The Typing of the Dead

Welcome to the Typing of the Dead (TotD) SDA Strategy Wiki. It is designed to facilitate new runners who wish to gain the required level of understanding about the game mechanics and routes considered optimal without turning into a full-fledged game wiki, but this will involve disassembling the game a bit. This wiki is currently under heavy construction work and does NOT provide you with all the existing knowledge on the game. Some of the information is also not fully confirmed. If you wish to help improve the page, bring it up on the discussion page first for coordination. Also do this if you'd like to discuss the abbreviations and naming conventions, some of which are somewhat arbitrary.

The construction of this page is on a temporary hiatus until another project is finished.

Here are a few links to get you started.

A lot more can be added to this page. Approaching some kind of expertise, I will try to leave sections empty that others can easily fill in. Many things just need to be copied from the forum thread and expressed concisely. -LotBlind

General Information

Game Controls

pause game - [Pause Break]
exit game - [Alt+F4]
exit drill or tutorial - [Alt+F3]
reset game - [Alt+F2]

Abbreviations and Naming Conventions (as per LotBlind - this list may evolve)

TotD - The Typing of the Dead
HotD2 - The House of the Dead 2 (which TotD is built on)
AM/OM - Arcade Mode/Original Mode
Ch. 1-6 - Chapter 1-6
ZR - Zombie Rank, i.e. which category of word length a particular zombie's word belongs to. Somewhat connected with zombie type.
MinR - Minimum rank for a zombie type.
MaxR - Maximum rank for a zombie type.
WR - Word Rank, i.e. the "ranking" the player gets for each typed word, from A's to E's. Could also be called "Grade".
DL - Difficulty Level, manifests in zombie ranks and/or the time the player is given to type a word.
Life - One of the "braziers" that you have 3-5 of at the start.
Cont NOT USED? - A "continue", which is the same as in many arcade games.
Tranq NOT USED?- A zombie tranquilizer, an item that lowers DL.
A1 - "A" followed by a number refers to an "Attack", also could be called "Wave" or something else. Eventually the whole game might be mapped out with the different pathways and this is an envisioned method of referring to zombie attacks, which are mostly neatly separated by camera movements and cutscenes. So we could have Ch. 1 A4 = the two Davids right before talking to G in chapter 1. Alternatively or in addition the different zombies could be separated by zombie numberings based on which one appears first/leftmost/topmost.
CS/SCS - Cutscene/Skippable Cutscene
zombie - A no-brainer
civilian - sometimes called "hostage"

Crates, barrels, aos. containers are collectively known as "crates".

BPM is a common abbreviation for Beats per Minute. SPL = Seconds per Letter might also get used.

The word "word" is used, for simplicity, for the zombie "typable", i.e. abbreviation, word, phrase or sentence regardless of how long or short it is. Thus the longest words in the game are around 34 characters discounting Strength's.

Zombie Names

The zombie names (almost all of them) are canonical. However, there may be a case for simplifying the taxonomy a bit by combining certain zombie-types into a supertype if their behaviour is similar. Thumbnails will be included later. For now, look at the HotD2 wiki page for a more verbose description.

This needs a table with spaces for the canonical name, possibly supertype name, thumbnails, and a further description of traits (if deemed necessary). Could be useful to add information about the zombie type's minR and maxR.

There are zombie types with multiple variants with a different appearance from which the game chooses at random. Behaviour is likely to be the same. Apparently certain details were added to the game as part of the humorous treatment.

Certain zombies may be paired in ways that allow either to be spawned in certain attacks, but this may only concern the missions.

David - shirtless with blue jeans, attacks with teeth

Andrew - like David, but wears shorts and shirt, attacks with arms

Johnny - orange hair, plaid shirt, two axes held high, may throw them Johnny B - unofficial name, tan shirt, gray receded hair, wields and throws items other than axes

Cecil - throws two axes usually from distances, e.g. window

Max - Two chainsaws

Bob - Beer belly, kick attack, throws barrels

Ebitan - rotting, charges up from underwater, three variants?: green, black (stronger?), brown (sudden charge, weak)

Kageo - "Mummy", dark areas, punch attack, pale colour Kageo J - like Kageo, dark green, one eyeball Ken - iron mask, claw-gloves, dark areas

Randy - small, masked, wall-ceiling-climing, leap-scratch attack

Mickey - small, bandaged face, red pants (like Mickey Mouse), knives/other random items which it may throw, attacks from above, moves around a lot

Ryan (are there Ryans in TotD? maybe Ch.4) - face bandaged, brown-red vest, throws two golden blades?

Keith - Alligator, underground, tail attack

Gregory - Giant sword

Ricky - Muscular, half-exposed brain, "chauffeur" Patrick - Muscular, military style clothing

Peter - has the parasite Buyo

Zak - small, metallic skin, skully mask, clawed gauntlets, hiding in crawlspaces

Lance - Ch. 5 and 6, small, energy blades, teleport

Franklin - Ch. 6, no-clipping, punch Eric - Ch. 6, pulse sabers for hands

Murrer - annelid Moowl - owl, in singles Devilon - bat, in flocks Bouere - frog Mofish - piranha Buyo - Clock Tower (Ch. 2), Peter parasite Cocoon - Clock Tower (Ch. 2), eggsack? dangle off the mechanism

Unknown 1 - Slate coloured face, gray hair, overall more formal attire, wields fans, spatulas(!), and other kitchen utensils. I'm suspecting it's a variation of Johnny though, because of the way it shields its face with those items. Also it throws said items at you just like Johnny. Should we call it a Johnny B then? Johnny B Good?

Some suggestions for zombie supertype names:
- Small (the ones that take three hits) = Randy, Mickey, Zak, Lance
- Ranged (anything that sometimes throws something at you)= Johnny, Cecil, Bob, Mickey, Ryan, Peter (technically just spawns a Murrer)
- Quick/QTE = Murrer, Moowl, Devilon, Bouere, Mofish, Buyo, Cocoon
- Normal (only melee attack, does nothing special, could also include types that have both ranged and melee attacks) = David, Andrew, Max, Ebitan, Kageo [J], Ken, Keith, Gregory, Ricky, Patrick, Franklin, Eric, Unknown 1

Which Boss is Which?

Hierophant A - Bridge Hierophant B - Jetty Tower A - Water Tower B - Sand Strength A - Redder colours, first a long stretch, then camera pans left at the turn. Strength B - Bluer colours, camera pans right at the turn.

[Possible] Run Categories

Any% - Finish the game as quick as possible
100% - Currently has no common definition, but may involve saving all the citizens and completing every mission among other things.
SS/IL - Ch. 6 is directly selectable in OM after acquiring enough coins from various challenges. This should be done for IL runs because of the dynamic difficulty level.

Non-Obvious Differences Between TotD and HotD2

A section that will most likely have only amusement value and that will probably be moved to another section.

Some of the zombies were given humorous variants to, e.g. Mickey.
Some boss behaviours were changed, at least Hierophant doesn't call Mofishes out of the water anymore.
Missions and crates/containers are new.

Game Mechanics

Dynamic Difficulty Level

There is an overarching difficulty level (DL) that adjusts according to the player's skill. It can be observed separately from each particular ZR, but because of the two being intermingled and because of MaxR's and MinR's, this is somewhat difficult. For most speed run categories, purposely lowering the DL should be used to speed up progress.

Lowers the DL

Losing a life?
Using a continue
Finding a tranquilizer in AM
Getting WR's below C? (likely, but not entirely understood)

Increases the DL

Effect of WR's on DL

Effect of Continues on the DL

Effect of Tranquilizers on the DL

Zombie Ranks

Speedrun-Relevant Items

Crates

There might be a separate heading here for checking what items can be acquired from which crates, but possibly not because that would already be a part of the chapter-by-chapter guide.

Speed Running Strategies

Optimal Overall Route

A per-run-category description of the route considered fastest. Currently you can refer to Peaches' run linked at the top of the page. Also, the strategy wiki pages seem to have information about which paths are faster to take.

Chapter 1

This will eventually contain a chart of some sort for each chapter that shows you all the possible paths through a chapter and has information about how quick the path is expected to be. This would be based on counting how long the camera movements take in-between attacks and on what sorts of zombies attack you (long or short words?).

Basically, the best strategy in Chapter 1 is to save nobody. Saving the lady at the start will trigger an unnecessary cutscene, and saving the lady from the monster with a barrel will trigger a few more monsters, which take up more time than needed.

Chapter 2

Not picking up the key allows for a faster run than picking up the key does, assuming you don't save anybody but the lady at the gate afterwards.

Using a continue before the boss is very much encouraged. For a speed run, single cycling the boss is practically mandatory, and because of the nature of the game and its dynamic difficulty, a speed runner will want the boss to be as easy as possible.

Chapter 3

One of the most important points of this level is saving the guy on the boat. At this part in the level, the player can go on two different routes - one for if he/she saves the man on the boat, and another one if he/she decides not to. However, saving the man on the boat reduces the level by about nine seconds, so for a speed run, it's definitely worth it.

Chapter 4

Saving the man in the vent is practically mandatory as it saves plenty of time. This level isn't too gimmicky, it is pretty skill-based.

Chapter 5

Chapter 6 Random elements

Getting good crate luck.

The words themselves, but this should average out.

Zombies that appear in certain missions seem to be randomly spawned from given types. This could have the implication that getting a failed mission will sometimes take longer than other times.

The first attack of Ch.1 - the death animation (one of five) of the last David can cause the next transition to be delayed by up to 1½ seconds.

Miscellaneous

Wishlist

A bot/hack that allows automatic typing of words at a given pace. E.g. infinite "Golden Hands"-items would be useful. Also if the game can one day be emulated, though Hourglass currently does not support TotD.