Zymos is an Infested pistol that releases explosive spores. On headshots, the spores burrow into the target, stunning and dealing continuous damage before exploding to release 6 additional spores that seek nearby enemies.
Characteristics
This weapon deals primarily 
Puncture damage.
Advantages:
- High Puncture and good
Impact damage – effective against armor and shields. - Above average critical multiplier.
- Very high status chance.
- Shots have a guaranteed Impact proc.
- Shots explode in a 3.3 meter radius upon impact with a surface or enemy, inflicting
Toxin damage.
- Innate Toxin damage – bypasses Shields.
- Headshots stun targets for 1.1 second and deals continuous damage before exploding for 953 Toxin damage and knocking down the initial target, then scattering 6 spores that home-in on nearby enemies within 20 meters, dealing 23 damage on contact with a guaranteed chance to proc Impact on targets over 7m away from the initial target in addition to 333 Toxin damage in a radius each.
- Initial hit and explosion apply status separately.
- Explosion does not need direct line of sight to deal damage and will penetrate walls.
- Can benefit from
Fulmination ( Primed).
- Innate
- Innate
and 
polarities.
Disadvantages:
- Very low critical chance.
- Very low fire rate.
- Very slow reload speed.
- All projectiles have travel time.
- Explosions inflict self-stagger.
- Explosion has linear damage falloff from 100% to 70% from central impact.
- Headshot explosion delay allows enemies to move out of the explosion range.
- Extremely low ammo capacity; requires just 3 reloads to fully deplete all ammo reserves.
Acquisition
Zymos is acquired by reaching Rank 1 - Stranger with the Entrati. Father sells the main blueprint for 
2,000 and component blueprints for 1,000; a total of 4,000 is needed for all parts. The main blueprint is also offered as a rank-up reward.
| Manufacturing Requirements | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 20,000 |
 1 |
 1 |
Time: 12 Hour(s) | ||
Rush:  35
| |||||
 Market Price: 190
|
 Blueprints Price: 2,000
| ||||
| Barrel • 1,000
| |||||
20,000 |
 Tempered Bapholite20 |
 Purified Heciphron5 |
 Dendrite Blastoma8 |
 Neurodes4 |
Time: 12 Hour(s) |
| Rush: 25
| |||||
| Receiver • 1,000
| |||||
20,000 |
 Adramal Alloy20 |
Purified Heciphron 5 |
 Pustulent Cognitive Nodule8 |
 Morphics5 |
Time: 12 Hour(s) |
| Rush: 25
| |||||
Notes
- One barrel blueprint is required to reach Rank 1 - Clearance: Agnesis with the Necraloid.
- Since headshots stun the target to then release the spore projectiles, if an enemy cannot be 'stunned' (Demolisher, enemies with Overguard) then the spores will never spawn.
- Initial 953 Toxin damage explosion will almost always be affected by headshot and headcrit bonuses, receiving double damage in addition to double critical multiplier.
- Secondary projectiles from the initial explosion are affected differently by mods and buffing effects.
- Base damage from mods like Hornet Strike and Magnum Force apply to the 23 contact damage, but do not apply to the 333 Toxin explosion.
- Spores randomly select targets within 20m of the host target. This range is not affected by Fulmination.
- Spore contact damage has a guaranteed chance to proc Impact on secondary targets more than 7m away from the host target, but has 0% natural status chance to proc modded elements.
- Spores randomly select targets within 20m of the host target. This range is not affected by
- Elemental mods apply normally.
- Faction Damage applies normally.
- Multishot increases the number of initial projectiles, but not the 6 spores that are released from each explosion.
- Critical Chance and Critical Damage bonuses are applied squared.
- Flat Critical Chance Bonuses are applied twice. They are multiplied by modded critical chance once, and then added after that.
- Critical Chance = ((5% × (1 + Modded Crit Chance)) + Flat Crit Chance) × (1 + Modded Crit Chance) + Flat Crit Chance
- Critical Damage = 2.3 × (1 + Modded Crit Damage)2
- For example, with Cat's Eye, Pistol Gambit and Target Cracker, the secondary projectiles have:
- Shooting the initial projectile through sources of projectile buffs like
Volt's 
Electric Shield or 
Mutalist Quanta's Orbs will not affect the secondary projectiles.
- If the placement of Electric Shield and Mutalist Quanta's Orbs is positioned so that the secondary projectiles pass through it, they will gain the bonuses.
- If the placement of
- Spores will still be generated even if the target dies from the initial headshot.
- Base damage from mods like
Tips
- Trick Mag in the Exilus slot or Cyte-09's Resupply will make up for the low maximum ammo.
- The low fire rate, lack of
Slash damage, and forced Impact procs on both the main projectile and homing spores make Hemorrhage a viable option, especially if the Zymos has been modded to deal 
Viral damage. - Due to the unusual nature of the weapon's critical scaling, critical modifiers are very effective despite the 5% base crit chance.
- Flat Critical Chance bonuses from
Harrow's 
Covenant, 
Adarza Kavat's Cat's Eye, 
Secondary Enervate, and 
Arcane Avenger are affected once by multiplicative Critical Chance bonuses before being applied again.
- Flat Critical Chance bonuses from
Nidus and 
Xaku can use 
Parasitic Link and 
Gaze respectively to turn a single enemy into an invulnerable spore "fountain" as both abilities keep their victims upright and invincible for their durations. Xaku in particular can prolong Gaze's duration via 
The Vast Untime on top of Gaze reducing the defenses of any enemy in its range.
Well of Life is a subsumable option that can also immobilize an enemy for headshots.
Bugs
- In multiplayer, poor to moderate network conditions can cause spores to never appear, despite landing headshots. Spore explosions also never occur regardless of network conditions.
Trivia
- The Zymos was first seen and wielded by the Zealot Proselytizer in the third episode of Nightwave: Series 2 – The Emissary.
- Upon performing a headshot on an enemy, the enemy's head with swell up with an audible inflating noise before the spores explode. The inflation is subtle compared to the more drastic effects of the
Nukor, and quickly reset upon the explosion. - Zym/o is a word part meaning Enzyme or Ferment.
Media
Zymos wielded by Ember and Keratinos wielded by Excalibur
Concept art
See Also
Keratinos, the melee counterpart to this weapon.
Patch History
Update 33.0 (2023-04-26)
- (Undocumented) Reverted critical scaling on spores to their original behavior.
Update 31.1 (2022-02-09)
- (Undocumented) Critical chance and critical damage bonuses now apply doubled instead of squared.
Hotfix 30.5.3 (2021-07-09)
- Fixed Chat Links for the Zymos lacking build/acquisition hints.
Hotfix 29.2.2 (2020-10-06)
- Fixed missing Blueprint locations for the Zymos when viewing in the Market.
Update 29.1 (2020-09-17)
- Fixed Zymos seeking swarms not being able to critically hit.
- Fixed Zymos not spitting out the homing spore projectiles after the headshot explosion triggers for Clients.
Hotfix 29.0.8 (2020-09-10)
- Decreased projectile spread of Multishot projectiles
- Increased projectile speed from 59 to 79
- Decreasing spread from Multishot and increasing the projectile speed makes landing headshots with all the projectiles a bit easier.
Hotfix 29.0.6 (2020-09-01)
- Clip size increased from 9 to 17.
- Ammo pool increased from 27 to 51.
Update 29.0 (2020-08-25)
- Introduced.
