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sekhithefops · 10 months

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Sekhi's Zombie Survival Guide for 7 Days to Die!

Step 1: Do the Tutorial!

It seems obvious, but its a damn good idea. When you first appear in the world of 7 Days to Die you'll start out with a few quests to get you to understand the systems. Even if you already know the gist, its best to do them anyways as doing them gives you FOUR skill points right from the word go, as well as some beginner gear.

Speaking of skill points...

Step 2: Whatcha Good At?

Are you a sharpshooter? A big burly brain-basher? A sneaky stealth-killer? A rigger who makes all sorts of crazy tools? In 7 Days to Die you have five stats that govern your abilities, and this is how they work.

Perception

How good you are at being observant and noticing details. The abilities you can get from this are how to make proper explosives, use a rifle, track animals, and find more loot and other treasures.

Two skills I highly recommend from this are Lucky Looter and Salvage Operations. Lucky Looter makes you more likely to find better loot overall and Salvage Operations gives you more resources from breaking down other things (which we'll go over later.)

Strength

How big, burly, and head-bashy you are! Strength is used for weapons like shotguns and clubs, and also for things like increasing how much you can carry without becoming encumbered as well as your ability to cook (gotta be able to take the heat in the kitchen!) Also heavier armor proficiency is measured via strength.

This also has the Miner 69'er and Mother Lode talents, which govern how fast you can cut down trees and mine metals and other precious materials, as well as how much you get from doing so. Very useful to all builds!

Fortitude

How beefy are you? Fortitude governs unarmed weapons like knuckledusters, as well as the use of machine guns. It also manages traits like Huntsman and Living off the Land which govern how much food you get from harvesting animals and plants respectively.

The big ones for any build are the Recovery Perks though: Healing Factor, Iron Gut, and Rule 1: Cardio. Healing Factor gives you health regeneration, Iron Gut makes you get hungry and thirsty slower, and Rule 1: Cardio makes your stamina regenerate faster.

Agility

Gottagofast! Agility is how fast you are, how good you can handle weapons like bows, handguns, and knives, and other things.

Light armor is governed by this stat, as are things like firing guns from the hip.

The big skill here for all builds is Parkour. It governs jumping ability, but also how far you can fall without getting injured. A fall from a height may not kill you in this game sometimes, but it can result in a broken leg! This, combined with a nearby zombie horde, will likely spell doom if you're not prepared (or very lucky.)

Intellect

SCIENCE!!! Intellect governs weapons like the shock baton, which can send enemies flying with a blast of electricity, as well as automated turrets and the creation thereof.

It also manages most crafting skills such as Advanced Engineering (workbench crafting for weapons, armor, etc,) Grease Monkey (making and maintaining vehicles,) and Physician (medicines and other remedies.)

The really useful one however is Better Barter, which lets you sell for more and buy for less from Traders (which we'll get into soon.)

Step 3: Home Sweet Hellhole

You can build your own bases in this game! You can... but its time consuming, takes a lot of resources, and will provide slow minimal protection.

Instead, take a lesson from the noble hermit crab and do what I did!

Find a good house in a suburban area, preferably near a city or shopping district with lots of good resources nearby.

Go inside the house and kill the everloving hell out of everything inside.

Punch a hole in the wall near the middle and put your land claim block (EXTREMELY IMPORTANT!) in there, thus generating a 'zombie no spawn here' field in all directions and claiming the house as your own!

(Insert your favorite joke about the American Housing Market here.)

Whats neat too is that you can use the Land Claim Block to show where the boundaries are for the safe zone it creates, thats how I know where to set up my defensive walls around the building.

You can toggle that on and off so you don't have giant neon green lines hanging around, but it can be useful for spotting your base at a distance as you get used to your new neighborhood.

Once you have it set up, just toss your bedroll on the ground in one of the rooms to mark a spawn point and get to building some defenses. Congrats, you are now surviving! Round of applause.

Step 4: The Post-Apocalypse Economy!

You're not the only survivor in the world. Trader Joel and his buddies have set up shop in every city in the world and will sell you all sorts of useful goodies if you have the coin.

The literal coin that is. Dollars are basically toilet paper in this world (literally sometimes) as the US Government collapsed when Joe Biden's infection progressed too far and he tried to eat the brain of one of his aides.

Funny enough it took the Secret Service about fifteen minutes to realize something was wrong, then another five to finish arguing over who was going to shoot him.

Instead, the post apocalypse uses Dukes, a casino token, as it's currency.

I recommend setting aside a spot in your base for stuff to sell to the traders. Anything you're not planning on using, mods that you have a lot of, medicines you don't want to bother with like steroids in my case, etc.

This is important as some stuff you can ONLY get from the traders! Early on you learn how to make a dew collector to gather drinkable water, but only the traders have the water filters you need to actually build the thing!

Speaking of water...

Step 5: Feed me! Feeeeeeeeeeeeed me!

Food is a concern in the post apocalypse. The local grocery stores ain't getting a resupply anytime soon and McDonald's is right out. You gotta learn how to cook buddy!

Cooking skills are governed by the Strength ability Master Chef and you can learn how to make everything from basic water and grilled beef up to hot coffee and fine tea along with meat stews and other wasteland delicacies. Infact, the better you eat the more health and stamina you have, so get cooking!

To cook you need some fuel (wood, paper, coal, etc) and the right tools. You slot the tools into place (see the upper right there) and it lets you craft the food if you know how. The tools are as follows:

Cooking Pot: Lets you boil murky water to make it safe, as well as making stews and other useful things.

Cooking Grill: Lets you grill meat, corn, and lots of other things. Tasty!

Measuring Cup: Lets you make things like glue from water and bones, and other useful but non-edible stuff.

Pick your foods, turn it on, and let it go and it'll grill you up a feast... but remember to turn it back off once you're done or else you're just wasting fuel... and something might notice the heat from the fire...

But of course to make dinner you need ingredients! Food can be hard to come by as I said above... but you have options. You can hunt animals such as rabbits, deer, chicken, and the like for meat. Kill one and take out a knife or other cutting tool, then butcher it into cuts of meat, cooking fat, and other useful things!

As for veggies you can raid ruined restaurants and storefronts, root through the ruins of people's kitchens, and the like... or you can just grow the stuff!

To grow you need two things: seeds and a farm plot. The farm plots are tricky as you need four things to make one:

Potassium Nitrate

Rotten Meat

Clay Soil

Wood

The Clay Soil and Wood are easy, just need a shovel and axe and a bit of wooded area. Five minutes of work and you're set.

As for the others... well potassium nitrate is something you can mine if you find large white deposits of it in the ground (they look like white crystals) but there is... another way...

Welcome to the Post-Apocalypse kids. Harvesting the bodies of those who didn't escape the zombie horde gets you potassium nitrate and rotten meat for fertilizing your new farm plots! Yummy!

Well, I'm sure the corn thinks they're yummy anyways.

But to make the seeds and food you need to know how to do it... and as for how that works...

Step 6: Read, or the Zombies Will Eat You

Books! There's two types of books in this world.

One time use trait books that give you a big bonus in one go, but you can only benefit from once, and magazines that you can use to learn tidbits of information that unlock tiers of knowledge for making... well... everything!

The magazines are the important ones, and I'll detail a few examples here:

Home Cooking Weekly: Yep, gotta know the recipe before you can make the pie! Reading this unlocks all sorts of cooking tricks. It starts simple with grilled corn and baked potatoes, but the more you read the more you unlock all the way up to things like homemade beer and pasta!

Forge Ahead: Be a Do-it-Yourself-er! This teaches you how to make things like the all important Dew Collector for gathering drinkable water, as well as forges, workbenches, and other things for making everything you need to survive.

Handgun Magazine: Do ya feel lucky, punk? Learn all about the crafting and maintenance of handguns from this book. Early issues give you the knowledge to make better scrap metal guns out of pipes and other found materials, moving up to crafting pistols, magnum revolvers, and even SMGs!

As for the other type of books, those all unlock one of several tiers of knowledge, each specific to a specific volume. But if you manage to unlock them all you get a special bonus for doing so! These include:

Batter up!: All you ever wanted to know about the Great American Pastime (or what was that before, yanno, zombies) Baseball! While this knowledge won't help you much with winning in the big leagues, it will let you know how to swing a baseball bat or club with devastating results for whoever is on the receiving end! Stuff like "Do 10% more damage with clubs," and "craft chain mods for bats and clubs to give them better knockdown chance" and the like. If you manage to find them all, you get a perk that makes power attacks give you back your stamina if they kill a zombie!

Wasteland Treasures: A series of handwritten notes by another survivor who endured after the bombs fell and the dead rose. These include tricks like how to harvest honey from trees when you chop them down (extremely useful for reasons we'll get into below,) find precious gems and jewelry in coffins, how to weave basic plant fibers into useable cloth, and the like. At the highest tier you learn how to harvest Military Fibers, which are used to create the strongest light armor in the game!

Whats more, if you stumble across a book you've already read the traders will pay good coin for them! Don't throw them out if you can avoid it, save 'em and sell 'em!

But now that you have knowledge its time to put it to use...

Step 7: I'm smelting! SMEEEEELTING!!!

Once you have some forge ahead magazines under your belt and in your noggin, you can make forges and workbenches! These are used to make, well, everything!

The forge works similar to the cooking fire, except that it has different tools. This one uses the following:

Advanced Bellows: Improves airflow in the forge to make resources smelt faster (see below.)

Anvil: You can hammer out iron and steel more efficiently! Crafting speed is faster!

Crucible: The pinnacle of blacksmithing tools. Allows the creation of advanced items such as steel bars and bulletproof glass, among others.

However, its not enough to have the raw materials, you need to smelt them into useable forms! How you do this is fill up the forge with fuel, put the items you want to smelt in the smelting slots, then just turn it on and... well... fuck off for a bit.

It'll convert them over time into useable raw materials, banking them in the forge itself, until it either runs out of fuel or materials.

Once you have them you can then convert them into iron bars, nails, glass, and all sorts of useful things.

From there, the workbench comes into play:

The workbench is where you make basically everything, from repair kits to weapons to armor to decorations. The works. Once you have one of these the game really opens up.

All you need is the component parts in your inventory and to tell the workbench to get working. Then in a few minutes, boom, new toys.

A new feature in Alpha 21 that I really like a lot is being able to track recipes too! Select a thing you wanna make and press A on the keyboard and the game keeps a running inventory of whats left to craft it. Super useful!

But now one of the best things to use that workbench for...

Step 8: Have Wrench, Will Travel

Making vehicles! 7 Days to Die has vehicles in it and they are vital to late game and extremely useful at any time. Each vehicle improves your mobility of course, but they also have the benefit of additional storage letting you make longer and longer treks out into the post-apocalyptic ruins!

There's five of them, and I'll detail them here.

Bicycles: The basic vehicle, a standard push bicycle with a little basket for storing goodies you find in ruins. A nice bonus, but going fast in it still drains your stamina and it can't hold much.

Minibike: A little scooter that uses gasoline instead of your legs to go and has more storage, but its fairly fragile and isn't that much faster. Faster than most zombies though so yay there.

Motorcycle: NOW we're hitting the road! The motorcycle is much faster and can hold quite a bit more, and whats more... once you have this vehicle or the next one you no longer need to be afraid of zombies on the roads... THE ZOMBIES NEED TO BE AFRAID OF YOU!!! Ramming into a zombie on a motorcycle at top speed will damage the bike, but it will do TREMENDOUS damage to the zombie, usually killing it outright! Still, you will want to keep some repair kits handy if you plan on making roadkill of the undead horde.

4x4 Truck: Its mah gahtdang truck Bobby! The pinnacle of land-based transport, the truck is a tank. Its a huge jeep with a ton of storage space and good armor that can travel great distances... but takes a lot of fuel to run.

Gyrocopter: Wendy I can fly! ... but not very well. I'll admit I haven't used one of these in a long time, several patch cycles ago, but when I tried it the thing flew like a drunk housefly. Can't recommend, stick with the truck.

The thing is, everything beyond the bike takes gasoline... and that's a resource you'll want a LOT of if you plan on driving much. So I'm sure you and Max Rockatansky want to know how to get their hands on as much as you can... well, there's three ways.

Refine Oil Shale

This one isn't an option until very late in the game as you'll need a chemistry workbench to make it and those take a while to unlock, but inside desert biomes you'll sometimes see these rainbow-colored rocks. This is oil shale and with a modicum of work with a pickaxe or other mining tool you'll have gas for days once you refine it. Find a good mine for this and you're set for the long haul.

Early on however you have two options:

Go to the Gas Station

Yeah its obvious, but its obvious because it works! Ruined gas pumps can be salvaged for gasoline, and intact ones you can just take gas from. Sometimes they'll have barrels of the stuff laying around or in storage areas too. Also keep an eye out for factories with the "Pass-n-Gas" sign, those are oil refineries. Those have LOTS.

But one other benefit to gas stations is what else is there...

Salvage Wrecked Cars

The cars! Their loss is your gain! Break down the cars to harvest all sorts of useful components such as scrap metal, plastics, mechanical parts, and of course whats left in their own gas tanks! Any car can be salvaged in this way, from family sedans all the way up to construction vehicles and big rig trucks... however...

Beware Police Cruisers!

And not for the usual reasons. These things are abandoned now, but are always locked. Thing is, they have a higher chance of REALLY GOOD loot! This one pictured had two hundred 9mm bullets inside (used for protecting our freedoms I'm sure.) You can pick the lock on them to get inside, but if you don't have the lockpicks or aren't confident you can get in without running out you can just salvage the car with a wrench to break the lock open... however...

Police Cruisers Have Car Alarms!!!

Whats rule number one of any zombie apocalypse kids? Thats right: NO LOUD NOISES!

Breaking into a cop cruiser without picking the lock will set off the car alarm, and this will often spawn several VERY strong zombies nearby! This mob was a bunch of nasty ones, including a cop zombie (think it was his car?) that I then had to fight off before I could loot the car and make my escape.

So yeah, you can loot cop cars, but you better be damn ready when you do... or else.

Which brings us nicely into our next item on the agenda...

Step 9: OH FUCK! ZOMBIES!

The zombies! The walking dead! Those who hunger for your brains, and perhaps any other choice morsels, they're not picky eaters.

The zombies come in several varieties, and I'll detail the nastier ones below.

Feral Zombies: These zombies look like normal ones, but their eyes glow and they move faster. They also hit harder and have more health. Its hard to spot them at first since they otherwise look the same, but if you see one its best to kill it fast.

Radioactive Zombies: Its a bit chicken-and-egg as to whether the bombs dropping caused the zombie apocalypse or the zombie apocalypse was why they bombed the cities in the hopes of containing it... but even nuclear fallout just makes them stronger. These zombies are like ferals, except that they also regenerate health at an alarming rate! You can just sustain fire to outpace their regeneration or, if you have it, install the Rad Remover Mod on a weapon to give it the power to negate this ability for a short time.

Fat Zombies: These zombies are... well... fat. They're very very tanky is all. They can take a lot of punishment before dying, but otherwise are no different from normal zombies.

Biker/Lumberjack Zombies: These zombies are both tanky and VERY strong. They were big burly bastards in life and that carries over into undeath. Not only can they take more damage, they can dish it out too!

Police Zombies: Fuck the police, especially so here. These guys are like the boomer and spitter from Left 4 Dead had a nightmare baby and it went into law enforcement. They can spew a blast of highly caustic acid at their enemies, but the nasty part is when they get low on health they'll try to charge you and explode! This explosion will do tremendous damage and can be instantly fatal at low levels! It may be wiser to run away if you're just starting out.

Spider Zombies: These zombies are easily spotted by their penchant for running on all fours, the exposed bones, the heavily mutated face, and their habit of making loud squeals and clicking sounds. They're faster than other zombies, but their main threat is they can JUMP! These things can leap over barricades with ease and get into your base!

Soldier Zombies: In life these zombies served the US Armed Forces, and in undeath they're one of the deadliest you can face. They're very VERY strong, a result of military training honing their bodies no doubt, and they wear military issue body armor! They take a lot to take down!

Screamer Zombies: These ones are different. They're always female and have heavily mutated mouths and necks, huge fangs too. They don't normally show up on their own, but are attracted to 'heat.' That is to say, the heat generated by cooking fires, forges, and torches and other light sources. They'll spawn near your base once you've caused enough heat and when they spot you... they scream. Loudly. Again, rule number one of zombie apocalypse: NO LOUD NOISES! Their screams summon OTHER zombies! Kill them fast or else you'll be facing a horde!

Lastly...

Zombified Animals: Its not just humans that rose from the dead! Animals became zombies as well and they're even more dangerous sometimes! There's three main varieties that I'll list below:

Zombie Dogs: I call them "Hellhounds" and they're easy to spot as you'll always hear them growling and barking before you see them. That being said, they're fast and VERY dangerous! Their teeth can shred armor and flesh with ease and they attack quick! If you have a gun, use it! Its best they go down before they can get close!

Zombified Birds: Carrion Birds in the most literal sense, they can still fly and they can come from above so they can reach you before you see them... but they're also very fragile. One good hit from a melee weapon or a clean shot from a gun sorts them out.

Zombified Bears: Fuck just run. The zombie bears are among the deadliest enemies in the game. Unless you're well geared and really confident its best to just get the hell away as fast as you can.

... but what about when you can't?

Step 10: The Zombies Got Me! ... now what?

Sometimes you just can't get away fast enough and the zombies will get you. They'll claw, they'll bite, they'll tear, and they'll do some damage! In this game there's several status effects that can do some severe harm to you, and I'll list the major ones here and how to remedy them.

Bleeding: You took a bad claw from a zombie's rotting fingernails and now you're gushing blood from the wound! You'll lose health every second and your screen will go grey as your body tries to process the pain. Any bandage will remove this status happily, so its easily remedied.

Lacerations: OH SHIT! That zombie got you DEEP! You're bleeding BAD! This status reduces your maximum health and makes it so if you get Bleeding it has an increased critical hit chance! This one isn't an easy fix though. You gotta stitch the wound shut! A sewing kit will do it, or a First Aid Kit (which has a sewing kit in it.)

Broken Arm: You took a really bad smack from a zombie and your arm is broken! Your attacks are slower and attacking with guns can actually hurt you now (that recoil is no joke!) You can use a splint or a cast to make it heal faster... but it won't heal it immediately, just faster. If you're not careful it'll re-break!

Broken Leg: Like above, but its the lower half! Perhaps a zombie got you in the leg, perhaps you took a tumble off what was once someone's rooftop, either way your leg shouldn't bend like that. Walking speed is slowed greatly and running or jumping can harm you... but a cast or splint will do the same for it as the broken arm.

Sprained Leg/Arm: They got you... but not as bad as it could be. It hurts, but you've had worse. This is the same as the Broken Arm/Leg but less severe and heals faster, however if you're not careful it can become a full on break! A sprain can't be healed by any tools you can make. All you can do is wait it out.

Concussion: BONK! You took a bad blow to the head and you're seeing stars! All your stats are lowered by one and you'll occasionally suffer bouts of dizziness where ALL speeds drop dramatically! This can be annoying in your base, but life-threatening in a fight! Painkillers will immediately remedy this however.

Dysentery: Look, I get it. Its the post-apocalypse, Wal-mart is closed forever, and you were starving... but that meat was so far past the sell by date it was starting to move. You ate something you shouldn't have and now you've got nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, the works. You become hungry and thirsty faster as your body tries to purge the foul thing you ate. Taking herbal antibiotics, drinking goldenrod tea, or drinking pure mineral water will help.

Fatigued: You're just worn right the fuck out. Good nutrition and rest are hard to find in the post-apocalypse and your body is worn down. All enemies do more damage to you because you just don't have the energy to mount a proper defense! If you manage to get some vitamins in you it'll sort it out though.

And then, the biggest one.

Infection: The Zombie Plague

You done got bit. The zombies got you and the sickness is inside your blood. Through some genetic quirk you're resistant to it, but thats all. Resistant. It won't turn you into one of them immediately, but its a nasty one regardless.

The infection is bacterial and comes in four stages. To remedy it you can use the following medicines:

Stage 1: Honey or any antibiotics. Honey is a natural antibiotic and at this stage the infection is relatively minor. Honey can be found in most kitchens, or by harvesting trees if you have the right perk.

Stage 2: Herbal or regular antibiotics. At this stage honey isn't good enough, you need medicines. Proper ones are best, but homemade will do in a pinch. You'll mostly find these in kitchens or bathrooms, or at ruined pharmacies.

Stage 3: Pharmacy Grade Antibiotics. Only the best will do at this point. If it gets any further you're doomed. These will likely be in either ruined pharmacies or abandoned hospitals.

As for the infection itself...

Stage 1: The infection is minor. You feel a bit gross but can cope otherwise. No major detrimental effects at this point. The infection will slowly get worse though, and attacks from zombies can speed it along! After an hour or if it progresses past 14% it advances to Stage 2.

Stage 2: The infection has gotten worse. You're starting to feel really sick and get tired easier. In game terms, your stamina regeneration is reduced. Lasts for three hours or until it reaches 57%, then progresses to Stage 3.

Stage 3: You're in serious danger and need medical aid immediately. The sickness has spread and is beginning to affect your brain. All stats are reduced and your stamina regeneration drops even more. You have three hours to find help, or until the infection reaches 100%. At this point the Infection reaches Stage 4.

Stage 4: Welcome to the Zombie Horde. You immediately drop dead on the spot and, presumably, will rise eventually as one of the undead.

Its important to note that treating the infection with medicines won't cure it IMMEDIATELY, it just makes the counter go the other direction. Instead of the percentage going up, it goes down. The duration is the same. Honey reduces it by 5%, Herbal Antibiotics by 10%, and Antibiotics by 25%. Once it hits that, it starts going up again, so be sure to have spare doses handy! Whats more, further attacks from zombies can re-infect you and make it start progressing once more!

But yes, thats the gist of 7 Days to Die. For a game thats been in alpha for years its surprisingly complex and a hell of a lot of fun, and I look forward to seeing what the devs pull off in the future.

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