Sudden Death (also shortened to “SD”) is the impending doom all hedgehogs have to face if the battle takes on for a long time. It will lead to a slow yet inevitable mass extinction of hedgehogs.

In Sudden Death, all hedgehogs can face constant damage and even a flood.

Summary

Sudden Death begins after a given number of rounds. After Sudden Death started, the water will rise and all hedgehogs take damage (down to 1 health) after each turn.

A Sudden Death without rising water or damage is also possible, it depends on the game scheme.

Sudden Death can also be completely disabled. To do so, set both Sudden Death Water Increase and Sudden Death Damage to 0.

This was the important stuff you need to know about Sudden Death. The remainder of this page contains the gory details.

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Beginning of Sudden Death

Sudden Death starts when a fixed number of rounds have passed, usually this is after a long time. It is configured in the basic settings under “Sudden Death Timeout”.

Calculating the exact moment when Sudden Death starts is a bit strange. First, the number of rounds specified in Sudden Death Timeout is played, then one additional turn, and in the next turn Sudden Death starts. (This is a bug, it shouldn't be this way.)

For example, if Sudden Death Timeout is set to 3, Sudden Death starts after 3 rounds and one additional turn. Also if Sudden Death Timeout is 0, Sudden Death starts at the second turn.

The announcer will remind from time to time all players of the impending doom and, of course, when Sudden Death has finally arrived.

Damage

Sudden Death damage starts to apply immediately at the first turn in Sudden Death. Sudden Death damage is applied directly before the start of a Sudden Death. Sudden Death damage applies ''on top'' to any poison damage. Sudden Death damage can never reduce the health of a hedgehog below 1. Sudden Death damage also applies 100% to frozen hedgehogs.

These hedgehogs do not take Sudden Death damage for one turn:

• Hedgehogs which were invulnerable at the end of the previous turn
• Hedgehogs returning from a time box at the start of Sudden Death do not take Sudden Death damage for this turn

Sudden Death damage is configured in the base settings under “Sudden Death Damage”.

Special case: Paramedics

If the “Paramedics” mode is active (hogs get healed at end of turn, see Game modifiers), things are a bit more complicated.
Here, the Sudden Death damage is applied first, then the hedgehogs are healed.
Additionally, the health to which the hogs are healed will also will be reduced each turn by the Sudden Death damage.

For example, if a hedgehog started with 100 health, and three Sudden Death turns with a Sudden Death damage of 5 have passed, the hedgehog will be healed not to 100, but only to 85 after the third Sudden Death turn.

Flood

The water will rise each turn if water rise was enabled. Slowly, the entire terrain will be covered in water, giving the hedgehogs less and less land to stand on, unless there is no more land left

When Sudden Death has started, the water does not start to rise immediately, but it starts rising at the second turn while in Sudden Death.

In combination with the Sea world edge, the flood is even deadlier: The water will not only rise from below, but the water on the left and right side will also move towards the center, thereby giving the poor little hedgehogs even fewer chances to survive.

In the base settings under “Sudden Death Water Rise” you can configure how much the water rises each turn.

Background effects

In Sudden Death mode, the background music changes.
Also, the background effects water color usually change to a slighly more “dangerous” atmosphere. However, this only happens if Sudden Damage damage is enabled. For a Sudden Death without damage, there will be only a different background music, but no visual effects.