Piñata

A fresh Piñata is created

A 'Piñata' is the term coined for a building which is barricaded up to Extremely Heavily Barricaded, but is also ruined. (These buildings can also be known as an EHB Ruin.) Because the building is ruined, survivors are unable to free-run inside. In addition, the EHB barricades prevent entry from street level. To gain entry to the building the barricades must be reduced to Very Strongly Barricaded. For survivors using a fireaxe or crowbar this takes around 35 AP. The tactic is particularly disruptive when used at free running 'choke points', forcing longer detours or spans of time spent out in the street.

Often, a lone zombie can be found standing inside like the prize of a piñata, hence the term.

Process

To be created, all that is required is a zombie (with the ransack skill) in a building barricaded to EHB. A method to attain this common to many groups requires a Trans-Mortal tactic referred to as parachuting which involves an infected survivor dying in the targeted building after Free Running past the barricades, another common method is to have survivors kill other survivors often usually of the same group but not exclusively. More rarely a piñata can be accidentally brought about by a well-intentioned survivor barricaded a location back up after zombies have entered but before they have ransacked the location and then leaving as there cannot be any standing survivors present to use the ransack ability.

Occasionally it is actually possible to end up with a piñata containing survivors by ruining the Extremely Heavily Barricaded location with a revivifying body inside. Some rare variants of tactics involving piñatas actually call for this so that the survivor can maintain the barricade level from the inside, this functionality however, is likely a bug due to the fact that Ruin is supposed to prevent barricading but only seems to at the first barricade level.

Additional

The first recorded Piñata was created on 23rd September 2007.

The first recorded wide-scale Piñatas were Red Rum's activities in Pimbank during late September/ early October '07, culminating in all of Tynte Mall's entry points being closed down.

As a larger scale zombie tactic the utilisation of Piñatas is called Cade and ruin.

Counters

The only way to repair a Pinata is to bring down the barricades to Very Strongly Barricaded so that survivors can enter, dump any zombies inside, and repair it. Since survivors must use more AP against barricades than zombies, it is most efficient for life cultists and dead survivors awaiting revives to smash pinata barricades to VSB for others to repair later.

Large Buildings are very difficult to pinata as it is possible to enter from any corner outside and move within the structure to repair all corners without triggering free running. When ruin was first implemented this wasn't the case, it was later resolved as an oversight through Bug Reports.