BRAINNNNNNNS~~ (A Zombie How-to Guide)

[mmcookies]

JUST READ THIS LINK ON WOWHEAD FOR THE MOST UP TO DATE INFORMATION!

Here's a quick how-to guide on playing the zombie class.
Keep in mind that as the event goes on, some details might change.

Step 1: Infection
The following things will get you infected:
- Killing infected critters (roaches) in major cities
- Clicking on Conspicuous Crates (green glowing boxes) in major cities
- Being attacked by Plagued Zombies
- Being blown up by Plagued Zombies (Zombie Explosion)
- Standing in the plague cloud created by Plagued Zombies for too long (Retch)

Step 2: Incubation (currently 5 minutes)
Several options for the incubation process:
- Spend the next 5 minutes not getting cleansed by players and staying well away from Argent Dawn healers located in major cities.
- Have a Plagued Zombie use their Mangle ability on you. It will periodically reduced your infection timer by 30 seconds.
- Use an immunity ability on yourself to instantly become a zombie (Divine Shield, Ice Block confirmed to work).

Step 3: Plagued Zombie!
Now the periphery of your screen should glow red as you're transformed into one of the living dead!
Your main action bar will be replaced with a new zombie action bar with several zombie abilities (discussed below).

You will slowly lose health, so you must keep attacking the living to regenerate your health!
You will also move fairly slowly (walking speed) unless you're lurching.

While in this state, you are part of the scourge faction and is now hostile to all players and most NPCs.
You can also converse and trade with other player zombies regardless of "former" faction.
Regular Scourge zombies will now be friendly to you (confirmed in EPL, and Stratholme).

Once you're a zombie, the only way to stop being one is to become even more deader (getting killed).
I would suggest taking off your armor, as getting killed by NPCs still cause durability damage, and armor stats do not improve your zombie stats.

Rogues can also stealth if they become zombies (unconfirmed, but lots of similar stories).

Zombie Skills!
Your main objective as a Plague Zombie is to infect as many of the living as possible!
To help you, there're several skills.

1. Mangle: Your main damage skill on 3 second cooldown. This also reduces a player or NPC's infection timer. As long as you keep mangling them, the timer will periodically decrease by 30 seconds. This also puts an armor debuff on the target, but so far it doesn't seem to do much.

2. Retch: Your short range AOE disease cloud that heals zombies and damages everything else. If humanoid NPCs and players don't get out of the cloud fast enough, they'll become infected as well. If you have multiple player zombies, this is a skill you should use on every cooldown, and it stacks. Alternatively, if you're traveling in player groups, rotating retches can help slow the drain on your health.

3. Beckoning Groan: Use this to call nearby non-player zombies to your location. They will follow for about 10-15 seconds. Up to 4 targets affected, but who gets affected is random and not particularly reliable at times.

4. Lurch: Gives all nearby zombies a temporary speed boost to chase down living humans. I would use this in conjunction with Beckoning Groan to keep everyone together. This should probably be put on round-robin.

5. Zombie Explosion: After channeling for 4 seconds (doesn't seem to have spell pushback), you explode. This causes NO damage but instantly infects everyone around you. If the living has superior numbers, use this quick to infect them all! (unconfirmed: doesn't damage durability)

[Siaea]

I finally got all mine infected in Shattrath, and some jackass cleansed them all. Got them all infected again, and my main disconnected. This is really a frustrating world event that probably should have had some more thought put in.

Edit: and what really pisses me off...I was on my priest/4lock team in tirisfal (level 7) when some 70 horde comes and kills them all..yet I can't attack shit in shattrath with my shaman. Very much annoying. A world event, and I can't play around a little. I know, QQ.

[mmcookies]

Just go to booty bay and click on one of the plagued boxes and you're infected. Ride to where you want to turn into a zombie (Zul'Gurub is nice for level 50 Zombies)

The NPC zombies seem to cap at level 50, even if you kill higher level mobs... so I guess you can't get a super army of level 70 elite zombies going, at least in STV...

And don't walk near the Argent Dawn agents all over the cities before you actually turn into a zombie, they're there to cure you.

[mmcookies]

oh, and zombies have their own language and faction

i've seen reports on forums that you can talk to horde/alliance zombies and even trade with them o_O
(trading might be hotfixed tho)

and there're rumors that zombies will become tougher in the coming days
there might also be other types of monsters (death knights maybe) who lead invasions and turn people into zombies

[Sajuuk]

You CAN talk and trade with people of the opposing faction.

[Sam DeathWalker]

WOOT!

Trash Talken now we Talken

"You DARE attack teh MIGHTY DEATHWALKER?!?!? So BE IT! You shall PAY me With PAIN!"

[Multibocks]

do you characters level when they kill stuff? Or is this completely just for show?

[Sam DeathWalker]

They do in EQ, Im still working on WoW.

Well once again WoW tops everyone in originality. Zombies - who wuda thunk it? Da even killen da Innkeepers. Dat ain't right.

[Trollzilla]

innkeeper has braiiiiiinnn

[sedory]

This annoyed the hell out of me lastnight.

A lvl 70 Zombie PC ran up to me while I was in the middle of a fight in weastern plaguelands... he's got the idental model to all the crap I'm fighting right then, so I'm thinking, hmm.. I don't know plaguelands that well and this looks like a named, let's kill it! So my lil lvl 58 Pally/Shammy duo is beating this guy down.. Everytime I'd get him to just under 90% and he pops back up to full, I'm like wth. So eventually I just attempt to run, but I get adds and die turning into a zombie. He later tells me that taking off a piece of armor and putting it back on resets your health. So annoying. That and I was just not in the mood to be messing with some world event, I just wanted to finish a quest and log for the evening.

And to top it off, while a zombie, you slowly loose health unless you attack humans.. the only human toons around were either the npc 'parties' of scarlet crusaders or the 21+ lvl 70's running around. All of which just slaughtered me, and going back and getting my corpse I got turned into a zombie again..

Not a fun night.