Zombie file · Snowbloom Palace

Hamster Zombie

A VR player, plus many hamster balls moving very fast.

Lore

Hamster Zombie is a VR player who keeps hamsters and releases hamster balls from time to time. The VR goggles can take about 28 peas; once they are knocked off, a large number of hamster balls are released at once.

Hamster balls move at alarming speed, bouncing up and down between lanes and biting plants in front. Generating perpetual motion by making hamsters run inside balls sounds unprofitable; the energy produced is not even enough to feed the hamsters.

Mechanics

Role

Armored summoner · Fast small-unit pressure

Practical work: VR goggles plus ordinary body-to-critical is about 37 peas; normal speed.
VR goggles have about 28 peas of durability; before they fall off, Sweetbriar Rose cannot hypnotize him.
Periodically releases hamster balls; when the goggles fall off, releases many at once.
Hamster balls are very fast and bite plants, but have only about 4 peas of durability.
A complete defense line, many projectiles, or area damage works well against hamster balls.

Advanced mechanics

Hamster Zombie's advanced mechanics are a timing problem between goggles, a finite ball queue, and fast small units. Read the 560 HP VR goggles first, then the ordinary 270 HP body critical window, then the difficulty-scaling reserve of hamster balls.

VR goggles, body, and queue resources

The VR goggles are an independent armor layer with 560 maximum HP. The main-entry shorthand is not the body maximum; it is closer to the work of removing the goggles plus pushing the ordinary body into its critical window. The body maximum still reads as 270 HP, with about 90 HP reserved for the critical window and about 180 HP of common work before that window.

Breaking the goggles therefore does not kill the carrier. It removes eye protection and creates the risk of dumping the remaining hamster-ball queue; after that, the body continues resolving as an ordinary zombie body and ordinary line-of-sight target.

A hamster ball is its own 80 HP small unit and does not use the ordinary body critical bands. Each ball is fragile, but speed, lane crossing, and batch release magnify small holes in the formation.

\begin{aligned}H_{\text{VR}}&=560\text{ HP}\\H_{\text{body,max}}&=270\text{ HP},\quad H_{\text{critical reserve}}\approx90\text{ HP}\\W_{\text{to critical}}&=560+(270-90)=740\text{ HP}\\H_{\text{ball}}&=80\text{ HP}\end{aligned}

740 HP is goggles plus body-to-critical work; body, VR, and hamster balls should not be merged into one health bar.

Release queue and VR dump

On entry, Hamster Zombie holds a finite queue. The base reserve is 6 balls, increasing by difficulty level L to 6+L. This is not an infinite summon pool; every successful throw removes one remaining ball.

While the goggles remain, the first release waits about 1000 internal ticks. After each completed throw, the next interval is randomized between 1200 and 1600 internal ticks. A normal throw releases only 1 ball, and biting a plant prevents the carrier from starting ordinary throws.

When VR HP reaches 0, the rule changes to a dump: if the queue still has balls, the throwing action releases all remaining hamster balls at once. If the body is currently biting, the break event also sets a forced-release flag and overrides the ordinary pause-while-biting rhythm.

N_0=6+L,\qquad R_{\text{normal}}=1,\qquad R_{\text{VR break}}=N_{\text{remaining}},\qquad T_{\text{next}}\in[1200,1600]

With goggles present, balls trickle out; when goggles break, the remaining queue resolves as one dump.

Bounce movement and bite resolution

A spawned hamster ball inherits the carrier's lane, but it appears with horizontal and vertical offsets instead of starting exactly at a tile center. Horizontal advance uses the zombie movement channel; vertical speed is randomized between -2 and 2, then bounces within the active lane bounds.

That bounce continuously rewrites lane reading. A ball can leave its starting lane, cross into an adjacent lane, and reverse at a boundary or blocking condition; this is why single-lane fire and single-point fronts often leak balls.

When the ball reads a biteable plant in front, it stops moving and enters biting. A biting ball no longer applies lane-crossing pressure, but it is still an 80 HP target that must be removed; once no plant is in front, it resumes movement by speed.

v_y(0)\in[-2,2],\qquad y_{t+1}=y_t+v_y,\qquad y\notin[y_{\min},y_{\max}]\Rightarrow v_y\leftarrow -v_y

The danger is high-speed lane crossing, not the durability of one target; defending only one straight line leaks balls.

Tactical reading

Stable handling controls three things at once: do not let the carrier safely trickle out balls, do not break VR without cleanup ready, and do not answer lane-crossing balls with only one-line interception.

Wall-nut, Enzymei, and similar front plants can make the carrier bite, suppressing ordinary release timing. But if damage breaks VR during that stall, the remaining queue can still flood out at once. Area damage and multi-lane projectile density are valuable because they cover that dump window.

Sweetbriar Rose depends on goggle state. While VR remains, the body does not resolve as an ordinary charmable line-of-sight target; after VR falls, the body returns to ordinary visibility checks, but balls already spawned do not disappear.

Layer first: VR is armor and eye protection, the body has ordinary durability, and hamster balls are independent 80 HP targets.
Manage the queue: with goggles present, balls release one at a time; when goggles break, the remaining count dumps.
Front timing: making the carrier bite pauses ordinary throws, but it does not cancel the VR-break dump.
Cover lanes: bouncing rewrites lane position, so dense fire or area damage is more stable than one-point blocking.

The front stalls the carrier, projectiles cover bounce paths, and area damage catches the VR dump.

Interactions & counters

Sweetbriar RoseCannot be hypnotized before the VR headset drops.
Area damageLarge hamster-ball releases are best handled by high fire rate or area damage.