Patient Zero

Stats

Enemy Type

boss

First Wave

30 ---- Originally

Flying

No, Yes (Stomp)

Health

100,000

Hidden

No

Lead

No

Top speed

Very Slow (1)

Cash

4,000 every 2.5% health (Intermediate)

Description

Patient Zero is the final boss of Intermediate mode. It also appears in The Takeover Event. It has a high amount of health but moves quite slowly. It has multiple immunities, making it immune to being frozen, stunned by stunning towers, slowed down by the Toxic Gunner, confused by the Jester, set on fire by towers like the Pyromancer, knocked back, slowed down by the DJ Booth, damaged by the Nuke's fallout damage or have its defense dropped, though some of these are only applied in Intermediate mode. Patient Zero has multiple abilities: The first ability, Stomp, makes it jump into the air, temporarily becoming a Flying enemy, and hit the ground with its fist while landing, stunning towers for 5 seconds and dealing 400 damage to units in a wide range. The second ability is Enemy Spawn, where it spawns five enemies. These can be the Living Experiment, Boomer, Ghoul or Speedy Boss. The third ability is Flask, where it throws multiple blue potions on the path, that heal any enemy, including itself, by 10 health every 0.1 seconds. Its fourth ability, Toxic, makes it fire out multiple toxic orbs that apply a 60% Firerate Debuff (150% increase) on towers for 10-15 seconds. As units cannot have their firerate slowed down, they receive 400 damage for each orb they got hit by instead. Its fifth and final ability is Index Case, which is rage mode.

Appearance

Patient Zero is a large humanoid with a waist, lower arms and lower legs in its rig. It has a light purple skin color, a white lab coat with a purple hexagon pattern accent and collar and a glowing green core at the middle of its chest, torn navy blue pants and grey boots. Its right hand is bionic, with glowing green wires attached and a large sickly purple and light blue arm with three fingers and a blaster in the palm of its hand. Its legs are whitish purple. It has glowing green eyes, a large grin, white hair and glowing green goggles on its forehead. These goggles will flip down when it performs the Toxic ability. It also has a yellow nametag, which displays its old, more human appearance. It also wears a large, high-tech metal backpack. When the Index Case ability activates, it will gain glowing red veins on its right forearm, legs and head, as well as red particles at the ends of its limbs. The ability activation also makes Patient Zero shake the screen whenever it takes a step. Patient Zero has a death animation, where it will flex its right arm, quickly spin around and then fall forward. It also plays a growling sound with a thump when it hits the floor during the death animation.

Strategy

Towers with decent DPS, like the Militant, Brawler, Ace Pilot or Military Base can be used to deal with it, though proper late-game towers like the Crook Boss, Hunter or Minigunner can also be used. Support towers like the Commander, Medic and DJ Booth can be useful at boosting the statistics of these towers. The Commander can be useful at partially mitigating the Firerate Debuff applied by Patient Zero. The Medic can be used to shield towers from its debuffs, though it cannot protect them from the Firerate Debuff it applies. Due to its high number of immunities, most stalling towers are ineffective against it. The only towers capable of slowing down Patient Zero are stunning towers like the Electroshocker and Trapper, though due to its Stun Immunity they will only be able to slow it down instead of stunning it.

Patch history

Patient Zero, and by extension, Intermediate mode, were originally teased through a silhouette in September of 2023 in an update forecast, being stated to release by early November of 2023. Prior to the 18th of May 2024, Patient Zero's grin was the from the Roblox catalog. This made it the first enemy to use dynamic heads. The current smile it uses appeared on all renders and promotional material at the time, however. Patient Zero is the first enemy that can target units using abilities. Patient Zero appears to be a German speaker (and possibly of German origin) according to the Intermediate mode trailer. Patient Zero said one line in German that being "Jetzt ist es an mir, die Menschheit auszulöschen!". Said line translates to "Now it's my turn to wipe out humanity!". This is the first time a non-event enemy is seen speaking. This is the first time someone is seen speaking a language other than English in promotional videos and trailers. Patient Zero's name comes from the noun "patient zero", used to identify the first known individual to carry a disease on an outbreak. Patient Zero is the second enemy to shake the screen without the use on ability, with the first being the Dummy Boss, which shakes the screen whenever one of its fists makes contact with the ground.