Zombie Pandemic Melee Guide

Zombie Pandemic Melee Guide by Mandarni

This post will be divided into three main topics:
1 Introduction
2 Stats
* .1 Agility
* .2 Close Combat
* .3 Constitution
* .4 Marksmanship
* .5 Smarts
* .6 Strength
* .7 Technical
3 Weapons
* .1 Melee
4 Summary

Okay, lets get started.

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1 INTRODUCTION

As a melee character you will, primarily, be prepared to deal with enemies close and personal. But let me state this for the record: there is nothing wrong with initiating combat against zeds with a ranged weapon – fundamentally thinning their numbers before they reach you.

Being a melee character you are faced with the option, at the beginning of combat: shall I thin their numbers or shall I charge up close and start slashing?

Not only is this good in a survival sense, since you have ability to judge if you can handle them at melee range with no danger, or if there is need to thin them out first.
There is also the added benefit of being able to conserve ammunition, thus saving money, by opting to go melee. Or if you are low on health, you can opt to thin them out at range instead.

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2. STATS

There are 7 different skills or stats, though quite a few of them are fairly unimportant. The most important one is close combat, followed by strength and constitution. Your goal is to be able to one hit, one slice zombies.

* .1 AGILITY
Determine chance to flee and ranged evasion.
Fairly unimportant stat for a melee character in the early game, since most of your kills and experience will be against zombies.
It is a good stat to increase after maxing close combat (200), constitution (200) and strength (200).

* .2 CLOSE COMBAT
Your primary attribute, since it determine three things: critical chance with melee weapons, your chance to hit with melee weapons and finally evasion.
Against zombies it grant better _effective_ HP and thus it is generally better for survivability than constitution. With 200 close combat roughly only 1 shot in 20 will hit you – that is great. Basically increasing it to 200 will give you an effective HP of 20x your base HP against zombies. Awesome!
It also determine damage, since if you miss you will not deal any damage, and close combat also determine critical chance. This makes close combat, generally, better than strength for damage.

* .3 CONSTITUTION
Constitution give you health, plain and simple. Generally it is less important than either close combat or strength, still its useful. Last time I checked it gave ½ hp per 1 CON, thus 2 points into CON => 1 HP.

* .4 MARKSMANSHIP
Not important, but not useless. As I said during introduction, if you are facing a big horde of zombies there is nothing wrong with thinning out their numbers before slicing last ones to pieces. Though I recommend investing in it after getting close combat, strength and constitution to a decent level.

* .5 SMARTS
Not important.

* .6 STRENGTH
After getting close combat to a decent level (I recommend 200), strength is important. Because your goal is not to tank a lot of zeds simultanously, but to slice them in half as they reach you. If you can keep zeds at 1-2 in melee range, by systematically killing them as they get close, rather than 5-10, you will receive less slashes. So in effect this grant you survivability – since less zombies will simultanously slash at you, and also it will conserve your SP.

* .7 TECHNICAL
Not important.

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3 WEAPONS

Basically you have two options.
Either you use a hard hitting primary melee weapon with a boosting backup (for example giant kunai as primary, with katana for boost in close combat).
Or you use a hard hitting primary melee weapon with a ranged backup – for thinning them.

If you want to play optimally you can switch out depending on circumstances.

* .1 MELEE
Bladed weapons are better than blunt weapons. Blunt weapons scale worse and have lower critical damage multiplier. Thus this list will focus on a few notorious bladed weapons.
A word of note: Small, medium and large chainsaw are neither bladed nor blunt. They receive no damage multiplier last time I checked and are thus basically useless. Thus giant kunai is recommended over them any day.

1. Mr. William’s Chainsaw (premium), counts as a bladed weapon and its currently best weapon avaible. Though premium. Slightly heavy but no concern since you are not carrying as much ammunition and also you will be increasing strength.

2. Zanbato (premium) and Lobotomizer (premium) are basically equal. Same as Williams just no +5 close combat and a bit lighter.

3. Giant Kunai. Hard hitting and generally good. The best weapon that in-game money can buy. Deal less damage than Zanbato, Lobotimizer and Williams, but it is easy to get in-game.

4. Katana (premium), a good secondary weapon (booster), since it yield +10 close combat. But it does deal less damage even if you include the +10 close combat into the equation.

5. Two-handed Sword. Also a good secondary weapon (booster), since it yield +10 close combat. It does give -5 agility, but its of minor consequence. Can also be bought for in-game money, which is nice.

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4. SUMMARY

Basically, if you want an easy build:
1. Max Close combat – for survivability and damage.
2. Increase Strength until you notice you can one shot almost all zombies – for survivability and damage.
3. Max Constitution – for survivability.
4. Max Strength the remaining points.
Then after that get marksmanship, agility or other skills depending on what you like.

For weapons I would go…
Against small groups: Giant kunai (primary) with Two-handed Sword (secondary booster).
Against bigger groups: Giant kunai (primary) with a decent ranged weapon, maybe a sniper or so, so I can thin the enemy before they reach me.
Hope you enjoy it ^^

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