Combat / Night Siege
Fight a Zombie Horde at Your Door
Night falls and the groaning starts. Fourteen zombies, sometimes more, converge on the one block of wood between you and them. Panic and you get surrounded and chewed from three sides. Hold the line and a fourteen-strong horde becomes a single-file queue you cut down two at a time.
The whole fight comes down to one idea: make them line up. Win the geometry and the gear does the rest.
14HORDE
DOOR INTEGRITY31%
BANG
SWEEP ×3KNOCKBACK IIThe choke-point siege, start to finish
A zombie horde only beats you if it surrounds you. Everything below is built to deny that. Stand one block back from a doorway or inside a 1-wide tunnel so the AI can only deliver one zombie to your face at a time, while the rest pile up uselessly behind it.
Block with your shield, drop it, swing a timed sweep into the stacked pack, raise the shield again. Knockback II resets the front zombie's reach on every hit, so the queue keeps collapsing backward. With Sweeping Edge III each swing clips 5-6 zombies for chip damage, so the back ranks die before they ever reach the door.
Keep a Totem in your off-hand slot for the rare night a creeper or husk slips the line, and light your perimeter to level 8+ before the next dusk so there is no encore.
Quick answers
+How much damage does a zombie deal?
1.5 hearts (3 HP) on Easy, 2 hearts (4 HP) on Normal, and 3 hearts (6 HP) on Hard, before armor. A full diamond/netherite set cuts that to under a heart per hit, so the real danger is being hit by many zombies at once - which a choke point eliminates.
+Can zombies break my door?
Only wooden doors, only on Hard difficulty, and only when a zombie has direct line to you through it. Iron doors and fence gates are unbreakable. The safest siege wall is an iron door opened by a button, or a 2-block-high gap you fight across.
+What is the best sword enchant for a horde?
Sharpness V plus Sweeping Edge III plus Knockback II. Sharpness raises per-hit damage, Sweeping Edge makes your sweep attack deal real damage to the whole arc, and Knockback shoves the front rank back so they cannot crowd you.
+Why do my hits feel weak?
You are spam-clicking. Minecraft has an attack cooldown - swing only when the white attack indicator is full, or you deal as little as a fraction of your sword's damage. For a horde, timed sweeps beat fast weak jabs every time.
+Should I use a shield or armor?
Both. A shield blocks 100% of melee while raised, so you take zero damage between swings. Diamond or netherite armor handles the hits you cannot block. Carry a Totem of Undying for the worst nights - it revives you with 1 health and Regeneration II.
+How do I stop zombies from spawning the next night?
Light the area to light level 8 or higher with torches, lanterns, or glowstone within a 24-block radius of your base. Zombies and other hostiles cannot spawn on lit blocks, so a well-lit perimeter turns a siege into a quiet night.