7 Days To Die Blood Moon

Overview Of Blood Moon in 7 Days To Die

The Blood Moon night is what 7 Days to Die is all about! Unless you're new to this game, you've already experienced the blood moon and know exactly what we're talking about. On the other hand, if you're still wondering why the game is named like this, then it's because once inside, you better be prepared. The blood moon is coming, and you've got 7 Days To Die.

Surviving through a blood moon night is going to be anything but easy! And it only gets tougher and more challenging as your gamestage increases! But fear not. We've got you covered! Continue reading to know all about how the Blood Moon mechanism works, what you can expect and how to make it through it alive!

Even if you're not new to the game, some of the detailed and advanced knowledge regarding how the game world operates during this night can help you survive the Blood Moon even at an advanced level.

What Is A Blood Moon?

In 7 Days To Die, on default settings, every 7 days the game world will have a full moon. Now, this ain’t your regular full moon. Instead, you will see a blood-red full moon with a crimson shade all over a stormy sky. And it's not just all show, for very soon you will have a zombie rampage at hand which will last all through the Blood Moon night.

So if you like fighting zombies, then you might be inclined to think that this is gonna be pure fun, killing all the zombies! But hold your tongue, because you just might get much more than you bargained for. The zombie waves in this case will just keep on coming at you and they will get stronger and stronger.

To put it simply, if you are not very well prepared for this bloody battle against the zombies, you will eventually be overcome by the zombie forces. This not only means losing life but also losing all of the stuff you’ve crafted and stored, as the zombies go about destroying your entire base.

Fortunately, if you are not too overconfident and are well prepared, then you can beat the blood moon and win against the zombie forces. To begin with, keep an eye out for these indications that the battle is about to begin!

The First Wave: When The Clock Hits 10

10 PM marks the start of the blood moon battle. As soon as the clock hits 10, you will hear a loud and scary scream cut through the heavy atmosphere. What this means is that the special blood moon zombie horde is on its way to say hello to you!

This zombie horde will spawn someplace close to you. What makes this horde special, is that, unlike the regular zombies, the blood moon horde will run straight towards you irrespective of whether you were absolutely quiet or not! So there ain’t no hiding from the zombies on this night. You better be ready to fight or die.

The total zombies that you will have to face at a time during this eventful night are dependent on your game settings as well as other factors affecting the game world. So based on the performance and difficulty settings and the gamestage value of you as well as all nearby players, you might have to face more or fewer zombies.

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.

Blood Moon Indicators: Don’t Miss These Early Warnings!

If you’ve been paying attention to when the Blood moon is coming, then your first indication to keep an eye out for is the ‘Day Number’ in your HUD. This number will turn red at 8 AM, meaning that it will be a Bloody moon tonight! Looking at the sky, you will have no doubt that there's a big storm on its way.

At 6 PM, a loud thunder will confirm the coming of the storm. Now even the entire sky would have begun to turn red. By 9 PM there will be no doubt in your mind as the sky will be completely bloody with a crazy storm already starting to break. And well, this is pretty much the last stage before the zombie rampage begins and a bloody battle commences!

The Zombie Waves Just Keep On Coming!

You better be prepared to fight zombies all night long now. On the blood moon night, the 7D2D world will keep spawning zombies that will run straight to you. The zombies will come at you in waves and you will have to face multiple waves through the night.

Each of the zombie waves we mentioned above has a set number of zombies that it will spawn depending upon your settings and gamestage. And it does not spawn all of them at once. So as you keep killing zombies, the game world will spawn more zombies to take their place till the wave limit is reached.

The good news here is that if you do manage to take out all the zombies in a wave you get to get a small break! Well, the break won’t last too long, because after a short interval, the next wave will begin and you better be sure you got enough ammo to keep going!

Each of these waves also has its own timer, after which the wave expires. This means that it will no longer spawn any additional zombies. This again is a very short-lived relief since, as above, the next wave will begin after a short interval and the battle will be back on!

 Final Relief: When The Clock Hits 4!

Now remember that it’s a blood moon night, all you gotta do is just make it through the night! And the goal is to make it to 04:00 am, because if you can make it to this deadline, then well you got yourself another 7 Days To Live!

Surely, you must have got it - the blood moon ends at 04.00 AM. At this point, the sky will clear up from the blood-red hue it had, the rampaging zombies will turn back to the regular zombies without a GPS read on you. All in all, it will be a much better day!

Changing The Blood Moon Frequency

By default, the Blood moon occurs every 7 Days. However, you can change this for single-player as well as multiplayer games. Mentioned below are the various parameters of the blood moon settings.

Default

7

0

Usage

This is the blood moon "base" frequency. You can increase the duration between blood moons or disable it by setting it to 0.

This defines the range from the "base" number during which the blood moon can occur.

Note:

The settings mentioned above are in relation to the previous blood moon occurrence and its range. See below for some examples to help you better understand the blood moon settings.

Example 2

• Frequency: 10
• Range: 3
• Blood Moon Occurrence (Frequency +/- Range):
• 1st Blood moon will occur on Days 7-13 (10 +/- 3)
• If the last Blood moon occurred on Day 10, the next one will be on days: 17-23 (10 + 10 +/- 3 ).

How The Horde Spawning Mechanism Works

Basic Users

• On the blood moon night, you will have to face the waves of the special zombie horde. The total number of zombies in each of these waves and the duration of each wave are fixed.
• So to survive, you can either eliminate all the zombies from the wave you are facing or outlast the wave.
• In either case, there will be a short interval after which the next wave of zombies will begin.
• Your gamestage level defines the difficulty of the zombie waves you face.
• Although the total number of zombies in a wave is fixed, they do not all spawn at once. The number of zombies that spawn at once is decided by the total number of players in an area, the gamestage levels and the game settings.
• Unlike before Alpha 18.4, the zombie waves do not just keep coming endlessly on a blood moon night. So now, if you eliminate all the zombies in the final wave, you do not have to worry about any further hordes rushing at you.
• As we mentioned earlier, the Blood moon ends at 4.00 AM, and everything turns back to normal, i.e. the crazy blood moon zombies become normal zombies!

Advanced Users

If you are an advanced user, you can tweak many game spawning behaviours by editing the file Gamestages.xml. This file contains the configuration settings related to the wave duration, strength and total zombies that can spawn simultaneously. Each wave has its configuration settings in its corresponding <spawn /> statement. For example, below are the wave settings where the gamestage = 59.

<gamestage stage="59">

<spawn group="feralHordeStageGS49" num="84" maxAlive="20" duration="2" interval="29"/>

<spawn group="feralHordeStageGS54" num="84" maxAlive="20" duration="2" interval="18"/>

<spawn group="feralHordeStageGS59" num="84" maxAlive="20" duration="7"/>

</gamestage>

Gamestage Parameters Details:

MEANING

This is the minimum gamestage needed at which these configurations will be applied. By default, the current set of configurations will be applicable for gamestage 59-63. The next set of configurations is for gamestage 64.

This decides which horde group to spawn for the current wave. The horde group are defined in the file entitygroups.xml.

This defines the total number of zombies in the current wave. However, note that this is not to be confused with the number of zombies that can spawn at once.

This number sets the max zombies that can spawn at once for each player. However, note that there are also other factors mentioned further down this article that affect the total zombies spawned at any one time. So you may actually not see as many zombies spawning at once, as set here in maxAlive.

This number defines the duration between waves in real-time seconds. If you outlast the ‘duration’ of the wave or kill all the zombies in it then after the ‘interval’ set here, the next wave will begin.

Max Zombie Spawned

If you just want to figure out how many zombies in total the entire blood moon night will spawn, then you can use the gamestages.xml file mentioned above. To do so, find the section representing your ‘gamestage’ level. In here, just sum up all the ‘num’ parameters for each wave, and you get the total zombies that can spawn on a blood moon at your current gamestage level.

So in the Gamestage Parameters table shown above, the total zombies you expect all through the night is 84 + 84 + 84 = 252. Once again, note that these are the total zombies you may have to face through the night and not the total zombies that you have to fight at once.

The Total Zombies That Can Spawn At A Time:

As you may have understood by now, multiple factors affect how many zombies get spawned at any one given time. Mainly, from the table below, it will be the factor with the lowest value of the three mentioned. 

Example Scenario 3:

•  Multiplayer dedicated server: 3 players
• Max Spawned Zombies: 64 (default)
• Blood Moon Enemy Count: 32
• MaxAlive: 22
• “num”: 100

In this final example, although the maxAlive is 22, since it is a multiplayer server with 3 players, the maxAlive value will get multiplied by 3 which is equal to 66. The multiplayer server also affects the Blood Moon Count, making it 32 x 3 = 96. And so the factor that will actually affect the total zombies spawned at once is the Max Spawned Zombies value of 64.

Settings For Naturally Spawned Zombies and Total Zombies Spawned

The settings that affect zombie spawning mentioned so far also consider the natural zombies already existing in your game world before calculating how many blood moon zombies to spawn. Let's consider the 3rd example we mentioned above.

In that example we saw that the total horde zombies spawned were decided by the Max Spawned Zombies value i.e. 64. However, let’s say there were already 10 naturally zombies present in your game world. In this case, the total zombies to be spawned will subtract 10 from the Max Spawned Zombies value i.e. 64 - 10 = 54 zombies spawned.

As the night progresses, these natural zombies will either get killed or be timed out and eventually all the remaining zombies will be from the blood moon horde wave.

Blood Moon Zombie Horde Wave Duration

As you should already know by now, each of the horde waves have a specific duration. This value is set for the “duration” parameter in the gamestages.xml file.  Let’s consider the example mentioned earlier for gamestage 59.

In that example, the first 2 waves have a “duration” of 2 which is 2 hours in game-time. The 3rd wave’s “duration” is set for 7 game-time hours. Now, note that the entire blood moon lasts from 10 pm to 4 am i.e. 6 hours in total. The “duration” settings for the 3rd wave ensures the final wave will last the entire remaining duration of the blood moon.

Surviving The Blood Moon!

Well, it all finally comes down to how to survive a blood moon night in 7 Days To Die. You of course have only two ways to stay alive - fight or flight! In either case, you will have to go through one or more of the scenarios mentioned below:

1. The first case is when you decide to take on the rampaging zombies head-on! If you do it right you might end up killing all the zombies from the current wave. In this case, after the “interval” set in the gamestages.xml file, the next wave of zombies will start.
2. Your other option is to of course avoid taking on the zombies head-on. But you gotta avoid getting killed till the “duration” of the wave expires. If you can pull it off successfully, then like in the previous case, you will have to do it once again with the next wave that will begin shortly.
3. If you manage to pull off either of the two strategies successfully through the final wave and survive till that magical 04.00 AM then congratulations! You have successfully beat the Blood Moon and all those crazy zombies will turn back into their normal form!

Pre Alpha 18.4, the waves would be infinite, i.e. in the final wave, the zombies just keep on coming till 4 AM. Not any more! So now if you manage to eliminate all the zombies in that final wave, then you have beat the blood moon already and there will be no more blood moon zombies. Of course, as your gamestage increases it won’t be all that easy to kill just all the zombies in the wave.

Multiplayer Settings Performance

All the settings that affect the horde spawning limits, also take into consideration single-player and multiplayer environments. That is because the zombies spawned in the latter case would be per-player.

The two main settings that affect the zombie limit are the “maxAlive” and “Blood Moon Enemy Count”. It is not recommended to mess with the “maxAlive” parameter, instead, adjust the “Blood Moon Enemy Count” as per your preference.

With a higher gamestage level especially after 50, the horde size on this crazy night will get substantially bigger if you increase the  “Blood Moon Enemy Count”. Double it and you will get double the zombies in the wave! This of course will have a significant effect on your server performance.

“Max Spawned Zombies” is another global setting that will affect both the single & multiplayer game performance. This setting defines the total zombies that can be present in your game world at once. This is a high priority setting and will override the “Blood Moon Enemy Count”. So if you set the “Max Spawned Zombies” to 80 and the  “Blood Moon Enemy Count” value to 30 with 4 players in the game, then the total zombies will still be limited to 80.

Blood Moon Customization Options

Given below are settings you can alter to change your Blood Moon behaviour.

Change This

Single-Player: Basic Settings / Blood Moon Frequency: ‘disabled’Dedicated Server: BloodMoonFrequency=0

Single-Player: Basic Settings / Blood Moon RangeDedicated Server: BloodMoonRange

Single-Player: Basic Settings / Blood Moon WarningDedicated Server: BloodMoonWarning=(hour of the day)

Single-Player: Basic Settings / Zombie Blood Moon SpeedDedicated Server: ZombieBMMove

Single-Player: Advanced Settings / Blood Moon Enemy CountDedicated: BloodMoonEnemyCount

Edit appropriate (stage …/) entries to increase ‘num’ parameter in gamestages.xml

In gamestages.xml edit the relevant final (stage …/) entries (within each (gamestage) group), change num=”9999″