Yes, PEAK has zombies, and yes, they bite. Zombies live in the ROOTS biome (the Tropics variant from The Roots update), sleeping on the ground until someone steps wrong, and a bite starts an infection that stacks Spores over time. The good news: there are seven ways to cure it, and doing so earns the Undead Encounter badge and a Pumpkin Hat. Here’s the whole system.
Where Zombies Spawn (and When)
Zombies appear only in the ROOTS biome, and only at Peak ascent difficulty or higher (they were removed from the easier Tenderfoot tier). They spawn asleep on the ground, which makes them a vigilance test: the scout who watches their feet never gets bitten; the scout sprinting for loot wakes the floor.
What a Bite Does
A zombie bite hits you with 10 Injury and 10 Spores, then infects you with a status that gains 0.5 Spores per second. Left alone, the infection eats your bar; treated, it ends and pays a badge. So the moment you’re bitten, the timer is on.
Every Cure
- Cure-All: the universal answer, as always.
- Antidote: the targeted cure.
- Scout’s Tenacity.
- Book of Bones (the skeleton lifestyle solves several problems at once).
- Spore-removing foods: Shroomberries, Medicinal Root, or Mandrake, which makes the ROOTS biome itself carry its own cures. Learn the berries.
- 45 seconds of continuous Invincibility, for the buff-stacked.
- Survive 60 seconds without another bite: the infection burns out on its own if you simply don’t get bitten again. Retreat, kite, and let the clock cure you.
That last one reframes the whole mechanic: a single bite is survivable by discipline alone. The kill condition is panic, because panicking scouts collect second bites.
The Badge
Curing a zombie bite grants the Undead Encounter badge and the Pumpkin Hat. It’s permanent content, not a Halloween event, so the hat is farmable any time the daily rotation serves ROOTS. Cheese route for badge hunters: take one deliberate bite with Shroomberries in your pocket, snack, hat.
ROOTS Survival Etiquette
- Walk, don’t sprint, over root-tangled ground.
- Call out sleepers you pass for the scouts behind you.
- Carry Shroomberries as standard ROOTS kit alongside your revival gear.
- A bitten teammate needs distance managed for them; box out the zombie, don’t crowd the patient.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can zombies kill outright? The bite’s Injury plus the Spore stack can absolutely down a weakened scout; the infection is the slow half of the threat.
Do cures work on teammates? Feed the afflicted; the foods and items work where they’re applied.
Do zombies respawn? Treat each ROOTS run’s sleeper field as fixed; the daily seed redraws the biome tomorrow anyway.
Is the Pumpkin Hat seasonal? No, it’s the permanent badge reward, despite the very Halloween energy of the whole affair.