Endless Mode: Threat Level, the pools and what a wave pays

Open the crises list at Cold Wave Strikes All 4 of the crises Endless draws are on that list, with what each one applies, what clearing it pays and which zombies any horde sends.

Reaching an ending does not have to end the save. The game offers to branch an Endless run from just before it, and it is explicit about the trade: "Create a new Endless Mode save from this ending save and return to continue defending before the ending. The original save and ending record remain unaffected. You will no longer gain Planning Points in Endless Mode, and no more time loops will be available."

What replaces the hundred-day schedule is one number. The settlement screen calls it Threat Level; the heads-up display prints the same number as "Tier 1". It steps up every 5 days on its own, and everything below reads it: how much health a wave carries, which weather pool the day is drawn from, whether a crisis can fire, and how many can run at once.

This page covers what each level changes, what the pools behind it can draw, and how the level connects to what a wave pays.

What the Threat Level moves, and what it leaves alone

The tier table carries 20 rows and moves four things. Two of them climb smoothly and two arrive as steps.

Wave health is the figure everyone quotes and the least useful of the four. It climbs in even steps from 1× to 8.2×, which is 8.2× across the whole run, and it never surprises you. The other three do.

The count multiplier never moves. It is 1× at level 1 and 1× at level 20. The same is true of the hour: a wave lands at 12:00 at every level. So the shape of a wave night is fixed for the whole run and only the health inside it grows.

Quiet days take 3 values across the run and no more. Level 1 gives 3, then every level from 2 to 15 gives 1, then level 16 gives 0 and nothing gives one again. That is the number that ends runs. At level 16 a wave carries 6.6× health, which is less than the 8.2× at the top, but it is the first one you meet with no day to repair in front of it.

Crises are the other step. None can fire below level 4, so days 1 to 15 are the only stretch of Endless where the weather is the whole of the world outside. That is what makes the opening the building window.

The story keeps its own timetable

The narrative beats do not wait for the crises. They begin at level 3, day 11, one level before the crisis pool opens. The settlement screen distinguishes two runs, "Endless Story" and "Pure Endless", and the achievement list asks for days held in the second of them. The tables do not say what else separates the two beyond the beats, so treat the level 3 date as the one fact to plan around.

What each pool can draw

Endless never reads a forecast. It draws its weather from a pool instead, and the level decides which pool. There are 5 in play across the 20 levels. Each pool is a set of weather kinds with a share of the draws each, so what a level fixes is the odds. The tables do not say how often a draw happens, so every figure below is a share of draws rather than a count of days.

The pool widens and dims at the same time. It goes from 3 kinds to 8, and what leaves is the good weather: a full-daylight day is 60% of draws at level 1 and 6% at level 10. Cold goes the other way, from 0% to 26% of draws.

That kills forecast planning outright. A hundred-day run can read the fixed schedule and know what day 60 brings; an Endless run can only know the odds. Two things follow. Anything you were running off daylight needs a battery or a generator behind it before level 10, because the panels stop on a 15% share of draws rather than never. And keeping warm becomes a standing cost rather than an event, because a quarter of late draws bring cold.

Open the forecast list Every weather kind Endless can draw, with the light and cold each one carries. The forecast itself is the hundred-day schedule, which Endless leaves behind, but the kinds are the same 8 the late pool rolls from.

The weather table also carries 3 pools that no level names, so nothing in the tier table ever reaches them.

Each of the 3 is a single condition taken to its extreme, and the crisis list holds a cold crisis and a rain crisis. The tables do not connect the two, so this page will not either: what is on record is that the pools exist and that the level table does not reach them.

The crisis pool never changes. Only the concurrency does

There is one crisis pool in the whole of Endless, and every level from 4 to 20 names it. So the four things that can go wrong at level 4 are the same four that can go wrong at level 20. What the level changes is how many of them run at the same time, from 1 to 3.

• Cold Wave Strikes: 29% of the draws, 2 days long, and at least 5 days after the last crisis of any kind.
• Days of Overcast Rain: 29% of the draws, 2 days long, and at least 5 days after the last crisis of any kind.
• Mold Infestation: 23% of the draws, 3 days long, and at least 5 days after the last crisis of any kind.
• Rat Infestation: 20% of the draws, 3 days long, and at least 5 days after the last crisis of any kind.

None of the 4 is rare. The least likely still takes 20% of the draws, and the four shares add up to the whole pool, so a draw is always one of these and never nothing.

That is the case the top of the run has to survive: 3 of them overlapping, each 2 to 3 days long, while a wave at 8.2× health lands with no repair day behind it.

What a wave pays, and how far the level can move it

Beating a wave pays out of 7 bands, and the band is chosen by the wave’s health, not by the Threat Level. That distinction is the whole of the connection between the two tables and it is easy to get backwards. What defending a wave pays has every band and what each one hands over.

What Endless adds is a ceiling on how far the level can carry you up that list. The level multiplies wave health by at most 8.2×, and the band boundaries climb much faster than that: from 1,000 to 150,000 is 150× the health for 6 bands. So a wave you fight at level 1 and again at level 20 moves across at most 3 of the 7 bands, and only if it starts in the right part of the table.

The item count is not the ladder: it goes 6, 7, 6, 7, 7, 8, 10 across the 7 bands, which falls as often as it rises. Shop value climbs cleanly instead, $60 to $500, which is 8.3× and close to the 8.2× that wave health climbs across the same run. What a band moves is the grade of what it hands over rather than the quantity, and the grade that matters to an Endless run is the material: the top band pays All-Purpose Strengthener All-Purpose Strengthener Materials Stamina -10 500 g 2×2 cells $80 Keeps indefinitely Consumed for reinforcing facilities , which is what puts a door back.

Areas fall, and that is what raises the level

The 5-day timer is not the only thing that moves the number. The game carries a full-screen notice titled "Area Fallen", and its subtitle is "{0} has lost contact - Threat Level increased to {1}", where the first slot is the place and the second is the new level. The explore map carries a matching state: a site marked "Fallen", with the line "The horde has overrun this place. There's no going back."

So places outside the house are lost as the run goes on, each loss pushes the level up, and a lost one does not come back. What the tables do not carry is which places fall, on which day, or in what order. No location row has a fallen state and no site carries a schedule for it, so this page can say the mechanism exists and cannot say when it will reach you.

The four nights that ask about somebody else’s place

4 events in the whole event table are gated on being in an Endless run. Each asks the same question about a different place, each opens once inside a window of days, and each waits 12 hours before taking "Protect your own" on your behalf.

Both answers are on record and only one of them pays: "Draw them away" hands over a bundle and 5 Morale, and "Protect your own" pays nothing at all. Each event also checks that you have not already given the first answer, so the payout is once per place and not a rotation you can farm. Whether declining is what makes that place fall is not in the tables, and it is the obvious thing to want to know; the events and the fallen state are recorded separately and nothing joins them.

Two sites open only in Endless

The location table marks 2 scavenging sites as reachable from the Endless start and never during the hundred days.

Both ask you to be carrying Inspirational Story Inspirational Story Books Morale +10 Stamina -10 500 g 1×2 cells $120 Keeps indefinitely Fuel 3000 Max Morale Read for 1 hour; gain a large amount of Morale instantly, Max Morale permanently +2 to get in, both open in the evening only, and both sound the alarm at 80% of the budget.

Open either entry on the locations list before you plan a trip: Gas Station and Office.

Here the data stops short of an answer. No item in the supply table names either site as a place it can be found, so the tables open these two sites, price the trip in exposure and say nothing about what is inside them. Everything the site list can tell you about the other places worth searching it cannot tell you about these.

Worked examples

What the achievement asks for

The achievement list files 6 entries under Endless, and one of them is "Threat Level 8".

Read against the tier table, "Threat Level 8" is a date rather than a fight. Level 8 begins on day 36, so the achievement is 36 days of holding. What it hands you on arrival is a wave at 3.4× health, 1 quiet day between waves, 2 crises able to run at once, and a weather pool that draws 6 kinds. None of that is the top of the curve. The level that costs runs is 16, another 40 days later, where the quiet day goes.

How far the level can carry the payout

Take a wave that carries exactly 5,000 health at level 1, which is the bottom of one band. At level 20 the same wave carries 41,000, because the multiplier has gone from 1× to 8.2×. Look both up:

• At level 1 it pays the band from 5,000 health, 6 items, $125 of shop value.
• At level 20 it pays the band from 30,000 health, 7 items, $180 of shop value.

That is 3 bands of movement for 20 levels of climb, and this is the best case, because 5,000 is the starting point the 8.2× reaches furthest from. The Threat Level is a difficulty setting far more than it is an income setting. Bank what the early waves pay rather than waiting for the late ones to pay better.

A level 1 day against a level 20 day

The health figure is the one that looks frightening and the quiet-day row is the one that ends the run. 3 repair days per wave against 0 is not a multiplier at all, it is a capability you either still have or do not, and losing it is what turns 8.2× health from hard into terminal.

What to do

1. Build through day 15. No level below 4 names a crisis pool, and the opening weather pool holds 3 kinds, none of them cold and none of them dark. Nothing in Endless is ever this quiet again.
2. Treat day 76 as the deadline, not day 96. Level 16 is where the quiet day between waves goes. A wave at 6.6× health with a day to repair in is survivable and the same wave without one often is not.
3. Get off daylight before level 10. 15% of the late pool’s draws carry no daylight at all and only 6% carry full daylight, so a generator and a battery stop being an upgrade and become the supply.
4. Plan for 3 crises at once, not one. The pool is the same 4 draws all run, and from level 12 they overlap. Check what each one applies and what clearing it pays on the crises list.
5. Bank the early payouts. The Threat Level moves a wave across at most 3 of the 7 reward bands, so a late wave is not worth materially more than an early one for 8.2× the danger.
6. Do not count on the two Endless-only sites. They open, they cost exposure, and no item in the tables names either as a place it can be found. Scout them before a run depends on them.

Quick reference

• 20 levels, one every 5 days, from day 1 to day 96.
• Wave health: 1× to 8.2×. Wave count: 1× throughout.
• Crises start: level 4, day 16. Up to 3 at once from level 12.
• Quiet days end: level 16, day 76.
• Weather pools: 5 in play, widening from 3 kinds to 8; full daylight falls from 60% of draws to 6%.
• Crisis pool: 4 draws, unchanged all run, each 2 to 3 days and at least 5 days apart.
• Rewards: 7 bands keyed on wave health, and the level moves a wave across at most 3 of them.
• Story beats: from level 3, day 11.
• Endless-only sites: Gas Station and Office, with no findable items recorded at either.