At launch, the enemy roster in Zombie Assault: Resurgence is zombies plus their bosses. The developers confirmed that they have ideas for enemies other than zombies but that none of them will be in the game at launch, so everything you shoot at the start of the game is undead. The horde itself is smaller than it looks — four named types, plus mutations and mods layered on top of them.
The zombie types and the enemies you fight
| Type | What it does |
|---|---|
| Shamblers | The baseline enemy, and the type used in the example bounty kill X Shamblers |
| Scuttlers and Maggots | Small enemies that the Assault Dash upgrade Vicious Tackle clears out |
| Shielders | Swarm enemies whose masses were the most criticised element of the second public playtest, and are being tuned |
The basic zombie types are catalogued in an in-game codex, tracked by the achievement Decoded for viewing them all, and the developers added extra enemy types for launch beyond what the playtests showed. The other half of the roster is the bosses, and the bosses page covers those.
Mutations, mods and buffs
The horde changes as you fight it:
- Random zombie mutations are back, evolved from the earlier game, and mutation stages matter enough to be tracked separately — the achievement Running the Numbers asks for 16 third stage multipliers chasing you at once.
- Zombies carry Mods and Buffs. The demo used these to make each run unpredictable and force on-the-fly adaptation, which is the whole reason a fixed loadout is not the whole answer.
Matching a mutating horde is where damage types and weapon mods come in, and the weapons page covers how to build for it.
Resistances, not weaknesses
Damage types apply to the zombies as well as to you, and there are five: Physical, Thermal, Cryo, Energy and Corrosive. The important limitation is that this is a resistance system, not a multiplier system. Enemies have resistances to damage types, and the developers have said they are sticking with resistances rather than elemental weakness multipliers, so there is no damage-type synergy to exploit.
That is why each Power Weapon has its own damage type: you are matching a resistance profile, not stacking a multiplier, and the Power Weapons page lists which one is which.
Environmental hazards
The hazards of a mission are as much a part of the fight as the horde:
- Breaches can build up to a critical mass that has to be dealt with, tracked by the achievement Big Masstake for letting a breach reach critical mass.
- Anomalies can be scanned with a drone, tracked by Abnormally for successfully scanning 300 anomalies.
- Power units crush zombies in bulk — and they will flatten a mercenary who stands in the wrong place as well.
The breach is a mission objective as well as a hazard, and the operations page lists the mission type built around closing them.