If you are in your first few games or haven't even played yet, jump straight into the game and kill some zombies without looking here, its for your own good. Exploring the game for yourself will make it more fun than immediately looking for guides, and will give you a feel for what works for you.


These tips are for beginners after your first few games.

1. Start with the Church map, its easiest to learn on

2. Air Dashing is your best survival tool
-If you run around the box room from corner to corner, using double jumping constantly and groups the mobs, its nearly impossible to die, this can be used whenever in a bad situation.

3. Keep moving!
Your Kinetic Energy increases when you move for over ~2.5 seconds in one consistent direction, up to a maximum of 25% more damage.

-By moving in a circular path around rooms or around the map and let the zombies group up, they will be easier to manage and easier to kill

4. Melee weapons such as the Axe, Katana and Sledgehammer are a lot of fun, and worth practicing

5. Try the Thompson gun with Rapid reload as a learning weapon

6. Optimise your clear speed for the first 25 waves
-This will make your next run faster, so try to be more daring and aggressive when you are comfortable with the early waves

7. Watch your ammo, and keep it stocked up in time

8. Try the 'Wave Spawn' set to 'Instant' in the settings, it will speed up your gameplay and clears

9. Aim for the head, obviously.

10. Put your mouse sensitivity as high as you can manage - being able to turn quickly is a big advantage


1. Try to avoid using the outside areas after wave 50, except in a panic situation

-Using outside areas such as the Outside bit, the Coutyard with Fountain, and the rooms with Vertical coffins, are not recommended

-The outside areas make mobs go faster each second until the wave is over or until you go back inside (but the speed wont reset till wave reset), which will be a problem in high waves

2. Don't be greedy.

-You can outrun the zombies for the most part, so you need to move often

3. Avoid being in an enclosed area such as doorways or hallways

-If you need to get into an enclosed area for a weapon, then make sure you have grouped the mobs beforehand or are on a low zombie count in the wave. It IS possible to spam air dash and get over zombies heads even in enclosed spaces, but takes practice

Its important to plan your perks, because you do not want to purchase perks that aren't useful since it will delay your prestige.


Kinetic Regeneration - Very good for survival and possibly the best single perk for non-campers, reducing time-till-heal-starts from 5 sec to 2.5 sec while kinetic is full. If you are a gun user who stays in one place without kinetic energy, then use HF first.

Hardened Flesh - Very good for for survival, It increases your health from 4 to 5, which is better than it sounds. This is a priority.

Vengeance - A powerful perk. The I-frames (brief invincibility) when hit can wipe out multiple problematic zombies.

Retribution - A good perk especially after you have the other good perks

Ructions - Every build will get use out of this, although if you are buying pistol and/or akimbo pistol then its not needed

Z-Ray - A great informational perk that can be very useful especially if you are killing in darkened areas of the maps




Rapid Reload - Great if you are a gun user, it indirectly will increase your damage per minute and time firing. If you are blasting zombies, you will get hit less. The best defence is a good offence right?

Scavenger - Will reduce your need to refill your ammo, which is generally good, but not by loads

Bandolier - Good perk, but not top tier

Gunslinger - Obviously this is only useful if you are using two sets of guns, but it means that one reload will reload both weapons, which helps your overall time shooting

Monotome - This is an interesting perk, but its not game changing and not a priority



Carpenter - Some people will love barricades, however this perk is not on the priority list IMO

Zoomies - The speed increase isn't noticeable, and crouching has little functional use. This perk is not a priority



For advise on which perks to use per prestige, please see the prestige strategy section.

Note that powerups scale with drop rates as you turn more on, starting at 1x with one power-up, scaling up to 2x with all power-ups on.

Keep in mind, with power ups, the more you enable, the less you might see the ones you actually want. So, turn on the ones that suit you the most, and leave off ones that are sub-par for you

Zillionaire - A decent perk, It's main strength is generating money that can be used on the machine from wave 75-100. Outside of that, it depends what your game plan is.

Nuke - Very good power up. It will never nuke more than 24 zombies on default settings. For melee users this tends to be better than insta-kill.

Insta-Kill This is an incredible power up for gun users. It can take you through a whole wave or two with ease.

ChronoPulse - Very strong in general, but especially at high waves. You reload in normal time, and melee weapons work in normal time, so your firepower per second increases

Necrovore - This is probably one of the best, if not the best perks when used correctly, it can be used as a near invincibility as you can attack nonstop with this up, without risk of dying


Fortify - Better than you'd think, and works with carpenter. However, its one of the weakest power ups

Vitality Surge One of the weaker power ups, but okay for beginners to increase survivabilty.

Gun Power ups

Max-Ammo - Good for gun users, especially Raygun, Minigun, Thompson.

Bottomless Clip Very fun to use, saves ammo and you dont have to reload during.

Instant Zombie Spawning - Id advise to always have this on after your first few games. Unless you are going after a specific achievement. It will speed up waves. It means that zombies will spawn instantly, up to 24 on the map at any one time.
Closer spawns Recommended for experienced players to speed up the game.

Permanent Breach - Mobs will spawn inside. The easiest permanent to deal with, and recommended for prestige 1+ if you are using melee
Permanent Decay - This makes mobs harder to deal with because they are tougher and can walk without their head. Don't turn it on unless its for an achievement
Permanent Enrage - Makes mobs faster. Mobs start with wave 25 Health and Speed. Mobs break through barricades instantly. This is great for Prestige 2+ with perks on. Try it and see what you think.
Permanent Irradiation - Zombies are irradiated, when means they blow up when you shoot them, and do some radiation damage near you. Dont turn this on, lol.

Zoombies - Zombies act as if you are outside. Which means that zombies move faster than normal, scaled per wave. Other than for the achievement, this should not be on as it becomes extremely difficult early on, and impossible beyond wave 50.

Tiny head mode - For fun only, It makes it harder with no benefit
Mini Zombies - For fun only. It might aid some strategies but is a negative for most cases.

Locked Inside - Not advised. It aids with an achievement though.


Note: as stated, any of these options will remove stat tracking and achievements
You can set the wave to anything up to 999, and money up to 9999
-it can be a useful tool to set the wave spawn to 'Manual' (in settings) then set it to wave 1, with 9999 money. You can then clear the wave quickly, and then explore the map, test out guns, and pathing etc
-I wouldn't recommend this for farming or setting it to waves above what you have experienced, unless you have something very specific to test. The money is reduced, but also it will also reduce the fun of the normal game in my opinion

Tip: Click the 'reset to default' if you fiddled with the extra modifiers, after you are done with them to ensure that they are set to off, and stat tracking is back on.

Melee

Lets talk about melee. Melee feels good because you don't have to deal with ammo, which releases your ties to the ammo wall compared to guns. However, melee builds requires far more movement and a great understanding of mob pathing.

[Baseball Bat and Spade]

This one is down to personal preference, I wouldn't think too hard about this. Try both and see what you like the most. Most people prefer the bat, however.

Axe The axe is very good and fast, It works well as a secondary weapon equip or being woven between other melee weapons

[Katana]

Katana, my beloved. The Katana has an amazing Horizontal melee attack angle, which means that you want zombies to be spread out horizontally near you as you attack, getting 4+ kills per swipe.


[Sledgehammer]

The sledgehammer is a beast. The sledgehammer has the best melee attack range, meaning that you can mow through a lot of zombies constantly, as long as you move in a way that bunches the mobs together


[Using Melee]
You want to maximise kills per attack, while avoiding being hit at all. Being hit will happen, but don't panic. You need to be on the offence permanently for melee to work well, as zombies will quickly overwhelm you if you are not always attacking effectively. Panic swiping doesn't really work.

[Using Akimbo Melee]
Many tactics work, on paper double attacking and swapping to another melee weapon increases firepower, but I personally prefer holding leftclick down on sledgehammer (for auto attack)


[Melee Combos]

if you have Katana and the Sledgehammer in both slots, you can combo them together for infinite possibilities. You can swipe with the Katana, change weapon then hit with the sledgehammer. Here are some potential combos.

L = Left click / attack 1
R = Right click / attack 2
C = Change weapon

LLC (repeat)
LLCLL
LLCR
RCRCR - The Triple Whopper


The other part is figuring out your keybinds to make these work for you. Personally, I have keybound change weapon to right mouse click. You want WASD for movement, and space for dash, which leaves your movement hand unable to tolerate keybinds such as Q or E when using melee. So all attacking options and change weapon should be on the mouse. Some people like using mouse button 4 or middle mouse, personally I just don't use double attack in return for greater keybind control.

I'd highly suggest leveling up using weapon roulette, for multiple reasons. You need less perks and power ups to be powerful, making your farming easier. It also allows you to get experience with every weapon and be more adaptable, which will make you do better at the game over time.


Classic Zombies

Perks = Rapid Reload or Hardened Flesh > Kinetic Recovery > Vengeance >
Power ups = Insta-Kill > Nuke > Max Ammo (if guns) > Bottomless (if guns) > Vitality/Necrovore
Melee Power ups = Insta-Kill > Necrovore > Nuke

Weapon Roulette

Perks = Rapid Reload > Hardened Flesh > Kinetic Recovery > Vengeance
Power ups = Insta kill > Nuke > Necrovore --- Just use these three the whole time

Shooting the NPC in the tower will activate Enrage mode till the end of the match

the machine can be activated by turning all the levers to the down position within a short time frame. They will start to reset if you are too slow

Some boxes in the box room can be destroyed for the zedex

The toilet when knocked will knocn back

The machine can be unlocked by pressing all the levers within a short time frame, and will unlock the metal door which is seen where the stairs go down to the basement

The machine can be activated to nuke a whole wave, and move you to the next wave, for a cost.

Generally, its advised to use the machine starting around wave 73 or 75, every odd wave number until 100, as long as zillionaire is turned on and you have no more than 6 power ups on. Credit to Poomer for figuring this one out.

When you use the machine, you should run to your kill location immediately as you should have 5 seconds of freedom to move, and then you can air dash about zombies heads to your kill location even if they are all spawned.