in other contexts, is rampant, often even the most advanced players may be drawn into such an act under these circumstances.
The practice of ZKing is sometimes used by ex-survivors after they have been killed by an invading horde. Known as Life Cultists, they attempt to carry on defending their comrades, by attacking invading horde members until they can be revived. Arguably, it is AP-inefficient to knock down a zombie as a ZKer. This is primarily because the zombie has avoided the headshot. In the simplest terms, a ZKer spends varying amounts of AP to take away either 1 or 10 AP (depending on its skill) from a target and restores the target to full hit points after it stands. Looked at in this light, ZKing is counterproductive in most cases. However, the real strength of ZKers happens when large numbers of ZKers work a horde and start a zombie riot. In this light, the ZK activity self perpetuates itself, provided it gets past the tipping point. Still, small numbers of ZKers are still useful in bringing down the HP of hostile zombies, and let friendly survivors finish them off. ZKers are useful for gathering information, known as Loyalist Spies as well. For the in-depth tactics employed by ZKers, see the Life Cultist page.
A similar policy is also used by some zombie groups. Renfields or zombie spies are used to heal fellow zombies with FAKs, report the whereabouts and lower the barricades of survivor safehouses and PK.
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