Survival Mode

Survival

Survival is a Killing Floor 2's signature gamemode. In this mode players equiped with various perks and weapons withstand the armies of AI-controlled enemies throughout the set of waves and face off one of the five¹ bosses and the last wave as an ultimate challenge.

In Survival mode players play either together (co-op) and alone (solo), before starting the game players can choose game length (either 4, 7 or 10 waves where 5th, 8th and 11th waves are being Boss waves) and game difficulty (Normal, Hard, Suicidal or Hell On Earth) which defies game's pace, amount of the ZEDs to spawn, damage and health variables and many other factors. As a rule of thumb, solo games are always easier to play through due to various indulgences given to survivors such as getting healed more, having less powerful and beefy ZEDs and overall less ZEDs to deal with and so on.

Survival's only winning condition is to made your way through all the waves and kill the boss. Should all the players fail in this task, game ends and players lose. In co-op games it require your entire squad to get wiped out before moving to the next map as a losers. If squad member dies during the wave time, they have to wait for their remaining team mates to carry on along and will only spawn once the wave is done. Fallen teammates drop their last held weapon (only one being droped) which has an internal hidden timer where it can stay on the ground before disappearing and are suffering from on-death Dosh penalty loses. Hence sharing money and watching over player's weapons (picking them up and droping again resets the timer) is a basic principle of survival.

Description

"In either Co-Op or Solo mode, players engage hordes of AI controlled Zeds across multiple waves until they reach the boss or die trying. The players can select from a variety of perks, each with its own skills, powers, and weapons, in addition to choosing from among several playable characters with different appearances and personalities. Against the players are arrayed a multitude of Zeds, from lowly, slow clots to bosses like the mighty Patriarch."

Difficulty Modifiers

Common Modifiers

Common modifiers
Base Modifier / Difficulty	Normal	Hard	Suicidal	HOE
Wave Size modifier	x0.85	x1	x1.3	x1.7
- ZEDs, (1 player)	21	25	32	42
- ZEDs, (2 players)	42	50	65	85
- ZEDs, (3 players)	58	68	89	116
- ZEDs, (4 players)	74	87	113	148
- ZEDs, (5 players)	85	100	130	170
- ZEDs, (6 players)	95	112	146	191
Trader time	75s	60s	60s	60s
Base damage modifier (see below)	x0.5	x1	x1.25	x1.75
Weak attack chance	1	1	1	1
Medium attack chance	0	0	1	1
Hard attack chance	0	0	0.5	1
Speed mod (used by Game Conductor)	x0.9	x0.95	x0.95	x0.95
Dosh kill mod	x1.2	x1	x1	x0.9
Start Dosh	300	250	250	200
Respawn Dosh	300	300	250	200
Ammo spawn mod	x0.4	x0.3	x0.4	x0.25
Item spawn mod	x0.45	x0.35	x0.25	x0.1
Self-inflicted damage mod	x0.1	x0.2	x0.2	x0.5
Global spawn rate modifier	x0.8	x0.8	x0.7	x0.68

Difficulty Traits

• ZED's health and attack power goes up with the game difficulty.
• Difficulty defies amount of ZEDs to spawn and how fast they spawn.
• On higher difficulties ZEDs are likely to use more advanced attacks and moves.
• ZEDs speed, sprint odds and blocking and evading capabilities grow up with the difficulty.
• More advanced (Elite) ZEDs are likely to replace they normal counterparts on the higher difficulties.
• Game Conductor controls the game flow.
• Game difficulty affects amount of earned Dosh, as well as a quantity of items and ammo boxes on the map.
• Difficulty affects amount of ZEDs to exist on the map at the same time (mostly relevant for Solo games).

Amount Of ZEDs To Spawn

Amount of ZEDs per wave
Amount of ZEDs to spawn during the wave time calculated by formula: Amount of ZEDs = Base Amount x Wave Size modifier x Wave Length modifier.
ZEDs spawn in squads, within certain time intervals. Minimum time between squad spawns - 1s.
Wave number	Base Amount of ZEDs ( Normal / Hard / Suicidal / HOE)
Short game
Wave - 1	25 / 25 / 25 / 25
Wave - 2	32 / 32 / 32 / 32
Wave - 3	35 / 35 / 35 / 35
Wave - 4	42 / 42 / 42 / 42
Normal game
Wave - 1	25 / 25 / 25 / 25
Wave - 2	28 / 28 / 28 / 28
Wave - 3	32 / 32 / 32 / 32
Wave - 4	32 / 32 / 32 / 32
Wave - 5	35 / 35 / 35 / 35
Wave - 6	40 / 40 / 40 / 40
Wave - 7	42 / 42 / 42 / 42
Long game
Wave - 1	25 / 25 / 25 / 25
Wave - 2	28 / 28 / 28 / 28
Wave - 3	32 / 32 / 32 / 32
Wave - 4	32 / 32 / 32 / 32
Wave - 5	35 / 35 / 35 / 35
Wave - 6	35 / 35 / 35 / 35
Wave - 7	35 / 35 / 35 / 35
Wave - 8	40 / 40 / 40 / 40
Wave - 9	42 / 42 / 42 / 42
Wave - 10	42 / 42 / 42 / 42

Where Wave Length modifier and Wave Size modifier are

Wave Length modifier			Wave Size modifier
1 player		x1	Normal - x0.85
2 players		x2	Hard - x1
3 players		x2.75	Suicidal - x1.3
4 players		x3.5	HOE - x1.7
5 players		x4
6 players		x4.5

For more than 6 players games: Wave Length modifier increases linearly from x4.5 to x10 (which is the cap) with the interpolation amount of (Num Living Players - 6 / 32 - 6), meaning that x10 cap can be achieved upon having at least 32 players on the server.

Maximum ZEDs At Time

Maximum amount of ZEDs that can exist on the map at the same time depends on the game difficulty and how many players are currently alive.

Maximum ZEDs At Time
Normal: 1p - 10, 2p - 14, 3p or more - 32
Hard: 1p - 11, 2p - 18, 3p or more - 32
Suicidal: 1p - 12, 2p - 18, 3p or more - 32
HOE: 1p - 12, 2p - 18, 3p or more - 32

Maximum boss Minions At Time

Maximum amount of the ZEDs to spawn at the same time during the boss wave calculated as:

Minions At Time = Base Amount x Per Player Scale

Base Amount (min - max):
Hans: 1 - 18
Patriarch: 6 - 10
King Fleshpound: 1 - 6
Abomination:
- normal: 5 - 30
- hard: 6 - 36
- suicidal: 6 - 36
- hoe: 8 - 48
Matriarch: 3 - 5

Base Amount scales linearly from minimum to maximum according to the CURRENT PLAYERS / MAX PLAYERS ratio. For example, Base Amount of the Hans' minions for one player in a game with the maximum player capacity of 6 will be Lerp (1, 18, 1 / 6) = 1 + (18 - 1) x 1 / 6 = ~3.833 = 3.

Per Player Scale
Players	Scale
1	x1
2	x1.5
3	x1.5
4	x1.875
5	x1.875
6	x2

Stand Your Ground

In Survival mode on official maps starting from wave 2 there is 35% chance for an optional "Stand Your Ground" objective to appear. It is an optional tasks rewarding players with Dosh, XP and Vosh. Upon receiving such objective players will be having 20 seconds (usually) to make their way into the designated area of the map and defend it from ZEDs.

¹ The method of the boss predetermining is yet unknown: prior to randomly picking one of the 5 bosses to fight, game firstly check if it has to force a specific boss depending on a currently active event or a specific map (such as Krampus being a guaranteed boss on the Krampus Lair map). This first part is done natively and there is no way to certainly tell what are the actual probabilities of bosses to appear. However, neither it is known if the responsible function (type, name and return type would be bool UseSpecificBossIndex(out int ForcedIndex)) for the lack of known arguments used by it, is actually capable of modifying boss spawn probabilities rather than setting a specific boss index. Developer commentary for this function - "Event or maps-specific override functionality" - is likely implies that if specific boss to be ever forced then it would be during a specific map or an event so it is safe to assume that under normal conditions boss spawn probability is completely random.