7 Days To Die Blood Moon

Overview Of The Blood Moon In 7 Days To Die

If you’re new to the game and haven’t seen it yet, then the Blood-Moon is when the main action takes place. And for sure, if you’ve seen it already, then there’s no need to explain this to you! On this night, the Blood Moon Horde starts spawning, and all hell breaks loose. By default, this takes place every 7 days. And that is where the name 7 Days To Die comes from. Because, if you’re not well-prepared, then you’re sure to die!

So in order to prepare you for one hell of a survival battle, we have explained below all about this bloody night and what’s so special about the zombie hordes that get spawned when the moon goes red.

The Basic Concept Of A Blood Moon Night

If you like fighting zombies, then you’ll get more zombies than you ever wished for, on a bloodmoon night in 7 Days To Die. During this stormy night, waves of blood-moon horde keep spawning.

Unlike the regular zombie hordes, this horde knows exactly where you are. So irrespective of how quiet you are, this horde will climb, dig and claw its way to you. You don’t want to be caught off-guard against these zombies. And for that, there are some indicators from early in the day that you need to watch out for.

Indicators: Don’t Miss The Warnings!

On default settings, your first indicator of a blood-moon night will be at 08:00 AM when the day number turns red in your HUD. It will also feel like a storm is on its way. Then about 18:00, there will be a loud thunder. The sky will begin to have a reddish hue and by 21:00 it will be blood red and the weather stormy! This means, that time is almost up and you better be ready to fight or die!

The First Wave: A Blood Moon Warmup.

When the clock hits 22:00, it’s time for action. A screeching scream announces the start of the bloodmoon horde. A group of zombies from the first wave will now spawn somewhere near your location. Unlike the regular horde, these special zombies will start running straight towards you irrespective of how stealthy you are.

The total number of zombies that get spawned at one time and the total zombies in a wave depend on multiple game factors and settings. So your current gamestage and those of other players in a multiplayer setting as well your difficulty and performance setting will decide how hard a time you’re going to have! You’ll find more details on this further down the article.

More Waves Of Zombies!

Once it hits 10.00 pm, zombies will just keep coming at you all night. As you keep killing the zombies, the game world will simply spawn more zombies in their place. However, if you’re good enough, you just might be able to kill all the zombies in the wave. In such a case, you will get a short break from the rampaging zombies, till the next wave begins.

On the other hand, each wave also has a timer. After a certain period of time, the wave will, sort of expire. This means that even if you don’t manage to kill the entire wave but manage to stay alive long enough, then the world will stop spawning any additional zombies remaining in the current wave. More on this in the advanced settings section of the Horde Spawning Mechanics mentioned further down the article.

Also, don’t get used to this ease in the zombie rampage, Even if the current wave has expired, after a short interval, the next wave of rampaging zombies will begin!

0400 AM: A Deadline To Live For.

Now although it can seem like a never-ending battle, there is some hope in looking forward to the night to end. And it does end! When the clock strikes 04.00 this bloody night is finally over. The red sky will become clear, the storm is gone and all the zombies in the blood-moon horde change back to normal zombies. This means they no longer have a GPS on you and all of them are not running straight for you.

Note:

The frequency setting mentioned in the table above is relative to the previous blood-moon +/-  its range. The examples mentioned below will help you understand this better:

#1
Frequency: 7
Range: 1
Blood-Moon Occurrence:
1st Blood moon will be on Day 6,7 or 8 (Frequency +/- Range)
If the Blood moon was on Day 6 the next Blood moon will happen after 6 + 7 +/- 1 Days i.e. on Day 12,13 or 14. 

#2
Frequency: 10
Range: 3
Blood-Moon Occurrence:
1st Blood moon will be on one of Day 7-13 (Frequency +/- Range)
If the Blood moon was on Day 8 the next Blood moon will happen after 8 + 10 +/- 3 Days i.e. on one of Day 15-21.

#3
Frequency: 1
Blood-Moon Occurrence:
This will of course cause the blood moon to happen every night if you’re that brave!

Example Settings 1:

Single-player
Max Spawned Zombies: 64 (default)
Blood Moon Enemy Count: 8 (default)
Parameter ‘maxAlive’ for the horde wave: 22
Parameter ‘num’ for the horde wave: 100
As we’d mentioned on top, the total zombies that get spawned at once will be the least of the 3 settings shown above. In this scenario, it will be the Blood Moon Count that determines the total zombies spawned at once. When you kill any zombie, more will spawn to keep the total zombie count at 8.

Example Settings  2:

Single-player
Max Spawned Zombies: 64 (default)
Blood Moon Enemy Count: 32
Parameter ‘maxAlive’ for the horde wave: 22
Parameter ‘num’ for the horde wave: 100
In this scenario, it is the parameter ‘maxAlive’ that is the lowest. Hence the max zombies spawning at once will be 22. Eventually, as your gamestage increases the ‘maxAlive’ parameter will also become more than 32. In that case, it will once again be the Blood Moon Count that decides the total zombies spawned at once in 7D2D.

Example Settings  3:

Multiplayer dedicated server: 3 players
Max Spawned Zombies: 64 (default)
Blood Moon Enemy Count: 32
Parameter ‘maxAlive’ for the horde wave: 22
Parameter ‘num’ for the horde wave: 100
In this scenario, the ‘maxAlive’ value is 22, which is per player and would result in 66 total zombies spawned for 3 players. Even the Blood Moon Count at 32 is per player, resulting in 96 zombies. Hence it will be the ‘Max Spawned Zombies’ settings that will decide the total zombies spawned at once count.

The Natural Spawned Zombies and The Total Zombies Spawned Setting

The zombie spawning settings for the Blood-Moon-Horde also takes into account any naturally spawned zombies that are already in the game world. So for instance, in Example settings 3 mentioned above, if there were already 13 zombies roaming around, then the number of horde zombies that get spawned as per the Max Spawned Zombies settings will be 64 – 13 i.e. 51 zombies. Of course, after some time, the naturally spawned zombies will either time out or be killed. It will all be just the BloodMoon Horde zombies till 4.00 am!

Wave Duration Of The Blood Moon Horde

Every Horde wave on the bloodmoon night has duration settings that decide how many in-game hours a particular wave will last. In the gamestages.xml file example mentioned above, the duration parameter of the first two waves is 2 hours, while the third and final wave lasts for 7 hours. Since the entire bloodmoon night lasts about 6 hours, the final durations parameter ensures the last wave, lasts for the rest of the night i.e. 04.00 am.

Beating The Blood Moon!

So the important question is of course, how do you beat the freakin zombie rampage! Well, it is ultimately down to a flight or fight situation and there are 3 scenarios, mentioned below, in how you can make it through the night!

1. You go all Rambo mode and kill all the zombies in the current wave. If you manage to do this, then after a short interval as per the parameter set in the gamestages.xml file, the next wave will start.
2. On the other hand, if you choose to play safer and survive by evading the zombies, then after the ‘duration’ of the wave, it will expire and not spawn any additional zombies. However, similar to point #1, the next wave will start after the set interval.
3. Now if you manage to either kill all the zombies in the final wave or survive till 04.00 am by evading, then you have beat the Blood moon, my friend! At this point, the zombies turn back to normal and the bloody rampage is finally over.

Since post-Alpha 18.4 the waves are no longer infinite if you achieve the first result and kill all the zombies in all the waves, then you would have beat the blood-moon much before 04.00 am. However, as your gamestage increases, it will become more and more difficult to beat the Blood moon this way since the number and strength of the waves will also be much higher.

Performance In Multiplayer Setting

The main difference between playing single-player and multiplayer modes are the per player horde spawning settings. The two common settings associated with these are the ‘maxAlive’ and ‘Blood Moon Enemy Count’. Now unless you’re building a MOD, it is not recommended to mess around with the ‘maxAlive’ parameter. So you adjust the Blood-Moon Enemy Count settings to change the multiplayer experience.

As your gamestage increases, especially over 50, you will notice the horde fight to be significantly bigger by increasing the Blood Moon Enemy Count. Doubling it will you get twice as many zombies! Hence this setting has a major impact on the performance of both client and server.

The other global setting which affects the performance, single-player and multiplayer experience is the Max Spawned Zombies parameter. This parameter decides the total zombies allowed in the game world at any time. It can also remove the ultimate cap on the BloodMoon zombie hordes.

Note that the Max Spawned Zombies parameter sets a hard limit on the zombie count. Hence if your Max Spawned zombies parameter is set to 80 but the Blood Moon Enemy Count is set to 25 and there are 4 players, it will still limit the total zombies to 80.