Surviving 7 Days To Die: First Steps

Hey Guys SighFye here.

Recently I have got myself into a new game in alpha called 7 Days To Die. Today I am going to teach you how to survive.

When you first spawn you will have 1 can of food, 1 jar of water and a few other things so you don't need to worry about food and water yet. You need to get a tool and a weapon, so lets do that now.

The first thing you need to do when you spawn is build yourself a stone axe. This stone axe is a multi-tool. Its great for everything. Digging, chopping, killing, building. This will be your basic survival tool until you find all the replacements. The recipe to build a stone axe is as follows.

So that's 1 stick, 1 plant fibers, and 1 sharp stone in this pattern. So lets collect these parts. First we'll look at the stick. There are two ways to get sticks but the easiest to start would be to punch a plant... literally. You will need to punch them a few times to break the plant.

There are other ways to get stick which are far easier later on but this is the best way at the start.

The next thing we need is plant fibers. This time we are going to punch grass for a while. It's so realistic. Punching grass equals collecting grass. Don't just grab it and rip it out. lol. Now the grass you need to punch is not the green textured floor. Its the blades of grass stood up and blowing in the wind.

The grass you collect will need to be crafted into plant fibers. This is done like this...

The recipe only requires 1 grass but I always craft all my grass into plant fibers. I haven't found any other use for grass.

The last part of the puzzle is a sharpened stone. You need to first collect a stone. My game play requires always picking up stones so whenever you pass them, pick them up. I don't go out of my way to get them, I just get the ones in my path.

To turn the stone into a sharp stone just throw them into your crafting table at the center.

You now have all the parts for the stone axe. The next thing I always make is a crossbow. The recipe is as follows.

You will also need crossbow bolts. That recipe is...

You only need 1 of each item to get 1 crossbow bolt. Okay so we need A LOT more sticks, A LOT more sharp stones, 2 plant fibers and a new item, feathers.

The only way to get sharp stone, at this stage in the game is to keep collecting stone. This is why I keep collect them as I ALWAYS need crossbow bolts. Collect the stones as you pass them while we do the rest of the recipe.

Your stone axe will make quick work of breaking plants and grass to collect those parts but you really don't want to take that long. Grass you have no choice but you don't need much. The stick, lets look at a faster way. You need to collect wood. You can get this two ways. You can use your stone axe to chop down a tree. Be warned, when the tree falls it will attract zombies to that location.

This can then be crafted into wood planks.

Then craft these wood planks into sticks like so...

If you are near a river there is a quicker and safer way to make sticks. Walking down the river you will find aged wood. Collect as much as this as you can.

This aged wood can be made into planks too.

This is much quieter and quick to get. Next is to find feathers.

Feathers can be found in rubbish piles or birds nest. I always love birds nest as you have a high chance to find both feathers and eggs. You also get much higher amounts of feathers.

Now make your crossbow and crossbow bolts. You are now ready to start killing zombies. To aim the crossbow, right click and place the red dot on the zombies head. ALWAYS aim for the head. This is my favourite weapon as it silent and kills all zombies with 1 shot if hitting the head. Stealth is everything.

Aiming while to stealth mode, use the eye pupil as your red dot.

Now remember to always collect stones and feathers. These are your main items for ammo.

The next post will show scavenging techniques, collecting food, water and being safe from nightfall.

Until Then, stay safe.

SighFye

The Dead... no longer... Linger

SighFye here...

On April 29th 2012, Sandswept studios announced their KickStarter project, The Dead Linger was successfully funded and would go into full steam development. I personally was one of those kickstarters as I liked the idea they had.

Sandswept promised a planet size randomly generated world where all buildings could be explored. They claimed you could "Slay the undead hordes with WHATEVER you want." Crafting new weapons from trash around the town. Interact and explore EVERY item, weapon, object and building you see. It was to be the zombie survival game of all time. Their slogon was "We are bringing the zombie era back from the dead..." or something like that. Here's some of the concept art they provided.

Looks damn awesome right?

So finally the day came when they released a playable alpha. We were all so excited to play. My friends and I logged in for the first time and were greeted with a world with trees and houses. I could see zombies, I could pick up items. Ok there wasn't many but it's alpha lots more to come. After playing for a little while I came to the realise this was shit.

I could shoot a zombie in the distance from the hip and kill it. I didn't need to reload so I had unlimited ammo. Zombies were very predictable and the random house designs kept fucking up. So my conclusion was they released alpha too early. And I do still stand by that.

I watched development and logged in with each new build to check out the new stuff. The game started to get scary and started getting hard. Things were picking up. But things moved slow very slow. They promised new builds every fortnight, which they never kept to. They have reprogrammed every aspect of the game multiple times. They even moved the game engine from Orge to Unity. A process which took a long time and pissed off a lot of their follows. However their decision was right. Things picked up and got better quicker.

Recently they released a devblog announcing they are scrapping the planetsize random world to a set world. Ok the towns and buildings will change but its all contained in a small area. I do understand the change but they have taken away a MASSIVE part of why I was interested.

So it’s still randomized every time I play it?
Yes and no. This is a really important part, so read carefully.
In Pepper Valley, the terrain, interstates, roads, lakes, rivers, and some of the environment will be static, meaning it won’t change, but large segments of the world, such as a town, city, island, neighborhood, or even a specific building lot, will be swapped out for other layouts each time you generate a new world.

The other thing that annoyed me in their post is this...

We are switching The Dead Linger to the insanely fast and insanely powerful Unreal Engine 4 .

Yet another engine change. Will this game ever come to the completion it hoped to be.

I have recently heard of a game called 7 Days to Die. This game seems to support most of what The Dead Linger have promised and more. They have been in development for I believe a year and by the looks of things have passed The Dead Linger.

The Dead Linger may miss the boat if they do not get things into a giant swing. Games are coming out similar to them and are getting finished quicker. Most people I know who KickStarted The Dead Linger, have lost interest already.

I do believe that one day The Dead Linger will finish their game and it will be a good game. But I also believe many games will come in that time and The Dead Linger will no longer be a new style of game. It will be seen as another zombie survival.

Don't get me wrong, I would not be able to make a game like it. Its just all the time taken in development, I would have expected them to be a lot further along.

The Dead Linger was my first experience of KickStarter and to be honest, I don't think I would be comfortable Kickstarting another project.

Linger On Survivors ;)

SighFye