Getting started!

A forum dedicated to the open-world survival game 7 Days to Die
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Boss Llama
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Getting started!

Post by Boss Llama » Sat Sep 01, 2018 2:31 pm

Hey all. Personally, I'm very pleased to see this game as a Ville server. Hopefully others will enjoy it as well! I've set up a TeamSpeak chat room for those who'd like to use that while playing.

I've got north of 500 hours in 7DtD, so figured I'd give just a couple basic thoughts/explanations/tips for it for anybody who is interested but hasn't played yet:

1) 7DtD is basically the first of those ubiquitous "Survival-Crafting-Zombie" games. Unlike most of the others, however, it's actually really fun (it's pretty much what the others of that genre are all trying to emulate). The game was a hugely successful Kickstarter around 4.5 years ago, raising over half a million dollars, and continues to be actively worked on and updated to this day.

2) The game is first person, and you can think of it as combining a much more complicated version of Minecraft building/construction, with a shooter world a bit like the old DayZ mod. There's almost no block you can't break with enough force, and the same goes for the zombies. No matter how strong your wall is, they can eventually break it down if they get your scent and are attacking you.

3) By default, zombies only shuffle during daylight hours, but they may be able to run at night. Once every week or so of in-game time, there is a "blood moon" when extra-large packs of zombies appear at night, and go after you. Be careful - they can break through most defenses and will beat you down fast if you aren't yet armored. Zombies, at any time, can respond to sound and smell. If you are banging away on a project or are carrying a bunch of meat, they may detect you through walls and come to investigate.

4) When you first start the game, there will be a couple very small "quests" given basically to introduce you to the gathering and craft system. They don't provide a lot of explanation, but do give you some basic things you'll need. Plant fibers are gathered by breaking grass. Wood from breaking trees. Small rocks are found on the ground, as are birds nests, which contain feathers and sometimes eggs you can make food from. The default key to access your menu system is Tab. The default menu that comes up when you hit it is your crafting menu, which shows all the types of things you can make, and what is needed to make them. Some items require a work bench or forge of some type which you must find in the world, or else gather materials and knowledge to manufacture, and their recipes will not show up until you are at the appropriate bench.

5) Other menus are accessible by clicking the icons across the top of your Tab menu. The most important of these is your Character menu, which shows your health, wellness, hunger, thirst, and other vitals. Health can be recovered in very small amounts by eating food. As your Wellness increases, your max health increases as well. Beverages restore thirst and tend to provide an immediate boost to your stamina (which controls whether you can run, how efficiently you mine, etc), in case you don't want to or don't have time to wait the brief period for it to recharge naturally.

6) The other especially important menu is your Knowledge/Skill menu. This game has levels and a pretty deep skill tree! As you gain points in skills (which can be done through usage - think Elder Scrolls), you gain additional points you can spend to either level skills up further, or purchase perks that do things like reduce the frequency with which you need to eat, or improves the quality of loot you find. Each time you gain a full level, you'll also get an extra dose of points to spend.

7) Your first few nights in game are liable to be spent cowering. That's normal. If you need to move around, use your crouch key to sneak. As you progress and gain both equipment and confidence, night stops being quite so much an inconvenience, and more of a fun shooting gallery where you can find yourself kiting dozens of angry zombies at once.

8) Use the wiki! There are so many things you can build and develop, and skills to pursue, it's impossible to describe them all here. Finding books can teach your recipes to make more powerful weapons and ammo, or even a minibike you can use to zip around at high speed, fueled by ethanol you refine from your own corn farm.

9) Be advised that structural integrity is a thing. Unlike Minecraft, where things will just float, held up by the slightest edge, that is not the case in 7DtD. You can use the wiki, or just experimentation, to figure things out, but it's pretty logical. You don't want to get hit by a roof collapse!

10) A couple zombie types are worth extra care. Dogs are fast and hard to hit. Frozen Lumberjacks (big dudes in the frozen areas) have huge amounts of hp. Police Zombies are rare and found in urban areas, but can vomit forth acidic bile like an L4D2 boomer, and when injured, tend to charge straight at you and explode in a lethal blast.

Sorry if that seems like a lot, but I could go on for ages! Have fun, explore, and enjoy the game :-D It's a really fun one, and with a good community, is super enjoyable.
-Boss Llama

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Re: Getting started!

Post by Boss Llama » Sun Sep 02, 2018 3:53 pm

A few more tips to help with your start!

1) To aim better with a bow or crossbow, crouch. The pupil of the eyeball icon that appears on your screen to show if you're hidden or not acts as a fantastic crosshair, and remains in place when you zoom in. You'll also get bonus damage for "sneak attack" if they haven't seen you yet, plus it helps get headshots.

2) Spend some of your earliest advancement points on the Survivor and Camel perks that reduce your need for food and water. Those are the hardest things to come by, especially early on, and can wear your down fast. Once you've got a cooking pot, you can make almost endless water by right clicking the empties in lakes or rivers and then boiling it clean, but food always remains a tough one. In a pinch, the "Old Sham Sandwich" some zombies drop works. It has a 60% chance of giving you food poisoning, but that actually just saps your stamina for 30 seconds and then is gone, so is much better than starving to death.

3) The poker chips (called "Dukes") are money. You use them at the traders to buy things, and receive them when you sell things. Gotta collect them all!

4) The area on your map that shows up red, surrounding the rest of the map, is highly radioactive. It does damage if you enter it. Stay away!

5) If you have successfully hunted a game animal, you gather the meat and hide with a tool. Rather than just looting the body like a normal mob, use your stone axe (or hunting knife or other appropriate tool) to chop at the body and gather meat, hides, bone, and fat. I know of five types of game animals. Rabbits and Deer will run when attacked. Pigs, Wolves, and Bears will fight back, hard. All three can easily kill you, and take a number of hits to down. I recommend using firearms for them.

6) The seventh night hordes are going to get worse and worse until week 7 (night 49) when they will reach maximum power, and remain that way. Night lasts from 22:00 to 04:00. You can still encounter hordes during the day, but they are easily kiteable. Just make sure you have lots of arrows, bolts, or bullets! It is unwise to go in to melee with more than a couple zombies at once, since a single lucky stun, break, or bleeding wound can result in you getting overwhelmed quite quickly. Back away firing carefully to spread out the fast ones from the slow ones, pick them off with headshots, and then mop up the remainder. Keep your ears open - it's easy to lose sight of crawlers in the grass, who will always be the last to arrive.
-Boss Llama

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Re: Getting started!

Post by Flufferx » Tue Sep 04, 2018 5:13 pm

So cool that you guys provide all this game :D play info. I've been on the server for a couple of days and really having fun with it. Hope to run into some other players soon.

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Re: Getting started!

Post by Boss Llama » Tue Sep 04, 2018 8:56 pm

Hey Flufferx! Great to see you've made it to our website. I've seen you popping in and out the last few days - glad to have you!

We're always glad to have new gamers here at The Ville! We've got a long history of all sorts of games going back to 1999, and while a couple of us have played it before, hosting 7DtD is a new experiment for us. Feel free to hop in to discussions anywhere you see them on the forums - we're delighted to have you join in.
-Boss Llama

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