Bosses are main guardian of most Zombie Mode maps that players will confront at various waves (usually the last one) and must be defeated in order to win the match.
Overview[]
The bosses have a large variety of attacks that the soldiers need to adapt in order to dodge them, at least attempt to when it comes to some of the more deadly ones. In many cases, the bosses will have at infinite supply of minions following them, which may require the luring tactics to allow direct focus on the boss.
The earlier bosses were reused in more than one map, while also sharing a spawn point with the zombies. Each of the subsequent maps that featured bosses introduced brand new ones, with their own spawn points and grand entrances, usually cinematic nowadays. In any cases, the soldiers usually have time to get into position to tackle them.
They have a large life-bar at the top of the screen, which allows better visibility on its health for every players. Stronger bosses can have multi-layered Life-bar, often with different color and a number indicator to tell how many HP boost they have left - starting from Boss Annihilator, bosses' HP are displayed in numbers directly in addition to their life bar. Soldiers should be looking for any potential weak-spots (usually the head), the weapons that deal the most damage possible in their arsenal, attempt a few melee hit with the adrenaline bar if available, etc.
Killing bosses in Challenge Mode will eventually grant exclusive boss crates with various boss themed loot and other miscellaneous stuff. In Defense Mode, they are usually just a bigger threat to the objective and won't have any crate for defeating them, although soldiers can still get their loots between the waves. Then, Trial Challenge Mode give crates for each defeated bosses, meaning Nightmare difficulty is the best value proposition.
Hard Difficulty[]
In Hard difficulty, players will face off an additional boss once Round 30 (Crater, Thunder Tower, Devastated City), Round 6 (Boss Arena) or Round 15 (Crater 2) ends - a "Special Round" notice will display while the screen fades out to black then fades in to show the new boss' entrance. Unlike previous rounds, players only have 10 minutes (7 in Boss Arena) to defeat the boss, and doing so under 3 minutes (Time Attack) will gain them an additional boss token.
Before Special Round starts, all players stand a chance to receive map-specific special items (FAL Camo, Laser Blaster, Puppet Device) (except in Crater 2) that will last for a specific amount of time to help softening the boss before engaging them. There is an Achievement that helps increasing the chance to receive special items as well.
Nightmare Difficulty[]
Starting from Trial Challenge Mode and newer ZM maps, the Nightmare difficulty becomes the hardest level, followed by Very Hard, Hard, Normal and Easy on older maps. This difficulty doesn't introduce new bosses, but rather make the boss more challenging with higher HP, more deadly attacks and, in Boss Annihilator, forbids HypoMdes usage and limited Revival Coins.
Bosses[]
| Maps | Easy | Normal | Hard |
|---|---|---|---|
| BL Camp / Valkyrie | Tyrant Mutant | Heraklops | --- |
| Biohazard / Venice | Tyrant Mutant | Chaos | --- |
| Crater | Titan | Heavy Titan | Crazy Titan + Titans |
| Dinner Theater | Destroyer Jr. | Destroyer | --- |
| Thunder Tower | Giant Predator | Giant Predator + Core | Geared Serpent |
| Devastated City | Destroyer Jr. | Atlas | Atlas + Blaze |
| Boss Arena | 4 Bosses | 5 Bosses | Big Bear |
| Crater 2 | Titan | Heavy Titan | Rampage + Infernal Titan |
| Maps | Hard/Expert/Nightmare |
|---|---|
| Titan Citadel | Demon Sentry, Dr. Haze and Cronus Titan |
| Void Rift | Toxic Crawler, Void Persona, Magna Engineer and Void Overlord |
| Icy Abyss | Abyss Scorpion, Abyss Destroyer, Abyss Dr. Haze and Freezing Guardian |
| Maps | Wave 5 | Wave 10 | Wave 15 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Broken Station | --- | --- | --- |
| Shipyard | --- | --- | Tripod |
| Battleship | Mother Crawler | Behemoth | Reactor Behemoth |
| Maps | First Area | Second Area | Final Area |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hell Tower | Glacial Beast | Machine Gargoyle | Persona |
| Fatal Canyon | --- | Longbill | Uranus |
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Dinner Theater did not receive a hard difficulty settings, even though both the previous and following maps did. It is also very unlikely that the first four maps would to get one at this point as they might be considered obsolete nowadays.
- The very first hard difficulty setting featured an upgraded version of the map's bosses, but subsequent hard mode bosses were unique and often unrelated to the other bosses in the map.
- The Tyrant Mutant appeared the most among all bosses, in four maps, followed by the Destroyer Jr. sub-boss in two different maps. Although a case could be made for Atlas and its counterpart Uranus, being featured in two maps as well.