Blood Moon

*Not to be confused with counterattacks after destroying a portal.*

**Blood Moon** is a nighttime Greed event characterized by a creepy ambience, and an unusually large assault of enemies, called **Blood Moon wave**.

A Blood Moon wave is a timed, one-sided wave, that happens in a very specific frequency, does not end until all monsters are defeated, and is usually followed by a recovery day.

## Frequency

### In *Classic* and *New Lands*

All Blood Moon events will happen after five or six normal days. So the first Blood Moon will take place on day V or VI. If it happens on day V, the second will take place either on day X or day XI. If the 1st happened on day VI, the 2nd will take place on day XI or XII; and so on.

If the Monarch wants to track more precisely when the Blood Moon will come, they'll need to take notes about the last time it happened.

The sequence below shows the notes of a player who recorded all the Blood Moons between day 35 and 100, when he was going for the *New Lands* "Day C" achievement. Numbers are days with Blood Moon, bullets represent the common days between Blood Moons and underlined days denote a 6 day interval.

```
38 • • • • 43 • • • • 48 • • • • 53 • • • • • 59 • • • • 64 • • • • • 70 • • • • 75 • • • • 80 • • • • • 86 • • • • • 92 • • • • 97

```

### In *Two Crowns*

Blood Moons happen in a schedule linked to the seasons cycle. The following board showing the start-end days for the seasons helps to understand it:

*Hover the mouse over the days to display its respective Roman numeral.*

A Blood Moon will always take place around two days before a season change.

#### Campaigns

On campaigns, on the first two years, these are the only Blood Moons happening.
This means that, if compared to *Classic* and *New Lands*, the Blood Moons in *Two Crowns* start later, and with a much lower frequency.
Starting on the spring of the third year, that frequency doubles, with an extra Blood Moon always occurring two days before the middle of the season.

*Hover the mouse over the days to display its respective roman numeral.*

So, on the first two years: one Blood Moon per season, with fifteen days between the Red Moon days.
From the third year onwards: two Blood Moons per season, with only seven days between them.

#### Challenge Islands

On Challenge Islands, Blood Moons strike with the double frequency from the beginning:
the mid-season Blood Moons also taking place two days before the middle of the season, but the late-season ones arriving only one day before the end of the season.

This difference creates distinct intervals between Blood Moons.
The breaks will have six and eight days alternately, instead of always seven.
This minor change certainly makes the task of preparing for the crimson days a bit more complex.
The first Blood Moon on challenges always hit on the sixth day of spring.

## Wave time

Just like nightly waves, Blood Moon waves are timely launched to reach the Kingdom's border by midnight.
For further details, see: Timed waves.

 *Kingdom: New Lands* &  *Two Crowns* – This timing is announced by a rumbling sound.

## Creepy ambience

Blood Moons can catch a new Monarch unaware, especially if they've never experienced the event before.
With some knowledge (usually acquired along a succession of Monarchs), even without paying much of attention to its scheduled frequency, it's possible to notice an incoming Blood Moon by its visual and audible indications.

### Red sky

The most typical sign of a Blood Moon is that during the night of the event the sky and the Moon, both acquire a red hue.

### Heavy weather

 *Kingdom: Classic* &  *New Lands* – Aside from the frequency in which they occur, Blood Moons can be fairly predictable during the day by the weather and the color of the sky.
The entire daytime preceding a Blood Moon is usually stormy, rainy (snowy if in the winter), or at least very cloudy.
From the sunrise of that day, the sky is pinker and darker than usual.

 *Kingdom Two Crowns* – The weather is overall more diverse, with a larger range of nuances, and it can't easily be used to foresee a Blood Moon during the morning and after noon. However the sky at dusk before the Blood Moon tends to be red for a noticeably extended time.

### Day counter color

 *Kingdom Two Crowns* – The morning day number on a Blood Moon day tends to have a reddish color.

### Sinister music

On Blood Moon days a sinister music starts playing exactly at the sunset.
About fourty seconds after that, it will be midnight, when the wave should be hitting on the Kingdom borders.
Here are the Blood Moon tracks for each of the games and settings.
(Links go to *Bandcamp*, and the last one to *Youtube*):

* *Classic* & *New Lands* – 🔉 Talisman
* *Two Crowns* Europe & Shogun – 🔉 Blood Moon
* *Two Crowns* Dead Lands – 🔉 Crimson Moon
* *Two Crowns* Norse Lands – 🔉 Greed

Note that sounds and musics have different volume sliders on the options menu.
Players that have lowered the music volume too much won't be able the hear the Blood Moon track.

### Rumbling sound

*This section is about New Lands & Two Crowns.*

The moment the portal is opened, a deep rumbling or grinding sound of moving heavy stones that lasts for about a second will be heard all over the land.
This is the same noise that warns of an upcoming counterattack after having destroyed a portal.

A couple of seconds after that, the first monsters will traverse the swirling goo of the portal, being followed by the rest of the wave.
When this happens, Monarchs should be aware that an important enemy force is already on land and heading to town.

## One-sided

A Blood Moon wave is a one-sided wave, meaning that the attack comes from only one random side.

At noon the active portals on both sides use to become non-exhausted.
But on Blood Moon days only one portal will recover its ability to recognize a hostile presence.

Scouting at least one active portal on the afternoon of a Blood Moon day can be useful to predict which side of the Kingdom will be attacked.
To do that, the Monarch shall try to trigger a defense wave (see the details on Portal § Hostile presence).
If the portal opens and release monsters, this is where the Blood Moon assault will come from.
If it remains closed, the attack will come from the other side.

On Skull Island (Two Crowns) they can come from both sides. If they do, it's possible to hear two distinct rumbling sounds announcing them.

On Plague Island, Blood Moon waves always come from both sides.

## Wave composition

The attacks scale in number over time, much like regular attacks, making it a formidable challenge to overcome in later days. While this is more incremental in the previous games, it is easy to tell for the Blood Moons in *Two Crowns* campaigns:

(*Two Crowns*)
 3rd
 5th

In the *Two Crowns* Challenge Islands the waves strength increases much faster. Armored breeders will begin to join later in the game.

## Next night truce

#Recovery day  #Truce
All portals exhaust their resources to fuel the Blood Moon wave and will shut down for the subsequent day, which prevents the regular monster's wave from spawning the next night. So, after each Blood Moon the Kingdom will witness a day, a night and another day without attacks from the Greed. In *Two Crowns*, this is marked by a blueish day counter.

The extra time may be useful to (listed from the least to most aggressive):

1. reconstruct the walls, recruit and equip townsfolk that may have lost their tools and coins during the Blood Moon attack;
2. safely recruit townsfolk from vagrant camps without the risk of an attack from the greed.
3. deforest far from the village, as builders will have enough time to return to safety — this may be particularly useful for deforestations starting from a grass field far after a wood section, to prevent the destruction of a vagrant camp or a merchant settlement adjacent to the town;
4. expand the kingdom frontiers, building a wall very far from the already established walls — this will give an extra time for builders to upgrade the wall to max level, and for knights, archers and catapult to join the new defense point;
5. seize a portal very far from the kingdom frontier — the extra time will allow knights to arrive at the portal without having to fight the regular monster would normally appear. Note that the portal being attacked still will release greedlings to defend itself. And if the portal is destroyed, the counterattack will still follow as normal.

 *Skull Island (New Lands)* – There is no next night truce.

## Atypical cases

**Regular waves are stronger**

Usually each Blood Moon is stronger than its preceding nightly wave.
However, in some odd or extreme cases this might not be the case.
In *New Lands*, for example, there is a heavy nerf on the first island that makes all Blood Moons much easier to deal with than their equivalent regular waves.
This behavior becomes even more remarkable when, by day L, a nocturnal wave can have a couple of breeders, while the following Blood Moon has nothing more than a few masked greedlings.
In *Two Crowns*, this might also happen in the very late days of a campaign, something about the fifth year.
Due to how Blood Moons are designed, with a whole creepy ambience, this can be seen as a bug.

**All portals down**

 *Kingdom: New Lands* &  *Two Crowns* – If all portals have been destroyed, the Moon will not turn red and no monsters will spawn, but there will still be a storm and the Blood Moon music will play that night. ( *Kingdom Two Crowns* – the moon still turns red)

**Traveling on Blood Moon days**

 *Kingdom Two Crowns* –
There's a nerf on the power of Blood Moon waves, if they hit the Kingdom on the first or second day the Monarch is on a brand new island.
In other words, if the Monarch travels to a new land for the first time on a Blood Moon day (or on the day before), they will have to deal with the Blood Moon event on their first (or second) day on that land.
However, that Blood Moon wave will be composed with less monsters than it would normally be expected for those types of waves on that season.
A Blood Moon wave on the overall day 46 on the first day on the forth island, for example, can be easily defeated with the troops brought on the boat with no walls, and without dropping coins to pay off the Greed.
Therefore, what could be seen at first glance as a very dangerous move, is in fact a narrow window of opportunity.
Note that the nerf is applied on the first and second days only.
If the Monarch travels to a new island two days (or more) before the Blood Moon day, they will have to face the wave on its full power.

## History

All changes noted below affect *Kingdom Two Crowns* only.

 2021-11-16

## References

1. ↑ Day C the Easy Way. By Colonel Sanders Lite on *Steam*. 28 September 2016.
2. ↑ Day 318 Blood Moon: slightly underwhelming. *Reddit*. 24 January 2022.
3. ↑ This nerf exists since the game release in 2018. On February 2023, it's still present on v.1.1.18, as tested by user Sapador.