Let’s be honest with ourselves here, 7 Days to Die is a tough zombie survival game. It’s not uncommon for new players to fall flat on their faces during the first wave. But hey, if you have a few early-game survival tips for 7 Days to Die, you too can beat back the undead hordes, find rare loot, and build an indestructible base!
Once you make it to mid- late-game, you’ll have a good foothold in the game to survive for the long run. First, getting past the first horde, securing food and water, and building up a base should be your main priorities!
Early Game Survival Tips
Here’s a quick rundown on what you should prioritize in the early game.
- Place down a bedroll someplace safe.
- Loot every container and crate you can find.
- Complete quests for the nearest trader to earn loot, experience, and to build a relationship.
- Save your ammunition for horde night, use melee weapons or bows.
- Scrap any unwanted resources for more useful crafting materials.
- Collect animal bones, feathers, and other naturally-occuring resources in the forest biome.
- Acquire perks using accumulated experience points.
Stay On Top of Food and Water
Yeah, I touched upon this topic in another guide, but I’ll reiterate here if you have yet to read that one.
It’s crucial that you remain on top of your food and water in 7 Days to Die. You can find water via natural sources, like wells and rivers, though you’ll want to sterilize any water you find from such locales. Otherwise, you can loot water and other drinks, like soda, from containers at various points of interest.
The same goes for food. In the early game, you’ll wind up looting most of your food supplies, like canned goods and fresh vegetables or berries.
Eventually, you’ll have a durable base with a little spare room for gardening or a full-blown farmstead.
Avoid Certain Biomes
In the early game, you’ll likely spawn in the forest biome. It’s one of the easiest to survive, though its loot table is rather lacking.
In your first week, that’s fine, though. You’ll find all you need; weapons, foot, water, etc.
But once you start to progress, you’ll begin to explore other biomes around the map.
For now, you’ll want to avoid the wasteland, which is considered the most difficult to survive but also comes with the best rewards. The same goes for the snow biome, which plays host to countless hostile mobs, like dire wolves and big cats, which will tear your face apart quickly.
Focus on Upgrades
7 Days to Die features a sort of natural progression. You’ll start off weak, with nothing but rudimentary tools and weapons, like a homemade bow or club, and eventually, find yourself trekking through biomes in an armored 4×4 with an assault rifle on your back.
The key is to focus on upgrading your character, equipment, and base over time.
When it comes to your base, upgrade materials, add in new levels, place traps, and create kill boxes or funnels to help you survive each weekly horde.
For food, you’ll eventually build a farm or small garden to produce your own goods.
As for weaponry, you can acquire new weapons by completing quests for the various traders and by looting points of interest scattered about the map. Eventually, you’ll unlock crafting recipes to create your own weapons back at base.
Choosing the Right Perks
As you kill zombies, complete quests, and loot points of interest, you’ll receive experience points to purchase new perks. It’s critical you select the right perks early on to help ease your survival experience.
- Healing Factor – Dying in 7 Days to Die is tough going. You’ll respawn but it may not be anywhere close to your base unless you placed a bedroll, but you’ll lose your inventory and equipment. Sure, you can loot your death bag and pick everything up, but wouldn’t it make more sense to avoid death altogether? Healing Factor allows you to passively heal so long as you’re not taking damage.
- Gunslinger – While melee is preferred in the early game, you’ll eventually utilize more firearms down the road. It’s best to plan ahead by nabbing the Gunslinger perk, which ensures more damage per shot, better accuracy, and faster fire rates overall. Furthermore, Gunslinger allows you to craft handguns and submachine guns.
- Charismatic Nature – 7 Days to Die is one of those zombie survival games best played with friends. If that sounds like your plan, then pick the Charismatic Nature perk, which increases health, stamina, and will eventually boost damage and defense when nearby to allies.
- Living Off the Land – Finding resources to survive could mean the difference between life and death. The Living Off the Land perk will yield more lootables when harvesting plans, while also making farm plots cheaper to craft down the line.
- Lucky Looter – As a loot-based survival game, 7 Days to Die offers a ton of items to find in containers and crates throughout the world. With the Lucky Looter perk, you’ll come across better loot with increased rarity and volume when searching through POIs.
Hit the Crack-A-Book
If you can locate a sizable town early on, head inside its boundaries and find your nearest Crack-A-Book. It’s a bookstore POI that will generally spawn new recipes and skills on its bookshelves.
On said bookshelves, you can find crafting recipes for crossbows, armor, foodstuffs, and other useful tools and equipment to help you survive.
Even better is, Crack-A-Book usually isn’t stuffed to bursting with zombies.
If you cannot find a local bookstore, try a school or college. Both have bookshelves to loot.
I hope this helps you survive even one more week in 7 Days to Die!