Luck, Cash and Damage Tags Explained

Damage-type tags: the stat that decides runs

There are seven damage types — Kinetic, Electric, Explosive, Slashing, Fire, Ice and Chemical — each with its own million-damage achievement. But the type system is not just a label on your weapons. It is a counter, and it scales.

The clearest published example is Ice. A November 2024 patch set its threshold effect as:

Ice: 10+ effect: Chance is now 5% +1% for every tag over 10.

That structure — a floor at 10 tags, then linear growth per tag beyond it — is why concentrating on one damage type beats spreading across several. The achievement Going All In asks for a damage type tag of 30 or higher, which is the game signposting how far the stacking is meant to go.

Two achievements pull the opposite way and are worth knowing so you do not trip over them: The Power Is Yours! wants five different damage types dealt within one second, and Emotional Damage! wants a full Default run with no elemental damage at all.

Watch for type bugs when chasing these. Two were live during launch week: Ice Turret was not registering as Ice until 1.0.0a, and SWAT’s Ricochet: Shattering evolution was not dealing Slashing until 1.0.0c. If a million-damage achievement refused to track in the first week of 1.0, this is almost certainly why.

Cash and Specialization Points

The two between-run currencies. Both are earned at the end of a run, and both are permanently increased by Team Bond — the shared squad-wide bonus you build by completing missions, capped at 250 since patch 1.0.0c.

This is the answer to the two questions people search for most about the economy: what does money do and what is cash for. Cash and Specialization Points are what convert a finished run into permanent power, through the skill trees and permanent upgrades. Since Team Bond raises both, and Team Bond comes from missions, the story content and the economy are the same progression track — which is exactly what the studio meant by “Less grind, more lore!”

Free respecs exist: the achievement Forget It is awarded for resetting points spent into any skill tree, and its description says so outright — “Free respecs!” You are not locked into a bad build.

Luck

Luck feeds the roll-based systems. The published references are indirect but consistent:

• Ban Hammer was changed in March 2025 to “additionally grant +10 Luck stat”
• Ranger is described in the 1.0 announcement as boosting “all Survivors’ Critical and Luck stats”

The studio has never published the formula behind Luck — what it weights, or how it curves. This page is not going to give you one. What is safe to say: it is a squad-wide value Ranger can raise for everyone, which is a large part of why she ranks where she does on the tier list.

Survival Level and team level

Two different progressions with confusingly similar names:

Survival Level is the one that gates content: Ranger unlocks at 175. It is the closest thing the game has to an account level, and it is what people mean when they search for the max level — there is no published cap, but the highest achievement sits at 400.

One quality-of-life change from 1.0 that affects levelling directly: XP gems now keep dropping past their total limit, with older gems’ values combining into nearby ones. No XP is lost when the cap is hit.

Military Training

A separate point pool, referenced repeatedly in item patch notes. Skip Rope grants a Military Training point every 5 points collected, and Schrödinger’s Cat upgrades locked Military Training cards. The full system has never been documented in a patch note, so treat any detailed MT guide with suspicion unless it cites the in-game Zombiepedia.

Lockdown, banish and reroll

Three level-up screen options, confirmed by the achievement Pro Gamer Move: “Use lockdown, banish, and reroll options on the same selection screen.” Lockdown holds an option across rerolls, banish removes it from the pool, reroll redraws.

Related to this is Item Pool Customization, added during Early Access, which lets you remove items from your runs entirely before you start. The achievement I Don’t Want To Play With You Anymore wants you to banish 20% of the item pool — a real build tool, not a joke: cutting dead items raises the odds of drawing the ones your build needs.

Movement Speed

One documented target: I Am Speed wants Movement Speed at 300. Items feed it — Congratulation Letter grants +50% for five seconds after a level-up, and MedKit costs you 50% for five seconds when used, which is the trade for its instant 25% heal.