7 Days to Die Tips: The First 7 Days

It doesn’t matter if you are a veteran when it comes to survival games, 7 Days to Die is brutal, which is where our 7 Days to Die tips come in, to help keep you alive for as long as possible.

Surviving the first 7 days can be a challenge, which is why we’ve focused on 7 Days to Die tips on those, getting a good head start on week one, can help you overcome the weeks to follow.

Place Your Bedroll

When you first load into the game you’ll be presented with some tutorial challenges to complete. One of these is to place your bedroll. A bedroll can be made from plant fibers which can be collected by hitting some foliage. Plant fibers are easy to come by, so not making a bedroll isn’t an excuse.

A bedroll sets your spawn point to the lcoation where it is placed. It will be your only spawn point and it will show on the map marked by a bed icon.

For the first few days, you may not have a base location, so you’ll need to remember to take your bedroll with you if you’re on the move, placing it down in a safe location each time.

If you do have a place you can call home, remember to put your bedroll down to mark your spawn point.

Loot Everything

Notoriously known as a hoarder in video games, this is where I excel. Loot everything you come across, even if you think it’s useless, as everything has a purpose in 7 Days To Die.

Whether it be a tire, a moldy sandwich, or a bone, these pieces of junk could save your life!

If you do loot everything, you’ll quickly become encumbered. It’s recommended placing a storage chest down to store your items and come back for them when you need them.

Do Missions (Quests)

Quests are a reasonably recent addition to the game (in the last few years) and can provide you with valuable rewards.

You can find quests in note form from dead zombies, in bags, or by looting. Or you can retrieve them from the Trader NPC.

Quests can range from killing a certain amount of zombies to looting a house in a specific location. This can result in offering generous rewards that come in handy.

Save Ammunition

If you’re faced with a zombie horde, ammunition can be the difference between life or death. Save your ammunition for the right moment.

For example, if you’re looting a building, you may prefer to kill zombies with a melee attack. Alternatively, you can slaughter them with a bow, saving gun ammo for a horde night.

Scrap Resources

Remember when I said to loot everything? Well, looting lots of stuff means you can scrap it for valuable parts.

For example, you can scrap most metal items like Short Iron Pipe, or a food can, in exchange for scrap metal. Scrap metal can be used to craft other items, or placed in a forge to create Iron.

Collect Bones

As gross as the thought may be, collecting bones can be very useful. If you need glue and duct tape to make items (e.g. repair kits), you can use bones to make glue and combine glue with cloth to make duct tape.

Bones can generally be looted from animals and corpses. Or you may come across them in body bags in hospitals and churches.

Place Points into Skills

The skills list in 7 Days to Die is extensive. It’s actually really fun when you put a lot of thought into it.

However, points don’t come thick and fast. So you’ll want to spend your points wisely at the beginning to ensure you have the right skills.

Pack Mule is under the Strength attribute. It allows you to carry more resources without being encumbered. Thus not slowing you down as much. At the start, looting is what you’re going to be doing the most. So whack some points into Pack Mule and loot everything.

Dig Down To Bedrock

Bedrock is essentially the border that identifies you’ve reached the bottom of the world. The elevation of bedrock is -57 M and when you strike it with a pickaxe or other object, it will make a strange sound.

If you’re able to dig down to bedrock within the first 7 days before the first blood moon arrives, you’ll have a much better chance of not being detected by Zombies.

You can place objects on bedrock so you could dig down and make your entire base underground to protect you. Zombies can dig, and they will eventually get to you if you don’t deal with them, but this could take days for them to accomplish.

Visit Crack-a-Book

One of the best 7 Days to Die tips is to expand your crafting abilities, and the best way to do that is by finding a crack-a-book or two as early into the game as possible.

If you can find a town (usually by following a road or path), most will contain a store called Crack-a-Book. These stores have plenty of bookshelves in, and if you’re lucky, you’ll be able to loot some new recipes and skills.

Some of these can be very useful in early game, e.g. crossbow, better armour, etc. Remember to loot everything in the store, including upstairs. You may even try your luck in a school or college which similarly have bookshelves to loot.