Joining a guild

One of the best parts of World Zombination for me has been the friendships I have made within my guild.

Joining a guild has many benefits:

• You will get an eighth team member to fight with (a borrowed unit)
• You will get perks that increase along with your guild level
• You will be able to play in guild raids for DNA and packs
• As you level up, you'll be able to use the borrowed unit only for no-stamina raiding and brainfarming
• You will have other people to discuss strategies with and learn from

So how do you join a guild?

There are two ways to join a guild.

The first way is click on the "Join a Guild!" flag on the top right of your screen:

You'll only see "Join a guild" if you are not in a guild

This will take you to a list of "recommended" guilds, which are guilds that have space for you to join, based on your level. As I am using a level 50 account to show you, I have a pretty good selection:

Take a closer look at each of the recommended guilds before you make your decision which one to join.

If you know the name of the guild you want to join, you can enter it in "Find a guild":

The second way that you can join a guild is from World Chat.

Some guilds advertise on World Chat.

You can join a guild from World Chat by clicking on the green box with three lines next to someone's name, then on guild: 

Confession: I often do this to look in random people's guilds as I am pretty nosey!

This will take you to their guild screen and, if there is space and you are the required level, you can join. You can also click on the Back button on the left bottom side of the guild screen to be taken to the recommended guilds screen:

What should you look for in a guild before you join?
1) Guild level - higher guilds give better perks. You can click on "Perks" (on the bottom of the guild screen) to see which perks the guild has unlocked.

2) Activity of leaders and members - have a look and see how recently the leader and other players have been on. You can click on "Status" to order the players in terms of when they were last on (and click again to see when the players who haven't been so active. You probably will get the most fun being in a reasonably active guild. Another way to check on the activity level of the guild is to see if it is in the Top 100 Active Guilds here

3) Ratio of experienced players to new players (consider both their level and gxp (guild experience) - more experienced players will generally be able to offer you better borrows.

4) The guild message - there may be a message about the amount of activity required, available borrows, chat apps used, or other information that will help you make up your mind about joining the guild.

Despite the enticing offer of "free officers" this wouldn't be a good guild to join as (1) it is level 2; (2) the leader hasn't been on in nearly a year; (3) there are only two members; (4) the leader is only level 5; (5) you don't want to be in a guild that gives away the position of officer too easily as this means they are not taking good care of guild resources.

Guild Etiquette

Here are some general tips for getting along with people in your guild (some might SOUND obvious, but they are not obvious to everyone :-)

1) Don't ask for packs or ask to be made officer. Especially when you first join a guild. In many guilds this will get you kicked straight away. Instead ask: "What are your systems for giving out packs/making someone officer/brains/DNA/whatever else you are interested in?"

2) If someone has ask for a specific unit in their borrow request (e.g, Doomsday/Killaton L30 and up) and you don't have what they are looking for, don't give them something else instead (at least without checking it is ok first). Many people request a specific unit for a specific purpose (e.g., for brainfarming or to complement their team) and as you can only borrow three things before your queue is filled, people don't want to get something they can't use.

3) do the daily guild hunt, if you can. The guild hunt earns the guild (as a collective) guild bars, which can be spent on unlocking new raid tiers or other things your leader and officers decide upon. Note: the guild bars don't belong to you personally and will stay in the guild if you leave.

3) Understand any requirements of your guild and do your best to meet them. Many guilds (but not all) have some type of requirement of members.
These requirements may be:
a) being active (normally defined as logging on - the guild may have a rule that they kick inactive people after 3 days, 5 days, a week etc. Find out what it is for your guild.
b) doing the daily guild hunt.
c) earning a certain amount of gxp over a period. (e.g. 10k a week)
Not all guilds will have the same requirements. If your guild's requirements don't suit you, there will be another guild which has requirements that do suit you

4) If there are a lot of requests on screen, be aware that talking lots in guild chat could push them off the screen. Some guilds use special chat apps, such as LINE or GroupMe to prevent this from happening.

5) Be respectful to others - people who are a variety of ages, and from different backgrounds play WZ. Be mindful that they might have a different first language to you and be patient and kind to others.

Levi turns 50

He's a massive unit and it was a massive effort from Breizh in getting him to L50. Well done, Breizh :-)

Levi is the first unit in our guild who has reached Level 50.

Breizh chose the AOE attack for the level 50 perk.

If you are level 50, you will benefit A LOT from this perk.

Level 50 Levi can be used for farming in a variety of cities, such as:

• Bangkok Expert
• Bangkok Hard
• Cape Town Expert
• Cape Town Hard
• Dakar Expert
• Dakar Hard
• Lima Expert
• Lima Hard
• Moscow Expert
• Moscow Hard
• Rio Expert
• Rio Hard

He can also solo (some are more tricky and less reliable than others):

• Dubai Expert
• Casablanca Expert (Kind of; I need to test more)
• LA Expert
• Honolulu Expert

I will investigate whether he can do BA, Sydney or Bogota (but probably not, I'm guessing at least)

WZ Glossary

AOE: Area of Effect. This often refers to an attack that affects a group of units, rather than a single unit.

Alts: Alternate accounts. These normally are a second or third account, often held by a high level player.

BA: Buenos Aires raid. Sometimes followed by a number to indicate the tier of the raid, e.g., BA2.

Birthday pack: For WZ’s first birthday on February 19th, Proletariat had a special birthday pack which contained a rainbow assortment of units (uncommon, rare, epic, legendary and mythic units). This pack is why many long term players have a mythic (it’s how I got my first one).

Bogo: Bogota raid. Sometimes followed by a number to indicate the tier of the raid, e.g., Bogo2.

Boom: An explosive unit (normally referring to the killaton family, rather than the deliveryman family)

Brains: one of the Infected side currencies (same as food on the Survivor side). Used to start fights and for research. You get brains from fighting in the campaign cities.

Brainfarming: to replay a campaign city repeatedly in order to get brains. There are different ways people brainfarm (more about brainfarming here).

Casa: Casablanca raid. Sometimes followed by a number to indicate the tier of the raid, e.g., Casa3.

CM: Critical Mass (mythic version of killaton/doomsday)

Colossi: Plural for colossus

One colossus, many colossi

D2/D3/D4/D5: Dubai raid. The numbers represent which tier it is.

Daily: Click on the Daily Hunts to see these. There are two types of dailies: individual tasks that earn you coins and a guild daily that everyone in the guild gets that earns guild bars. Individual dailies last until you complete them (or re-roll them). Guild hunts change every 24 hours.

Deployment cooldown (DC): the time before you can spawn/place the unit down again.

DNA: one of the Infected side currencies (same as supplies on the Survivor side). Used for evolving or levelling units. You get DNA from guild raid and faction war rewards and from consuming unwanted units.

A dreadnought.
Note: this is a hard outfit to pull off in RL

Doom: Doomsday

Dread: Dreadnought

Drone geyser: a skill that is unlocked at the end of Rio de Janeiro that can be further researched. Especially good for using in conjunction with explosive units to take out ranged units and buildings.

Fast explosives: Deliveryman family of units

Forums: the WZ forums, found here

Flare: A skill that is unlocked when you complete San Francisco. Flare can be upgraded through research. This is very handy as it is a bit "broken" and can make your units basically invulnerable while in use.

FW: Faction War

Guild bars: These belong to the guild as a whole, not any individual. Only the guild leader and officers are able to use guild bars. In The Order of Chaos, we use guild bars for unlocking new raid tiers and, very occasionally, extending long raids. Other guilds may use their guild bars in different ways.

Guild goliath: The default guild borrow unless you are in a guild level 39 or over (it will be a Behemoth then).

Guild hunt: the daily down the bottom of the list that give guild bars to the guild.

gxp: Guild experience - your points in the guild list.

Harby: Harbinger

Heavy explosives: Killaton family of units

Hoolies: Hooligans (mythic delinquents/punks)

Hono: Honolulu raid. Sometimes followed by a number to indicate the tier of the raid, e.g., Hono5

Insane: a mode of difficulty harder than expert that is unlocked after finishing the campaign.

KAT: Killaton

LA: Los Angeles raid. Sometimes followed by a number to indicate the tier of the raid, e.g., LA3.

Legendaries: Packs or Units with a brown/orange border. Harder to get than uncommons, rares, and epics. Easier to get than mythics.

Legs: short for legendary.

Machines: The machines you level units in under “Evolve”. Called lockers on the survivor side.

MF: Manual fight. Manual fighting involves actively playing a fight. Manual fights take longer to do than quick fights, but tend to give better rewards and use your brains more efficiently.

Mortician looks like pretty much
every guy I went to high school with...

Mort: Mortician

Mythic units: These are units with a red border. They are extremely rare to get, but theoretically can be found in any pack or be won as a fight reward. You are most likely to find one in a legendary pack. There is a mythic for each family of units. They do not require another unit to be consumed to level up at 10, 30 or 50. They take a lot longer to level up and require a lot of DNA to do so. A mythic at level 30-35 has better stats (except for deployment cooldown and 50 perks) than a level 50 legendary.

Other side: Survivors side of the game

P0: Patient zero

Perks: skills given (at levels 3, 20 and 40) or that you can choose (at levels 10., 30, and 50) for your units. Some perks are much better than other perks so make sure you do your research before choosing perks at levels 10, 30, and 50. Guilds also have perks, given at each guild level.

QF: Quickfight. Quickfighting fights your team for you, but gives you fewer rewards than if you successfully manual fight.

Quick fight army: Units you have raised to quickfight. Many people build a quickfight army for brainfarming and some people also use a quick fight army for raids as well. Using quickfighting in raids gives you trophies quickly, but is expensive in terms of brains.

Ranged: Units that attack over a distance, like puddler family, spitter family, chef family, and fire/oil/water units.

Rares: Units or packs with a blue border. Harder to get than uncommons. Easier to get than epics, legendaries or mythics.

Stamina: the energy your unit has. Placing a unit down in a fight uses up one segment of its stamina. It doesn’t matter if you place it down once or five times, the same amount of stamina is used. Stamina comes back over time (that time depends on your guild perks).

Stim-Z: This is a skill that you can use to temporarily increase the damage that your units do. It can be further researched. The last level of research also allows the Stim-Z to heal your units.

Support unit: a unit that helps make drones (e.g., infector/famer) or heals or resurrects (e.g., mortician/scouts) or buffs/debuffs (demerits).

Tank: A unit with a lot of health or armour, like the brute family, colossus family, or titan family. It can also mean evolving chamber/machine.

TB: easily defeated by punks since 2015

TB: Timberbeast (the epic survivor unit with a chainsaw)

Tiers: Each raid has five different tiers. The higher the tier generally the better reward, but the more trophies are needed to complete it.

Trophies: points on a fight

Uncommons: Uncommon packs or units (green border)

Undies: Undertakers

WC: World Chat

Farming with L36 Hooligans

Hooligans are one of the best units for brainfarming in the World Zombination.

Hooligans for all your brainfarming needs

Brainfarming is replaying a campaign city in order to get brains for raiding and research. Brainfarming works especially well when you can borrow a unit and just use the borrowed unit (and none of your own) as you can play as long as you want without using up your unit stamina.

Hooligans are capable of brainfarming in many cities on hard and expert.

Different cities give different pay-offs in terms of brains - they also take different lengths of time to complete.

Silencer from Reddit Brains kindly let me use his spreadsheet to input data for Maelstrom's level 36 Hooligans to see what the brain per second pay off was for each city. I put in five times for each city (most cities I played a number of times first to make sure I was getting a fairly consistent set of times before recording five times as having a bit of practice can make a difference to times.)

Here's the spreadsheet (sorry it goes over the edge - it's either that or making it teeny tiny and unreadable):

The best brains/second pay off comes from Lima on Hard (40 brains/second).


Lima on Hard is also easy to play, but if you are still looking to level up, you might be better playing Mexico Expert as you will get more trophies.

(As for level 50 Hooligans with an AOE attack, it may be that Mexico Expert gives a better pay-off in terms of brains, but Silencer currently needs more data to work that out)

Hooligans go to Dubai (Videos)

I did these videos a while back when Maelstrom's Hooligans were 34. They are a bit stronger again now at 36 and I have a set as well (currently 30 at the time of this post) for your borrowing pleasure.

Here are some videos showing how you can use borrowed hooligans only to get points in Dubai.

As with all my videos, they are pretty amateurish and hacky, but you get what you pay for ;-)!


















 As you'll see in the vidoes, you really need to have flare (preferably with at least Strobe Light research completed so you have a decent dodge) and drone geyser unlocked (so you can get those pesky units behind walls).

I find soloing with Hooligans pretty fun and easy to do on fast-forward. I'd recommend that if you can, you use Hooligans in their mid-thirties or higher and be level 35 yourself.

Raising units for DNA

So I'm really behind in my posts and this is my attempt to catch up!

A few weeks ago (*cough, cough* maybe months ago) Yersinia told me that you could level up units then consume them for a profit in DNA.

I had always assumed that any levelling of units would cost more than you'd get out of it, so did my normal nerdy thing of opening an excel spreadsheet and recording information :-)

Here's a summary of what I found.

These numbers should be accurate if you are in a guild anywhere from level 26 - 40. Outside of this range, due to guild perks, the numbers will probably work out differently, but it will give you a place to start.

Common units

Sorry, Runner. No reason to level you up.

(White/light bluey green bordered units)
Spitter, Brute, Deliveryman, Infector, Runner

Don't bore me with numbers: Don't bother levelling as it will cost you more than you'll get back. Just consume them :-)

If you like tables:




Uncommon units

(Green bordered units)

16 DNA : Is it really worth the price of cleaning that up?
I will let you be the judge.

Sprayer, Puddler, Stuntman, Foreman

Don't bore me with numbers: Level to 2 and then consume will make you 16 DNA better off than if you hadn't bothered doing anything. This may or may not be worth your investment (and is as good as it gets - don't go any higher).








If you like tables:

Rare units:
(Blue bordered units)
There are two types of rare units: cheaper rare units and more expensive rare units. More expensive ones cost more in terms of DNA and time to level.

Cheaper rare units

Titan has just posted on the WZ forums
to complain that he is cheaper than Sprinter. 

Mortician, Biohazard, Titan
Don't bore me with numbers: Levelling to four will give you a maximum extra 140 DNA.












If you like tables:

More Expensive rare units

Explody goodness comes at a price

Sprinter, Reanimator, Goliath, Harbinger and Defiler

Don't bore me with numbers: raising to level 3 will give you a maximum additional 75 DNA.









If you like tables:

Epic units
(Purple bordered units)
Epic units also come in two price categories. I personally would not consume epics for DNA, but I know many people do. It's up to you.

Cheaper epic units: 

Tentacled units are cheaper to raise.

Assassin, Chef, Delinquents, Demerits, Farmer, Killaton, Mistress, Rainmaker, Scouts, Squidfingers, Wildfire

Don't bore me with numbers: Raising to level 6 will give you a maximum profit of an extra 583 DNA

If you like tables:

More expensive epic units:

Work it, Pitboss!

Behemoth, Cesspool, Daredevil, Foulmouth, Pitboss

Don't bore me with numbers: Raising to level 4 will give you a maximum profit of an extra 390 DNA

If you like tables:

So the big question: should you do it?

Again, it's up to you. If you have the spare space on your machines (e.g., because you have not enough DNA for a higher level unit, you might as well). I personally wouldn't put this ahead of making units for your team or for a QF army though.

One good reason to do it might be to "save" DNA if you are needing a vast amount for levelling units towards level 50 when it gets really expensive. If you have units you have raised to the maximum DNA amount you can then "cash them in" when you need them.

Other strategies for Dubai - Punks and Hooligans

Honestly, I'm not sure yellow and black
leggings would be my first fashion
choice if I were starting a gang....

I've been playing around with Ace's level 36 Hooligans and have found they are getting pretty respectable scores all by themselves in Dubai Expert.

Most of the time, I've gotten all three rewards and get around 1500-1600.

Some tips if you want to borrow them and have a go:

• Use flare often to help increase their dodge
• Use drone geyser to put the hooligans in walled off areas with commando or desperado type units

One advantage I've found with using the borrowed hooligans only as they are much easier to play with on fast-forward than explosive units, which often need to be used with precision, or full teams, where you have a number of units to be thinking about. I also got consistently higher points than with a level 30 doomsday/killaton only. So if your level is mid-30s or above, have a go.

Punks working the more classic
red/black regalia

Matty has been playing with my L40 punks. He's found that, when accompanied by a team of level 1 units, he can regularly get a perfect score on Dubai Expert. Those units are two L1 foreman (to take care of buildings), a L1 reanimator and an L1 mortician. You've probably got these units, so this is worth a try. You might need to be L40 or above for this to work well. Let us know how you go, so we can add in information about the limits of these strategies :-).