Loadouts
Before a round begins, you can customize your loadout. You can choose your starting weapon, type of grenades, a Special Ability, and up to three Mods. Anything you can find—no matter how slim an advantage it appears to be—could make the difference between life and death.
Arsenal
If you want to survive the zombie apocalypse, you’re going to need guns. You begin a round of Nazi Zombies with the weapons you’re entitled to by your rank. At the start of the game, this includes a pocketful of grenades and a sidearm (typically a P-08 pistol). By taking out the first few waves of zombies, you can accumulate Jolts and use them to purchase something better from the weapon lockers scattered throughout Middelberg.
Your Shovel and You: A Zombie Killer’s Guide
The first weapon you acquire in the Prologue stage, the trusty Shovel, is a useful, albeit limited, cornerstone of your Nazi Zombies tactics. You can switch to the Shovel at any time and wield it as a primary weapon, or swing it as your melee attack. Regardless, after the first few waves it takes a few shovel hits to kill even a weak zombie, but it does stun them for a second on impact. You can also use a quick shovel hit to knock off a zombie’s helmet, setting it up for a headshot. Remember that melee kills are worth 130 Jolts, while a gun kill results in just 100 Jolts.
A heavy swing with a Shovel can kill a standard zombie (a Wicht) in one hit, as your character pries off the zombie’s head. This is satisfying, a guaranteed kill, and has a chance of rewarding you with some extra Jolts (usually 50 to 200), some scavenged ammunition (approximately one spare magazine’s worth for every gun you’re carrying), or “lethal equipment” (a grenade).
However, as a trade-off, the decapitation animation cannot be interrupted once it starts, making you vulnerable during the process. If you want to go around digging zombies’ heads off, only hit the lone survivors and occasional stragglers. If you try to methodically shovel a pack of zombies to death, you might get one before the rest kill you.
Starting Weapons
At the start of your Nazi Zombies career, you have your pick of a single gun as well as a free choice between five different kinds of grenades. As you gain EXP and rank up, you unlock access to better starting weapons, which gives you a big boost in killing potential straight out of the gate.
Your choice of weapon mostly comes down to personal preference. Pistols are accurate and come with a large stock of ammunition, but they don’t pack a lot of punch. If you’re good enough to regularly score head shots, you may favor them as a go-to weapon.
Shotguns are good for up-close combat and are lucrative, as each pull of the trigger fires several pellets, each of which counts as its own attack for scoring purposes. They have a very short effective range, however, and it’s easy to pick one up from weapons lockers.
Assault rifles have range, speed, and flexibility on their side and are the best choice for a Freefire specialist but demand accuracy in order to get results, and the individual rounds tend to be on the weak side. As is the case in Multiplayer Mode, you should fire short, controlled bursts and start popping heads; otherwise, you’ll run out of ammo.
Grenades
As mentioned previously, grenades are a mixed blessing. On one hand, they offer a lot of advantages and pure crowd control. On the other, a zombie that dies in an explosion is only worth 50 Jolts. If you actually hit a zombie with a primed grenade before it goes off, it results in another 10 Jolts.
Be careful when using explosives early in the game, or else you may end up with some “cash flow” problems. At around wave 12 or so, zombies will appear in larger groups so you can go nuts.
There are five types of grenades in Nazi Zombies as part of your loadout. Once you enter a match with your grenade choice, you must stick with that choice for the duration of the match. Each grenade type is valuable in its own way, although throwing knives are a little questionable compared to the others. Ultimately, your choice comes down to your personal preference and your role in the group.
Grenades don’t appear in weapon lockers. Once a match begins, the only ways to reload grenades are by drops from heavy shovel kills or the Taschen Voll power-up. You also receive one “free” grenade every time you survive a wave of zombies.