The Mutants

The outbreak is evolving

A regular horde in Project Zomboid is dangerous in numbers but predictable. The Mutants breaks that predictability by adding special infected to the world, many of them inspired by Left 4 Dead. Each mutant has its own animations, models, outfits and sounds, and above all its own behavior that you'll have to adapt to.

Survivor's note

The mutants and how they work

⚠️ Spoilers! The section below explains exactly how each mutant behaves. If you'd rather figure them out yourself, skip it.

PUKER

• Every 30 seconds it vomits toward a targeted player. The spray can hit several players at once, but it can be dodged.
• Vomit left on the ground draws in nearby zombies.
• A player who gets hit becomes Puked, and zombies will follow them for up to 3 in-game hours. MoodleFramework is needed for the status to show up.
• Washing removes the effect early. Make sure you wash your body, not your clothes.

HUSK

• Firearms deal reduced damage to it, except for headshots.
• Once it spots a player and starts closing in, it raises its arms to shield its head.
• How tough it is against bullets depends on the vanilla sandbox settings Zombie Armor Factor and Maximum Zombie Armor Defense. On the default Apocalypse preset it takes only 15% of normal firearm damage.
• Melee damage ignores this protection entirely.

SKITTER

• Always spawns as a crawler.
• Once it spots a player, it rushes at them at extreme speed.
• Attacks faster than vanilla crawlers.

LEAPER

• Always spawns as a sprinter.
• Every 10 seconds it pounces on a targeted player. A hit knocks the player down, but the leap can be dodged.
• Gets over fences and through windows far faster than ordinary zombies.

WRECKER

• Every 10 seconds it charges in a straight line at a targeted player, hurting and knocking down anyone in its path.
• If it slams into something impassable, it crashes to the ground.
• If that obstacle is something zombies can destroy, the impact breaks it. This depends on the vanilla sandbox setting Zombie Damage Construction.

WEEPER

• Always spawns as a sprinter.
• Has extremely poor sight and hearing.
• Always spawns sitting down in a Dormant state.
• While dormant, it weeps and raises the Panic of nearby players; the closer you are, the stronger the effect.
• While dormant, player attacks deal no damage to it.
• It wakes up and turns aggressive as soon as it detects a player or gets attacked.
• Immune to critical hits and knockdowns.

Recommended mods

Moodle Framework is optional but needed to display the Puked status. Place it above The Mutants in the load order.

Where's the Tank?

The Tank is a popular request. The author is currently working on a separate boss zombie mod, and the Tank will be one of them. Whether that mod will require The Mutants hasn't been decided yet.

The bosses are going into their own mod because they use completely separate skeletons and models, and they're far too powerful to roam the map like ordinary random spawns. The plans include questlines and scenarios that build up to boss encounters, plus related content around them.

FAQ

Is it compatible with…? Check the compatibility section below. Your safest bet, though, is to test the mods together yourself: compatibility testing takes time, and the author will expand the list of known conflicts gradually.

I washed, but the Puked status didn't go away. You need to wash your body, not your clothes, and let the action finish. If you interrupt it partway (by moving, for example), the effect stays: Project Zomboid only removes body dirt once the washing action is fully completed.

Some mutants feel overpowered. Will there be options to tune their abilities? The author is gathering feedback for now. If enough similar reports come in, extra options for specific abilities may be added. In the meantime, just lower the spawn rate of any mutant that feels like too much.

Compatibility (important!)

How mutants are identified

The Mutants recognizes mutants by zombie Outfit IDs. That means other mods that give zombies custom outfits can get overwritten, depending on load order.

Usually nothing breaks. However, mods that rely on specific outfits to work, such as They Knew, may trigger less often than intended if mutant spawn rates are high.

You control priority through load order. For example, to let mutants replace Authentic Z zombies while leaving They Knew zombies alone:

Authentic Z → The Mutants → They Knew

Note: outfit mods are not the same as regular clothing mods. If in doubt, place clothing mods above The Mutants.

Possible conflicts

Mods that change zombie outfits or behavior at runtime may conflict.

A compatibility patch for Bandits NPC is already built in, and the author may add patches for other mods on request. The patch lives inside the main mod rather than as a separate file, since all it does is add a simple boolean check before a zombie is classified as a mutant.

For modders

Mods that spawn zombies with custom Outfit IDs through

ZombiesZoneDefinition

shouldn't conflict with The Mutants.

If your mod changes zombie behavior or outfits at runtime, making it compatible is easy: just skip mutants.

if PZTheMutants
and PZTheMutants.API
and PZTheMutants.API.isMutant(zombie) then
return
end

Performance

The mod was built with performance in mind. Regular zombies are kept out of its update loops wherever possible, and only active mutants run the extra behavior checks.

Movement, pathfinding, combat and collisions mostly rely on vanilla Project Zomboid systems rather than custom replacements.

Both singleplayer and multiplayer are supported, including hosted games and dedicated servers.

Credits

The mutants' sound effects were created with ElevenLabs.