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Unlock the Four Horses of the Apocalypse in our Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare guide
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Dave Tach
Friends, we are here to tell you that you may have great luck and find a horse on your first attempt, or you may face a multi-hour slog. This is the nature of random spawns. But stick with us and we can tell you where to find each horse, because we put in the time. Let’s get to it.
The Four Horses of the Apocalypse challenge
You don’t have to find any of these horses to finish Undead Nightmare. Rather, the four horses are an optional side quest which you can find from the main menu under Journal > Challenges.
The way it works is deceptively simple: There are four horses to find, and each is a random spawn that roams a broad and general geographic region of the game.
When you’re near one of the Four Horses, two things will happen:
- A message appears at the bottom of your screen: “A mythical creature has appeared in the area.”
- On both your map and your minimap, a small blue circle will indicate the location of the horse.
Pestilence
Pestilence is the horse that spawns closest to the beginning area of Undead Nightmare, which also makes it the one you’re likely to get first. In fact, it’s the one that you should get first.
Pestilence spawns in the northeast corner of your map, between the Tall Trees and the northern Great Plains areas. We have seen Pestilence spawn in the snowy, wooded area of Tall Trees and the wide open plains north of your starting location.
Your best bet is to get familiar with the territory and make your way back and forth, east and west. There are several quests available in the area, so feel free to get them done while you’re here. Pestilence may show up when you’re not exclusively looking for him.
For your efforts, you’ll earn a horse with bleeding eyes, a strange, ever-present green haze, and an amazing amount of health and stamina. As the game puts it: “Pestilence is almost impossible to kill.”
War
War spawns reliably near Gaptooth Ridge, which is in the far west of the map. As with Pestilence’s spawn location, there are many things to do out here, so make your way around the area saving towns and finishing quests.
For your efforts, you’ll earn a horse that’s always on fire. That comes in handy—as the game puts it, “War can set enemies on fire,” and setting zombies ablaze with your horse is never not awesome.
Famine
Famine lives in Mexico, or as it’s known in Undead Nightmare, Nuevo Paraiso. It’ll be a while before you can get there. Try to place a waypoint south of the (red) river on your map too early, and you won’t get directions.
Nuevo Paraiso becomes available after you complete several missions, including “A Cure for Most of What Ails You,” “Get Back in That Hole, Partner,” and “American Imperialism.”
As you explore the map, liberating towns and unlocking missions, new mission icons appear. Complete those, and you'll make your way to Mexico automatically.
Eventually, you’ll find Nigel West Dickens in Solomon’s Valley, where he tells you that the U.S. Army is building a train to Mexico. That’s your way south of the border.
You’ll enter Nuevo Paraiso at its far western end, so head east to Las Hermanas, which is conveniently labeled on your map. There, you’ll find sisters running a mission. Famine spawns just south of that location.
For your efforts, you’ll earn a tough horse that never gets tired. It also attracts a swarm of locusts. As the game puts it, “Famine has unlimited stamina,” which is useful for galloping across the map.
Death
Death is Undead Nightmare’s final horse. It’s also the strangest—and in our experience, the most difficult—to find.
Let’s get this out of the way first: The easiest way to acquire Death is to beat the game. If you can wait, Death will be your reward. If you want to find Death before then, finding him is likely to try your patience because he seems to be a rarer spawn than his brothers. But we can tell you where to look.
We found him just south of Las Hermanas, very nearly where we also found Famine. Others report finding Death as a random spawn at any location in the game. Still others have concluded that Death spawns in the same locations that the other Four Horses can spawn. Since we found Death in roughly the same area as Famine, that seems credible. If you have anything to do in those areas, you may bump into Death.
In our game, Death spawned at about 9:30 p.m. on a Thursday. (You can find the time and day of your game in the pocket watch clock in the upper right corner of the pause screen.) We can’t tell you that Death will always spawn at that time, but Las Hermanas is a certain spawn location.
If you want to check there at or around that time, find a bed in Las Hermanas and keep saving or fast traveling. Every save and fast travel advances the clock by six hours. But be careful: The more you advance the game, the more other towns will need your help. Neglect them, and people will start to die, and your job in Undead Nightmare is to keep people alive to the best of your ability. There will be consequences.
For your efforts, you’ll earn a powerful horse. As the game puts it, “Death dispatches foes when he tramples them,” which is useful for murdering zombies while on horseback.
And that’s how you find every one of the Four Horses of the Apocalypse. You can select which horse you want to use by activating the horse’s specific Blood Pact in your inventory. Happy haunted hunting!
You can check out Red Dead Redemption and its expansion Undead Nightmare on the Epic Games Store.