• Spoilers
• Subraces
• Zombie

Zombie

Much like Skeletons, Zombies too are undead horrors: they are resistant to life-draining attacks, they become resistant to cold-based attacks (actually earlier than skeletons), resist poison and can see invisible, but are vulnerable to cuts (unlike skeletons). They gain very little nutrition from the food of mortals. However, Zombies are, as the name implies, practically mindless.

IMPORTANT: Zombies are NOT resistant to Nether as stated in 2.2.7!

A zombie character begins the game with:

• Some scrolls of satisfy hunger
• Some torches

A zombie character gains the following intrinsics as s/he levels:

• Level 5: Resist Cold
• Level 1: Resist Poison
• Level X: See Invisible
• Level X: Resist Lifedrain
• Level 1: -4 Luck

Discussion

Zombies have a mana penalty of 30%. They also have a number of altered abilities worth looking at: searching, magic device, and melee (those don't apply in version 2.3 and magic device ability is only useful with rods and activations in ToME 2.2.7).

There is no reason I can think of not to take zombie for the extreme warrior types, especially Zombie trolls make fantastic unbelievers or swordsmasters. The healing you get from troll regeneration and special berserk ability will make them preferable to half-ogres.

Zombies are penalized with -4 luck. A Zombie Troll is -8 so it is garanteed negative luck; but it is most definitively worth it. Keep in mind lots of unluck will result in less artifacts found and you can never get the "never harmed by hands of mortals" fate...

In any case zombies are part of the ultimate warrior-type because of the +3 to hit dice and warrior-type stat changes. The cold/poison resists help warrior types survive the early levels too, but are nearly irrelevant at high level as you get immunities from equipment instead.

Only Ents and Deathmold are stronger with the STR and CON, but they have serious drawbacks (-5 speed for ents and lower hit dice, and for Deathmolds the movement issues).

Surprisingly Troll zombies are a popular combo for one mage class: alchemists! They don't really need mana, INT, WIS, or luck in the long term; so you might as well play them warrior-with-excellent-equipment style.

Zombie dwarves are only one hit dice away from 15, but get the secret passage ability and blindness resist instead of berserk; this is worth it for some players who want a good escape route for disasters.