Knowing how to unlock all characters in Yet Another Zombie Survivors doesn’t take much guesswork, but you may want a cheat sheet by your side as you play. The Early Access roguelike from Awesome Games Studio is a lot like the incredibly popular Vampire Survivors in more than gameplay. Aside from slaying hordes of enemies, you’ll also get more classes (called Leaders here) just by playing the game. Each Leader has specific weapons and Skills that alter gameplay and strategy, and having the right team composition could help you survive until dawn.
How to Unlock All Characters in Yet Another Zombie Survivors
Here’s how to unlock all characters in Yet Another Zombie Survivors:
- SWAT, Tank, and Engineer: Available at the start of the game.
- Huntress: Survive 15 minutes in any level on a single run.
- Ghost: Kill 100 zombie bosses (larger enemies with health bars).
- Medic: Collect 200 health packs (red hearts dropped in levels).
While those are the only available classes as of Early Access 0.2.1, there are three unknown leaders yet to be released. We don’t know anything about them just yet, but more information on how to unlock them will be released as the game makes its way through development.
Zombie Bosses
Zombie bosses begin to show up around the seven-minute mark of a run, spawning more and more as you get closer to the 20-minute time limit in Default mode. They appear around 2 minutes in Endless mode, but the Danger Level escalates so fast that I don’t recommend farming them in Endless until you’ve increased your Team Level with more upgrades. Make sure to focus on DPS for bosses, since most are mobile and AoE abilities aren’t efficient on them.
Health Packs
Additionally, health packs, which look like red hearts, are dropped by enemies randomly and remain scarce through each run. You can’t pick them up if you have full health, and they disappear after a time. Selecting a health-related Power Up doesn’t count toward the count needed to unlock the Medic Leader. To put it in perspective, I had only picked up 56 of them in 3.8 hours of play.
Which Character to Unlock First in Yet Another Zombie Survivors
In my opinion, the first character you should unlock in Yet Another Zombie Survivors is the Huntress. Not only is surviving 15 minutes the “easiest” Leader challenge to accomplish once you start unlocking Perks, but the Huntress is also incredibly powerful as a support character. I beat the Isolated City map for the first time, seeing a new dawn and getting the associated achievement, on my first run with the Huntress as support to my SWAT Leader.
Her base skill as a Leader increases Critical Chance by 2.5%, while her support stat increases Crit by 1.25%. Either way, she’s able to one-shot or two-shot zombies in the early waves. I admit she’s a little slow as a Leader early on and not the best choice in that role, but she shines as support.
Focusing on her upgrades as you gain experience can lead her to Multishot, Eagle Eye, and Arrow Rain. Pair these with the Engineer’s Tesla Gun, Electrocution, and Electric Turret, and you’ll be wasting zombies right and left while melting bosses all the way through Wave 3. That’s especially true if you’ve invested in the Role Player skill, which increases all XP gains.
The next character you’re likely to unlock is Ghost, since you’ll be dealing so much damage to bosses with the right Power Up pulls and Skill Upgrades. After The Huntress, I had the easiest time unlocking Ghost with SWAT as my main. Still it took me almost four hours to unlock Ghost. Interestingly, I had the hardest time unlocking the Medic, since a.) health packs are so rare and b.) since SWAT/Engineeer/Huntress is such a devastating combo.
That’s how to unlock all characters in Yet Another Zombie Survivors, as well as which Leader to unlock first.
