Eternal hordes insane difficulty

[IDNeon]

I'm preparing to launch an official (no-mods) style of play I dub "Eternal Horde". It's a step-up from my "Die Every Day" style of play which is Insane, Blood Moon every night.

But, in preparation for it I only now learned how Blood Moons work, and wanted to know a few settings I need to tweak which are in question.

1) If I change the day/night cycle to longest night possible, does that INCREASE the time the Blood Moon occurs? Or does Blood Moon still only happen from 2200 - 0400?

2) If I change max zombies, then this will allow the only zombie cap to be Game Stage dependent?

3) What's the best way to absorb a blast from demolitions zombies? I think these zombies will be the least manageable and I've always generally sucked against them.

4) I'm still confused on why increasing Max Alive would reduce the waves? Apparently there's settings that can prevent waves from lasting the whole night and it's not as straight forward as increase those settings? Can someone touch on how to make sure I don't run out of zombies on a 120min day cycle with an 18 hour night, by 0000 hours? That would just be disappointing to have to fiddle with.

Thanks all! I hope to have much to share from this style of play!

[SylenThunder]

1. Yes. Bloodmoon will extend through your full night hours. As long as there are zeds to spawn for your gamestage.

 

2. It is not advised to increase the MaxSpawnedZombies value past 90 as it will cause issues with pathing. You'll end up with zombie slideshows. I believe the cap for BloodMoonEnemyCount is still 64, and that's a hard-coded cap.

 

3. Armor with explosive resistance of course. I just focus on killing them before they get to me without blowing up. Going for the knee is a good tactic.

[IDNeon]

3 minutes ago, SylenThunder said:

1. Yes. Bloodmoon will extend through your full night hours. As long as there are zeds to spawn for your gamestage.

 

2. It is not advised to increase the MaxSpawnedZombies value past 90 as it will cause issues with pathing. You'll end up with zombie slideshows. I believe the cap for BloodMoonEnemyCount is still 64, and that's a hard-coded cap.

 

3. Armor with explosive resistance of course. I just focus on killing them before they get to me without blowing up. Going for the knee is a good tactic.

Sweet, I'm unfamiliar with the MaxSpawnedZombies anyway, I do everything from the settings menu (but I'm aware of the xml). As such is the MaxSpawnZombies the selection in the settings menu? And then how does it, or rather why does it, get capped for BloodMoon?

I'd rather leave it default but increase it more than the 8, which is, I believe 8 total zombies during the bloodmoon at any time? That can only be raised to 64?

[Sjustus548]

1 hour ago, SylenThunder said:

2. It is not advised to increase the MaxSpawnedZombies value past 90 as it will cause issues with pathing. You'll end up with zombie slideshows. I believe the cap for BloodMoonEnemyCount is still 64, and that's a hard-coded cap.

 

I've wondered about this.  Say I have 4 people on the server and have the horde nights set to 64.  Is that supposed to be 64 per person or 64 total?  If per person will it only spawn in the 90, if that's the MaxSpawnedZombies?  

[SylenThunder]

Sorry for the delay. Permissions got a bit muffed, and I can't post replies. Had to get creative to make this post.

 

Bloodmoon count setting is per-player, and is not limited or in conjunction with the max spawned zeds setting. Which is very likely why it is hard capped at 64.

 

Note that even if you set it at 64, you may not immediately get that many as it will be limited by your gamestage.

[IDNeon]

6 hours ago, SylenThunder said:

Sorry for the delay. Permissions got a bit muffed, and I can't post replies. Had to get creative to make this post.

 

Bloodmoon count setting is per-player, and is not limited or in conjunction with the max spawned zeds setting. Which is very likely why it is hard capped at 64.

 

Note that even if you set it at 64, you may not immediately get that many as it will be limited by your gamestage.

I'd like to know more about the interaction of the game stage with total zombies in blood moon and how it is determined how long the waves will continue to come.

At my lower game stages the waves stop well before the end of the regular blood moon. I read another thread on it and it doesn't seem to make sense why that is the case....

Regardless what that may be....the "endless horde" is a failure for two reasons.

 

1) Can only make the night last 12 hours.

2) Blood moon seems to still end around 0400, and normal night continues until 10:00 hours. But it still THINKS there's a blood moon, or so it seems, because no regular zombies spawn.

Needless to say, the setting of 120min days and 12game-hour nights seemed to be rather broken...

[Danidas]

Bloodmoons have a max total of zombies for the night based on your game stage that cannot be changed by the player. All that you can change is how many will be in each wave but once the total is reached the bloodmoon is over. So increasing the wave sizes may actually make the bloodmoon shorter if your able to quickly kill all of the zombies in the waves.

 

Edit for example if your game stage says 100 zombies will attack at default you will get 12.5 waves of 8 zombies. But if set to the max of 64 it will only be one and under a half waves.

[IDNeon]

5 hours ago, Danidas said:

Bloodmoons have a max total of zombies for the night based on your game stage that cannot be changed by the player. All that you can change is how many will be in each wave but once the total is reached the bloodmoon is over. So increasing the wave sizes may actually make the bloodmoon shorter if your able to quickly kill all of the zombies in the waves.

 

Edit for example if your game stage says 100 zombies will attack at default you will get 12.5 waves of 8 zombies. But if set to the max of 64 it will only be one and under a half waves.

First where do I check how much zombies per game stage by default?

 

Thanks! That made it so much more clear than the repeated demonstrations of the XML that were talked about in the more thorough thread.

I'm not interested in stretching out the hordes to meet the low game stage, now it makes more sense why you just have to wait it out to higher game stages.

I set my horde sizes to 32, but it doesn't feel like I get all 32 at once, is that because the "max alive" also scales with Game Stage and the horde size setting is either capped by it or caps it?

[FranticDan]

You want endless zombies from the very first night? (32 max alive constantly)

Do you want 22 hour nights?

[IDNeon]

7 minutes ago, FranticDan said:

You want endless zombies from the very first night? (32 max alive constantly)

Do you want 22 hour nights?

I already learned can't do the 22 hour nights, I figured the 32 was a constant but it doesn't seem to achieve that at earlier game stages. I keep reading that there's a 64 cap max that can only be overridden by change to xml? Which I wasn't interested in doing either.

Looks to me like the "Eternal" horde night idea can't be done without modifications to some values, which is OK. For now I'm still working on my base design for Insane horde every night....which is taxing enough without a constant horde haha.

[FranticDan]

If you like, I can make 22 hour nights possible for you. Yes it is changing a small thing in one xml file.

I can also increase the amount of zombies that will spawn per night, again will require editing values in one other xml file.

[IDNeon]

32 minutes ago, FranticDan said:

If you like, I can make 22 hour nights possible for you. Yes it is changing a small thing in one xml file.

I can also increase the amount of zombies that will spawn per night, again will require editing values in one other xml file.

True, not sure there's merit right now though, but if you want to post the lines to change here? that'd be cool. I'll get back to it eventually!

[FranticDan]

Look for BloodMoonHorde in gamestage xml.

Example: 
       <gamestage stage="23"><spawn group="feralHordeStageGS16" num="5000" maxAlive="256" duration="1" interval="20"/><spawn group="feralHordeStageGS19" num="5000" maxAlive="256" duration="1" interval="19"/><spawn group="feralHordeStageGS23" num="5000" maxAlive="256" duration="1"/></gamestage>

You want to change num= to the amount of zombies you want to spawn, maxAlive you can change all to 256 if you like, they max to this amount towards the middle of the entire list. Finally duration, this is how long in game hours the wave will last for. The first 4 lines on have one wave. The next 4 lines have 2 waves, the rest have 3 waves.

To makes nights last your desired amount (don't do 24 unless you don't mind the sun and moon teleporting in the sky.

 

In the XUi_Menu folder, open the windows xml.

There are 2 lines you need to change, look for DayLightLength. If you want 22 hour nights, add a 2, in front of the 10 on both lines

<gameoption name="DayLightLength" title="goDayLightLength" value_wrap="false" value_type="int" values="12, 14, 16, 18" display_names="" value_localization_prefix="goDayLightLengthValue" />

Edit: Made a mistake and pasted the wrong line for DayLightLength, my bad!