Question about horde night spawns

[Whiteshark68]

So as my title says i have a question about horde night spawns that someone with more knowledge about how spawns work can answer

so here is my "problem" i started a new world with the horde spawn count remaining at 7 and day 7 horde night went as expected with the horde lasting until dawn

then i upped my horde spawn count to 16 and then day 14 the horde didn't go as expected with the horde night finishing at roughly 1 a.m thought that was a little bizarre.

The day 21 horde night went roughly the same with it finishing at 18 minutes past midnight. Should this have happened or does the horde spawn count dictate when the horde will finish? or is this a bug?

i will test at day 28 but since it is day 22 in game might be awhile, also i am now in a different biome to hordes 1 - 3.

[Riamus]

If you can kill the full set of zombie spawns before 4am, horde night will end early.  The slowed down spawns to trickle longer, but it is still possible to finish early if you can kill them quickly.  It could still be a bug, but it could just be normal as well.

[Suxar]

Read this article first. https://7daystodie.wiki.gg/wiki/Blood_Moon_Horde

[Whiteshark68]

I knew that in previous alphas that you could kill the allotted zombies in an hour or two for the first couple of horde nights.

The reason i asked this question was that when i watched the dev streams for 1.0 they said that horde nights would last all night and i had thought this applied to all spawn count numbers but from what i have found it doesn't at least not for me.

 

[Whiteshark68]

4 hours ago, Suxar said:

Read this article first. https://7daystodie.wiki.gg/wiki/Blood_Moon_Horde

The only problem with that is it is prior to version 1.0 so when the blood moon hordes changed it is not reflected in the wiki as it was last updated on june 2nd

[Riamus]

Even at default spawn counts, horde night in 1.0 still doesn't last all night very often in the first horde nights for me.  It improved things somewhat, but not a lot.  From what I've seen, the only real change is the first horde night since you normally can't kill them fast enough now (at least, I don't seem to) because of poor weapons.  So it does seem to last all night, or close to it, where before it was usually done by midnight.

[SylenThunder]

Something everyone has left out of the discussion.

 

The amount of zeds you get on bloodmoon has nothing to do with what day it is. You are only going to get the number of zombies allocated by your gaemstage when the event starts.

 

It doesn't matter if you up the max spawn to 64. If your gamestage only allows for six zeds per wave, you will only get six zeds per wave.

[Jugginator]

Yeah that Wiki is partly incorrect/missing information. What Sylen said is the reason you're not getting spawns till dawn. Increasing your gamestage and/or doing hordes in harder biomes will increase how many total you'll get. 

[theFlu]

That's a combo of potentially confusing intel from our two colour-titled members.. not wrong, but just shattered enough to be misread.

 

The number of zeds in total in a horde night is decided by gamestage. The more to kill the more time it'll take in the night. Higher the gamestage, harder to kill all.

The number of zeds alive at any single moment is capped by gamestage. The more there are up, the faster you can kill them; if you have the DPS. In this respect, the higher the gamestage, the easier to kill them all.

 

Gamestage is influenced by many things, mainly the level of your character and the time you have been playing on the character (in SP this is "days", but on servers it's unrelated to server day).

 

Horde gamestage and concurrent zed numbers are also greatly influenced by additional players, so if you mostly play solo, but get a friend or two to join, you might get a lot more than you expected...

[Javabean867]

3 hours ago, SylenThunder said:

Something everyone has left out of the discussion.

 

The amount of zeds you get on bloodmoon has nothing to do with what day it is. You are only going to get the number of zombies allocated by your gaemstage when the event starts.

 

It doesn't matter if you up the max spawn to 64. If your gamestage only allows for six zeds per wave, you will only get six zeds per wave.

I think the question is not, why are we only getting x zombies per wave, but why the waves are ending before morning?  I thought we were supposed to get trickling waves all the way up till the morning bell chimed.  But it seems like it has recently stopped getting waves all the way up till morning.

[Jugginator]

1 hour ago, theFlu said:

Gamestage is influenced by many things, mainly the level of your character and the time you have been playing on the character (in SP this is "days", but on servers it's unrelated to server day).

 

Minor correction on this though, there's no difference at all with the calculation between servers and single player, the "days" part of the formula is the number of days the player has survived

[theFlu]

13 minutes ago, Jugginator said:

there's no difference at all with the calculation between servers and single player

True indeed, no difference in calcs, but a difference in utility; in SP you basically can look at the day and know the effect, as that's quite literally a measure of your "time played".

 

But thanks for filling the deets

[SylenThunder]

  

26 minutes ago, Javabean867 said:

I think the question is not, why are we only getting x zombies per wave, but why the waves are ending before morning?  I thought we were supposed to get trickling waves all the way up till the morning bell chimed.  But it seems like it has recently stopped getting waves all the way up till morning.

 

No, even those trickling waves have a limit.

 

Lets take a look at one of the lower gamestages.

		<gamestage stage="19">
			<spawn group="feralHordeStageGS16" num="27" maxAlive="8" duration="1" interval="10"/>
			<spawn group="feralHordeStageGS19" num="27" maxAlive="8" duration="1"/>
			<spawn group="feralHordeStageGS19" num="200" maxAlive="5"/>
		</gamestage>

Now for this, your first stage is 27 zeds. The second stage is a total of 27 zeds. The final trickle stage is 200 zeds. However if you kill all 200 spawns before the night is over, then it is done. You won't get any more zeds past that.

 

At GS23 you get an extra spawn group added.

		<gamestage stage="23">
			<spawn group="feralHordeStageGS16" num="33" maxAlive="9" duration="1" interval="20"/>
			<spawn group="feralHordeStageGS19" num="33" maxAlive="9" duration="1" interval="19"/>
			<spawn group="feralHordeStageGS23" num="33" maxAlive="9" duration="1"/>
			<spawn group="feralHordeStageGS23" num="200" maxAlive="6"/>
		</gamestage>

 

That final spawn group is set to 200 up to GS103.
 

		<gamestage stage="103">
			<spawn group="feralHordeStageGS91" num="145" maxAlive="33" duration="2" interval="28"/>
			<spawn group="feralHordeStageGS97" num="145" maxAlive="33" duration="2" interval="17"/>
			<spawn group="feralHordeStageGS103" num="145" maxAlive="33" duration="7"/>
			<spawn group="feralHordeStageGS103" num="200" maxAlive="22"/>
		</gamestage>

 

Afterwards, it contains just the first three groupings.

		<gamestage stage="109">
			<spawn group="feralHordeStageGS97" num="154" maxAlive="35" duration="2" interval="25"/>
			<spawn group="feralHordeStageGS103" num="154" maxAlive="35" duration="2" interval="10"/>
			<spawn group="feralHordeStageGS109" num="154" maxAlive="35" duration="7"/>
		</gamestage>

 

Once you hit GS381 the number for each group is 500, and it keeps increasing the max alive per wave.

Edited September 24 by SylenThunder (see edit history)

[Javabean867]

Thank you for that info!

[Old Crow]

17 hours ago, Riamus said:

If you can kill the full set of zombie spawns before 4am, horde night will end early.  The slowed down spawns to trickle longer, but it is still possible to finish early if you can kill them quickly.  It could still be a bug, but it could just be normal as well.

 

So since 1.0 released, and Joel claimed that the first Horde Night will last all night.. every horde night I've done has ended early. Like, a few hours early. Hell, our second horde night, new map, horde night ended before midnight. I've yet to have one go all night now.

[Rotor]

14 hours ago, Old Crow said:

I've yet to have one go all night now.

 

There is a pill for that.

[Whiteshark68]

Ok so for all you who have stated that the hordes will not last until morning because of the coding is that new in exp 1.1.

Why did in my first playthrough of version 1.0 in the burnt biome from day 14 until day 75 i had every horde last until morning and just to enlighten you i was killing more than the limit cap per wave.

but in my second playthrough in exp 1.1 in the pine forest the day 7 horde lasted all night until the morning chime and day 14 and day 21 end just after midnight

[theFlu]

11 minutes ago, Whiteshark68 said:

Ok so for all you who have stated that the hordes will not last until morning because of the coding is that new in exp 1.1.

It's not new.

 

13 minutes ago, Whiteshark68 said:

i was killing more than the limit cap per wave.

From SylenThunder's post, the trickle wave is 200 zeds. Were you really killing 250 zeds on day 14? It's not impossible, but unless you actually knew the numbers going in and checked for how many you killed, you can't really know. At least I'd have a hard time calling when I've killed 250, whether I'm killing them fast or slow.

 

17 minutes ago, Whiteshark68 said:

end just after midnight

Were you killing 250 zeds by then? If not, maybe bug, if you were, then working as intended?

[Whiteshark68]

Again i am going off what joel said in the dev stream that they have changed horde night spawns so they last all night, Has something changed because as i stated

from day 7 to day 70 every horde lasted all night long in 1.0

but in 1.1 only the first horde night lasted the whole night that would suggest to anyone that something has changed but everyone seems to be ignoring that or at least skipping that point.

[theFlu]

27 minutes ago, Whiteshark68 said:

but in 1.1 only the first horde night lasted the whole night that would suggest to anyone that something has changed but everyone seems to be ignoring that or at least skipping that point.

We're not skipping it, you're not telling how many zeds you kill in those nights. You CAN have it end early if you kill enough. You haven't told us whether you kill 2 or 2000 before it stops. 2 would be a bug, and 2000 would be a bug, the proper max amount is something in between.

 

If you're thinking that Joel has said something specific and you're not seeing that.. well, even Joel can have been wrong. And we don't know what he's said, timestamps please.

[Riamus]

The dev stream really wasn't specific on how it would work.  Just that they'd trickle in (they might not even have said that), allowing horde nights to last until 4am.  And the change can improve that (I'd never had day 7 horde night last until 4am before but it does now).  However, it doesn't guarantee they last until 4am because there is still a cap on the number of spawns.  I've regularly finished before 4am on week 2 and 3 in 1.0 in 2-player games.  I haven't tried 1.1 yet.  I'm not sure why they didn't just increase the cap far enough to guarantee it lasts until 4am.

[lord_ahriman]

7 hours ago, theFlu said:

We're not skipping it, you're not telling how many zeds you kill in those nights. You CAN have it end early if you kill enough. You haven't told us whether you kill 2 or 2000 before it stops. 2 would be a bug, and 2000 would be a bug, the proper max amount is something in between.

 

If you're thinking that Joel has said something specific and you're not seeing that.. well, even Joel can have been wrong. And we don't know what he's said, timestamps please.

 

 

Let me add some info. I'm currently on second playthrough day 49 (didn't take on the horde yet), so hordes 7 through 42 were as follow:

day 7 - 474 zombies
day 14 - 460 zombies
day 21 - 579 zombies
day 28 - 690 zombies (gamestage 172)
day 35 - 808 zombies (gamestage 198)
day 42 - 1139 zombies (gamestage 291)

Managed to exhaust all hordes before 2 am and I can kill fast enough (my horde defense is an electrified pit, so explosives only). In my first playthrough (77 days) from day 56 through 77 hordes I killed ~ 1.5k zombies, so I suspect that would be the maximum or close to it.

[Whiteshark68]

so found my own true answer to this went back into my 1.0 world after reverting back to 1.0 with the max zombie horde set to 32 and the day length set to 120 minutes

i killed 1500 zombies at game stage 571 on day 14 horde finished at 3:06 am

then went back to 1.1 and did another horde night on day 14 and killed another 1500 zombies same settings as version 1.0 the horde also finished at 3:06 am

it would seem that you would not finish horde night by 4 am with the day length set to the default 60 minutes

just did another pine forest day 21 horde again finished by 1:04 am with horde zombies set to 16 zombies gamestage 123 and 511 zombies killed

just a fyi i mostly always play on 120 minute days and yes the hordes were lasting all through until 4 am until i updated to 1.1.

i had forgotten i had reset my day length to 60 minutes in the version 1.0 playthrough after i think day 35 because i just was trying to complete the 10 hordes quest

Edited September 26 by Whiteshark68
added info (see edit history)

[BFT2020]

2 hours ago, Whiteshark68 said:

i killed 1500 zombies at game stage 571 on day 14 horde finished at 3:06 am

 

That's not normal.  They are not going to balance a game if a person gets to GS 571 by Day 14.

 

My experience has been that the initial blood moons lasted all night without any speeding up the GS or player progression.

[lord_ahriman]

11 hours ago, Whiteshark68 said:

so found my own true answer to this went back into my 1.0 world after reverting back to 1.0 with the max zombie horde set to 32 and the day length set to 120 minutes

i killed 1500 zombies at game stage 571 on day 14 horde finished at 3:06 am

then went back to 1.1 and did another horde night on day 14 and killed another 1500 zombies same settings as version 1.0 the horde also finished at 3:06 am

it would seem that you would not finish horde night by 4 am with the day length set to the default 60 minutes

just did another pine forest day 21 horde again finished by 1:04 am with horde zombies set to 16 zombies gamestage 123 and 511 zombies killed

just a fyi i mostly always play on 120 minute days and yes the hordes were lasting all through until 4 am until i updated to 1.1.

i had forgotten i had reset my day length to 60 minutes in the version 1.0 playthrough after i think day 35 because i just was trying to complete the 10 hordes quest

 

Your numbers are way off. You can't reach GS571 by day 14 and by setting low numbers like 16 and 32 max alive it's pretty obviously you are going to need more time to exhaust hordes. Not mention, I'm playing 1.0 as I mentioned before and no hordes lasted all night. The main "problem": you are not killing zombies fast enough to exhaust hordes in 60 minutes days and is nerfing max zombies alive. If you can kill fast enough, 64 max zombies alive and 60 minutes day you will exhaust hordes at the very least day 7 through 49. Example, you said GS 123 and 16 max zombies alive, according xml files:

 

<gamestage stage="121">
            <spawn group="feralHordeStageGS109" num="171" maxAlive="39" duration="2" interval="15"/>
            <spawn group="feralHordeStageGS115" num="171" maxAlive="39" duration="2" interval="14"/>
            <spawn group="feralHordeStageGS121" num="171" maxAlive="39" duration="7"/>

 

You are definitely nerfing zombies alive, therefore you "thought" horde night was lasting all night. Again, there is no such thing as "hordes lasting all night". TFP did make some changes introducing what I call "persistent wave" (those few zombies spawning after normal 3 big waves), but killing fast enough it will exhaust as well.