Horror and Spooky Content
Horror and Spooky Content is the theme that Fear Nightfall is built around. It is not one mod but a set of horror mods and pack changes: undead and haunted biomes, graveyards, witch covens, spider caves, boss-tier hounds and demons, and scheduled night attacks. Most of the content comes from Born in Chaos, The Graveyard, Sleepy Hollows, Sons of Sins, Hexerei, The Hordes and Iron's Spells 'n Spellbooks, with biomes from Biomes O' Plenty, Terralith and Regions Unexplored, and structures from Dungeons and Taverns and others.
The pack makes the world spookier on purpose. Horror biomes make up about 12% of land, against about 4.5% before the pack's changes. Horror structures spawn about 2× more often, and the horror biomes, caves and structures concentrate in humid, temperate-to-cool forests, taigas and swamps. Players who travel after dark, or who explore caves, meet the pack's hostile content far more often than in a standard modpack. The dangers are summarised below, and each linked page gives the full numbers.
Horror biomes
Horror biomes are weighted six times higher than ordinary biomes during biome selection. The pack's list of them is:
- Surface biomes: Dead Forest (including the Old Growth Dead Forest), Ominous Woods, Blackwood Taiga, Ashen Woodland, Ashen Savanna, Sleepy Hollows, Willow Swamp, Bayou, and the vanilla Dark Forest and Deep Dark.
- Cave biomes: Infested Caves, Frostfire Caves and Spider Nest. All three also spread into neighbouring cave areas. The Spider Nest has no surface share.
Lush caves are reduced to one third of their weight so that they no longer dominate the cave layer. Deserts, jungles and mountain peaks stay mostly normal. The biome weighting is part of the custom biome table described in Biomes.
Horror structures
Horror structures are placed about 30% closer together than their mods' default spacing. Where a horror structure shares a set with other structures, it also gets six times the weight. The main families are listed below. Each structure has its own page with its generation rules and loot.
The pack's structure density figures are on the Structures page. In a 26 km² test sample, horror structures rose from 578 to 1,071.
Horror mobs
Horror mobs spawn across most of the Overworld, and the densest groups are in the horror biomes above.
- Undead: the Infected Zombie, the Headless Horseman (a boss from Sleepy Hollows), and the Ghoul, Revenant, Reaper and Wraith from The Graveyard. The Lich is the multi-phase boss of The Graveyard, and it is summoned at an altar.
- Hounds and night hunters: the Dread Hound, which hunts in packs, and the Nightmare Stalker, a boss that appears in darkness once a world is a few in-game days old.
- Pumpkin monsters: the Pumpkinhead, Sir Pumpkinhead, Lord Pumpkinhead, Fleeing Pumpkin Head and Mr. and Mrs. Pumpkin, from Born in Chaos and Sleepy Hollows.
- Spiders and flesh: the Mother Spider and Ice Spider, and the sin creatures of Sons of Sins such as the Devourer and Prowler.
- Demonic bosses: the Krampus and Lifestealer from Born in Chaos, which end that mod's boss progression.
- Spellcasters: the Necromancer of the Catacombs and the Cultist.
Night dangers
Several systems make the night the most dangerous part of the day.
- Horde Nights. Every ten in-game days, a player's personal horde night sends waves of undead at that player for five minutes. Beds refuse to work during the event. See Horde Nights.
- Graveyard Hordes. The Graveyard runs a separate overworld horde timer. At night, a check can spawn a group of up to 40 undead or illagers. See Graveyard Hordes.
- Zombie Infection. Zombies, husks and other undead can infect players and mobs, and an infected player who dies rises as a zombie player. Infection applies at any time, not only during a horde. See Zombie Infection.
- Sanity. In the Sleepy Hollows biome, the Sanity meter drains. At 0, it inflicts Insanity and forces a return to bed. See Sanity.
- Seasonal Events. Born in Chaos runs date-based events (Halloween, Chilling Horror and Chaotic Spring) that give zombies and skeletons seasonal helmets and held weapons. See Seasonal Events.
Fear Nightfall switches off the Born in Chaos naughtiness mechanic, so the Naughtiness and Krampus punishments and the summoned Krampus never occur in this pack.
Pack changes that make the world spookier
The pack rebalances the mods so the horror content is more common and more connected. The numbers below come from the pack's change log:
| Area | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Horror biomes, share of land | 4.5% | 11.9% |
| Horror caves, share of cave layer | 17–22% | about 30% |
| Lush caves, share of cave layer | 12–15% | 4–5% |
| Horror structures, 26 km² sample | 578 | 1,071 |
The change applies to the biome table, the structure spacing and the spawn weights, so it affects every world made with the pack. For how the biome table works, see Biomes; for how structure spacing is set, see Structures.
Where to find it
Horror content is spread across the world, so the most useful tools are the ones that locate it. Finding Structures and Biomes covers how to locate structures and biomes, and Nature's Compass is the pack's biome finder.
Tip: Check the day count before a long trip, since a horde night starts at midnight on a horde day and lasts five minutes. A horde night is announced in the action bar. A lit, enclosed base is rarely troubled by Graveyard Hordes.