Zombie Animals

The wildlife turned. Green eyed infected animals hunt your players, and the infection spreads by bite.

Zombie Animals turns ordinary Rust wildlife into an infected threat. Infected animals lose all fear, hunt players, wildlife and human NPCs alike, and are marked by glowing eyes you can spot across a field. Get bitten and you carry the infection yourself, bleeding health until you find a cure, spreading it to anyone who stands too close, and rising as a zombie if it kills you.

Features

Infected wildlife

• A configurable share of naturally spawned animals are already infected
• Infected animals never flee, never lose interest, and chase far beyond vanilla ranges
• They hunt players, uninfected wildlife and human NPCs, and ignore each other and other undead
• Wounding another animal passes the infection on, so an outbreak grows on its own
• Per species control of health, damage, speed, detection range, chase range and attack range

Glowing eyes

• Every infected animal gets glowing green eyes, hand placed per species so they sit in the real eye sockets
• Alphas glow red instead
• Just eyes in the dark

Alpha variants

• A rare alpha rolls on each infection, tougher, harder hitting and faster
• Fully configurable chance and multipliers

Night aggression

• After dark, infected animals move faster and notice you from further away
• Driven by the in game clock, with configurable hours and multipliers

Player infection

• Bites carry a configurable chance to infect the player
• Infected players lose health on a timer and hear themselves breathing like the dead
• Standing near an infected player long enough infects you too
• A status indicator shows infected players their condition
• Cure items and their success chances are configurable, medical syringes, large medkits and anti rad pills by default

Reanimation

• Infected players who die rise as a zombie where they fell, and their loot bag still drops normally
• Scientists and other human NPCs killed by infected animals rise too

The Little Details

• Infected animals yield spoiled meat when harvested
• Zombie breathing, visible breath and a death rattle, all range gated so quiet areas stay quiet
• Optional chat announcement when an infected animal kills a player

Commands

| /zaspawn <species> [alpha] | Spawns an infected animal where you are looking |
| zombieanimals.cureplayer <steamid or name> | Console | Server console | Cures a player's infection |

Permissions

zombieanimals.admin grants access to the spawn command

Requirements

SimpleStatus is required: https://codefling.com/plugins/simple-status
The plugin will refuse to load without it and tell you so in the console.

Supported species

Chicken, boar, stag, bear and polar bear.

Rust's newer predators (wolf, tiger, panther and crocodile) run on a different AI system with no server side targeting. Only the five species above are supported.

Configuration

Everything that affects gameplay is configurable: spawn chance, the cap on concurrent infected animals, spread chance, per species stats, alpha odds and multipliers, night hours and multipliers, bite chance, contagion range and exposure time, damage per tick, reanimation delay, cure items and their chances, effect toggles and effect range.