Zombie Not Working? — Work Mastery, Tools & Skill Points

Quick answer: A zombie does nothing until it has Work Mastery, and mastery only rises by equipping the zombie with the matching tool — a hammer for simple items, an axe for wood. Match the tool to the job. Skill points earned from work cap out at the corpse's red skull count (up to 5).

Why your zombie sits idle

1. Work Mastery is 0 — the most common cause. Placing it at a station does nothing until mastery exists.
2. Wrong or missing tool — the tool is what qualifies the zombie for a station; swapping tools changes which jobs it can take.
3. The station itself is blocked — it's waiting on materials or its output isn't being cleared. This is why guides pair a supplier zombie with a crafting zombie.

How to fix it

1. Equip the zombie with the tool matching the job (hammer → simple items, axe → planks/wood).
2. Let it work — skill points grow from the work it performs.
3. Spend points in the zombie's perk table on Perks or Character skills.
4. Check the station's inputs and outputs before assuming a bug.

Zombie skill points & skulls

• Skill cap = the corpse's red skull count: a 5-red-skull zombie can hold up to 5 points.
• Heads-up for veterans of the first game: in GK2, red skulls are the good ones for zombies (growth, perk slots), while white skulls feed graveyard quality via decorations — the reverse of GK1. (One guide disputes that skulls affect zombie efficiency at all; the majority of sources support the cap.)
• Demo limit: zombies could not work as gardener or lumberjack — there was no supplier station for the garden. TBD: whether the retail build adds those stations.

How to get zombies

1. First two, free: investigate the hatch in your house, clear the rubble, free the Plague Doctor in the tower. Craft a Science Kit at the Writing Desk, study blood and water at the Study Table, combine them at Laboratory 1 into Dream Dust, hand it over.
2. Extra zombies: buy Reanimation Liquid (30 red / 40 green / 50 blue, Anatomy and Alchemy tab — an earlier "30 red / 10 green / 10 blue" circulated pre-launch and is wrong), build a Resurrection Table in the hidden chamber left of the Morgue, bring a corpse with a collar + Reanimation Liquid, and resurrect on Snake Day during lightning. Max 3 extra in the demo, one per week.

Known issue — supplier station wipes skill points

Placing a zombie at the Zombie Supplier Station could wipe all its unspent tech points (reported on demo v1.002.4 with 21 green and 151 red points, permanently — unlocked perks survive). No developer reply at the time; a third-party Nexus mod patches it. Spend points before assigning as a precaution.

TBD: whether the retail build fixes this. No post-launch source confirms a patch either way.

Also: discarding a zombie destroys its collar — which could not be crafted in the demo — so the practical route is rebuilding it at the autopsy table (swap a skull for a red-skull skin).

Related

Technology guide · Walkthrough · Combat & the zombie army · First grave troubleshooting

Sources: post-launch guides (PowerUpGaming), Steam discussion threads, ItemLevel, GamesHorizon, TheGamesWatch and ProdigyGamers. Zombie mechanics are community-verified; the supplier-station bug's retail status is marked TBD.