Parachuting

Zombie Tactics

The information on this page or section discusses a zombie strategy.

Trans-Mortal Tactics

The information on this page or section discusses tactics that can be applied if you find yourself on the wrong side after getting killed or being revivified.

Parachuting is a technique whereby a recently-revived zombie enters a target building, dies, stands up, and attacks survivors from within as a zombie.

Procedure

Skills needed

Although Free Running is not, strictly speaking, mandatory for the success of this technique, it is far easier to successfully parachute with the skill than without, as having it enables the use of entry points to access extremely heavily barricaded target buildings. Offensively-oriented Survivor skills are useful for making the most of the last of the paratrooper's HP, and Zombie attack skills (basically, everything on the Vigour Mortis tree, especially maxed claws) increase the damage a paratrooper can do as a zombie once he dies and stands up. Ankle Grab is also useful, as this technique involves dying and standing up a lot. Also, there should be at least one (preferably several, to increase the chances of someone being logged on) zombie in the area with Infectious Bite.

Revival

First, the paratrooper must secure a revive. This can be accomplished by a survivor combat-reviving the zombie, a confederate reviving the zombie, or the zombie swaying at a revive point and being revived as a matter of course.

Infection

If the paratrooper is not already infected upon being revived (infections remain until a FAK is applied), he must secure an infection. This is not particularly hard to do if a large group of zombies is nearby; in a siege, a paratrooper can simply walk over to a large stack of zombies, verbally request an infection, and refresh the page until the infection is confirmed.

Entry and death

The paratrooper then enters his target building and spends AP until he dies from his infection. There are several things that the paratrooper can do while waiting to die from his infection, including simply moving, searching for useful items (usually ammunition), broadcasting propaganda (shouting does not decrease AP), PKing, GKing, or RKing. Or a combination of some or all of the above.

Rise and attack

Once the paratrooper dies from his infection, he stands up and proceeds to attack survivors as a zombie, without having had to break through the barricades first; the AP that would have been spent breaking down barricades has instead been spent doing other zombie-productive things.

Log-off

In a heavily-populated target builing, it is likely that a survivor will log on and notice a zombie inside the building. In such a scenario, the paratrooper may find it useful to reserve one AP for a ?rise. With one AP left, the paratrooper player types "http://www.urbandead.com/map.cgi?rise" into his browser's URL bar and refreshes the page until he is killed by repeatedly pressing the F5 key if he is using Windows, quickly standing up afterwards. This forces the building's defenders to use twice the ammo and AP to kick the paratrooper out of the building. In a lightly-populated building, it is more likely that the paratrooper will run out of server hits before he is killed, so a paratrooper in this situation may simply log off once his AP is gone.

Other uses

Parachuting has several other uses.

Breaking open buildings

Because barricades are easier to dismantle from inside the building than from outside, a horde can send in several paratroopers who will dismantle the barricades to a building from the inside, allowing a more efficient use of AP on the behalf of the zombies, as well as wasting several survivor syringes.

Countering Barricade Strafing

With the introduction of Ruin to the game, zombies can now parachute into empty buildings raised to EHB and convert them into Piñatas. This is often far more AP efficient than restoring the building would be, and it doesn't require a person to be at the mercy of the Random Number Generator to pull it off.

History

Originally referred to as a "Zambah Bomb" on at least one occasion, this technique was not widely used until late 2006, when Shacknews began using the technique in its attack on Stickling Mall. [1][2] The concept of revived, infected zombies "parachuting" to their destination was mentioned in an earlier post. This tactic allegedly appeared in full in the Philosophe Knights' playbook nearly two weeks before it was mentioned on the Shacknews boards, though no evidence has been brought forward to demonstrate the veracity of those claims.

Aside from when it is being used to make a piñata however, this tactic no longer sees as widespread use as it once did. Of the zombie groups that would make use of tactics such as these, many use companion PKer groups or Death Cultists to bypass barricades when the need arises.