Horde night Spawn Mechanics

Originally posted by Ozarck: Do the Horde Nights have limits on the number of zombies to spawn over the night? I remember in Alpha 21 I could clear all zombies by about 2 AM, and no more would spawn all night. The way I understand it, wasn't the limit something like 64 total spawns per player?

Now, it seems they spawn continuously until 4 am. I killed 113 zombies, which I thought was well above the max for a horde night. at the end of the night 15 minutes before dawn, a squad of vultures and something that spits (maybe that was also the vultures) descended on me and stun locked me. I died at 3:45 or so, thanks to at least three vultures and the rest of the Horde. I got a screenshot of my killcount before and after the Horde night (244 to 357 or so).

Just to clarify something, Blood Moon Count is the setting you are thinking of for '64 total spawns per player'. This setting determines how many zombies are alive at one time- Not how many will spawn over the course of the night.

If the spawn pool is 50,000 and your BMC is 64, Then there will only ever be 64 zombies alive at once, and when you kill one, a new one spawns and there are 49,999 zombies left to spawn.

The total number and difficulty(Ie, seeing cops/demolishers/radiateds) of spawns is determined by your Gamestage. In A21, Low gamestages had an incredibly low spawn count that could be exhausted in an ingame hour or two on your first couple horde nights depending on your settings. In 1.0 this was rebalanced to make it more likely to last a full night.


RE one of your later replies, Fair warning that adjusting settings to try and compensate for this can result in much harder hordes than you're expecting. Because it's based on gamestage, If you for example make your horde night every 14th day, then you're dealing with a horde night equivalent to that increase- You would have less frequent but more difficult horde nights, so you must prepare accordingly.

Same for changing other settings, Contrary to your immediate thought, Increasing your exp gain to 300% would make horde nights that much harder for you- Because you're gaining 3x as many levels in the same period of time, And gamestage is heavily influenced (primarily, even) by player level. So counterintuitively, you'd want to Lower exp to get easier horde nights.

Likewise to day length; Increasing it to 2 hours would, intuitively, make you feel like you have more time to prepare. But it counterintuitively also gives you more time to gain levels and increase your game stage, which will make your horde night harder.

Say you increased day length to 2 hours, and exp to 300% and your horde night to the 14th day, You would actually be dealing with a day 14 horde night roughly equivalent to a day 84 horde night due to compounding effect.

In short, Be careful how you try to tune your settings if you want to alleviate some of the pressure. :)

Originally posted by Ozarck: I knew about the 64 alive in the world thing, from the wiki. the explanations there could use some tweaking for simplicity though.

THe reason I started this thread was because, in the previous version I could finish a horde around 2 AM if I got good loot and stuff, but in this version, there is no end to the zombies. Which means, not only do you simply have to survive the night instead of hoping to "beat" the horde, now, killing zombies fast is counterproductive, since a) they respawn instantly and not very far away, and b) you spend more ammo / durability the faster you kill.

So, riding a bike around for six hours and killing eight zombies gets you through the night, same as killing 113 zombies would. The only downside is less xp, which you've just made a compellign case is not a downside at all.

As for 'less frequent but more difficult horde nights"
Would cahinging the horde night frequency really make them more difficult? wouldn't the day 14 horde be roughly equivalent to the day 14 horde either way? All you'd be doing is skipping every otehr horde night, saving ammo and durability, and losing out on some XP, which again, would slow your gamestage growth

To the last paragraph, yes, in essence. My point was to instill the importance of planning FOR a 14 day horde night, instead of expecting your 'First' horde night to be equivalent to a normal 7 day horde. Alot of people skip that step and just prepare as they would normally, thinking they just need to prepare for the normally easy 7th day horde.

Basically, by skipping every other horde it's harder to get a grasp on how much more difficult it's become each time- Your second horde night in a 14 day horde world is likely to have demolishers, for example, when you're normally used to having them on the 4th or 5th horde night on default.

If you're Aware of that difference and plan for it, it's all good. Else, big booms.