Note: this page covers the Standalone version of DayZ; for information on the Mod, see Mod:Infected.
A typical female zombie
Zeds, otherwise known as zombies in DayZ Standalone, are the inhabitants of the Republic of Chernarus+ which have succumbed to an infection that has devastated most of the world's population. They feed on players and are able to hear and see them. Getting too close, using a bright light source at night, and making too much noise will draw them to a player.
Zeds do not currently carry any loot on them however, this may change in later stages of development.
Zeds are still in on-going development, and due to the early stages of the Alpha, many features and functionality have been disabled as part of the testing process, many mechanisms including zombies may be buggy, lack functionality or have buggy or odd behavior.
Types of Zed
At the moment, all zeds exhibit the same behavior. However, more types of zombies are planned to be introduced in later stages of development.
Currently existing zeds include
- Civilian
- Military
Military zeds are harder to kill, but otherwise the same as civilian zeds.
Zed Facts
Zed Spawns
With 0.42.116181 there was implemented a simple respawn mechanism pending for a more robust method of respawning zombies. At this stage it can occur, that zombies may spawn right in front of your character. [1]
Idle Zeds
Zombies are able to roam around. They may vary their walking direction and also their field of vision.
Aggressive Zeds
Aggressive zeds, usually referred to as "aggro" zeds, are zeds which enter a state of aggressiveness in which they will chase and attack a player, usually by scratching, biting or jumping at them.
Zeds may be provoked by:(These may also be affected by environmental factors.)
- Sight
- Sound
Zed Damage
- Like most sources of damage, zeds cause Health, blood and shock damage.
- Zeds do little damage on their own but often cause status effects like bleeding, pain or, occasionally, Broken Bones.
- Zeds can knock you Unconscious. Unconsciousness appears when the Shock level is higher than your blood level (Your blood is 5000 maximum).
- Zed swarms attacking players in a building may very rarely destroy the building.
- Zeds can hit you (and you can hit them with a melee weapon) when they may appear to be too far away.
Zed Health
- Zeds have about 4400 health.
Melee Combat Vs. Zed Tips
- When wielding a melee weapon and you and the zed are running towards each other, be sure to swing as you come near one another. What this does is ensure you hit the zed first and possibly get the kill before he can do any further damage.
- Zombie attack animations are slow to reset (slow in general). Running circles around them or attacking them after they miss an attack can be a very safe combat strategy in melee.
- Zeds have less of a chance to notice you if you are behind their field of vision, making it easy to sneak up behind them and hit them in the head.
- Zig-zagging through buildings is a good way to lose zeds if fighting in melee is not working in your favor.
- Much like players, hitting a zombie in the head will knock it unconscious.
- If you are not looking for a long fight, stick with the Fire Axe, Crowbar, or Splitting Axe. Other weapons may take longer then it's worth (such as the hammer).
Zed pathfinding
Zed are spawned by the server and every client receives their position from the server.
Once Zed are alerted to your presence and actively start chasing you, your client takes over the Zed's pathfinding; this is sent to the server and relayed to other players. Because of this mechanic Zeds can often lag, even at low latencies to the server.
This is performed to ease the AI pathfinding load on the server.