Days Gone: Fix What It Takes To Survive Horde Spawn Bug Without Restarting Mission (1/2025)

days-gone-what-it-takes-horde-spawn-fix-no-restart.md

Fix Horde Spawn Bug in 'What it Takes to Survive' Days Gone Mission WITHOUT restarting mission **

NOTE: requires mods, ability to manage zip files and (temporary) cheat mod. | Works as of Jan 2025

I ran into this issue in Jan 2025 and was first real problem I've had w/game. I read all the posts saying you had to restart (the game application itself and the entire mission) to fix the mission bug where the horde never spawns. I was going to be super pissed if I had to do this so I found a way to avoid it. Do everything below at your own risk, etc etc - but it worked for me.

Requirements for success

A) You ran into the mission bug where horde doesn't spawn B) You have no closed your game or restarted mission yet C) You killedthe Reacher guy already D) You know how to zip files, backup files etc

Instructions

1. Go to your save folder and zip all the files in it - filename doesn't matter. NOTE: Save folder for me [Steam] is C:\Users\MyName\AppData\Local\BendGame\Saved\SomeNumberHere\SaveGames*.*. Copy this zip a few places if you don't trust yourself in case you delete it or something - again, all of this at your own risk.
2. After creating the zip in #1 NOW you can exit the game fully to desktop
3. Install or enable the Days Gone debug cheat menu mod **
4. Run game again - game will likely will be restarting the mission/cutscene w/O'Brian
5. Once cutscene is over (or you skip) alt-tab to your save folder and delete all files there except your zip. Then extract your zip files back into the same folder
6. Go back to game and pick "Restart Checkpoint" from menu
7. Game should then load you back in the cave where you likely just were wondering where the horde was
8. The horde should now spawn in a few seconds.
9. You can TRY to kill the horde now .. HOWEVER

• First of all - at least for me, if you die now the horde WILL STOP SPAWNING again and you'll have to repeat steps 1-6 over and over (no amount of zip file/restart checkpoint will fix it).
• Secondly, this may vary for others [if the bug has different iterations] but for me the horde would never stop spawning. Maybe this is the actual mission and is supposed to be insane hard IDK but seemed overkill since I ran out of ammo and ammo pickups after killing 400+ of them wtf.

10. After reading the above two notes ... you can feel free to try to kill the horde - maybe it is just a huge # (?). However if you, like me, were sufficiently pissed at this point and just wanted to resume enjoying the game

• Use the Debug Mod to just get out of this mess
• First wait for horde to spawn in step 8 above
• Then CTRL+Backspace to open debug menu, then find the Kill All Enemies option (I forget where but in one of submenus).
• Run the "Kill All Enemies" item however many times you need to - I had to run this 3 times to kill them all. On the 3rd time I got booted out of the cave and into the final mission cut scene w/O'Brian.

11. If you are autistic as me you can go back to the cave and get the bounty/ears you should have picked up from all the kills. Since I killed 400+ myself hashing out the above I figured I deserved them. But not a required step obviously
12. Now resume and enjoy this gem of a game!

Sorry if the above misses anything or is badly written... just wanted to get it out in case it helps anyone else. Obviously this is beyond embarrassing that this bug is still in the game ... however the game is also criminally underrated and truly a wonderful game otherwise (esp. given how crappy games are getting these days) so I'm not going to hate on it. Good luck.