Zombie Slayer

Zombie Slayer is the Fall 2012 special challenge path, introduced on August 14, 2012. This path adds variant rules and restrictions to an ascension run. Its description in The Bureau of Reincarnation reads "The dead are rising! Okay, it's been known to happen from time to time -- zombies aren't exactly rare in the Kingdom -- but this time it's serious! Take up arms to fight the undead hordes, before the entire Kingdom falls to a zombie apocalypse!"

In practice, that's not quite what happens. You become a Zombie Master, a new class with a unique resource mechanic but no access to permed skills. You're stalked by wandering zombie hunters, your diet is highly restricted, and only undead familiars are allowed.

Restrictions

• Skills
  • No access to any non-zombie skills that you may have permed, including books on Your Mystical Bookshelf.
  • No class can be picked during reincarnation. Instead your class will be Zombie Master, which has its own distinct skill set. Your main stat is Muscle.
  • Skills are gained by killing wandering Zombie Hunters, eating their brains, and then visiting the open grave in your campsite.
  • You do not have MP. Skills use up members of your zombie horde, which you replenish by using your Infectious Bite and Recruit Zombie skills (among others).

• Consumption
  • Liver is size 4! Players will become intoxicated (and unable to adventure) upon reaching a drunkenness level of 5.
  • Cannot eat normal food -- only food with 'brains' in the name (and also the steel lasagna for some reason).
    • Monsters killed on this path will drop crappy brains, decent brains, good brains, boss brains, and hunter brains.
    • brains casserole and fricasseed brains are also edible, but Brain Food Pastaco and brain-meltingly-hot chicken wings are not.

• Familiars
  • Only undead (or undead-ish) familiars are available; the rest are temporarily deceased.
    • Trying to switch to any other familiar (such as by using the /fam chat command) yields the message "That familiar seems to be dead."
  • This restriction (and error message) also applies when using the Crown of Thrones.

• Dropping the Path
  • You may not drop Zombie Slayer until day 3:

    You can't give up the Zombie Slayer lifestyle until you've given it a chance. Three days worth of chance..

Divergences

• You begin the run with Barney's rake. Your bear arms are also auto-pulled, if you own them.
• Most monsters will drop delicious brains based on their Monster Level, after +ML effects. The monsters that can and cannot drop brains seem to be identical to those who can/cannot be turned by Infectious Bite. The monsters that can drop brains will do so as follows:
  • 0-50 ML: crappy brain (30% drop)
  • 51-99 ML: decent brain (30% drop)
  • 100+ ML: good brain (30% drop)
  • Quest Bosses: boss brain (100% drop)
  • Zombie Hunters: hunter brain (100% drop)
    • One exception to the above pattern is Ed the Undying who does not drop any brains despite being both undead and infectable. A possible explanation is that part of the traditional mummification process was removing the brain via a hook through the nose. Alternatively, since Ed is technically repeatable if one loses to a later incarnation, this may simply be intended to prevent farming boss brains.

• Zombie Hunters will attack you following each level-up. They drop epic-quality hunter brains which will allow you to choose a new skill. These monsters can be found in any zone, and will begin to appear approximately Level to Level*3 turns after level-up. They will reappear every 10-15 turns until you defeat them. A given level's Hunter will not appear until you defeat the previous Hunter. Zombie Hunters are Wandering monsters, following those rules for when they can appear. The Hunters are:
  • Level 2: Norville Rogers
  • Level 3: Peacannon
  • Level 4: Scott the Miner
  • Level 5: Father McGruber
  • Level 6: Herman East, Relivinator
  • Level 7: Angry Space Marine
  • Level 8: Deputy Nick Soames & Earl
  • Level 9: Father Nikolai Ravonovich
  • Level 10: Charity the Zombie Hunter
  • Level 11: Special Agent Wallace Burke Corrigan
  • Level 12: Hank North, Photojournalist
  • Level 13: Rag-tag band of survivors
  • Level 14: Wesley J. "Wes" Campbell
  • Level 15: The Free Man
  • Any level, multiple times: Zombie-huntin' feller (starting on Day 2)

• Many locations involving NPCs do not work. These are the known exceptions:
  • The Council of Loathing
  • The General Store
  • Mr. Store
  • The Cake-Shaped Arena
  • The Bugbear Bakery (still requires Bugbear Costume)
  • The Crackpot Mystic's Shed
  • The Untinker's Cottage
  • The Bounty Hunter Hunter's Shack
  • The Degrassi Knoll Bakery and Hardware Store
  • The Gift Shop
  • The Shore, Inc.
  • The Knob Dispensary
  • The Game Grid Arcade
  • The Hippy Store
  • Barrrtleby's Barrrgain Bookstore
  • The Black Market
  • The Florist Friar's Cottage

• Resting at your campsite gives this additional message:

  Unsurprisingly, you sleep like the dead.

• If you are poisoned during a fight, the effect will be removed at the end of combat with the following message:

  You retch and spray some additional green fluid around the area.

• Trying to use a permed skill to which you do not have access, using chat commands, yields the following message:

  Graaah?

• Trying to eat from the Hot Dog Stand yields the message:

  You're really, really hungry, but that isn't what you're hungry for.

• The first choice in the noncombat in The Defiled Nook gives a talkative skull instead of moxie stats the first time you choose it.
• The Hermit is not around, but you can get one free ten-leaf clover each day from visiting. Likewise, the hermit script does not increase the number of clovers available in-run.
• You don't receive any quest item when looking with the Lord Spookyraven's spectacles in The Haunted Bedroom.
• You don't need a wand of Nagamar to defeat the Naughty Sorceress's third form. You'll have to do some more fighting, though.
• Upon freeing King Ralph you must choose a class. If you choose a Moxie-based or a Mysticality-based class, muscle will switch with your new class's main stat.
• Consuming a bottle of used blood does not give any stats.
• You cannot enter The Sea (the Old Man doesn't appear).

Class

The Zombie Master is the class associated with the Zombie Slayer special challenge path.

Horde

your zombie horde

You do not have MP of any kind. Skills instead use zombies from your horde. If you aquire a non-Zombie master skill from The Big Book of Every Skill, all MP costs will also be replaced with Zombies, with each being worth 1 Zombie per MP.

You begin with one zombie in your horde, and can gain more by:

• Infecting certain types of monsters with Infectious Bite, and (if necessary) intensifying the infection, such as with Plague Claws
• Spending adventures to Recruit Zombies
• Using brains to Lure Minions
• Using Meat to Summon Minion or Summon Horde
• Insta-zombifying an enemy using the Bear Hug skill from bear arms (only works on 10 encounters/day)

Skills

You begin with two skills:

• Infectious Bite - Give your opponent a little bit of what ails you
• Recruit Zombie – Spend some time looking for a new friend

You can gain additional skills while contemplating in An Open Grave at Your Campsite. You may learn from three trees: Hunger of the Zombie, Anger of the Zombie, or Master of the Zombie. Each skill you learn costs one zombie point, regardless of rank.

You cannot skip ranks within a skill tree. In order to learn a 3rd-rank skill, you must first learn the 1st-rank and 2nd-rank skills from that same tree.

You begin with one zombie point on your first Zombie Slayer run. You get bonus zombie points for past Zombie Slayer runs (1 point for Normal, 2 points for Hardcore). You gain an additional zombie point for each hunter brain eaten.

Rank	Hunger of the Zombie			Anger of the Zombie			Master of the Zombie
	Name	Type	Effect	Name	Type	Effect	Name	Type	Effect
1	Bite Minion	Noncombat 1 Zombie	Restore 10% of max HP	Distracting Minion	Combat 1 Zombie	Sacrifice a zombie for a regular attack that always hits	Summon Minion	Noncombat	Lets you summon zombies for 100 Meat each
2	Lure Minions	Noncombat	Lets you trade brains for zombies	Plague Claws	Combat	Weakens your opponent and increase the strength of his or her Infection	Zombie Chow	Noncombat 1 Zombie	Chow Downed +5 Familiar Weight (10 Adventures)
3	Undying Greed	Passive	+25% Meat from Monsters	Flesh Mob	Combat 3 Zombies	Unleash your horde to damage your foes	Smash & Graaagh	Combat 2 Zombies	Attempt to steal an item from your opponent
4	Hunter's Sprint	Passive	+100% Combat Initiative	Elemental Obliviousness	Passive	So-So Resistance to All Elements	Scavenge	Noncombat 2 Zombies	Scavengers Scavenging +20% Items from Monsters (10 Adventures)
5	Insatiable Hunger	Passive	+5 Stomach Capacity	Vigor Mortis	Passive	Muscle +30%	Meat Shields	Combat 1 Zombie	Hide behind your zombies, making you harder to attack
6	Devour Minions	Combat Noncombat 4 Zombies	Restore 50% of max HP Upgrades Bite Minion to cure negative effects	Virulence	Passive	+10% chance of Critical Hit Critical Hits Improve Infectious Bite	Summon Horde	Noncombat	Lets you summon 11-14 zombies for 1,000 Meat Upgrades Summon Minion to increase combat chance
7	Indefatigable	Passive	Regenerate 16-20 HP per Adventure	Bilious Burst	Combat 5 Zombies	Explode some zombies, dealing Spooky and Stench damage	His Master's Voice	Passive	+5 to Familiar Weight
8	Skullcracker	Passive	+100% Brain Drops from Monsters Critical hits occasionally stun opponents	Unyielding Flesh	Passive	Damage Absorption +100 Damage Reduction: 5	Ag-grave-ation	Noncombat 3 Zombies	Zomg WTF (Monster Level +30) (10 Adventures)
9	Neurogourmet	Passive	+1 Adventure per Brain Eaten	Corpse Pile	Combat 3 Zombies	Pile zombies on your foe, preventing him/her/it from moving for a while, and dealing damage	Disquiet Riot	Noncombat 5 Zombies	Disquiet Riot (Decreases Combat Frequency) (10 Adventures)
10	Ravenous Pounce	Combat 2 Zombies	An attack that deals more damage the hungrier you are and always hits +5 Stomach Capacity	Howl of the Alpha	Combat 9 Zombies	Scare your enemy away for a while Deals major damage to unscarable enemies	Zombie Maestro	Combat 9 Zombies	Order your horde to attack an enemy en masse Also reduces the Cost of Zombie Skills by 1

Council Text

See The Council of Loathing/Zombie Slayer.

Strategy

See Zombie Slayer/Strategy for tips & strategies.

Rewards

• A class tattoo is obtained when starting the path.
  • A sparkly class tattoo is obtained at the start of any run following your first Hardcore Zombie Slayer run.
• The Hovering Skull familiar hatchling (talkative skull) is only obtainable within this path.
• Players will receive a Thwaitgold maggot statuette upon defeating the final boss of this path.
• Surprisingly, there is no level 30 trophy for this class.

History

• Prior to the NS Lair revamp on January 1, 2015, the lair had a few divergences for this path:
  • You did not need a star starfish familiar to use Richard's star key in the lair. You still needed the hat and weapon and any familiar equipped.
  • You needed at least 10 zombies in your Horde to defeat the Naughty Sorceress's familiars.

Ascension Paths
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Special Challenge Paths
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