7 Days to Die: Tips and Tricks for Beginners

The world of 7 Days to Die is a harsh and unforgiving place. Even if you don’t fall prey to zombie hoards roaming the landscape, you can still die a slow death from starvation and exposure. If you do manage to survive, you still have to watch out for players that’ll rob you and stab you in the back.

Overcoming obstacles is part of 7D2D’s appeal. However, you may want to skip the trial-and-error period and go straight into post-apocalyptic survival action. To help you get there, we put together a list of 10 tips and tricks for surviving the zombie wasteland.

7 Days to Die – 10 Tips and Tricks

The following tips work best if you’re running the Alpha19 version with no mods installed, as it is completely free of exploits, bugs, and other unintended behavior.

1. Use Your Bedroll While Exploring

You can use a bedroll as a respawn point in case of untimely demise. This way, you won’t have to backtrack to your safehouse. Bedrolls can be looted from enemies and containers. Alternatively, you can craft one from 10 plant fibers which you can gather by punching grass.

2. Loot Everything You Find

In 7D2D, every item is useful, even those that seem to serve no immediate purpose (such as household faucets or rotting flesh). You can combine most items to create advanced building materials, tools, weapons, food, and other resources at the appropriate crafting station.

3. Use Your Time Wisely

Time management is essential for surviving. During the day, prioritize scavenging for supplies and foraging. Nighttime is best for crafting items and fortifying your base. Although mining is equally dangerous during the day and night, evening expeditions are encouraged when playing multiplayer, as fewer players will be around.

4. Learn to Love the Bow

The primitive bow is one of the first ranged weapons you can acquire in the game. It is cheap to build, requiring only 3x plant fibers and 8x wood. The bow one-shots most zombies if you aim for the head. As a bonus, it is a silent weapon, meaning it attracts less attention from nearby zombies when firing.

5. Avoid Early Skirmishes

Going toe to toe with a zombie as a beginner is a great way to get killed. Instead, observe how they behave from a distance, and if they look docile, try to sneak past them. Engage only if you have a tactical advantage and prepare an escape route in advance – getting surrounded by zombies in the early game is a death sentence.

6. Harvest Wood

Wood is one of the most versatile early-game resources. It is required for crafting many essential early game items, and you can use it to upgrade wood frames to fortify your base. Chopping wood by hand is bit slow, so make it a priority to craft a stone axe (2x small stones, 2x plant fibers, 2x wood) to speed up the process.

7. Build a Forge

A forge is a workstation used for crafting and upgrading weapons, tools, ammo, and building blocks. This allows you to build and equip your safehouse early, giving you better odds of surviving the horde attack at the end of the first week. The forge requires fuel to operate, and to craft one you need:

• 50x small stones
• 60x clay soil
• 10x leather
• 3x duct tape
• 3x short iron pipes

8. Craft a Minibike

The minibike doubles as a mode of transportation and a portable storage device. It allows you to stash extra loot, which is essential in the beginning when carrying capacity is limited, and it can be used as a getaway vehicle when things go south. You can craft the minibike at a workbench using:

• 2x wheels
• 1x minibike chassis
• 1x minibike handlebar
• 1x engine
• 1x lead car battery

9. Carry Plenty of Food and Water

In the initial stages of the game, hunger and dehydration are more dangerous than zombies. So make sure always to carry ample amounts of food and water. Try to drink only boiled and/or bottled water, as drinking directly from the source will likely give you dysentery. As for food, try hunting with your bow, and be on the lookout for berries, yucca, and other wild fruit. Later on, you can start farming corn and other crops.

10. Aim for the Head

Ammo is scarce in 7D2D, and zombies can take on many shots before going down. This makes guns impractical early on in the game unless you go for headshots. Most of the time, shooting a zombie in the face is a guaranteed kill, so save your bullets for situations where you have a clear line of sight and enough time for precise aiming.

Conclusion

So, you’ve made it this far? Congratulations, this means you’re ready to enter the zombie-infested wilderness of 7D2D. Keep these tips in mind when you start playing the game to increase your chances of surviving. As you spend more time in the game, you will eventually figure out your own tricks for staying alive and prospering in the harsh world of 7D2D.