Zombie file · Sands of Time ~ Urgency

Pine Zombie

Wearing a pine tree and moving tile by tile; calling it a plant among zombies is not entirely wrong.

Durabilityvaries by difficulty, about 30–40 peas

Speedfast while jumping in the day

Lore

Pine Zombie adapts to the environment by hiding inside a pine tree. During the day, it jumps diagonally, dodges attacks flexibly, and intentionally avoids Cherry Bomb and loading CD-shroom.

At night, it hides inside the tree shell. Even the strongest attacks deal only a little damage, and it also throws pine cones. Fighting it feels like trying to catch something slippery as it moves diagonally all over the field.

Mechanics

Role

Day-night dual mode · Evasion and damage reduction

Durability varies by difficulty, about 30–40 peas; fast while jumping in the day.
During the day, jumps diagonally, retreats, and avoids attacks, especially Cherry Bomb and loading CD-shroom.
At night, hides in the tree shell, greatly reducing damage taken, and throws pine cones.
During the day, blocking its movement with plants works well. At night, use high-frequency attacks or hit hard before it enters the shell.

Advanced mechanics

Pine Zombie's advanced mechanics are a day-night state machine. By day, it defends itself with tile position, adjacent-row selection, and jump evasion windows. By night, the same HP bar enters a tree shell that caps each hit and delays removal with pine-cone throws. Read it as total HP, shell cap, and exposed attack windows instead of a normal body with a critical reserve.

Durability, crack states, and no critical reserve

Pine Zombie is not a Basic Zombie body wearing a 270 HP layer. It uses one difficulty-scaling pine HP bar: base maximum HP is 600, and each difficulty tier adds 50. Across tiers 0–4, the maximum runs from 600 to 800. The main-entry durability shorthand refers to this one total bar, not to a separate ordinary body and critical reserve.

When HP falls below two thirds and one third, the wood switches into more damaged visual states. These are readable HP bands, not extra damage-reduction layers; by day, or while the attack is exposed, damage still comes off the same HP bar.

The night shell separately rewrites per-hit damage: each valid hit can remove at most 5 HP. The cap is applied after a hit connects but before HP is deducted, so burst damage is flattened inside the shell while frequent small hits keep more of their value. During the pine-cone throw or attack motion, the shell cap no longer protects it, making that the most important night burst window.

H_{\max}=600+50L,\quad L\in\{0,1,2,3,4\};\qquad H_{\text{crack}}\in\left\{\frac{2}{3}H_{\max},\frac{1}{3}H_{\max}\right\};\qquad D_{\text{shell}}=\min(D,5\text{ HP})

Pine Zombie is read as one difficulty-scaling HP bar. Cracks are visual thresholds; the night shell is what rewrites each hit.

Daytime diagonal jump and block window

By day, Pine Zombie's default defense is the jump state. While it is not biting or locked in another action, it reads the current tile, searches for a valid adjacent row, then combines forward/back movement with row change into one diagonal jump. During the jump or evade animation, ordinary damage does not directly spend HP; the real damage windows are before takeoff, after landing, and while a plant has forced it to stop.

If a blocking plant exists on the route ahead, Pine Zombie enters an attack instead of continuing to jump diagonally. This is why plant blocking is more stable in the day. The blocker is not meant to absorb everything; it converts continuous movement into a pause that the formation can focus.

Adjacent rows are not always legal. Top and bottom edges, unusable rows, and terrain conditions restrict the escape direction; when both sides are open, the choice can vary with the current jump offset and random selection.

S_{\text{day}}:\operatorname{idle}\to\operatorname{scan}\to\operatorname{jump}\to\operatorname{land},\qquad r'=r+\Delta r,\quad \Delta r\in\{-1,0,1\}

Daytime counterplay starts by shrinking its legal tiles. Once a plant blocks the route, the jump chain becomes a damage window.

Threat scan and position-locked burst

Cherry Bomb and loading CD-shroom are not ordinary obstacles. By day, Pine Zombie reads them as threat sources during its normal movement check; when a source falls into the nearby danger area, it prioritizes an evade jump and tries to land in a valid adjacent row.

That evasion is not absolute immunity. If Pine Zombie has already been forced into an attack, has no valid adjacent row, or is covered after landing, the explosion or load can still connect. Advanced play locks the route with a plant first and then spends burst damage, instead of dropping burst directly under an idle daytime Pine Zombie.

CD-shroom is mainly a timing question. A loaded or already committed position behaves more like a spatial check; a still-loading CD-shroom is what the daytime scan treats as a danger to jump away from.

\operatorname{Threat}=\{\operatorname{Cherry},\operatorname{CD}_{\text{loading}}\},\qquad \operatorname{Threat}\cap\operatorname{Near}\Rightarrow\operatorname{evade}(r\pm1)

Burst has to solve position first. An idle daytime Pine Zombie reads danger sources; a blocked or just-landed one is much easier to hit.

Night shell and pine-cone window

When night is active, Pine Zombie moves from walking into a hidden animation and then into the tree shell. The shell keeps the same HP bar but limits every hit to 5 HP; it does not have to be broken like an ordinary armor layer.

The shell does not make Pine Zombie inactive. It searches the forward channel of its current row for valid targets and throws pine cones from the head position. The throw itself is the exposed window: damage is no longer capped by the shell, so high damage or concentrated fire should be timed into that motion.

If there is no suitable target, or if night conditions end, Pine Zombie attempts to move again or stand up. A night formation cannot simply wait for exposure; it still needs frequency coverage, area cleanup, or early damage before the shell is entered.

S_{\text{night}}:\operatorname{hide}\to\operatorname{shell}\rightleftarrows\operatorname{throw},\qquad S_{\text{shell}}\Rightarrow D'=\min(D,5\text{ HP}),\qquad S_{\text{throw}}\Rightarrow D'=D

Durability reading: use total HP 600+50L; crack states are not a normal zombie critical reserve.
Day handling: restrict adjacent rows or the forward route with plants, then focus after pauses or landings.
Burst timing: Cherry Bomb and loading CD-shroom are easy to dodge when they threaten an idle daytime Pine Zombie directly.
Night handling: use high-frequency hits into the shell, then spend high damage around pine-cone throws or shell-entry transitions.

Night does not only make it tougher: the shell flattens each hit, while pine-cone throwing briefly opens a full-damage window.

Interactions & counters

Cherry BombDeliberately dodges Cherry Bomb during the day.
CD-shroomAlso avoids loading CD-shroom during the day.
Plant blockersBlocking its daytime movement path is effective.