Introduction

Thinking of trying ZOMBIE? Good news, friend, you made the correct choice! Zombies are charming, simple and devilishly fun to play.

How to get started

Make a zombie account - for zombie starting class I'd suggest Fresh Corpse (Intellect) or Frenzied Corpse (Hunger Pain) but it doesn't matter much
On the mini-map, click on the buildings to move to adjacent locations
Head to the center of the city, that's where most players are - here's a map
Focus on XP gain by killing human/vampire NPCs and non-zombie players you encounter - killing fellow zombies will give zero XP

First day tips

You gain 6 AP every 15 minutes, so getting full AP takes 2.5 hours for a 60ap zombie
There are NPCs in All Out Hell who attack when attacked, be wary of dangerous-looking ones
You know you have found an actual player if the game says "a human", "a zombie" or "a vampire"
Tap the building name to enter it, if cades are down and doors are open
The price of new skills becomes more expensive every time you buy one
Don't bother attacking barricades until you're over level 5
Don't bother with searching for healing items, it's a waste of AP for new zombies to try to keep health high
Joining a zombie group is a good way to learn the ropes and get into a good community who will give you freebies, recommend hunting grounds and teach you how to play
If you join a group, you will see players in ally groups as green and enemy groups as orange

First week tips

Once you get Identify Life, click search inside empty buildings as there may be a hiding vampire or human
Zombies and vampires should grab melee weapons for taking down barricades, such as the battle axe from Ye Olde Weapons Shop in Beachwood (511,508)
Get a helmet and armor, easiest options are searching inside Ye Olde Weapons Shop in Beachwood (511,508) or withdraw from group storage if you're in a group
You can take out light or medium barricades yourself, but you should work with other zombies to take down maxed out barricades
You can give each other items even as zombies if they're in your group/allied group/you friend them
Vampires and humans can craft items
Zombies can search and use some items, e.g. with gas lighters and fuel cans you can start fires!
You can hop on a train in the subway stations to fast travel between burbs
Backpacks and sacks allow you to carry more - click the pack/sack to open it up and put stuff in
Organ coolers let you carry zombie HP and AP restoratives like human hearts, livers and genius brains
The busy public walkie talkie channel on AOH is 27.0 - if you don't like the feed, retune in my profile to a different number
If you want to play partly as another race too, in your game settings, check "Keep items that are unusable by your current race” to keep items that might be useful for the 2-3 races you want to use.

Regarding death: you're a zombie, so be chill about it

Expect to die half the time you solo a NPC and every time you log out, don't worry about it, it's part of the game and doesn't stop you from gaining XP.
It costs 10ap to stand as a human/vampire and 15ap to stand as a zombie. If you don’t have 10-15 AP, you can’t stand until you do.
If you become human and don't wish to be, you can stand in the street near zombies or jump out of a window of tall buildings, you can eventually buy the Cellular Degeneration skill to prevent revives.
If you become a vampire and don't wish to be, you need to get reinfected with zombie virus, so go lose a fight to a zombie NPC.
To get killed much less, buy the hiding skill (Drop Dead) and finish your last AP by hiding in the street.

Smell Blood

The prey-finding skill for zombies is called Smell Blood. It is a passive skill so you don’t need to click Search for it work. Red text onscreen will appear to tell you if there is a human or vampire player within a short distance of you below 25 health points.

Its range includes all squares around you, and an extra square in a straight line N,S,E,W,NW,NE,NW,SE,SW.

Smell Blood also indicates target health by referring to them as “(wounded)" or "(dying)" when you are with players with very low HP.

It can smell behind even insane level barricades.

To make best use of this skill, go for long walks in mostly straight lines and wait for a good smell to pop up.

Suggested first skills to purchase

Get-these-first tier

The 5 teeth skills - Gnawing Bite, Jagged Teeth, Grim Feast, Hunger Pain and Snap Attack.
Intellect - you need this to enter buildings which is where human players usually hide.
Drop Dead - this lets you hide before you run out of AP which reduces your deaths (and the associated 10-15ap penalty).
Identify Life - click search inside buildings to find hiding humans and vampires.
Smell Blood - helps you find nearby injured human and vampire players if they aren't behind IHB barricades.

A tier

Cellular Degeneration if you're getting revived a lot: lets you choose to stay a zombie if revived.
Corpse Feeding - restores lots of health quickly if you eat from piles of multiple corpses. Fails if there are revived bodies in the pile.
Meat Seeking - extra damage for claw and teeth attacks.
Strength in Numbers if you're working in a horde that strikes together: +1 damage for each zombie in your location.
Solid Grip and Flailing Battery if you're breaking barricades often: lets you use melee weapons better.

B tier

Pulverise (Elite) - If you're using melee weapons against barricades it's well worth it, 30% chance of doing 2x cade damage and 15% chance of doing 3x cade damage.
Adrenaline Boost - 5 extra health points if you're revived and stand up as zombie.
Infectious Spew - spewing infectious vomit is fun and affects more targets than Biohazard.
Biohazard - infections force humans to use first aid kits and can result in them being forced to switch to a race they don't want to be. Good in a battle.
Infectious Splatter - passive ability that can infect your attackers. Good in a battle.

C tier

Clot - stops vampires getting health from you, which makes a difference in the long run but isn't a priority skill.
Dine Out - lets you get some food out of a dangerous building into the street so you can eat in peace or feed a baby zombie.
Decimate - let's you ruin buildings, very important for the overall war between zombies and humans, but you need to get dine out first.

D tier

The 5 claw skills - averaging damage and accuracy, their damage is very similar to teeth but there's no health gain. The high health damage bonus only activates 5% of the time so it's not that important. If you saw this after starting the claw tree, don't worry, stick with it, you can use corpse feeding for health regen and buy the teeth skills as your D tier.
Eerie Moan - AP refresh is fast so if you have a human to fight, why not wait to see if you can kill them yourself? Useful for other zombies if you find a big group of humans.

E tier

Smell Rot - not useful, the smell text is cluttered and obscures the human and vampire smells that you actually want to see. Don't buy it.

Tooth and claw comparison

This table attempts to estimate average damage per 10 hits for claw attacks and teeth attacks. Damage is similar for both. Both types of attacks are effective and have their advantages.

Tooth or Claw	Skill bought	Accuracy	Damage	Extra Dmg	Extra Acc	How often	Avg Dmg per 10 hits	HP gain	How often	HP Gain per 10 hits
Lv1 Claw	Rending Hands	60%	3				18.0
Lv2 Claw	Piercing Talons	65%	3.5				22.8
Lv3 Claw	Evisceration	70%	4				28.0
Lv4 Claw	Rend Flesh	70%	4	4		5%	30.0
Lv5 Claw	Rotten Precision	70%	4	4		5%	30.0
Lv1 Bite	Gnawing Bite	40%	4.5				18.0
Lv2 Bite	Jagged Teeth	45%	5				22.5
Lv3 Bite	Grim Feast	45%	5				22.5	3	45%	13.5
Lv4 Bite	Hunger Pain	45%	5	2	10%	Last 10 AP?	26.7	3	45%	13.5
Lv5 Bite	Snap Attack	45%	5	2+5	10%	Last 10 AP + 5%	29.2	3	45%	13.5

Player damage: Balancing the differences in attack power and accuracy to a common "average damage per 10 hits", the claw attacks and tooth attacks are nearly identical.

Weak NPCs: Claw attacks with their high accuracy are best against low health NPCs like squirrels.

Tough NPCs: Tooth attacks are better because NPCs only counterattack against your successful hits, so you want to do the highest possible damage in each hit.

Barricades: Only accuracy matters when taking down barricades. At low levels and at high levels, claw attacks are best. Although, neither are as good as the best melee weapons, so eventually you may find the point moot.

Hunger Pain: The hunger pain bonus makes using teeth attacks when on your last few action points well worth doing, it kicks in when you're at 10 AP or less.

Rend Flesh: The rend flesh bonus for being at high health only adds a 5% chance to do double damage on claw attacks, so don't obsess about staying at high health.

All in all, investing in either type of attack is fine and will not put you at a disadvantage. Teeth come out slightly better but it's a near thing and dedicated zombies will usually end up buying all the hand skills too. With corpse feeding to restore health, it would work fine for new zombies to start with claw skills and leave tooth skills for last.

Useful items

You are a master of death, my rotting friend, embrace it! You do not need items. Feel free to use all your AP for destruction. However, there are admittedly useful items to find when you fancy looking for them.

Weapons

Claws and teeth are the best zombie weapons for attacking other players, but melee weapons are better in two situations:

1) You want to take down barricades
2) You want to fight a dangerous NPC with minimal health loss

Here's a few that are easy to find and have good hit accuracy once you have bought Solid Grip and Flailing Battery.

Name	Max zombie hit% on cades	Location
Teeth	32% max	-
Sledgehammer	40%	Kill a construction worker or search Hardware Stores or Work Sites
Battle Axe	48%	Ye Olde Weapons Shop in Beachwood (511,508)
Star Meteor Hammer	58%	Craft from a medieval mace and mystical tarot deck (22 cards)
Grave Breaker	58%	Craft using a Hammer, a Box of Nails, a Dinosaur Fossil (Museum of Science and Nature), 5 Coffin Woods (craft from coffins, you need one saw) and a Tombstone (cemeteries)

You only need 10 items to make the Grave Breaker, with all components available from any hardware store, any cemetery and the museum of science and nature, so it’s your best bet for a high power cade weapon. It has 50% chance to inflict dazed and 25% to inflict weakened when used on players. The star meteor hammer requires one of each of the 22 unique tarot cards, plus a medieval mace.

Special event weapons are also great but we don't mention them here because they aren't available all the time. For example, the Santa Baseball Bat (58%). Full list of weapons in Weapons, although this includes weapons that zombies can't use and doesn't currently show zombie barricade hit accuracy.

First Week Armor

Zombies can wear most armor. Here's a few that are easy to get when you're new. They only block damage from the part of the body they're on, so for example riot armor will protect the chest and groin but not the head or legs.

Name	Protects	Dmg reduction	Block%	Location
Neck Brace	Neck	1	15%	Hospitals
Medieval Helmet	Head	1-2	25%	Ye Olde Weapons Shop in Beachwood (511,508)
Medieval Plated Armour	Chest, Groin	2-4	35%	Ye Olde Weapons Shop in Beachwood (511,508)
Riot Helmet	Head	1	25%	Kill Leviathan Security Brute/Grunts or search PDs
Riot Armor	Chest, Groin	2-3	45%	Kill Leviathan Security Brute/Grunts or search PDs

Serious Armor

Here's some high level armor for when you've been playing a while. Most involves beating tough NPCs and/or collecting the 22 tarot cards. You would have to collect multiple sets of the tarot cards for each piece of tarot armor.

Name	Protects	Dmg reduction	Block%	Location
Corpse Helmet	Head	1	30%	Craft from a severed head from a morgue + army helmet + 6 scrap metal
Corpse Armor	Chest, Groin	3-4	36%	Craft from 2 severed arms + severed head from a morgue + 10 scrap metal
Tendril Mass	Chest, Groin	4-6	30%	Drops from the Puppet Node NPCs in the Strange Hole Cavern, entrance 505,497
Cursed Amulet	Neck	2-3	35%	Rare drop from a cursed mummy (near an Egyptian Museum in north Elgin)
Supernatural Necklace	Neck	2	30%	Rare drop from The Mother under the Hell House
Strength Necklace	Neck	2-4	35%	Craft from mystical tarot deck and supernatural necklace
Empress Helmet	Head	3-4	30%	Mystical tarot deck + army helmet
Emperor Body Plate	Chest, Groin	3-8	40%	Mystical tarot deck + military armor

See the full list of Armor here.

Consumables

Animal Remains / Rotting Stir Fry: Lesser Defence

Brain: Lesser Defence, cures Cell Corruption

Crocodile Flesh: Lesser Defence, Lesser Fortify, Lesser Intuition, Lesser Keen Eyes, Lesser Rejuvenation

Cursed Mummy Flesh: Only heals

Embalming Fluid: Lesser Defence, cures Bleeding

Human Heart: Lesser Fortify, cures Bleeding, Cell Corruption, Dazed & Haemorrhaging

Infected Waste: Lesser Keen Eyes, Lesser Intuition, Lesser Fortify and Lesser Defense.

Liver: Lesser Keen Eyes, cures Poisoned

Maladictus Vial: Lesser Defence, Lesser Fortify & Lesser Rejuvenation, cures Cell Corruption, Infected & Poisoned

Rotted Meat: Lesser Keen Eyes, Cures Bleeding & Cell Corruption

Undead Chocolate Egg: Energised & Rejuvenation

Undead Golden Chocolate Egg: Keen Eyes

Undead Insiderooms Juice: Energised and Rejuvenation

Zombie Smoothie (__Hollowed Out Skull__, Embalming Fluid, Dead Rat, Rotten Fish): Greater Defence, Fortify, Intuition

Zombie Stir Fry (Hollowed Out Skull, Bottle of Soy Sauce, Brain, Human Heart, Liver): Defence

For more, see Healing items