Citizens are the cornerstone of your operation in Infection Free Zone, and there never seems to be enough. You can never have enough spare hands, so let’s find out how to get some more.
All ways to get new workers in Infection Free Zone
In Infection Free Zone, your citizens can handle any role you assign them. From building to researching to forming squads – as long as you have some spare workers, you can assign them where you need them most.
This adds much-needed flexibility and versatility to the game, although with the vast number of jobs you need handled at all times, the more citizens, the merrier. There are two ways to get more citizens in Infection Free Zone – through encountering other survivors and calling them in.
Other survivors can be encountered in a couple of ways. You may find a group huddled together in an abandoned building that you can rescue, or you may find them walking around. You can also send out radio transmissions to hopefully reach out to other survivors.
Upon accepting other survivors, they’ll walk to your HQ and will become citizens, increasing your maximum worker count. Just be prepared to have enough food for them. If you’re struggling for food, it may be wise to research more efficient methods of gaining and storing food.
Finding survivors in buildings
The survivors you’ll find in buildings are finite and random, so it’ll help to investigate and clear all the buildings you can. Note that when encountering these survivors, they’ll need to walk all the way to your HQ, so it’ll be wise to escort them back.
If night falls, they’ll seek shelter in the closest building until the sun is up and be targets for the infected. They can handle themselves, although they only have melee weapons, and if the infected are particularly dangerous, you’ll lose them.
Finding survivors out in the world
Outside of survivors, you’ll find in buildings, you’ll also encounter survivors randomly walking around. They seem to spawn in semi-frequently and will wander around the map, perhaps near your base. There are a few different ways that the encounters with these survivors will pan out.
For the most part, you’ll need to send a squad over next to them, and you’ll get a transmission letting you know they wish to join your settlement. If you accept them, they’ll make their way to your HQ.
Sometimes, you’ll get a radio transmission letting you know that a group of survivors is around one of your squads or your base. You can either treat them as friendly or hostile. These survivors may very well be dangerous, and engage in shootouts with your squads and citizens.
I would suggest you always treat them as friendly, but send a squad or two with decent weaponry over immediately. If they turn out to be unfriendly, then you’ll be ready for them. Otherwise, they may carry on with their business or request to join you.
Using the Antenna to call survivors over
One of my favorite features about Infection Free Zone is the Antenna. Once built, you can send out invites through radio transmission to hail other survivors. If a surviving group receives your signal, they’ll hail you.
You can either make them walk on their own or get them to hide and wait one of your squads to grab them. Honestly, making them walk over every time has been fine, as they come in from the very edges of the map. They likely won’t encounter danger, even when night falls if they’re so far away from your base.
To maximize their safety, however, it’s always best to send out an invite in the morning. It seems that no matter how many invites you send in a day, you can only receive one group of survivors per day, which honestly is more than enough.
With this feature, you can reliably gain around 5 new citizens every day, so it’s worth making this as fast as possible.
To build the Antenna in Infection Free Zone, you need to keep playing the game and scavenging around. Soon, you’ll get a quest to construct a Research Center. You must research the Basic Antenna in the Communication category to unlock the Antenna. Building it only costs 20 metal, and you can place it wherever you like.
How to use workers and all roles in Infection Free Zone
Citizens will simply stand idle and unemployed if you don’t assign them something to do. Idle hands cost your base progress, so you’ll want to make sure your citizens are working on something at all times.
There are 10 roles that a citizen will have at any one time depending on your choices. I’ve described each one below.
| Job Name | Job Description |
| Unemployed | These are the citizens who don’t have a role assigned to them. |
| Squad Member | Squad members are the citizens you’ve assigned into squads. You can create squads from the Squads menu and your HQ. Squads can be disbanded back into citizens from their menus. |
| Builder | Builders will get to work on constructing and adapting any facilities you’ve ordered to be built. They will take resources from the closest storage and work them into the building. |
| Scavenger | Scavengers are those who are assigned to an Area Work (such as gathering metal, bricks, or wood) and also are responsible for deconstructing any buildings. |
| Farming | Farmers tend to Fields and Barns that you build to produce grain and raw meat. |
| Food Production | Food Production workers work in the Cookhouse and Cannery to turn grain and meat into food rations and canned food. |
| Guard | Guards will arm any Towers and Gates during the night to fend off the infected. They will run back to storage units to grab more ammunition if they run out. |
| Factory Worker | Factory Workers will tend to either the Tool Factory, Arm Factory, or Chemical Plant to construct what you’ve ordered them to construct. |
| Scientist | Scientists will reside in a Research Center and will either research or produce scientific materials. |
| Nurse | Nurses will stay in a Med Bay and help cure and look after the wounded using first aid kits. They will also produce first aid kits. |
To assign or unassign citizens from roles, you can go into the menu of a building or Area Work and click on the “+” or “-” buttons. You can also click on “0” or “max” to unassign all workers from that role or assign as many unemployed citizens to that role as it can handle.
You can also click on the Citizens Panel in the lower left to assign and unassign, although you won’t have precise control over which building or Area Work they get unassigned from or assigned to.
Each construction and job you order will have a maximum amount of citizens that can be assigned to that role. The bigger the job, the more citizens it can have working on it. The combined total of all maximums that relate to that role will be reflected in the Citizens Panel by the total amount of citizens that role can handle.
Do Citizens repopulate in Infection Free Zone?
Citizens won’t reproduce in Infection Free Zone, which may be disappointing, but makes a lot of sense. Time passes rather realistically in Infection Free Zone, with seasons and months. It takes a lot of time for a child to be born, and then grow up, so it’s not a realistic feature to include.
Also, considering the context of where they are, it wouldn’t really be wise to be having children in a zombie apocalypse. Although the game is in early access, this may be subject to change.
This means you’ll be reliant on finding and calling other survivors to bolster up your ranks.
With your citizens growing, just make sure to have enough food and resources to feed and house them.
