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[Szkeptik]

Or did I just get lucky? I had a rookie squad with iron weapons and some parts of iron armor and shields, and they absolutely destoryed an army of 30+ zombies with only 2 dwarves lost. Some of my guys just decapitated 5-6 zombies with a single swing each. I remember earlier zombies used to be almost indestructible...

[PatrikLundell]

The latest nerf was made after 0.40.24 (check the release notes if you want to know the exact release). They're no longer extremely fast, they don't know how to dodge (having a rotten brain can do that), etc. A somewhat earlier change required grasp ability for something to be raised (very abstract grasp ability: biting is considered grasp, and anything that comes from the head [like hair or skin] can be raised and is almost or completely indestructible in combat [dorfs die of dehydration in droves when fighting those]).
Destroying the head will bring an undead down (but reanimated arms not attacked to the part containing the head remain unaffected by that).

[Shonai_Dweller]

Announced 27th December 2015.
Released 17th January 2016

A zombie nerf has arrived. The animated critters no longer block, dodge, parry, wrestle or sprint, and they do charging attacks whenever possible. Zombies no longer receive positive defense adjustments for body part types, and they don't seek or prevent combat opportunities. Their strength bonus has been reduced. Severing all non-smashed heads on a zombie kills it (smashing already worked), and severing or smashing any working grasp on a headless zombie kills it. Zombies can still be reanimated if they have a working grasp. So it's a bit confusing there with the overall grasp situation on headless zombies (it's better to target their arms than their bodies if you can't smash them entirely), and they still have some undue benefits they share with wild animals (you should be able to strike or stop many unarmed attacks with weapons), but it is much better than it was. I still sometimes get those invincible unsmashable zombie heads. I'll try to figure that out.

In an arena test, my competent sword+shield human was able to defeat ten zombies at once, receiving only minor injuries. It took some judicious selections, and some dodging to other squares, but it isn't hard if you stay away from multiple opponents. I also set six sword humans against twenty zombies, and they won without any losing anybody. On the other hand, I set ten unarmed unskilled humans against ten zombies, and the zombies won without losses. That sounds about right to me -- the zombies have many advantages in unarmed combat. So you'll have to keep your squishy civilians safe. Incidentally, one unarmed unskilled elephant person was able to kill ten human zombies without any trouble, since they have smashing power. Then an elephant person zombie was able to kill the elephant person...

I fixed sparring as well. The cautiousness personality check got flipped around with the new facets, which wouldn't normally be a problem (just a strike frequency shift), but the new drunken dwarves were 100 percent not-cautious (which made them all 100 percent cautious in the flipped check). The roll failed every time for them, so drunken sparring partners just sat there without throwing shots. That's normally reserved for super rare pathologically deliberate dwarves absolutely on one end of the curve, and that's not even much of an issue if their partner isn't the same way.