The Hordes

The Hordes is a mod that adds timed undead invasions and a mob-infection system to the game. It adds no blocks, items, recipes, worldgen or loot tables. Its effect comes from scheduled waves of hostile mobs that chase each player, from zombie-type mobs that infect players and other mobs, and from changes to how vanilla undead, piglins, illagers and horses behave. In Fear Nightfall it is a main source of night-time danger, and several of its settings differ from the mod's defaults.

Overview

The Hordes adds two systems to the game. The first is the Horde Nights schedule, in which each player receives timed waves of undead, illagers and other mobs that move directly toward that player. The second is Zombie Infection, in which certain mobs infect players and other mobs. Infected entities eventually die and convert into zombie variants, and infected players leave behind a zombie-player copy of themselves. The mod also alters around two dozen vanilla behaviours, such as sun burning, zombification, zombie horses and illager targeting. It is a rules-and-content add-on rather than a total overhaul. It requires AtlasLib.

The mod's commands are under /hordes. They start, stop and reset horde events, spawn waves and zombies, list horde entities and write a debug log.

Content

The mod adds no items, blocks or recipes. Its content consists of the following.

• Zombie players: Player Zombies are copies of players who died while infected, or when graves are enabled. There are three variants: a zombie-based type, a husk-based type used when the player dies in a desert, savanna or badlands biome, and a drowned-based type used when the player dies underwater. Each carries the player's skin, name, equipment and optional cape.
• Reskinned vanilla mobs: the mod replaces the texture and chat name of a zombie Wandering Trader (a zombie villager), a zombie Pillager with 24 health, and a zombified piglin brute with 50 health.
• Horde mobs: the spawn tables use vanilla types such as Zombie, Husk, Drowned, Zombie Horse, Zombie Villager, Zombified Piglin, Zoglin, Piglin Brute, Wither Skeleton, Phantom, Vindicator, Ravager, Evoker, Skeleton Horse, Cave Spider and Bogged. Infection-capable mobs are described in Zombie Infection.
• Effects: the mod adds two mob effects, Infected and Immunity, listed in the table below.
• Attributes: every entity type receives the infectivity and infection_resistance attributes. Players start with an infection resistance of 0.25.
• Damage type: infection deaths use a dedicated hordes:infection damage type.

Mechanics

Horde Nights

Each player has a separate horde schedule, which counts that player's playtime in ticks rather than world time. A horde night falls every 10 days of playtime, and there is no horde on day 0. A horde starts at tick 18000 (midnight in a 24000-tick day), with a 1200-tick start window, and only happens in the overworld. An event lasts 6000 ticks and sends a wave every 600 ticks, so each event has about ten waves. A wave starts with 15 mobs and grows slightly as the horde days go on. The mobs appear 75 blocks away on the ground surface. A wave is skipped if 160 horde mobs are already alive. If another online player with an active horde is within 25 blocks, the wave size is multiplied by 0.8 for each such player.

Horde mobs gain 75 follow range and path directly at the player, repathing every 25 ticks. They cannot despawn while their event is active. Ending an event removes the chase behaviour. See Horde Nights for the full mechanic.

The spawn table changes with the horde day. Early hordes are mostly zombies, with some husks, zombie horses and drowned. Later hordes add zombified piglins, vindicators, ravagers, phantoms, wither skeletons and piglin brutes. From around day 60 the table adds mounted combinations, such as a skeleton horse with a stray rider and a cave spider with a bogged rider. When the player is in an ocean biome, the script switches to a drowned table that prefers water.

On a player's own horde night, that player cannot sleep. The mod also blocks sleeping for everyone while any online player has an active horde, so sleep-skipping is unavailable during a horde.

Zombie Infection

Infection happens on a hit. An attacking mob that is listed as infection-capable has a chance per hit equal to its infectivity. Zombies have 0.75, husks 0.8, drowned 0.7, zombie horses 0.7, zombified piglins 0.7 and zoglins 0.5. The chance that a victim is infected is the infectivity multiplied by one minus the victim's infection resistance. Only mobs in the conversion list and players can be infected.

Infection resistance comes from the victim. Players start at 0.25. Mobs take a value from their conversion entry, for example 0.15 for villagers, 0.35 for horses, 0.65 for piglin brutes and 0.85 for hoglins. Worn armour adds to this. Leather and chainmail pieces add 0.05 each, iron and gold add 0.1 each, diamond adds 0.15, and netherite and turtle helmets add 0.2. Horse armour adds 0.3 (leather), 0.4 (iron and gold) and 0.5 (diamond). Wolf armour adds 1.0, which gives full immunity while worn, because resistance is capped at 1.

An infected entity goes through four stages of the Infected effect (amplifiers 0 to 3). Each stage lasts 6000 ticks multiplied by 0.95 for each cure the entity has received, starting from one. A first infection therefore gives four stages of 5700 ticks, about 19 minutes in total. Each stage adds hunger exhaustion and 10% movement slowdown per stage. When stage 3 ends, the entity dies from infection damage. Effect cure items do not remove the Infected effect.

Cures remove an infection:

• Right-clicking an infected mob with a golden apple or enchanted golden apple removes the infection and uses one item. Eating a cure apple removes the effect and increases the entity's infection count.
• Each cure increases the entity's infection count, which shortens its later infection stages. The count resets when the entity dies.
• Eating an enchanted golden apple grants Immunity for 150 seconds. Immunity removes any active infection and stops new infection while it lasts.

Infected mobs convert into their conversion target instead of dying normally. Infected players do not convert. They die, and a zombie player is created from their body. Infection deaths show the message "death.attack.infection", with a zombified suffix when the player became a zombie player.

Infected mobs also seek out other infection-capable mobs and players. Illagers, piglins and vexes hunt them. Piglins that become infected eat a golden apple from their inventory to cure themselves.

Changes to vanilla

The Hordes changes the following vanilla behaviour.

• Sun burning: by default, zombies, skeletons and zombie horses do not burn in sunlight. Zombie villagers cannot be cured by right-click by default.
• Piglins and hoglins: these are immune to zombification in the overworld by default.
• Zombie horses: these gain melee, player, villager and iron golem targeting, and cannot be leashed. They gain 35 follow range and 3 attack damage.
• Zombified piglins: these gain the same targeting as zombie horses and move through villages, unlike vanilla zombified piglins, which are neutral.
• Illagers: vindicators, evokers, pillagers, ravagers, vexes and witches target infection-capable mobs within 10 blocks. Evokers, pillagers and witches flee from them. Witches replace harming and poison potions with healing or regeneration when they target undead.
• Zoglins: these ignore undead by default.
• Golden apples: a right-click with a cure apple on any non-player living mob within 5 blocks is intercepted, and that mob's infection count increases. This also blocks feeding animals or breeding them with golden apples.
• Global world pause: the level tick is cancelled when the server has no players (see the pack section below for the pack's setting).
• Sleep: beds are refused on a player's own horde night, and on every night while another player has an active horde.
• Sky and fog: the sky, fog and moon are tinted on horde nights on the client.
• Death drops: a player who dies infected, or with graves enabled, has their drops moved into a zombie player, and the Infected effect is removed.
• Mob textures and names: every living entity gains a synced texture field and a chat name, and custom textures can override the default render.
• Horse conversion: horse inventories, including saddles and armour, are copied across conversions, such as from a horse to a zombie horse.

In Fear Nightfall

The pack keeps the mod's horde schedule, spawn values and tables, but several settings in the live hordes-common.toml differ from the mod's defaults.

• Zombies and skeletons burn in daylight. zombiesBurn and skeletonsBurn are true. Zombie horses do not burn, because zombieHorsesBurn is false.
• Zombie villagers can be cured. zombieVillagersCanBeCured is true. The pack limits cure items to golden apples and enchanted golden apples, so infected villagers are no longer cured with any item.
• The world keeps running when the server is empty. pauseEventServer is false, so time, weather and entities continue while no one is online. The pack changed this so that empty worlds no longer freeze time.
• Zombie players do not store items. zombiePlayersStoreItems is false. The mod cancelled the death drops that the Corpse mod needs, so the pack's setting keeps the items with the corpse while the zombie player still spawns.
• Zombie players spawn only from infection. zombieGraves is false, so a zombie player is created only when a player dies while infected.
• Piglins and hoglins do not convert. piglinsHoglinsConvert is false, which is the mod's default, so piglins, piglin brutes and hoglins are not zombified in the overworld.

The horde spawn values match the mod's defaults: 15 mobs per wave, 6000-tick events, 600-tick intervals, a limit of 160 live horde mobs and a 10-day horde cycle. The pack's Horde Nights and Zombie Infection pages go into detail on each system, and the zombie-type mobs are described on Player Zombies.