Zombie Skills/Ransack

You ransack the building.

Ransack is a zombie skill which allows the player to cause internal damage to buildings, reducing search odds and making barricading impossible until the damage is repaired. It is a child skill of Memories of Life. Like all zombie skills, Ransack costs players of all character classes 100 Experience Points (XP) to purchase.

Overview

Whilst inside a building devoid of survivors, a zombie with Ransack has the option to Ransack building. Ransacking once costs 1 Action Point (AP) and gives the zombie 1 XP, along with the message You ransack the building (this message may differ inside some building types). Further ransacks by that zombie will cost 1 AP each but will return no XP after the first. They also return the slightly altered message You ransack further rooms of the building. Ransacked buildings have their search odds lowered, and cannot be barricaded until the damage is repaired by a survivor, which is only possible after all zombies have been removed from the building.

After a building has been ransacked five times in a row (without being repaired), zombies with the skill will be given the option to Ruin building. This again costs 1 AP, which brings the total cost of ransacking and then ruining a building to 6 AP, but once again returns no further XP. It gives the message You ransack further rooms of the building. The building is now ruined. Ruined buildings suffer the same penalties as ransacked buildings, but also incur further ones; survivors cannot free run into a ruined building, instead landing outside of the building with a chance of suffering 5 damage (though this damage cannot be fatal), preventing the scouting of a safehouse and removing the bonus granted to anyone who has already done so, and preventing survivors from changing clothes. Ruins also are more difficult to repair than mere ransacking, as even a freshly-ruined building will require the Construction skill and a toolbox to repair; whilst every day that a ruined building is left unrepaired, the cost to repair it rises by an additional AP.

The inability to free run into a ruined building can be combined with the fact that a building can be ransacked and ruined whilst it is still barricaded (say, by a zombie rising after dying of an infection alone in a barricaded building) to create what is known as a Piñata; since a building barricaded beyond Very Strongly cannot be entered from the street, and a ruined building cannot be entered by free running, this creates a bastion which needs to be breached by survivors wishing to recover it, and is a vital death cult tactic, adding to the value of Ransack as a skill.

Ransack Messages

Ransack Messages vary depending on the building being ransacked. This is an incomplete list. Feel free to add to it to enhance the information.

• Armoury

  Ransack Message: You punch dents in weapon lockers and tip crates over.

  Building Description: You are inside ... armoury, a small grid of concrete tunnels running under the military base. The majority of its shelves and lockers have been cleared. The weapon lockers have been smashed and ransacked.

• Auto Repair

  Ransack Message: You ransack the building.

  Building Description: You are inside ... Auto Repair. The building has been smashed and ransacked.

• Bank

  Ransack Message: You ransack the building.

  Building Description: You are inside ... Bank. The building has been smashed and ransacked.

• Building

  Ransack Message: You ransack the building.

  Building Description: You are inside ... Building. The building has been smashed and ransacked.

• Church

  Ransack Message: You ransack the building.

  Building Description: You are inside ... Church. The building has been smashed and ransacked.

• Cinema

  Ransack Message: You ransack the building.

  Building Description: You are inside ... Cinema. The building has been smashed and ransacked

• Club

  Ransack Message: You smash at the bottles behind the bar.

  Building Description: You are inside Club ..., in the near-darkness of the main dancefloor. The building has been smashed and ransacked.

• Factory

  Ransack Message:You wreck the machinery.

  Building Description: You are inside a factory. The machinery has been ransacked.

• Hospital

  Ransack Message: You ransack the building.

  Building Description: You are inside ... Hospital. The building has been smashed and ransacked.

• Library

  Ransack Message: You topple shelves onto the floor.

  Building Description: You are inside ... Library. Shelves and racks have been toppled, books scattering out across the floor.

• Mall

  Ransack Message: You smash through window displays and pull shelves from the wall.

  Building Description: The store fronts have been smashed and looted, the shops ransacked into dereliction.

• Museum

  Ransack Message: You ransack the building.

  Building Description: You are inside the ... Museum. The building has been smashed and ransacked

• Necrotech Building

  Ransack Message: You overturn the desks, smash computer screens and sweep lab equipment onto the floor.

  Building Description: You are inside a NecroTech Building. The NecroTech logo is set in the wall behind the front desk, and doors open onto powered-down computer rooms and laboratories. The lab equipment has been smashed and ransacked.

• Police Department

  Ransack Message: You overturn desks and punch dents in the lockers.

  Building Description: You are inside ... PD. The building has been smashed and ransacked.

• Pub

  Ransack Message: You smash bottles onto the floor, and tear at the bar fittings.

  Building Description: You are inside ... an abandoned pub. The bar has been ransacked, dark puddles pooling around broken glass.

• Railway Station

  Ransack Message: You ransack the building.

  Building Description: You are inside ... Railway Station. The building has been smashed and ransacked.

• Towers

  Ransack Message: You ransack the building.

  Building Description: You are inside ... Towers. The lobby has been ransacked.

• Warehouse

  Ransack Message: You crash piles of crates to the floor, and punch dents in lockers.

  Building Description: You are inside a warehouse. It looks like it's been out of use since before the quarantine. The building has been smashed and ransacked.

See Also

• Ruin- more detailed information on ruined buildings
• Decay- in-depth breakdown of the decay process in ruins