Horde Nights

Horde Nights are timed attack events that The Hordes adds to Fear Nightfall. On a horde night, the game sends waves of undead and other hostile mobs at one player, who is the target for the whole event. Each wave spawns at a distance and paths directly toward the player. Horde nights are the pack's main scheduled night threat, separate from the mob infection system described in Zombie Infection.

Each player has an independent horde cycle counted in that player's playtime rather than world time. A horde night occurs every ten in-game days. During the event, the sky, fog and moon are tinted, beds refuse to work. The pack changes several of The Hordes' defaults, which are noted below.

Schedule

• The first horde night falls on day 10. Day 0 has no event because the mod's first-day spawn is disabled.
• After that, horde nights recur every 10 days. Each player's next horde day is saved with that player's data, so the schedule survives a restart.
• The event starts at tick 18000 of the in-game day (midnight), with a 1200-tick start buffer.
• Horde nights run only in the Overworld.
• The world keeps ticking when no players are online. The mod's default is to pause the world, but the pack turns that pause off, so time, weather and mob AI continue on an empty server.

Waves

A horde event lasts 6000 ticks (5 minutes) and spawns a wave every 600 ticks, giving ten waves per event.

Wave size is 15 mobs on day 10, rising slowly with each horde day. The formula is 15 × (1 + (day ÷ 10) × 0.05), rounded down. For example:

Two rules change the count:

• Multiplayer scaling: for each other online player with an active horde within 25 blocks, the wave size is multiplied by 0.8. Players who share a horde night together therefore face smaller waves each.
• Population cap: a wave is skipped while 160 horde mobs from the event are still alive.

Each mob spawns on the ground surface about 75 blocks from the target player. Spawn positions avoid fluids, except in the ocean case described below.

Spawn tables

Each wave draws from a weighted table. An entry is eligible only on days inside its range. The first number in each range is the earliest day, and a range that ends at 0 has no upper limit. The pack uses the mod's default table:

Early horde nights therefore use zombies and villagers, zombie horses and husks from day 20, and zombified piglins from day 40. The table has no entries for skeletons, illagers or the other mobs that a custom script could add.

When a player stands in an ocean biome other than a frozen ocean, the event uses the drowned table instead, and spawns prefer water.

Horde mobs

Horde mobs are tuned to reach the player, not to wander.

• Each horde mob gets +75 follow range, so it tracks the player from far away.
• Each mob re-paths toward the player every 25 ticks.
• While chasing, a mob treats water as free to cross.
• Horde mobs cannot despawn while their event is active.
• When the event ends, the chase behaviour and the follow-range boost are removed. The default script runs no reward commands.

Zombie horses in a horde also gain the aggressive behaviour set by the mod's zombie horse rule. The zombified piglins in the table have the same extra targeting.

Beds

Beds refuse to be used on a player's own horde night. The pack also blocks beds for every player while any online player has an active horde, so one player's horde stops the whole server from sleeping.

Notifications and sky

The event sends a notification in the action bar. The sky, fog and moon tint change on the client during a horde night, with colours set by the mod's default values.

Pack changes

Fear Nightfall changes several of The Hordes' defaults:

• Zombies and skeletons burn in daylight. The mod's default is that they do not.
• Zombie villagers can be cured. Curing uses the mod's cure items only.
• The world does not pause when empty. See Horde Nights.
• Zombie players do not store the dead player's items. The zombie player still spawns. See Player Zombies.

Commands

The /hordes command has these subcommands:

• start <ticks> starts an event.
• stop ends the current event.
• reset [player] resets the horde schedule.
• spawnWave <count> spawns a wave immediately.
• spawnZombie <player> <pos> <type> spawns a single zombie-type mob.
• listEntities lists the horde mobs.
• debug writes the horde log.

Staff can use these commands to test the event. Natural horde nights run regardless of them.

Tips

• Plan to be indoors, or somewhere that you can defend, before the event starts at midnight of a horde day. The event lasts five minutes and the waves arrive steadily.
• Because waves are scaled per player, a server with several players online at once faces smaller waves for each player.
• If you need a bed during a horde night, wait until the event ends. Sleeping cannot skip it.