I´m a little confused as to what can turn into a zombie after death lorewise.
It seems that toads can resurect after death and by extention amphibians although the only ones large enough to do so are always mutant.
Fish seem to be immune even mutant ones that are large enough to resurect except for sharks.
All mammals seem to resurect if large enough but some mutants don´t while some like humans do.
Any kind of invertribrate doesn´t resurrect even if mutated to a approtriate size same goes for birds.
So what is the deal with resurection? Does the blob simply not like or can´t work with certian types of creatures? Is this intenional or are there plans to have zombie centepides and slugs going around?
My guess is that it started with mammals over a certain size (on the species: tiny dog breeds resurrect as well, although that’s probably a non intended side effect of how breeds inherit properties), then somebody came up with shark. At some point somebody came up with giant non mammal mutants that won’t revive for some reason (probably a combination of how much work it would be to make zombie versions of them as well, together with the zombie versions being even more overpowered compared to the giant ones, as well as zombies and arthropods not being properly mutually hostile).
Then somebody came up with giant amphibians, following the pattern of arthropods.
Mutant revival is indeed rather arbitrary, with some reviving, some don’t (including some human mutants), and mucus ones not reviving (due to mucus magic, presumably), unless they end up in a fire, in which case they revive as scorched zombies (and you can’t prevent that, as you’re not allowed to pulp mucus zombie corpses).
The lore I’ve seen indicates revival should happen if the corpse is large enough and with a sufficiently low amount of structural damage (a missing, or largely destroyed head is not sufficient damage, nor is destroyed legs, assuming headless etc. zombies and crawlers match the intended lore). The blob doesn’t shy away from essentially doubling up the skeleton with a bone exoskeleton in a bunch of zombies, so that shouldn’t be a factor. You could make the rather arbitrary argument that the creature should be homeotherm, or at least mezzotherm (“warm blooded”, and having a regulated core temperature respectively), but that seems quite, well, arbitrary.
Thus, I’d say the implementation doesn’t match the lore, in a number of cases.
Very interesting way to implement mutant revivecation. But there are a few things that stand out as odd about them:
Aren´t these things a little too strong to start spawning after a week. Espesially the small abomination seems like it might have a little to much HP. It is only about the size of a medium dog and is supposed to have no bones so you could probably chop it in halve if you used a battleaxe or great sword on a critical but if you give it 160 HP you can´t kill in one stike with even on a critical.
If you give them “PATH_AVOID_DANGER_2” than they will avoid dangerous terrain but also traps. Implying that they are somehow intelligent enough to recognize thing as bear traps and shotgun traps as dangerous. Having them avoid dangerous terrain makes them much harder to deal with and it seems strange that a zombie created from animals is somehow smarter than the creatures it came from. A zombie that is somehow more intelligent than when it was alive would be a first in the game as it usually goes the other way around.
The armour values also seem wierd. Usually the pierce armour is supposed to be lower than the cut armour. This is becease things like knifes and spears have their force more concentrated on one point. The ballistic armour also seems a little high (although monster ballistic armour in general probably needs and audit and be lowered in many cases).
They don’t spawn after a week, and they never spawn passively for now - as it stands something needs to die, regrow as a cocoon and then grow up into the end result. The way it’s set up you only have single swarmer spawns until the man-sized creatures show up, which is pretty much Summer at the earliest these days barring subways and other fun corners of the world.
HP and armor are fluid, but they don’t really have organs inside so beating them to a pulp is the only way to keep them down. Pierce and ranged are extra penalized for this exact reason.
They very explicitly aren’t “just zombies”, and being smarter is a pretty good way to show that.
Interesting to give them no organs. That would explain the the high bash, bullet resistance and the HP. They would however at minimum need some kind of nervous (for senses, movement and reacting to the enviroment), muscular (for locomation) and circulatory system (you cant have metabolism without it). These systems however could be distributed around the entire creature in some way with probably plenty of redundency build in.
It still seems wierd however that they would be so smart that they recognize traps. I could understand avoiding pits and fire as many animals have a instinctual fear of those. But recognizing a shutgun trap or bear trap as dangerous without memories of them in their former lives is probably something that is outside the capabilities of even the blob.