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.

Special Abilities & Mods

Prior to a match, you must select a role in the group. Those roles are: Control, Medic, Offense, or Support. These are simple templates that provide the player with a prearranged loadout. You should customize them as quickly as possible.

Your character’s Special Ability heavily influences his/her role in the group. These abilities are the result of a salvaged bit of Nazi science, which gains a small amount of charge each time a zombie is killed or damaged. When the Ability Meter becomes full, you can unleash the Ability and deliver a devastating attack or gain a short-duration buff.

When a Special Ability is activated, the Ability Meter begins to deplete, indicating the time remaining for that Ability. By default, every Special Ability lasts about 20 seconds before it expires.

Each Special Ability has five special Mods that, when equipped, provide an additional passive bonus during the Ability’s active duration. You begin the game with access to Tier 1 Mods and can unlock more by spending Raven Tokens. You gain one Raven Token for every Rank reached above 5 and can equip up to three Mods at any given time.

Mod Upgrades

Medic: Camouflage

With Camouflage activated, every zombie on the map immediately forgets you’re there regardless of your actions. During this period of invisibility, use the time to revive fallen allies, assassinate a few key zombies (thanks to Serrated Edge, Camouflage is actually the best Special Ability if you want to play a melee character), escape a bad situation, or interact with map objects without fear of being blindsided.

Allies have no visual cue that you’re camouflaged. When you’re under this Ability’s effects, zombies’ eyes glow with a pale white light.

Camouflage is a great tool to use for your personal survival, but it can be dangerous for anyone next to you, as any zombies that were pursuing you will instantly switch to their next available target. Use Camouflage carefully or your closest teammate will suddenly get beaten into the floor.

Camouflage Mods

• Field Medic: Revive fallen allies in half the time.
• Survivalist: Gain a point of Geistchild when activating Camouflage. (Geistchild is discussed later in this section, under “Blitzes.”)
• Exfiltration: When reviving a teammate during Camouflage’s duration, your teammate becomes Camouflaged for roughly five seconds.
• Saboteur: Grenades are significantly stronger when using Camouflage.
• Serrated Edge: During Camouflage, your melee attacks inflict a damage-over-time effect on zombies, dealing 3% of the zombie’s maximum health to it every 1.5 seconds for 30 seconds. This takes time, but is surprisingly effective against hard targets in later waves.

Offense: Freefire

When you activate Freefire, you enjoy infinite ammunition for the next 20 seconds — even with an empty gun — because you’re firing raw, necromantic energy instead of bullets. When Freefire ends, your current weapon is reloaded.

Plan accordingly when using Freefire. Although it works with every firearm in the game, it doesn’t adjust each weapon’s fire rates or actions. You simply get more damage out of an automatic or semi-automatic weapon.

A useful side effect is that if you get a big enough crowd of zombies and you have a weapon with a high fire rate (such as an SMG), Freefire becomes a license to print Jolts!

Freefire Mods

• Marksmanship: Your weapon’s damage multiplier for headshots is tripled.
• Explosives Handler: You and your allies receive two grenades.
• Ammo Carrier: All nearby allies get a clip of ammunition.
• Mk. II: The weapon you’re currently using behaves as if it’s been upgraded for the duration of the effect. This is useless if you’re using a weapon that has already been upgraded, a melee weapon, a Tesla Gun, or a plot item.
• Squad Tactics: You and any nearby allies receive a 150% bonus to your weapons’ headshot multipliers for damage.

Support: Frontline

With Frontline activated, all zombies in the surrounding area pursue the Frontline player to the exclusion of all other targets. The player using Frontline also deals double damage to all zombies until the effect expires.

Frontline isn’t something you want to activate just for the sake of doing so. The damage boost is nice, particularly against later waves of zombies, but its primary use is as a tactical tool. Frontline is useful for luring enemies into ambushes or onto traps, or simply distracting the horde so the rest of your teammates can turn valves or open doors in relative peace.

After unlocking the higher-tier mods for Frontline, it also turns your character into a strong force multiplier for your team. With Vicious and Team Effort, your Special Ability results in a massive boost to the entire team’s damage output. Combine that with Freefire and Shellshock for massive carnage, even against the tough late-game waves of zombies.

Frontline with Determination and Punishment may be the single most durable loadout in the game, which is handy when playing solo.

Frontline Mods

• Resilient: It takes significantly less time for your health to recharge.
• Vicious: Your damage bonus increases to 300%.
• Determination: Receive two points of Geistchild when you activate Frontline, up to the usual maximum of three.
• Team Effort: The base damage bonus from Frontline also applies to your teammates.
• Punishment: Zombies automatically die when they hit the user. This only gives you the base amount of points per zombie and you still incur the damage from the hits, so this isn’t as tactically handy as it may sound. At best, you end up trading some health for a few less zombies in a round. Punishment may prove to be more useful later in the game.

Control: Shellshock

When Shellshock is active, your character emits a circular burst of energy. Nearby zombies get knocked down, take slight damage, and remain stunned until your Special Ability meter runs dry. Shellshock passes straight through obstacles and equally affects almost all types of zombies.

Shellshock is a great emergency option and it can save your neck, but it has a couple of drawbacks. One such drawback is that it only hits once by default. By the time you reach wave 12 or higher, zombies spawn so fast that Shellshock — unless it’s used carefully — is only good for a quick breather. Fresh zombies will arrive almost immediately to back up the stunned zombies. Watch your position and time its use, or Shellshock won’t work to its fullest possible extent.

Shellshock with Exploit Weakness can set up late-game waves of zombies for quick, decisive kills especially if you coordinate with buddies who have Frontline and Freefire. It’s particularly useful for point defense.

Shellshock Mods

• Breathing Room: Shellshock gains a 200% bonus to its knockback effect and a 150% bonus to its radius. Its visual indicator is a little misleading here, as it can — and will — hit zombies that are seemingly well outside its range.
• Protector: Allies hit with Shellshock gain a point of Geistchild.
• Fiery Burst: Zombies hit by Shellshock are set on fire. They suffer damage equal to 3% of their maximum HP every 1.5 seconds for the next 30 seconds.
• Exploit Weakness: Zombies stunned by Shellshock take triple damage.
• Defribrillate: Any fallen allies within range of Shellshock are instantly revived.

Universal Mods

Instead of affecting Special Abilities, these mods affect your base skills, allow you to start with or accumulate greater resources, or otherwise provide passive benefits.

• Grenadier: Carry a maximum of eight grenades, rather than four.
• Fully Loaded: You receive a 50% bonus to your weapons’ maximum ammo pool.
• Preventative Medicine: Your entire team takes longer to bleed out. This does not stack if more than one player uses it.
• Dutiful Medic: While reviving fallen teammates, you can take a single hit from a zombie for no damage.
• Discipline: You receive an increase to weapon accuracy and damage while crouching and in a prone position. A Freefire user with a crew to watch his/her back could get a lot of use out of this.
• Finishing Blow: You inflict double melee damage against zombies that have less than half health.
• Hoarder: You get a fifth Blitz slot. This sounds good but, in practice, it’s rarely useful.
• Flak Jacket: You take no damage from your own explosives. This sounds better than it is, as you already take very little damage from your own grenades, but this comes in handy when fighting later waves. Being able to stand on top of your own primed grenades or minefields is a valuable way to buy some breathing room.
• Stubborn: Keep all your Blitzes after being revived for the first time.
• Specialist Training: In normal circumstances, the cost required to use a Special Ability increases each time the player uses a Special. With this mod, the increase in cost is lessened. Successive Special Abilities still increase in cost, but less so with Specialist Training.
• Geistchilded Up: You begin the match with three points of Geistchild. This Geistchild is “free” and having it does not affect the Panzerblitz machine’s prices. This is probably the single most useful mod during the process of learning the game, but it can be safely abandoned once you’re comfortable with your skills.
• Resourceful: You enjoy an increased chance to spawn power-ups when killing zombies.
• Pack Mule: You can carry a third primary weapon. Note that this doesn’t let you switch between weapons any faster, so you need to hammer the switch button to cycle through your arsenal. This comes in handy later in the game, as it means you don’t have to give up a weapon slot in order to carry around a certain plot-relevant item.