Damage Types in Yet Another Zombie Survivors
Tags on weapons and abilities. Resistances only matter if the tag is honest.
Damage in Yet Another Zombie Survivors is not only a number. Weapons and abilities carry tags: Ice, Fire, Electric, Chemical, and ordinary physical hits. Status layers sit on top: Burn, chill or freeze, Electrified, poison or toxic fumes, Fear (Ranger’s 1.0 crowd control), and Bleeding. Achievements ask you to kill with a tag or to refuse tags entirely. This page is the tag desk. Gun ranking stays on weapon tiers. Pair recipes stay on synergy.
Hover the upgrade. If the card says Ice, the shot should interact with Ice resistances and Ice achievements. If the card lies, a hotfix already had to say so. Hotfix 1.0.0a (20 August 2026) made Ice Turret register as Ice so resistances and vulnerabilities finally matched the name. Before that patch, an “ice” turret that dealt generic damage wasted a restriction run and a Mechanic line. Update before you farm the Ice kill achievements.
Why tags exist
Restriction achievements punish mixing. A no-element run wants SWAT rifles and Tank rockets without grabbing Molotov, Ice Turret, or Electric Turret. An Ice-only run wants Huntress freezing arrows, Medic freezing flasks, Engineer ice toys, and the Glacier-style badge if you own it — then you still have to refuse Fire cards. The Steam 100 percent guides are homework lists; the in-game Zombiepedia is the live list. This wiki will not paste every counter.
Synergy cares about tags too. Ice Turret taunts after spawn in some Mechanic pairings. Fire Path plants mines next to Pyro. Transmitter rings deal Electric. Huntress Arrow Rain can drop toxic fumes. Ranger Fear does not replace chill or burn; it stacks with them. See synergy for the named procs and Ranger for Fear.
Status that is not a damage school
Fear is crowd control: space, not a DoT school. Bleeding is a damage-over-time status that hotfix 1.0.0c2 (28 August 2026) had to fix because the damage was not applying correctly. If a Steam thread from launch week says Bleeding is fake, they were right that week. They are wrong after 1.0.0c2. Marked is a synergy hook, not a fifth element; several abilities gain extra effects against Marked targets.
Environment still kills without a tag: Bio Lab decontamination, desert worm, trains. One Hit cares about those as much as bullets. Do not bring Glass Cannon into a tag exam that also has a red ring.
Practical loadouts
Learning tags: Isolated City Default with SWAT lead. Pick one school and finish that weapon line before you splash. Ice homework: Engineer or Mechanic in the squad, Ice Turret after 1.0.0a, refuse Fire. Fire homework: Pyro rescue, mines, Molotov, refuse Ice. Electric homework: Engineer turrets and Transmitter. Chemical or toxic: Huntress and Medic fumes, then read the card so you do not dip into Fire by habit.
Torments can strip evolutions or lock survivors, which also strips the tag you planned. Build for the modifier first: Torments. Boss Rush wants burst more than a slow Burn zone: Boss Rush.
What this page will not invent
We will not publish a fake spreadsheet of every enemy resistance. Hover the zombie. We will not claim Ice Turret was always Ice; 1.0.0a exists because it was not. We will not list a tenth damage school the client does not show. Pair with items when a badge adds a tag, and with achievements when the Steam overlay is the real checklist.
Frequently Asked Questions
Quick answers to the most common questions.
What damage types does the game use?
Ice, Fire, Electric, Chemical, and physical hits, plus statuses such as Fear, Burn, freeze, Electrified, and Bleeding.
Why did Ice Turret not count as Ice?
A launch bug. Hotfix 1.0.0a made Ice Turret register as Ice for resistances and achievements.
Is Fear a damage type?
No. Fear is Ranger's crowd-control status. It stacks with chill and burn instead of replacing them.
Is Bleeding working in 1.0?
After 1.0.0c2 it should apply. Launch-week reports that it did nothing were about that bug.