Do you like The Walking Dead? Are you afraid of The Undead? Good. Because this mod will give you the Heebie-jeebies!
This is not your average Zombie mod. In Zombieland, Zombies are everywhere! They crawl out of the ground in masses, hunt you down, bash your doors and eat you alive! At night, their blood lust will steer them towards your base. So better be prepared!
Zombies attack anything that moves, smells and makes sounds. They do not discriminate and attack your animals, your enemies and even traders. There are rumors of maps with well over one thousand zombies. Shoot them and they keep going, kill them and they respawn.
This Mod features custom controlled Zombies with simulated instincts. Most default RimWorld functions have been disabled on them to allow for a smooth game play experience. Therefore, you cannot select or harvest them.
With zombies in Zombieland you won't get the normal planing and attacking behaviour like with other mods. Zombies are dumb, get stuck and in general slowly radiate towards your base than to attack it. There are exceptions though: special zombies (depending on type) are smarter and will find you but the big masses just wander around. When they hear, see or smell you they will start following your trail and if one zombie starts to track that way others around it will follow thus resulting in a group behaviour that you would expect from animal packs.
So when you see that zombies get stuck in a cave or near your base, don't get fooled in underestimating the danger. You can use the mechanics to your advantage too. Try to kite them around or lead them away while another colonist rescues someone. In general, zombies add a chaotic moment to your base Rimworld experience that changes the game substantially. If you expect normal gameplay you will be disappointed.
There are 4 ways to edit settings in Zombieland.
Default settings: If you go from the main RimWorld menu and select Options->Mod Settings->Zombieland defaults, you can set the defaults for all new colonies you will start.
Initial game settings: When you start a new colony, the settings dialog will appear after the world is generated. It will be prefilled with the settings you have defined in the default settings.
In-game settings*: While playing, you can choose Menu->Zombieland and edit the current games settings. They will apply immediately and will be saved together with the game when you save it (don't forget to save!).
Cloud settings: While in the Zombieland settings dialog, you can load and save your current settings with the Download and Publish buttons. Publishing will ask you for a name and a description and will save the settings with your steam name. Downloading presents you with a search dialog where you can search for steam user name or settings name. You can see and download other steam user settings too.
Zombieland has a huge amount of customization, so lets go through all options:
All the time
No restriction
When it is dark
Zombies will spawn at cells that are considered dark. This can be during night or anywhere where there is no light. Lit areas will prevent zombies from spawning, even at night
Only as events
In this mode, zombies will come in groups and the center of the group spawn is random but follows the next setting
Where there is soft ground
They will spawn anywhere on the map but only if there is no hard ground and you did not build any floor or wall there. Some mods introduce new types of ground/floors and Zombieland tries to do its best to identify them
From the map edges
The classic way raiders or visitors appear in RimWorld
All creatures
No restrictions
Human-like creatures
All humans (mods that introduce robots usually make them based on humans, there is no easy way for Zombieland to see that they are not)
Only colonists
Just your beloved settlers
Enemies attack zombies
Make your raiders fight zombies or let them try to ignore them as long as possible
Animals attack zombies
Make any animal on the map fight zombies (if they are a predator or have to fight back) or let them ignore them
Nothing
Zombies leave your things alone
Only doors
Zombies will attack doors if they are happen to be close to them.
Everything that was build
Zombies will attack anything, even ancient danger walls (surprise!)
Only when they are agitated
Restrict damaging to zombies that are raging (red eyes; triggered by too large tight groups of zombies)
Note: Zombies smell and hear you, even through walls. Weapons will be heard within the shooting range but only if they make clear sounds (bows won't)
Limited
Close range, roughly 3-5 cells, traces fade away fast
Normal
Normal range, about 6-9 cells
Elevated
Larger range, 10 or more cells, traces fade away slowly
Zombies rage when a group gets too large
Makes extra angry zombies (red eyes) that know where you are and will follow you (and destroy things if previous setting allows it)
Rage level
This controls the difficulty of raging. Set to low, raging only occurs in very large groups and does not last long. Set to high, raging will happen in smaller groups and the effect will last longer.
Zombies recover from injuries
Since zombies are dead, this will activate slow continuous random injury healing to simulate that they are undead
Zombies are easy to kill
Is Zombieland way to hard to play? This is the #1 option to turn on. The slightest injury will kill zombies and they won't get down but die immediately
Injured creatures
Normally zombies only start feasting on corpses but turn this on and see your downed colonists being eaten alive!
Corpses
Turn this off if you don't want zombies to eat anything
Zombieland has six special types of zombies and the rest is either fat and slow or slim and fast.
Suicide bombers
They have a explosive vest on their body that explodes when they die or when they get close to your walls
Toxic splashers
They consist of toxic goo that will be spread around them when they die. Do not walk over it because it creates toxic buildup and is extremely sticky. Can be cleaned and will wash away when it rains.
Tanky operators
These zombies are slow but smart and very strong. They will try to reach your walls and will breach them easily. Just like your skull if you get too close to them. Their shield and armor will protect them so make sure you hit them many times with your long range weapons
Miners
Normal zombies but with a hobby. They like to mine through mountains
Electric
Electrifying zombies that are shockingly resistent to bullets or ranged weapons. You need to melee them but luckily they don't bite so you don't get infected by them. Their electric field damages everything close by that is electric/electronic - like power lines, appliences, powerarmors, shield belts - basically anything you build out of components.
Albinos
Very fast zombies that are easy to kill. They go for your doors and sabotage them so they stay open for a bit longer than usual. Will start to scream when getting close to your colonists which makes them vomit so you loose control for a short while.
Dark puffers When hit they produce a big cloud of defensive dark smoke that will prevent you from seeing them and their fellow zombies. They also leave a very sticky tar like substance on the ground that makes moving very hard.
Healers These cyan zombies will heal other injured zombies around them.
Days until zombies come
To give you a head start, Zombieland lets you configure the number of days without zombies when you start your colony
Note: the actual number of zombies on a map is calculated by Zombieland based on the game difficulty and the combat ability of your colonists. It takes into account: number of colonists, their weapons, their armor, if they sleep or are injured, if they are away from the map, if they can only do melee, etc...
Never more than ... zombies
Maximum number of zombies per map. This is a hard upper limit and mainly to prevent the game from lagging too much. Fast computers can deal with 1500 or more zombies
Colony multiplier
If you play rich explorer or in general with few colonists and want more zombies, increase this number to get more zombies
Note: Events with groups of zombies will always appear, even if you play with "When do zombies appear - all the time". In that case, less often. Events are spaced out by Zombieland every few days
Zombies per colonist
This setting is only for calculating event size, not an overall restriction. Events have an internal maximum size (but aim to never exceed the maximum number of zombies on the map) so this setting mainly allows you to reduce event size
Extra days between events
If events are too frequent for your taste, add a fixed amount of days between them
Note: this is the second most useful setting to make Zombieland easier
If they are calm
Normal zombie speed (fat ones are slower, slim ones are faster)
If they feel excited
The speed for agitated, raging red eye zombies
Damage multiplier
Zombies deal different amounts of damage (slim/fat). This setting makes it less or more. Zombies always deal a good amount of stun so don't get caught up in a fight with more than 2-3 zombies or you won't be able to fight back
Reduce turret gun consumption
This will reduce the amount of steal turret guns consume when they fire (100% makes them consume nothing)
If you turn on dynamic threat level you will get a threat level forecast that applies to the maximum number of zombies you would normally get. As default you also get that at 0% threat level, all zombies on the map die. You can turn off that and also define how the level changes over time.
If this is on, every human with a brain will become a zombie after they are dead for the given time period. This will force you to "double tap" dead humans like raiders or visitors to preventing their corpses becoming powerful zombies. Double tapping can be controlled per selected colonist with the corresponding widget button.
Note: see Infections for more details on how infections in Zombieland work
Risk that a zombie bite is infectious
Only zombie bites infect, scratches won't
Time until infection is known
Stage 1) zombie bites won't show a status at the beginning
Time infection is treatable
Stage 2) Once a wound is infected, treatment it will stop the infection. So does amputation (if possible)
Duration of the infection
Stage 3) An unstopped infection will start the conversion to a zombie. At this point hope is almost lost, only amputation (if feasible) is still the last option. Don't kill your colonist because he or she might have zombie-like super powers. At the end of this stage, the colonist becomes a powerful zombie
Treatment in a bed stops infections
Normally, treatment only works if done by a really good doctor, in a really good medical bed with a vitals monitor in a sterile room. This option makes it work in any bed. Please note: if the wound has been treated outside of a bed before, it's too late. You have one chance
Note: see Serum for more details on how serum in Zombieland work
Amount of zombie extract per zombie
Here, you can set how much extract you will get from each zombie corpse
Hours until zombie corpses disappear
To reduce the overall impact of all dead zombies on the game, the visuals and your ability to select things, Zombieland lets you configure how fast zombie corpses desiccate and disappear.
Use custom textures
Makes all zombies look uniquely shabby but requires more memory
Change survival meals to Twinkies
A homage to the movie Zombieland!
Play creepy ambient sound at night
Makes the nights, when zombies tend to wander towards your base, a bit more creepier
Automatic avoidance of zombies
Since the risk of getting close to a zombie is high, Zombieland can help you continuously reevaluate the path to avoid zombies. Recommended. Downside: sometimes, you might not be able to order colonists close to zombies if you want to
In addition, you have a button for each colonist where you can turn avoidance on/off at any time. This affects not only pathing but also any action or job that colonist does. If zombies get too close, the job (sleeping, building, shooting) gets shortly interrupted by a quick flee to a better position unless your colonist is drafted in which case you are fully in control of the action. This allows you to configure your colonists with auto-attack to let them fight zombies on their own or let them haul things without worrying too much about them.
Electrical zombies are excluded from avoidance since they don't bite and to allow auto melee attacks (the only way to fight them).
Zombies drop blood
Keep on for more dramatic visuals but can slow your game down a bit
Zombies burn longer
It's more fun to have undead run around burning but you can turn it off
Restore default settings
Will reset the current dialog to the defaults that you have set from the main menu
Remove Zombieland from current game
Will ask you for a new save file and save a copy of the current game with all references to Zombieland removed
You can collect zombie extract in small amounts from dead zombies and refine it on a drugtable into zombie serum (requires 1x medicine too). The serum comes in qualities of 10% to 100% and they require different amounts of zombie extract. One potion of serum heals one zombie bite and the quality determines the failure risk when doing an operation on an infected colonist.
Colonists that are scheduled to do doctor tasks automatically collect zombie extract if there are no zombies nearby but you can order them too. There is a button in the colonist actions that toggles automtic collection on and off.
Zombie serum is a very good way to remove a zombie infection regardless of its stage. So try to plan ahead and start collecting it early - gathering enough zombie extract to make serum takes a while.
For tribal runs you can craft serum on a normal crafting spot by combining medicine and a small animal cadaver. This makes it easier for non-tech runs to get serum.
In Zombieland, only human-like pawns can get infected. That includes any human-like modded pawns that are based on the basic human characters in RimWorld, including most robot mods. Zombieland tests for human flesh and tries its best to reduce this to the actual human forms but it's sometimes not possible.
Only zombies can infect humans. There is no concept of infected meat or corpses and only zombie bites are infectious. Zombies deal scratches and bites and the risk that a bite is infectious can be set in the settings. Fighting zombies close up in melee is therefore not recommended but with a set low risk doable.
Each bite separately has a predetermined infection status that is hidden at the beginning. The part of the body stays infected unless the wound is treated in an appropriate way or amputated if possible.
Infections go through 3 stages: Unknown, treatable, infecting and after the third stage, the infected human turns into a zombie. The settings define a time interval for each of these stages. If all are set to zero, a bite will instantaneously turn the bitten into a zombie.
Stages are marked with colored text in the Health tab of the character. Bites can show up in white (no or unknown infection), orange (treatable infection) or red (fully infecting, only amputation will help). Also, an infected human (or corpse) will have a warning at the bottom of the health overview page.
When colonists become infected or go from one stage to the next, Zombieland will generate warning notes on the right hand side of the screen. Do not miss them, they contain useful information about the colonist or the infection.
Infections continue even after death. When a corpse starts rotting, it will become a zombie and get out of the grave if necessary. Raiders or friendly can become infected and when they return, they will become zombies the moment they enter the map.
Infections are quite fatal. Once a colonist is terminal infected and the affected body part cannot be amputated or you don't have any zombie serum, there is almost no hope anymore. Consider it a loss and be more careful next time. But: Don't kill or amputate stage 3 infected colonists too early! They might prove more useful than you think: they get zombie like powers and don't need to sleep or eat. And the best is that zombies won't attack them anymore. They are almost part of the zombie family anyway!
Zombieland is a huge and complex mod. It is designed to showcase Harmony, the patch library that powers most Unity game mods. A lot of areas are carefully manipulated but conflicts are impossible to prevent. Especially badly written mods conflict easily with Zombieland. So if no zombies spawn or you cannot treat infected wounds or any other unusual outcome, try playing with Zombieland alone to see if this is a specific bug in the mod or just an incompatibility.
Zombieland seems to work best when put at the end of the mod list but you may have to try other positions or mod combinations. Please do not ask me to find the conflict for you because I don't have the knowledge nor the time to test Zombieland with all the mods out there. As a rule of thumb, I also do not adapt Zombieland to specific mods unless the mod is very popular and I can establish some sort of cooperation with the other mod author.
Existing games
You can add Zombieland to existing games but be careful: if your colony already has many powerful colonists, the number of zombies will rise significant since the mod scales zombie numbers to match the defendability of your colony.
Multiplayer
Zombieland is currently not compatible with multiplayer. It is not very likely that it will be made compatible because of the randomness and optimizations that would prevent running predicably on different computers.
Combat Extended
Zombieland is compatible with Combat Extended. From time to time there might be small bugs but reporting them to both authors in a useful way usually helps.
Free. As in free beer. Copy, learn and be respectful.
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Andreas Pardeike
Email: andreas@pardeike.net
Steam: pardeike
Twitter: @pardeike