Zombie
Zombies are common undead hostile mobs that attack players and villagers and burn in the daylight. Zombies can place platforms, break blocks, and may even spawn parasites when killed.
Spawning
Zombies spawn wherever the light level is below 7 in the Overworld. They are mobs that can spawn with tools, melee weapons, and/or armor. Villager Zombie variants may spawn as well under the same conditions, or in Ruined Villages[1]. In addition to these occurences, there are zombie spawners in Overworld dungeons that repeatedly spawn Zombies and their counterparts (spawn conditions apply).
Mechanics
Attack & Defense
Like in Vanilla Minecraft, Zombies and their variants are hostile mobs that attack from a melee distance, whose base damage depends on difficulty. They can also be equipped with armor, weapons, and shields to aid their fight against the player and others. In ROTN, what they can wield and when has changed. To start, the set of tools has expanded: while in Vanilla Minecraft the only tool a Zombie usually had was a shovel, they now can spawn with pickaxes and axes. The pickaxes serve to help break stone blocks, while the axes they wield not can help break wood structures but also breach player shields.
In ROTN, zombies can rarely spawn with boosted amounts of HP whilst not being minibosses (like the ones that spawn in invasions). While a normal zombie has 20 HP, boosted zombies will spawn with anywhere between 40 to 100 HP. This effect is amplified on harder variants: for example, boosted Stalkers can spawn with anywhere from 100 to 200 HP.
Build & Destroy
In ROTN, all zombies can now break blocks to reach their targets(namely, you). If a zombie spawns with the correct tool for the block they are breaking, the block will be mined at the same rate as if a player was mining it. Blocks mined by zombies will drop their respective yields, which can be then picked up. Secondly, Zombies can now also place weak platforms in order to get to you if they need to either elevate themselves or make a bridge to cross a gap. These platforms do not drop anything when broken, and (needs confirmation) decay into nothing after some time has passed.
Bombers & Parasites
Rarely, a zombie may spawn with a block of TNT in its hand. When this zombie gets near to its target, it will summon an activated TNT block, which blows up after a few seconds (as TNT would). This may or may not kill the zombie in the process, especially if it has followed its target outside of the blast radius. As a result, these nasties are best fought from a far distance via ranged weapons, as spears and even pikes are not enough distance to prevent the TNT from spawning. They should be treated like pre 3.0-ROTN creepers that would always blow up if they ever got in range. When these bomber zombies spawn in invasions, they will be called fusers and spawn with a candle on their head; if they spawn naturally, no such indicators are present.
In ROTN 3.0, all zombies now possess the ability to inflict hunger onto their opponents, not just Husks. In addition to this, besides the usual reinforcement mechanics, when a zombie dies, there is a small chance for its corpse to break out with up to 4 Parasites. These nasty critters will slowly move like silverfish towards players and other zombies, latching onto their faces and causing a variety of effects, such as Diseased, Nausea, and Infected (Spawns more parasites on death, pretty sure this isn't the status effect name, can someone else find the proper name for it?). As a result, it is unwise to kill a zombie with a Parasite on its face, as it will break out into even more parasites on death.
Variants
In ROTN, there far more types of zombies that can spawn. Aside from the regular variants (Z. Villagers, Husks, etc.), there are:
- Stalkers: zombies that spawn deep underground and will remain invisible until they either attack or are hit. Spawns with 50 base HP.
- Brute Zombies: zombies that take less physical damage, and in some versions of ROTN destroy items on death.
- Fire Zombies: immune to fire & inflict burning when attacking.
- and more: filling out this list would be much appreciated!
Notes
- Zombies with metal pickaxes seem to break stone into its raw form, not as cobblestone, like how the player would mine it.