Zombie

A Zombie is a hostile mob that appears in two slightly different forms. The most common form closely resembles the player, and a rarer form that resembles a villager may appear. The rarer form is called a Zombie Villager, and 5% of all zombies spawned are of this type. If a zombie attacks a villager and kills them, there is a chance (100% in hard difficulty and 50% in normal) that the villager will become infected and transform into a zombie villager. This often occurs during sieges. These zombie villagers can be 'healed' by throwing a splash potion of weakness onto them and then giving them a golden apple. However, these cured villagers do not retain the same trades they had before they became infected.

Zombies spawn in dimly-lit areas, and will attack the player by slowly moving toward them, touching them and thereby inflicting damage. Like skeletons, zombies catch fire in sunlight.

Appearance
Zombies have Three different forms:
 * The original form of zombies have green skin, empty eye sockets, and identical clothing to the player and humans. They are 2 blocks tall, 1 block wide, and 0.24 blocks thick.
 * The rarer zombie villagers have bodies that are exactly like the bodies of normal zombies, but their heads are a reskinned villager's head.
 * On October 31st (Halloween), both types of Zombies have a chance of wearing a Pumpkin (22.5%) or a Jack 'o' Lantern (2.5%). If you want to see this without it actually being Halloween, simply change your computer's clock to October 31st, the year or time is irrelevant.
 * Zombies have a chance of turning a villager into a zombie if the difficulty is on normal, hard or hardcore gamemode. This can also happen with baby villagers, resulting in baby zombies.

Uses
When killed, zombies drop 0–2 pieces of Rotten Flesh. These can be eaten, but have an 80% chance of giving the player food poisoning. Rotten flesh can safely be used to heal and breed tamed wolves without any risk of the wolf being poisoned.

Zombies will rarely drop iron ingots, shovels, swords, carrots and potatoes. Zombies may be spawned wearing armor, and upon death may drop some of their armor. Zombies can spawn with and drop Chain Armor. Zombies, along with Skeletons and Zombie Pigmen can also spawn wearing a Pumpkin as a helmet during Halloween (October 31st). These items will only drop from zombies killed by the player.

Behavior


Zombies moan when wandering around aimlessly, but snarl and gurgle when attacking or injured. Zombies spawn in groups of 1-6 and will pursue the player on sight. Zombies will attempt to avoid obstacles, including sheer cliffs and lava, and would try to find the shortest path towards the player. Unlike skeletons, zombies do not try to avoid being hit, and continue to pursue the player even when being counter-attacked. Zombies can sometimes deal damage through a closed door, as shown on the picture to the right. This is because when they occupy the space of the door, the game considers their hits as reaching past the door into an adjacent block. The behavior of the zombies is demonstrated in this video.

At dawn (when the Sun is 15 degrees or more above the ground), zombies will catch fire and burn once exposed to direct sunlight. However, zombies will make some attempt to seek out shade from the sunlight, or enter bodies of water to protect themselves from burning up. Being in water negates the effects of direct sunlight, preventing them from burning. If they exit water, they will again be vulnerable to direct sunlight. Zombies standing under trees will prevent them from being burned. They will not burn if it is raining or if they have the ability to pick up items and are wearing headgear. They will leave trees and water if a Player comes near.

Zombies will attempt to break down wooden doors, continuously banging on them. This is only successful on Hard difficulty and wooden doors though; on other difficulties, the door will crack, but not break. Iron Doors are always safe from zombie attack and destruction. Zombies will attack villagers within 16 blocks of themselves, ignoring the hazard of direct sunlight. The villagers will attempt to flee from the zombies. Once a zombie has focused on a villager, the zombie will ignore any other villagers and the player until its target is killed or when the player attacks it.

Like most mobs, zombies will always float on water even if their target is below them.

Occasionally (1% of the time on easy, 7% on medium, 20% on hard), zombies (along with skeletons and zombie pigmen) will spawn with the ability to pick up items on the ground. Armor will automatically be equipped. If a zombie picks up a helmet it gains immunity to burning in sunlight. Items will instantly be held, which is not exclusive to weapons. This means these zombies can be found holding items they have come across, such as rotten flesh. This feature will cause zombie pigmen to drop their sword and skeletons to drop their bow.

Combat
Zombies do not pose much of a threat unless encountered in large groups or in a narrow space. A player on sufficiently high ground can repeatedly hit a zombie as it approaches, knocking it away each time it comes close. If the player is being pursued by several zombies, then it is necessary to knock each one away in turn so that no single zombie can close in. If a player is in a small room with several zombies and no escape route, it is advisable to use a blocking and slashing technique; this slowly kills the zombies while reducing the damage they inflict. Like Zombie Pigmen and skeletons, zombies have a chance of spawning equipped with armor, enchanted or not, wielding an iron sword or iron shovel. Zombies, along with Zombie Pigmen and skeletons, can be damaged by Splash Potions of Healing.

Zombie sieges can pose a significant threat to villagers and players in the village even though zombies are so easy to defeat.



Defensive measures
Zombies are vulnerable to daylight, lava, fire, and contact with cacti. Surface zombie populations can be controlled if the player regularly sleeps in a bed at dusk, since zombies will spawn at night if given the chance to do so.

Should a player be trapped on the surface outside at dusk, they can dig a single block wide pit 3 blocks deep, seal off the top with a block, and wait for morning light to burn away the undead before climbing out. However, this leaves the player vulnerable to creepers that may have spawned in the area due to their immunity to sunlight. Another method is jump up and place blocks below you until you build a tower high enough to keep you safe until sunrise. This way you have a 360 degree view as you come down, allowing you to see any creepers in the area (providing there is limited number of trees). The only problem with the tower method is that if the tower is not tall enough a skeleton may shoot you down.

The Player can also kill zombie mobs by using a bow from a distance so the player will not be vulnerable to attacks.

If the player places a door rotated so having one "closed" appears "open" and vice versa, zombies will not attempt to break them, simply standing in front of them if they wish to enter.

A popular method of protecting your shelter from zombies in Hard mode without wasting iron is to place a fence gate and wooden pressure plate in front of your door. That way, the zombie cannot get to the door to break it, and you stay protected from the arrows of Skeletons and the detection of other mobs as you would with a door in your shelter.

Logging off on a multiplayer server will either cause the zombies to despawn, or, if other players are close to the zombies, cause the zombies to burn in daylight after other players sleep.

Bugs

 * If a zombie walks off the end of running water off a ledge, it will disappear.
 * Zombies will stand still in daylight if it is raining. This bug makes them appear 'scared' to move as if they feared catching on fire, even though the rain would douse the flames. (may not be a bug, they could be 'scared' just in the case that the rain stops when they go outside).
 * In Pocket Edition, zombies can attack the player through doors if the player is standing directly in front of it and cannot move any further. This also means the player can attack the zombie the same way.
 * Zombies sometimes start spinning around in circles randomly.
 * If a zombie is trying to break down a door to kill NPC villagers or players, if you walk in front of the zombie which is trying to break down a door, they inflict damage on you and the zombie still isn't hostile to you if pursuing NPC villagers or other players.
 * A zombie can be harmed if in a building packed with NPC villagers and there's no room for a zombie to move around in a building.
 * In a room with slabs on both the floor and ceiling where there is still a space of 2 blocks, a zombie will stand still and will make no attempt to harm the player. This maybe useful for a mob trap because they could be pushed into a room by water which would allow the player to kill them safely.
 * In 1.3.1 doors cannot be broken due to a breaking bug. The door will stay broken if the zombie leaves or is killed. Breaking the broken door will create a new crack in the door and if removed, will create broken air.
 * (possible bug) In 1.3.1, zombies can break doors on Normal difficulty & SMP.
 * In snapshot 12w36a, zombies holding spawn eggs will show a bug whereas the game does not color the held item.
 * In snapshot 12w34b and newer, curing a zombie villager which has picked up your items completely deletes those items.

Trivia



 * Zombies can spawn with colored leather armor but this is very rare.
 * Because a zombie has identical dimensions to the player model, the zombie's skin can easily be used as a player skin and vice versa.
 * A Giant is an unused variation of a zombie that can only be spawned through third party programs or SMP commands. Its behavior is identical to the zombie's, but it has 50 hearts of health, deals 8.5 damage in a single hit, and is unable to damage the player unless they are right beneath it.
 * A Splash Potion of Fire Resistance can be used to prevent zombies from burning in direct sunlight.
 * A zombie hit by a Splash Potion of Harming will gain health, and when it is hit by a Splash Potion of Healing it will lose health. Zombies are unaffected by Splash Potions of Regeneration and Poison.
 * Zombie armor has no durability score, which means it can never 'wear out' the way player armor does. Two points of armor gives 8% damage reduction from most sources. This means the player would need to deal  physical damage to kill a zombie. When dropped from a height of 23 blocks, a zombie would have its health dropped to half a heart but still takes two unarmed hits to kill. As unarmed hits deal half a heart each hit, the first hit would be reduced by the armor and send the zombie's health down below half a heart, thus a second hit is required. There is no one-hit (unarmed) method to kill zombies in a falling trap.
 * In the Snapshot 12w04a, when spawning a Zombie in daylight with an egg on Soul Sand, it will not catch fire.
 * When in daylight while raining, a zombie might make a "hiss" sound, due to the fact that it will catch on fire and immediately be burned out.
 * Even if attacked by an arrow from a skeleton, the zombie will still be focused on attacking the player.
 * The rare Zombies can be spawned by spawners.
 * Zombies can climb ladders, but will only do so if their path finding runs them into one.
 * After snapshot 12w32a, zombie NBT tags can be edited to make them use any item in the game with any enchantment as a weapon and wear any armor with any enchantment.
 * Villager zombies have brown eyes, but normal villagers have green eyes.
 * When the villager Zombie was first introduced, the texture for their body depended on the body texture of the regular Zombie, located in the "zombie.png" image file. This made it impossible to give the villager Zombie and the regular Zombie distinct body texture when using a texture pack. However, in one of the following snapshot, Villager Zombies were given their own texture file called "zombie_villager.png" which fixed this annoyance.
 * Villager Zombies are thinner and slightly taller than villagers.
 * This is due to the fact that villager Zombies are modeled as Zombies with alternate heads instead of using the model of the villager. However, it may be intentional in order to avoid confusions.
 * Zombie villagers also have their noses sticking through a pumpkin if they are wearing one.
 * When walking in a space that is 2 blocks tall, the top of the Zombie Villager is higher than the ceiling, and goes through it with no effect.
 * Before 12w34a, when zombie villagers were added, the textures that could be used did not require modification to be a player skin.
 * The attribute applied to allow them to pick up items is called CanPickUpLoot.
 * On Halloween, zombies sometimes spawn with pumpkins or Jack 'o' Lanterns on their heads.
 * Since Zombies can pick up items, this can make them useful for preventing items from despawning, however the zombie itself will despawn if you walk out of a certain radius, which is approximately 32 blocks for allowed despawn and 128 blocks for instant despawn. A better method that still displays the item in question is to put them into item frames.
 * Any Zombie wearing a helmet, pumpkin, or head will not catch on fire.