Combat

Battles are fought on their own battlefields, started from a guard post. You fight in person with a sword or a bow while leading squads of zombies or hired mercenaries, and zombies attack in waves along set lanes. You win if, when the last wave is over, every base flag is yours; you lose if the enemy takes your base or your health runs out. You do not have to kill every zombie: those still on the field when you win simply fall. The story opens the battles one by one; all of them, with every wave, are listed under Battles.

Health and stamina only matter in battle. Health is 100 and is full again after every battle, won or lost. The game clock stands still from the moment you step onto the battlefield until you leave it.

Starting a battle

1. Equip armor and a sword on your hotbar. Without both the character says “I must equip sword and armor”. A bow cannot stand in for the sword.
2. Go to the guard post on the right day. Most battles can only be started on Sloth day (see Time and the Week). The exceptions are the first battle, the two Sewer Brawls, and the fights started from the sewer guard post: the bathhouse breakthrough and the sewer arena.
3. Check the battle window. It shows how many squads you may bring and the battle’s defence power requirement. You can only start once your defence power reaches it.
4. Prepare. You arrive on the battlefield with time frozen. At its build table you can set out the barricades and towers you built in the Barracks, then start the fight when ready.

Defence power is the quality of every barricade and tower standing in the Barracks, plus the power of the squads you tick. Barricades and towers count as long as they are in the Barracks: you do not have to place them on the battlefield for the requirement.

Fighting

Every hit does the attacker’s damage minus the target’s armor, never less than 0. There are no critical hits and no random rolls. Your armor’s value is fixed by what you wear:

Armor	Rusty	Bronze	Iron	Steel	Master
Armor value	0	1	2	3	4

The six kinds of zombie you face have no armor (see Enemies). Most hit for 4 to 7; the Barrel Zombie hits for 10 and has 100 health. In Master Armor the common Wild Zombie cannot hurt you at all, but the burst of a dying Stinker ignores armor.

You fight with a sword or a bow, and switch between them if both are on your hotbar. Every attack costs stamina, out of 100: 20 for a sword swing, 10 for an arrow. A sword attack lunges forward; the bow shoots from a distance.

Level	Sword damage	Bow damage
Rusty / Simple	4	4
Bronze / Reinforced	5	8
Iron / Battle	7	15
Steel / Heavy	10	22
Master	13	—

Bows do more damage for half the stamina. What the sword has is the Sword Master perk (+2 damage, +3 on the Master Sword) and a lunge. On top of either weapon, the battle potions Fighter add 3 damage per level and Berserk makes attacks cost no stamina; the sermon buff God’s fury adds 2 to swords and 3 to bows. Battle potions can only be drunk in battle, and the preparation phase already counts, so do not use a 30-second potion before the fight starts.

Squads

A battle allows one to four squads. There are two kinds.

Zombie squads. Carry a zombie to a squad slot in the Barracks. It only fights if it holds a pike or a bow and wears armor; a zombie cannot hold a sword. What goes into battle is a copy of the zombie, so a zombie that falls in battle is not lost. A squad’s power is the quality of each fighting zombie’s weapon and armor added up. Zombies improve with their own red talents: Impaler for pikes, Blindseye for bows.

Squad slots are opened with Defender’s Emblems, handed to Battle Ram in the Barracks. Four battles give one each, and there are four slots.

Mercenaries. The Merc Leader’s four fighters, two with pikes and two with bows, fight for pay. The payment covers one won battle: lose, or leave before the fight, and it carries over to your next try. After each win the price rises: 5, 7.5, 10, 15 and 20 silver, then 1 gold, until the Inflation quests let you pay in wine instead, finally 3 bottles of 3-star Wine a battle.

Paid mercenaries always come along and take up one squad slot, so in a one-squad battle they leave no room for zombies. Their power is 8, and 16 and 24 after the two equipment upgrades the Merc Leader offers for 3 Iron Ingots and then 3 Steel Ingots.

Barricades and towers

You build barricades and towers in the Barracks, from its build table; there they count toward defence power and Barracks quality. Before a battle you set them out on the battlefield, and after it they return to the Barracks by themselves. Three kinds of barricade and one tower come in three levels each, all unlocked with Barricades and Towers technologies:

Structure	Quality	Health (I / II / III)	Also
Barricade	2 / 4 / 6	400 / 600 / 800
Spiked Barricade	2 / 4 / 6	250 / 450 / 600	hurts attackers for 3 / 5 / 7
Fortified Barricade	2 / 4 / 6	600 / 800 / 1000
Archer Tower	2 / 4 / 6	150 / 300 / 450	shoots for 8 / 16 / 24

The perks War Supplier and War Engineer raise their health, the spikes and the towers’ damage. Taking one down in the Barracks gives back everything it cost. Two battles, the Sewer Brawls, allow no barricades or towers at all.

The Barracks has room for only so many structures at first. Each Victory Banner, from three battles, pays for one extension of its building area.

After a battle

A victory drops its reward at your feet when you are back: mostly Town Gratitude and Zombie goo, sometimes Keys for Looters, an emblem or a banner (see Battles). Battles give no tech points. Some battles come in pairs: winning the first leads straight into the second, and losing the second sends you back to the first.

A defeat costs nothing but the potions you drank: you keep your items and money and can try again.