Zombie

Zombies are undead hostile mobs.

Spawning
Zombies spawn in dark areas with light level of 7 or less. Zombies have a 5% chance to spawn as a zombie villager and a 5% chance to spawn as a baby zombie. Baby zombies have an additional 5% chance of spawning as a chicken jockey.

Monster spawners
Zombie spawners have a 50% chance to spawn inside dungeons.

Zombie Villagers
Zombie Villagers comprise 5% of all spawned Zombies. They generally behave as ordinary Zombies, but their character model's head and face is reminiscent of that of a villager, but shaded with a darker green hue.

Zombie Villagers can result from Zombie attacks on ordinary villagers. If any type of Zombie kills a Villager, there is a chance that the villager will transform into a Zombie Villager (100% in hard difficulty, 50% in normal, 0% in easy).

Zombie Villagers can be cured by throwing a Splash Potion of Weakness at them, then feeding them a Golden Apple by it on the Zombie Villager. A loud hissing sound will be heard if successful, and the Zombie Villager will begin to shudder. The transformation will take 2–5 minutes, during which time the Zombie Villager will still attack and must be shielded from other attacks and sun damage. While the zombie is being cured, it will have the Strength I effect in normal difficulty, or Strength II in hard difficulty, making it more important to isolate the zombie.


 * Cured Villagers do not retain the trades they had before they became infected.
 * If the Zombie Villager is wearing any Armor or wielding Tools or Weapons, those items disappear when the villager is cured.
 * During the curing process, keep the Zombie Villager away from any other zombies, because the other zombies will stop the curing process.
 * Conversion can be sped up by around 4% by surrounding the zombie villager with iron bars and/or bed blocks within a 9x9x9 cube centered on the zombie villager.

A Zombie Villager cannot be cured by switching from Easy, Normal or Hard difficulty to Peaceful. They will just disappear, like all other monsters when switched to Peaceful.

Baby Zombies
Baby Zombies make up 5% of zombie spawns. They are the same as regular Zombies, with the following oddities:
 * They do not burn in sunlight.
 * They are faster than the normal zombie.
 * The noises they make are higher-pitched than normal zombies' voices.
 * They can ride chickens.
 * They grow up if cured.
 * When they wear armor it shrinks to fit their body size.
 * If they wear a head, jack o'lantern, or pumpkin, it will float above their head.
 * They are able to climb ladders.
 * They are able to fit through 1x1 gaps.

Baby Zombie Villagers are spawned when a zombie kills a Baby Villager. The chance of infection is the same as Zombie Villagers. Baby Zombie Villagers also spawn naturally, but the combined chance (5% villagers * 5% babies) is very low at 0.25% of all newly spawned Zombies.

Armed Zombies
Along with Skeletons, some spawned Zombies can pick up dropped items from the ground. These Zombies will automatically hold any item they come across, but if those items happen to be armor, weapons, or tools, the Zombie will wear them. Some of these Zombies spawn already sporting such items, and those items may also be enchanted. The chances of that event are listed below and are taken from the game's code. Zombie villagers can spawn naturally with armor on.

If a zombie does spawn with armor, it will always include a helmet, and a 10% to 25% chance of each other piece (depending only on difficulty). The chances of it being of a particular quality are:

Most Zombie armor has no durability score, which means it cannot "wear out" the way player armor does. Helmets on Zombies that usually wear away while on a player (meaning not a block) can wear away and break on a Zombie if the zombie is exposed to daylight and the Zombie starts burning like usual. Two points of armor give 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.

If any Zombie has a sword in their hand, and a sword of a better type or with better enchantments is given, they will drop the existing sword and start using the better one. Zombies capable of taking items will also take mob heads, which they will wear, and will become their new head. Any zombie that spawns with equipment (picking up items doesn't count) will give extra experience: 1-3 points per item.

Drops
When killed, Zombies drop 0–2 pieces of Rotten Flesh.

Zombies will rarely drop iron ingots, carrots and potatoes. If a Zombie spawns with a sword, shovel or some armor there is a small chance of it dropping one or more of its items. This is one of two ways to get the uncraftable chain armor in Survival mode, the other being trading with an armorer villager. A zombie will drop its head when it is killed by a charged creeper's explosion.

Behavior


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 will 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 attacked. Zombies can sometimes deal damage through a closed door, as shown on the picture to the right. Like most mobs, Zombies will always float on water, even if their target is below them.

At dawn, generally when the sun is 15 degrees or more above the ground (that is, when the moon can no longer be seen), most Zombies will catch fire and burn once exposed to direct sunlight. However, Zombies with head armor are immune to sunlight, but the armor piece will take damage. They may make some attempt to seek out shade during this time, or enter bodies of water to protect themselves from burning up. Being in water, rain, or shade negates the effects of direct sunlight, preventing them from burning. Zombies will exit protective areas to chase a close player or Villager, whereupon they will again be vulnerable to burning. Zombies wearing headgear will also be protected from burning, and Baby Zombies do not burn. If they attack a player or mob while burning, they will set their victim on fire.

As zombies are undead mobs, they are harmed by potions of healing and healed by potions of harming. They are also immune to potions of regeneration and potions of poison.

Attacking Villagers
Zombies will attack Villagers within 42 blocks. Once a Zombie has focused on a Villager, the Zombie will ignore any other Villagers, and the player, until its target is dead or the player attacks.

Zombies will bang on closed wooden doors, and can succeed in breaking them down in Hard difficulty. In other difficulties, the door will crack, but not break. Iron Doors are always safe. In Minecraft Pocket Edition, Zombies cannot break down wooden doors at all. In the newest updates, not all Zombies will break down doors. Only Zombies with a special tag can do this; and since the chance of this happening is low, only 5% will one see a Zombie attack a door.

If a Zombie is attacking a villager and is hurt by another mob, the Zombie will then retaliate and attack the offending mob.

Reinforcements
On Hard difficulty, Zombies can call other Zombies in the area to "help", and in a matter of seconds, more Zombies will target the player. When a Zombie is damaged by another entity it will attempt to spawn one reinforcement Zombie nearby (within an 80x80x80 box centered on the attacked Zombie). Both the damaged Zombie and the new Zombie will have a reduced chance of summoning another reinforcement, so they cannot cause an infinite number of Zombies to spawn, but they can multiply significantly.

Damaged Zombies will also call all other nearby Zombies in the area to attack, regardless of difficulty, such as Zombie Pigmen.

These effects can be combatted by killing the Zombie in as few hits as possible, by using environmental damage such as falls or lava, or by ignoring them.

Console Edition
In Console Edition, most of the Zombie and villager reactions are present, with Zombie sieges occasionally happening. Zombies are also able to convert villagers to their zombie form. However, the special breaking down door tag is not present and as such all Zombies can punch doors.

Pocket Edition
Zombies do not drop rotten flesh, instead they drop between 0-2 feathers and/or more rarely a potato/carrot. As of 0.9.0 with the addition of villagers, Zombies are attracted to villagers, but can´t break down doors. Zombies unlike their counterparts on the PC version of Minecraft can not pick up armor or any kind of item. They do not spawn with armor or tools either.

Trivia



 * Both the Zombie and the Player skins share the same model, thus the Zombie skin can be used as the player's skin and vice versa.
 * Zombies do have an additional 32 pixels of white space below the skin though, thus using a regular player skin for the zombie texture results in the zombie's face being on the back of its legs.
 * This is not true as of 14w03a. The zombies still use the old skin system.
 * When in daylight while raining, a zombie might make burning sounds due to it catching on fire from the sunlight and immediately being extinguished by the rain.
 * Zombies can climb ladders, but will only do so if their path finding runs them into one.
 * Zombies can frighten villagers from behind walls of glass. Villagers will even run into a fire to "escape" from zombies behind glass.
 * Zombies attack range is a bit higher in the Console Edition than the PC version hence making it harder to kill in the console edition.
 * If a zombie spawns wearing multiple pieces of armor, the armor will never be mismatched (i.e. all pieces will be made of the same material); the same applies for skeletons.
 * The hat part of zombie texture can be used for zombie villagers, but it will be cubic instead of a parallelepiped.
 * Zombies will not catch fire if they are caught in cobwebs.
 * A Zombie holding an item given by a player will not despawn when left alone.
 * If you are using a texture/resource pack, you can see that, as with baby zombie pigmen, baby zombies are also missing their hat layer.
 * Killing a Baby Zombie will not give the player the "Monster Hunter" achievement.
 * Currently, zombies have the most subtypes of all the mobs:
 * This is because zombies can be zombie villagers, baby zombies, armed, armored, or any combination of the above.
 * Baby zombies can also rarely be chicken jockeys.
 * Zombie villagers will drop normal zombie heads when killed by a charged creeper.