Guides:Zombie Metagame
How do you become part of horde, given that zombies can't talk to each other in-game?
Joining a Group
- Recruit your pals. The single best way to form an attack squad is to get a few of your friends playing Urban Dead. When you've all got zombie characters, converge and start cracking. Working with a few trusted pals means you'll never (or rarely) have to worry about security leaks or disorganized players who won't agree to a plan.
- Public groups. Many open zombie groups can be found on the groups page of this wiki, or "the morgue" on the unofficial forums. The requirements for joining these groups vary, but a few will accept zombies who have no or few skills.
- Build your own. It takes patience, but zombies can try to use in-game communication to initiate metagaming (coordinating outside of the game). First, change your description or group affiliation to include an email address or chat location & handle. Then do something to get another zombie to look at you. Zombies without Death Rattle should use, "Mrh?" which most clearly indicates that the speaker wants something (as explained in the Zombie Lexicon). Take care! "Mrh?" also means, "revive me," so don't use it when humans are around. If a zombie says this to your zombie, check his description. Zombies with Death Rattle have it easier, and can say things like, "Zambahz gab? Arrang!ng ramm!ng?"
Zombie Communication
Communicating outside Urban Dead dramatically multiplies a zombie gang's effectiveness, but it also requires a greater time investment. Many players would like to rend human flesh while enjoying UD's "play a few minutes a day" flexibility. So how can zombies make the most of in-game communication?
- A Zombie Speech Translator sounds promising, but it's probably not practical for trying to organize attacks with strangers, who may or may not have the necessary Firefox extension.
- Similarly, while Zamgrh provides a rich vocabulary, non-devotees may find some messages nearly as obscure as translator code. Numbers are especially non-intuitive, yet are essential for arranging attack times. A countdown system of dashes is simpler. For example, suppose you're standing with a group of zombies near a plausible target, and you'll have full AP to attack at 9:00 pm (whatever your timezone). You could log in to your zombie at 2:00 pm and say,
"Zmazh barragaz ahn - - - - - - - haraz." The meaning may not be immediately obvious, but if you log in again at 6:00 pm and say,
"Zmazh barragaz ahn - - - haraz," it may be clear to at least a few others who log in after you.
- Finally, consider the X:00 strategy, especially as applied on the Mall Tour. It easily communicates locations and times (the information is in your profile for the listener to see plainly if you can convince them to look), it requires minimal special knowledge (for both speaker and listener) and it can benefit the users of Scent Death as well, potentially making it a "multi sensory" communication method unlike anything survivors can use.
Suburbs of Relative Zombie Advantage
Humans with Bargain Hunting find guns and ammunition twice as easily in malls as in PDs (33% versus 16% for PDs). In the map below, dark green areas are more than one full suburb away from a mall. Humans therefore have to spend 20 or more AP every time they want to go shopping, yet doing so will still be more productive than searching in a PD. Lighter green areas are not quite a full suburb away.
There's no guarantee that these suburbs are zombie havens at any given time, but attacking and inhabiting them is a sound long-term strategy for zombie hordes. This remains true even if humans are aware of this strategy - there's simply no cheap way to keep large amounts of ammunition flowing into these suburbs.
| Furthest From Malls | Far From Malls |
