Improved Hordes

7 days to die improved hordes, 7 days to die animals, 7 days to die zombies

Horde alert, Survivor!

There’s been a sudden abundance of Zombies all over the place. Screamers are now popping up in major towns, and we’re finding sleepers on the road. Stay safe out there.

Backstory

This mod was initially an idea FilUnderscore came up with after playing A19, and reflecting on the past alphas where he felt wandering hordes used to be more dangerous and unpredictable. He wanted to bring this back and focus on improving both wandering hordes and scout hordes, to bring more difficulty (and customization) into the game, as he felt the only real threat was the blood moon.

Features

Improved Hordes

Customizable hordes that scale in size and difficulty, with gamestage & biome progression, to keep the game feeling balanced.

World Roaming Hordes

  • Hordes are now commonplace, you’ll encounter many on your journey.
  • Hordes are simulated throughout the world and load in when nearby.
  • Each major POI zone (i.e. cities) has hordes moving in and out constantly, while screamers patrol the zone.
  • You will also find smaller roaming hordes in the wilderness. They may either be lost, or making their way to a city.

World Event System

  • Heatmap-like system that attracts nearby hordes depending on heatmap activities occurring in certain areas. The number and size of the hordes depend on where the activities are occurring. Near a city? Expect huge hordes to wander around and find out what’s going on in the neighborhood.
  • Screamers contribute a lot of heat if they spot you nearby, attracting hordes nearby. Make sure to take them down quick or you’ll be having many hordes knocking on your door.

Enhanced AI Behaviors

  • Hordes investigate interruptions to their current task as Zombies are a curious bunch.
  • Hordes can also merge and split in size, depending on their goals as a collective.

Add-ons

These will be coming soon. Stay tuned for updates.

  • Airdrop Hordes Add-on
  • Bigger Hordes Add-on
  • Massive Hordes Add-on
  • Random Hordes Add-on

Installation

Note: This mod can be added to existing saves to start working, no new save is required. To remove the mod from an existing save, just delete the mod.

Download and extract the zip containing latest release into the Mods folder.

Client-only: Disable EAC so the game can load the Improved Hordes DLL.

Dedicated Servers: This mod is EAC friendly and only needs to be installed in the server’s Mods folder. Your players do not need to install the mod to play.

Settings can be modified in the Config/ImprovedHordes/settings.xml file in the ImprovedHordes mod folder.

Commands

Note: All commands require a permission level of 0.

For a full list of commands, type in the console

help improvedhordes

Wiki

For information such as changing mod settings or creating your own custom wandering/scout hordes, check out the Improved Hordes Wiki.

Mod Support

This will work with any mod that does not modify the vanilla AI.

Donations

You are already showing a lot of support just by enjoying the mod, but if you really appreciate FilUnderscore’s work and want to show extra support in the form of a donation, feel free to buy him a coffee on Ko-fi.

Screenshots

7 days to die improved hordes additional screenshot 1

7 days to die improved hordes additional screenshot 2

7 days to die improved hordes additional screenshot 3

7 days to die improved hordes additional screenshot 4

Terms of Use

Definitions

  • Private Use = Using the mod for personal use or hosting/running a server with the mod installed.
  • Binaries = The DLL file (ImprovedHordes.dll) distributed alongside the Improved Hordes mod.
  • Source Code = The files that fall under the “Source” directory in the Improved Hordes GitHub repository.
  • XML Files = The files that fall under the “Config” directory in the Improved Hordes mod folder.
  • Mod Author = FilUnderscore, the original author of the Improved Hordes mod.
  • Original Sources = GitHub, Forum

Use

You are allowed to use Improved Hordes with or without any kind of modifications made to its source material.

Distribution

  • You are not allowed to distribute the Binaries and/or Source Code and/or XML Files of Improved Hordes in exchange for payment.
  • You are allowed to distribute modifications made to the XML Files of the Improved Hordes mod provided you give appropriate credit to the Mod Author and provide a link to the original sources of Improved Hordes and these Terms of Use.
  • You are not allowed to distribute the original nor modified Binaries and/or Source Code of the Improved Hordes mod without prior written consent from the Mod Author.
  • You are allowed to distribute links to the original sources of Improved Hordes.

Modification

Any modifications made to the Improved Hordes Source Code and Binaries are limited to private use only if not stated otherwise with written consent from the Mod Author.

Liability

Mod Author is not responsible for any damage that may be caused during an incorrect or correct installation of Improved Hordes.

If you have been given written consent from the Mod Author to do one or more of the following: use, reuse, distribute, duplicate, copy or modify Improved Hordes outside of private use only, you are obligated to give appropriate credit to the Mod Author, provide a link to the original sources of Improved Hordes and these Terms of Use, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable matter, but not in any way that suggests the Mod Author endorses you or your use.

All rights to the Improved Hordes Binaries, Source Code, and XML Files are shared with The Fun Pimps.

Improved Hordes 2.0.0 for A21.2 b30 Released

Changelog

Added

  • Banner and Icon for Mod Manager Mods menu.
  • silence_init_msg setting (default: false) to hide the initialization message on first world load (it appears in the console instead of in-game chat).

Changed

  • Wandering hordes no longer sprint between zones and no longer have a wander delay within zones to compensate.
  • This change was necessary as the AI ends up doing ‘nothing’ most of the time and isn’t very exciting to see when encountering a horde.
  • Wandering AI Command improvements.
  • Hordes will now wander in areas they visit in the wilderness, heat events, or zones by roaming around within a certain radius when arriving at their destination. This is an improvement to the previous wander system which just had them idling in place.

Fixed

  • Fix error thrown when WorldZoneHordePopulator checks for trader area.
  • Fix “Collection was modified” error during horde updates.
  • Fix errors when using debug builds of the game.
  • Fix Horde AI pathing getting stuck when given certain world positions.

Improved Hordes 2.0.0 has gone stable! This update brings some bug fixes and AI improvements.

DOWNLOAD (320 KB)

If you appreciate FilUnderscore’s work and you want to show support, use this donate link.

The forum topic of the mod is here.

Credits: FilUnderscore

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65 thoughts on “Improved Hordes

  1. this mod is good but i have the NPC mod, and it’s not compatible, it makes spawn 50 NPCs instead of a zombie horde. if you can fix this it would be insane cause this mod is really needed in the game

    1. This sounds like it may be an incompatibility with the NPC mod, perhaps a configuration error in one of the XML files. Are you using any other mods alongside NPC mod and Improved Hordes? The hordes.xml file defines the horde spawns and relies on the base game entitygroups.xml file, so if that file has been incorrectly modified by another mod then that would be the cause of this issue.

  2. I’m playing war of the walkers and have dangerous cities as well. I didn’t get any hordes until day 3, I stayed in the trader overnight until I can get a base going, I heard them outside beating on the door. In the morning I went out there and there was a Ton of zombies, both regular and huge HP ones from WotW. I killed most of them and another horde came. I killed most of those and another horde came. I killed most of those and another horde came. It was like I’d kill most of them and the horde would just reset, they kept spawning from the same point, and walking towards the trader, even if I was off in the distance watching them and nowhere near the trader. All damn day this steady stream of zombies would come for me, it never stopped. I like killing zombies and had Random Hordes with dangerous cities last game which added a lot of zombies to kill. But the area cleared after a while, you had a pause in the action. This was just spawn, I’d kill a bunch, and they’d spawn again. Is it broken, is it broken because I have WotW, is it broken because I have dangerous cities, or is that how it’s supposed to work? Love the idea, but need a break to do missions n stuff… maybe if I leave the area and come back it will stop? Thanks much for your time making this

    1. Hi, I just toughed it out and finally they stopped coming, but the hordes are brutal, especially at the start with War of the Walkers going and 1000 hp hell’s janitors coming at me. Now that I’m higher level they are great, I love the mod!

      1. I love this mod, man. Got rid of WotW, droprate of loot was too much. Added a bunch of zombie mods to have a bunch of different zombies, and Wandering Horde Frequency for added oomph. Then I edited all the hps and droprates of loot for the zombies, and now I think I finally fine tuned it enough. I’m playing a map called “Mega cities only” Everyone should definitely check it out, great map! Thanks again for the mod!

        1. Glad to hear you’re enjoying the mod! In response to one of your previous questions, if you are playing with POI dense maps, you will have exponentially more hordes present in the world as horde populations depend on POIs in the world. You may choose to increase the repopulation settings in the settings.xml if you’re finding that you can’t clear out hordes faster than they repopulate. Additionally, hordes are attracted to sight, heat, and sound so playing stealthier will always result in less hordes being attracted to you.

  3. So one major issue with the mod is that you can’t hide from hordes using the sneak mode. Other zombies can be lured and you can sneak away but the moment you get too close to a horde, it doesn’t matter what level your sneak skill is, they will all auto lock you and attack.

    Makes my current stealth build almost useless, but other than that, a great mod.

    1. The mod integrates with the vanilla stealth system, which I don’t think allows you to achieve perfect 100% stealth, but there are still some bits to improve such as sleeper horde player detection, and as you’ve mentioned the stealth around wandering hordes. Thanks for the feedback!

  4. The mods, unfortunately disable screamer spawning…

    I’ve tried on implements on my server to play with friends. but after long play i noticed there are not screamers at all spawned in game, even when spawned using commands.

    i’ve reproduce the bugs on private game and yes screamers not shows up.
    Is this intended function?

    1. Vanilla screamers are currently disabled with the mod installed, I’m wanting to further customize their behavior in a future update and balance them relative to the rest of the mod, so not a bug right now – they still spawn in towns/cities.

    2. I’ve temporarily re-enabled vanilla screamers until a new wilderness spawned screamer horde type is implemented in a future update. For now, this should be fixed in the latest version 2.0.0-beta.5.

  5. Does this mod have compatibility issues with other mods that may effect zombie populations or something or perhaps it doesnt like it when you only play on one biome?

    Ive been trying to create a new world and wouldnt be able to get past the spawn chunks before falling out of the world into the void and getting lots of console errors. After removing this mod this no longer happens. Is this just a new bug to report?

    1. Sounds like unexpected behavior. Could you provide a log of the error through pastebin? It would help to figure out what might be causing it. Thanks!

        1. Open the console when in-game with F1 and click the “Open Logs Folder” button in the top-right corner of the screen.

  6. I am getting a lot of errors on Dedicated Server. I removed this and it is working fine. All “work items”. Forge, workbench, cement mixer, etc. Would burn wood but would only work if I was in them. They would stop making items if I was out of them, but still burn the wood. This is A21.1(b16)

        1. Update on this issue: This has been fixed in the latest version 2.0.0-beta.5. Thanks again for reporting it, let me know if it comes back!

  7. Hi I’ve been using the mod since latest release and for the most part it seems to be working, except on day 4 i’ve noticed screamers spawning almost constantly. Seems like they spawn every 2 minutes and it’s quite annoying. Any idea of how I can fix this issue?

    1. Might be a bug with hordes respawning when they are killed, I think if you leave the area and return it should fix itself. I’ll try get it fixed as quickly as possible.

      1. Can confirm this bug has been fixed in the latest release 2.0.0-beta.3. There was a bug where entities being killed would not properly update the horde size.

  8. Hey, I love this mod. It works great most of the time EXCEPT in the Wasteland.
    In the plains, desert, and snow it’s worked great. I run into a couple of hordes every now and then when I’m traveling and then in cities I run into them pretty often, but they’re never too overwhelming. Sometimes they pile up if I’m inside a POI and make a lot of noise and all of a sudden I’ll have dozens of zombies streaming in through a hole in the wall, but I enjoy the challenge from that and it makes the game a lot more dynamic.

    HOWEVER

    The Wasteland spawns. Every other biome has been fine. Today I decided to go into the Wasteland for the first time using this mod. I biked to a medium sized town in the wasteland. I encountered a small horde of 6-12 zombies with some rads and ferals and decided to fight them. They were killed pretty easily and I thought I was good, right? Next thing I know there’s a dozen more zombies rushing at me. Okay, I can handle this. They’re dead. But then I turn around and see more. And more. And more. And more. And I run around pumping the crowds of radiated cops and mutants and ferals full of shotgun shells, or swinging with a L6 steel club. But no matter how many dozens I killed I would turn around and there would be more coming. I’m not sure how many there were but I wouldn’t have been surprised if there were more than the 64 cap. I’m fairly certain that any zombie I killed was instantly being respawned just out of sight. I’d say I killed at least a hundred zombies before I realized. There was a feral screamer which I killed but the zombies didn’t stop after that, and I didn’t hear or see any other screamers.

    Mind you, this wasn’t nearby a large city or anything. I didn’t get a chance to explore it thoroughly but it was a medium sized town, probably with mostly T2 and T3 buildings with maybe one or two T4s. I even ran a bit out of town and I still had zombies coming out from the trees. Game stage 74, level 47. I’ve also installed the Dangerous Cities mod, which I don’t know if that’d have an effect and cause this bug.

    Overall, it was really bizarre to go to the Wasteland and find a horde half a dozen times more difficult than the Blood Moon hordes I was facing. Really a shame because I love the mod otherwise – it makes the game so much more interesting since zombies can actually pose a threat outside of POIs, and cities are much more dangerous which is how I feel the game should be in vanilla.

    1. Hi,

      The zombie spawns past 64 are a bug which is being fixed next update (ETA next couple of days). I’ve reworked some of the horde spawning code to prevent it from happening again. Some AI changes to hordes are also coming.

      Wasteland spawns can be scaled in the settings file, see the option “horde_biome_curve_scale” at https://github.com/FilUnderscore/ImprovedHordes/wiki/Settings#horde_biome_curve_scale

      You may want to set it to a value closer to 1.0 if you want hordes much closer to other biomes, but setting it below 1.0 will result in less hordes in harder biomes.

      Make sure to run “improvedhordes flush” in the console when loading in after changing the settings to put them in effect immediately. Be warned however that hordes will be repopulated across the map, so you may need to clear them out again in some areas.

      Thanks for your feedback, will look at scaling back some of the wasteland hordes for default settings.

  9. Mod ain’t working properly/respecting Zombies cap as I had over 100 zombies alive in a wasteland city and needed to use Killall 3 times in a row to sort out the situation.

    I created a serverconfig.xml with MaxSpawnedZombies set to 40 and will see tomorrow if that solve the issue but I believe the mod should use the default value of 64 even without a serverconfig file.

    1. This is running the latest version? The mod should obey the MaxSpawnedZombies game preference that is set, and listed when you type “getgamepref” in the console.

      If it’s not obeying it, must be a bug and I’ll look into it.

  10. is the mod stable? also, does it work with “Server Side Zombies PLUS”, “EliteZombies”, “Return of the Behemoth” — and i don’t mean for it to spawn them in the hordes for it to say it works but for it to work in general with this mods.

    1. Mod is in beta so no game breaking bugs so far, stable release still a few weeks away I’d say. It should be compatible with almost all mods, including the ones you’ve listed.

    1. Sorry! Not yet, but it is starting to enter a beta phase soon where most of the bugs should be ironed out and more balanced. Still working on getting it there, thanks to everyone with their feedback so far.

  11. Can you even defeat these hordes? I literally cant move in my base without getting bumrushed by 64 zombies. I’m not even sure I can defeat the hordes either, or if I’m just throwing ammo away. they’re all feral, and about 40% radiated. I love the idea of these hordes, but this is ridiculous. I can’t even lead them away from my base. I upgraded one block from wood to cobble, and watched as the entire treeline half a mile away erupted in a sea of radiated zombies.

    1. Hi, some info would be useful for feedback on balancing the horde difficulties. What biome are you located in and are you near a dense town/city, and what gamestage are you roughly at? This feedback helps a lot in making the mod a better addition to the game.

  12. Interesting mod …. didn’t tweak any of the mod setting … game set as (7 days between hordes, nomad, 16 zombies irrc on blood moon, and 64 total zombies on map, pregen 10k map) on 1st horde night was ok then apparently they decided to call all their friends lol. The final tally 2 constant days of fighting later, zombie death count was at 1900+. Rocket launchers apparently really raise the heat level (call to dinner bell) and the zombies are very curious, never got a screamer during that though.
    But if you want Walking Dead Mega hordes level of OMG give this mod a shot. I will keep this in my modlist, kinda curious what a city horde is like. Appreciate the work put into making this, really works well with the Relic/Artifact mod

  13. We’ve been playing for like 2 days with a friend ( so only two player ) we’re low level ( 5-6) and we keep getting horde and horde comming to our base every 2 m, we tried to tweak the settings but i don’t really know the scale/balance. Is this what you intented to do with this mod and does the tweakings really change something ( we litteraly keep getting aggros by 20 zombies and at least 2 to 3 witches per “waves” ). If it’s possible to hard nerf the mod do you have a recommandation of values for the different settings pls ?

    1. Please see the latest reply to Winter Steale, new version (2.0.0-alpha.4) has more options for spawning and has been tweaked to have less hordes and zombies by default.

  14. Trying to figure out the settings. I went to the wiki but it still isn’t very easy to understand. I have had servers for a while and some basic knowledge of changing files but not a pc whiz. I have this on our server and we are getting wandering hordes every 5-10 mins, mostly all feral & loads of them. What else do I need to change besides max count per player to tweak this? I would like more time in between them as well as slightly smaller size.
    Also, can’t find the add-on for the screamers to reduce either. Any help is greatly appreciated.

    1. Wandering hordes in the A21 version no longer spawn randomly, and instead now roam the world at all times. You can encounter one if you happen to pass by. They respawn every 7 days for now.

      Horde difficulty is still dependent on gamestage, though tweaks are still being made. Feel free to edit the hordes file if you’re finding you’re getting too many ferals at your current gamestage.

      You can reduce the max horde density setting if you’d like smaller hordes, as well as the max world density which will reduce the number of hordes in the world.

      Add-ons will be updated closer to the stable release, as the A21 version is still in experimental development and testing.

      1. So the hordes are always roaming and no spawn? Our main base is in a field a bit of a way out from the town. We will get horde after horde every few minutes for about 6-8 waves and then finally a stretch of quiet. 3 of us play together usually and we are all in the low 30’s for levels. The way we get wave after wave after wave for a while and then nothing is so strange. Thank you so much for explaining the settings to me. I really like this mod and the challenge it brings. It adds more (un)life back into the game and definitely keeps you on your toes. Sure takes mining to a whole new level. 😀 Will the hordes be different in each biome as well?

        1. Yeah, the problem I wanted to focus on was that the world wasn’t feeling quite alive. I’ve left the vanilla wandering hordes enabled which means you still get the random vanilla spawns (previously I disabled them and implemented my own system). Instead I’ve decided to switch the mod’s focus to having roaming hordes that you can encounter and follow throughout the world on a large scale, since that’s what the game is missing. The roaming hordes also react to stuff like gunshots in the distance which forces you to play smarter. With biomes, hordes currently only scale in size with the forest having smaller hordes and the wasteland having much larger hordes.

          1. Yes that makes sense and makes it more dynamic that way. We get pretty good size hordes in the forest so I’m curious to see the difference in other biomes.
            May I ask if any of your mod works with max alive zeds set by base game settings? Meaning if we kill of a bunch in a horde does that trigger more to start instantly spawning to replace them? Would that trigger another horde? Just trying to figure out how we would get so many successive waves in one day/night so consistently.

          2. Oh and by default how many hordes are in the world? Like in the world density setting. Sorry so many questions

          3. Just released a new version (2.0.0-alpha.4) on the forums which should be updated here soon as well. This version adds extra settings to fine tune hordes spawned throughout the world, though I’ve lowered the number of wilderness hordes (and slightly increased the number of hordes in towns). Should result in fewer hordes. I’ve also slightly nerfed the size of hordes, so it should be more manageable. Additionally, killed hordes will now save and repopulate every 7 days (default setting), whereas before they would re-spawn every time you started the world. In response to your question, the waves you are encountering could be either A. the following as you’ve mentioned (this is for performance reasons, and come from the same direction as the horde spawned), and B. other hordes that happened to be alerted to your location.

  15. – Zombies spawn or despawn in front of you
    – Too many zombies are spawning and this is Very High performence issue
    -Looting bigger POI is hard cuz hordes are tearing POI appart

    1. A21 version is still in a testing phase so it may be unbalanced in some places, if it’s causing a problem feel free to wait for the stable release of the mod which should perform better.

    2. Additionally, feel free to change the mod settings (see how to do this on the Improved Hordes wiki) to lower the number of zombies that spawn at a time in the meantime.

  16. Hi. I was wandering is it possible to make the mod to increase spawning and hordes with all the downloaded zombies and NPCs from mods folder. Like if it could be a priority mod for whatever zombie mods you add.
    And also is it possible to make a mod to force all imported zombies and NPC spawn in all gamestages, hordes, and all biomes randomly? And random sleepers also – NPCs, zombies etc.

    I was editing many files in a19 and got so many different zombies spawn everywehere, but now it’s more complicated cause there are more zombies added, and more files edited, so it would take much time. If it’s possible to add something like “zombies all” line in config files it could be great, if someone knows how to do it.

    Thanks in advance.

  17. Gave this mod a run over two weeks on our dedicated server, really wanted it work, but found too many issues:

    -Too many hordes, minimum twice a day, good luck trying to mine.
    -often feral
    -horde always zero in on our base or mining area, and even if we were silent, the zombies didn’t move on and would continue hitting the walls below our six story base.
    I tweaked and tested every setting in settings.xml and nothing would change (always reset the schedule with console command).
    The other mods we have installed are izayos weapon packs and ‘enzombies’, but surely these don’t conflict with wandering hordes.
    I really wanted an upgrade on the vanilla wandering hordes, but this mod made It feel like a non stop blood moon.

    1. interesting, I just tried it out on our dedicated server and had a similar experience in the opposite direction: We couldnt get any hordes to spawn (aside from day 7) no matter what changes we did to the settings.xml. I iteratively cranked the min and max events per week, but nothing happened. Uninstalling and just going to use a 2x

    1. Compatibility with overhauls has not been tested, but shouldn’t interfere. You can always remove it without any damage to your savegame.

  18. Does this mod add to how many zombies can be active on a game at one time (I believe the default is 64?) or is it still capped at 64 zombies allowed

    1. It caps to the max zombie count (default is 64) that’s set in the serverconfig.xml file (both multiplayer/single player).

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