PC What are the impacts of a longer 24-hour cycle?

[Greybird]

The 24-hour cycle setting (default 60) has me curious. What are the non-obvious impacts of this?  I mean, clearly it means that you have more daylight in which to do daylight things, longer nights in which to do night things, and longer to quest between blood moons.

What else does it affect? What other calculations are tied to the in-game clock.

For example, plant growth is on the real-world clock, but  does hunger/thirst run on a real-time clock, or does it run on the in-game clock?  If it's the latter, that would effectively halve the food usage while keeping plant growth the same.   But if  hunger isn't tied to the in-game clock, it wouldn't affect that at all. 

 

[Rotor]

Less time to do stuff.  Trust me I know.  Which makes almost everything else imminent.

 

[meganoth]

What I dimly remember:

I thought plant growth was independant from day-night cycle and always 3 real-time hours.

But recently I think it was revealed that the dew collectors actually take 2 or 3 in-game days, so they could be producing faster or slower depending on the setting.

I find it strange that dew collectors would work differently than farm plots so I wouldn't be surprised if one of the two "facts" I listed was wrong

in serverconfig.xml you can set LootRespawnDays and AirDropFrequency to in-game durations which means they also get influenced by day length.

 

[NekoPawtato]

spawning.xml for zombies and animals in different biomes has a respawndelay in units of in game days, so I'd think longer days means you'd have to wait longer for them to respawn

 

[Rotor]

Itell ya what.  I played my first horde night on 60 min days..........my trigger finger is wasted.  And now I need MORE AMMO .

 

[Maharin]

I so wish more things like hunger/thirst (as only one example) were tied to actual game day length and not 60 minutes (the default day length).  A days worth of food/water should last one in-game day, regardless of how long that day is.  The same goes for buffs, their duration should scale with game day length.

If possible, it will be one of the things added to my overhaul mod I'll be making after release.

 

[Ramethzer0]

I frequently play with settings and I can tell you that less time or more time is pretty relevant when you trim the amount of resources you can reasonably gather in that time.  This includes mission rewards, looting, mining, xp gain, etc etc.  It means you can dilate or tighten up how much time you intend to spend doing things before horde nights.  These are the biggest impacts I have gathered so far.  Finding the right equilibrium of fun Vs resource gathering Vs building is sublime if you hit it right where it feels the most satisfying.   I play longest days possible, but my gathering and looting is tuned down, making sure I need to fill that day doing what I NEED to do for my character to survive.  Every day is a grind for that survival and just feels the most fulfilling to me.  Night times (as per usual) are the times I craft and replenish stocks from raw materials.

Effectively what this does for me is to extend the early game quite a bit, which is arguably my most enjoyable part of the game.  I get much more bored with well built characters because most of my needs are already met by the time I'm level 100 ish.

 

[Melange]

I frequently play with settings and I can tell you that less time or more time is pretty relevant when you trim the amount of resources you can reasonably gather in that time.  This includes mission rewards, looting, mining, xp gain, etc etc.  It means you can dilate or tighten up how much time you intend to spend doing this things before horde nights.  These are the biggest impacts I have gathered.  Finding the right equilibrium of fun Vs resource gathering Vs building is sublime if you hit it right where it feels the most satisfying.   I play longest days possible, but my gathering and looting is tuned down, making sure I need to fill that day doing what I NEED to do for my character to survive.  Every day is a grind for that survival and just feels the most fulfilling to me.

Effectively what this does for me is to extend the early game quite a bit, which is arguably my most enjoyable part of the game.  I get much more bored with well built characters because most of my needs are already met by the time I'm level 100 ish.

Well said. I on the other hand boost my loot to 150, diminsh the zed damage and give my self a boost in the ability to take damage, much prefer longer days. And, horrors, I've been playing with horde nights off as of late. Still plenty of opportunities to get my buttocks handed to me by the zeds. But that comes later, like at gamestage 150 ish. Thanks for the options TFP.

 

[Gazz]

Nights (meaning traders are closed) get really long which is inconvenient when you only have one trader / quest status unlocked.

Traders cycle their inventory less often and auto-selling on rented vending machines is that much slower.

 

[warmer]

On the faster day:

I am a plan/build/assess kind of guy.

I like to find a spot, lay it out first in frames, get a scope of how things works, and then upgrade once I have the rough layout completed.

Anything 60min or lower makes that process speed up much more quickly in a single player game. I typically will take over a POI vs. build my own from scratch, due to less time in the day.

On longer days:

The longer days equals more XP per day, ie faster leveling/game stage by day 7.

I like a slower pace between hordes, so I op for longer days as a solo player to give me time to prep. It makes horder night a lot harder, but I can properly plan an effective layout for a custom base at 90-120min days. 60min I am rushed the entire time.

The other aspect, if I am not mistaken, is food/water is based on real time game play vs in game time. Which means you will consume more in a 120min day vs a 60min day. I believe I read somewhere that actually player action affects thirst and hunger, which means you can run/build/fight a lot more in 120min than 60min. So that may be why as well. Even is statically attached to time + modified by ayer activity a 120min you will likely eat/drink more.

 

[Greybird]

If food burn is base on real time and not the in-game ticker (I wasn't able to find out for sure, but I do know that it's used faster when you burn stamina), it wouldn't have any real effect, save for maybe needing to carry bigger stacks when you're out.  You go through more food in a 120 minute day than a 60, yes, but in a session that last five real-world hours, you'd eat the same amount of food, and you'd get the same amount of food - you could hunt the same amount, and you could grow the same amount.  In other words, it wouldn't take any extra effort.

Would it have any effect on horde night other than the length?  There would still be the same number of waves, unless I misunderstood the mechanics.

I tried the 90-minute days in my solo game, and I'm finding that I prefer it.  I think I'll keep the 60-minute day for my multiplayer game (I run the server), though.  We play for 3-4 hours per session once a week, and 60-minute days give us a horde night roughly every two weeks, which is good.  Setting it to 120 would make it once per month.  And with five people to gather (and with each specializing in specific skills - I'm the tank and the cook), we're not having much trouble with materials.

 

[Ramethzer0]

Would it have any effect on horde night other than the length?  There would still be the same number of waves, unless I misunderstood the mechanics.

as the days lengthen, so do the nights (as per usual) but that can also be trimmed in settings.  The hordes still scale towards your gamestage, last i understood.

 

[FA_Q2]

Would it have any effect on horde night other than the length?  There would still be the same number of waves, unless I misunderstood the mechanics.

AFAIK, there is not a 'number of waves' per se but rather a total number of zeds that will spawn.  This will eventually exceed the number of zeds that are capable of spawning though that seems to take quite a bit of time now as I have finished horde night before the night ends all the way up until day 50 iirc.  Having longer nights will, eventually, give you more total zeds to deal with on that horde night.  

 

[Vaeliorin]

I only play on 120 minute days, and it does have a fairly serious effect.  For one thing, I usually have cops in my day 7 horde.  Granted, I tend to level up a lot because I tend to build a lot.  My day 7 starter horde base usually ends up using between 20,000 and 30,000 cobblestone rocks.  It does require more food/water (I often see youtubers go out for the day without taking food/water, and that's something I never do...I would easily run out before nightfall) and as such, I'm fairly worried about the dew collectors taking game days to refill.  I'll probably end up having to build several dozen of them to get by (I run through a lot of duct tape as well.)

Nights (meaning traders are closed) get really long which is inconvenient when you only have one trader / quest status unlocked.

Traders cycle their inventory less often and auto-selling on rented vending machines is that much slower.

This really only applies if you spend all you time questing/looting.  Almost all of my nights are spent mining, which really doesn't cover all my needs (and thus I also spend many days mining as well.)  But again, I spend a lot of time building (I spent so much time gathering sand for concrete mix in one a19 world that I had over 1.2 million clay stuffed in boxes.)

 

[Syphon583]

Would it have any effect on horde night other than the length?  There would still be the same number of waves, unless I misunderstood the mechanics.

AFAIK, there is not a 'number of waves' per se but rather a total number of zeds that will spawn.  This will eventually exceed the number of zeds that are capable of spawning though that seems to take quite a bit of time now as I have finished horde night before the night ends all the way up until day 50 iirc.  Having longer nights will, eventually, give you more total zeds to deal with on that horde night.  

This is mostly true. As described in the link below, blood moon spawns are dictated by the gamestages.xml. That file controls the spawn group, number of zeds, wave duration (in-game hours), and delay (real-world seconds) between each wave. There is a max number of zombies,  however there are also "waves" of zombies per wave, and with the exception of very early game stages, there are a maximum of 3 waves. Longer nights will not change the number of waves, but will give the player more time (since the in-games hours are longer) to kill the zombies that are spawned in each wave.

https://7daystodie.fandom.com/wiki/Blood_Moon_Horde#Horde_Spawning_Mechanics