7 Days to Die – Everything that awaits you in Alpha 21 Experimental

It took a long time, but now the latest alpha version for 7 Days to Die is finally available on the Experimental branch.

We have compiled all the changes and new features of Alpha 21 Experimental and can already tell you this much: The update turns the whole game upside down!

Graphics update for the game world

The game world of 7 Days to Die has received many visual updates. This ranges from entire buildings and building facilities for churches, hospitals and industrial complexes to individual pieces of furniture, walls, signs and doors.

Doors – Mechanics & Variations

Previously, you had to either open doors to fight enemies in front of them or wait for them to break down the door. With Alpha 21 you can now fight through broken doors.
Holes created can be used for melee attacks and shots, which are then no longer intercepted by the door itself.
However, this works for both sides – the zombies and the players.

There are also some new door variations, including double doors. Especially with these, however, it can be the case that some enemies can fit through holes that have been created.

Changes for Loot Containers

Smaller loot containers like trash bags, backpacks, and bird nests are now destroyed when you remove all items.

Larger containers such as tables, drawer cabinets, closets, and safes will now visually appear open and empty when all items are removed.
You no longer have to go through everything again to see where you can still pick up items.

Water in the game world

The water in the game world of 7 Days to Die has been reworked both visually and technically with Alpha 21. Cut-off water edges and clipping should now happen much less often, and the water simulation has also been improved.
As a result, water areas now put significantly less strain on performance – both for the game client and the server, and lakes, ponds and rivers should look and flow more naturally.

Danger system

One new feature is the hazard system, which first comes into play using fires as an example. These must first be contained and deactivated before you can move forward at certain points in the game.
As long as the flames are active, they cause high damage to players and all other creatures.

So you might be able to use this cleverly for your own purposes before you turn the fires off.

Expansion of the Gore System

There are now more zombie variants where the gore system is applied and displayed.

New & Revised Places in the Game

All the “Points of Interest (POI)” available in the game have been improved and/or revised. This, of course, includes the graphically redesigned objects and almost 700 new block shapes.

• All merchant areas have been completely reworked and now have multiple entrances
• There are over 75 completely new possible quest locations in the game
• Most locations (almost 400) support the new infestation quest type.
• Random world generation: more possible POI’s now spawn along roads
• The map Navezgane has been fundamentally reworked
• Over 200 locations have been added or completely reworked.

Difficulty display for biomes and locations

When you enter a new location or biome, a new window now displays the name and difficulty level.

Orange skulls indicate the difficulty of the biome, red skulls indicate the difficulty of the current location.

Biomes are classified as follows:

• Forest – 0 skulls (orange)
• Burnt area (Navezgane only) – 0.5 skulls (orange)
• Desert – 1 skulls (orange)
• Snow – 1.5 skulls (orange)
• Wasteland – 2 skulls (Orange)

The loot level and difficulty, however, is also partly based on the biome in which the locations are found.
So a location in the forest biome will spawn easier enemies and offer less good loot than the same location in the wasteland.

Infestation quests

There is a new quest type in the game called “Infestation”.
You can accept this quest type from Tier 2 onwards from a merchant.

The difficulty of quests of this type adds a difficulty level to the existing one of the quest location.
Infestation quests drastically increase the number of zombies and give you an additional special loot box at the end.

The highest level of these quests increase the difficulty of a Tier 5 location to Tier 6.

Localization Update

All locations of interest – “Points of Interest (POI)” – have been retranslated and named more appropriately. These names are also reflected in the quest texts and are displayed in a new box in the upper right corner.

Wandering Hordes

Previously, it was often the case that players avoided wandering hordes and waited for them to pass by. Now, however, the chance of getting loot bags in these confrontations has been increased significantly.
So it’s much more worthwhile to face the undead mob.

In addition, hordes no longer appear before the first blood moon.

Improvements to the Random World Generator (RWG)

The random world generator (RWG) has also been significantly revised and improved with Alpha 21.

According to the developers, the latest version focuses mainly on faster generation, visual representation of the world, correct placement of POIs and adding new features to improve the player experience.
In addition, some bugs have been ironed out.

Here is a sample of the biggest improvements:

• The generation speed has been significantly improved, so the process is now 4-5x faster than before.
• A correct connection of highways has been added.
• A new points system ensures that POIs are not repeated too often.
• New country tiles have been added, making the rural area look more believable and beautiful.

Reset system for chunks

Also new is a new, extended option called “Chunk Reset Time”.
If this is turned on, chunks will be reset to their original state after the set time.

If there are sleeping bags, secured zones and other player objects like backpacks or vehicles in the chunk, the corresponding chunk will not be reset.
However, this does not apply to manually filled world containers or workstations outside of secured zones, these do not prevent the reset.

This feature ensures that locations you visited earlier are reset and can “recover”. It also ensures that the memory size of a world is significantly reduced.
The feature is disabled by default.

Note: A chunk is an area of about 500×500 blocks. The game world consists of many “chunks” strung together.

Re-balancing of survival aspects

It has now become a bit more costly to supply yourself with fresh water and thus survive.

• Empty bottles and cans have been removed from the game.
• Boiling water now requires a cooking pot over the campfire
• You will now find water and other drinks much less often without possible side effects
• There is a new dew collection station that can be used to collect water
  • To use the collection station you need a water filter
  • You can get water filters from a merchant
  • You get about 3 glasses of water in 24 hours time (in game)
  • Players can set up multiple collection stations
  • Collection stations must be placed outdoors
• There are now more drinks in vending machines
• Since water is needed to make glue, you can now find more glue in loot, quest rewards and at the merchant

Crafting system Rework

With Alpha 21, item crafting unlocks have been separated from the skill system and moved to the new crafting system.
You will now need to read various magazines about crafting items to get better at crafting them and craft better tier levels.

These magazines can be found in loot bins, zombie loot bags, supply drops, as quest rewards, or as an offer at the merchant.

This change is intended to ensure that players don’t simply skip certain stages of the game’s progression entirely, and also that they are no longer forced to learn certain skills for crafting.

However, one skill does give an increased chance of finding a suitable magazine. For example, the Boomstick skill now increases the damage of shotguns, but also increases the chance of finding parts and ammo as well as shotgun magazines in the loot.

Perk Overhaul

The reworking of the crafting system was of course accompanied by a reworking of the skills in Alpha 21.
Here is an overview of the most important changes:

• The Sexual Tyrannosaur skill has been split between the individual weapon skills and no longer needs to be taken as a “must have” so to speak. If you want less stamina consumption when using clubs, you can now put the points into “Pudgy Pete”, for example.
• The skill “Flurry of Blows” has been added as a new skill in the individual attributes:
  • Perception: Quick and Perceptive – Increases attack speed with spears.
  • Strength: Big and Fast – Increases attack speed with clubs and hammers.
  • Fortitude: Lightning Hands – Increases attack speed with fists and fist weapons.
  • Agility: Whirlwind – Increases attack speed with knives
  • Intelligence: Calculated Attack – Increases attack speed with batons.
• The Physician skill now allows you to treat sprains and gives you more experience points when using healing items.
• The Master Chef skill allows you to cook faster.
• The Lock Picking skill has been moved to Intelligence.
• Mechanic (Grease Monkey) uses less repair kits when repairing vehicles

Perception & Spears revision

The Perception Attribute has been significantly improved and now ensures that headshots on zombies are much more often fatal and generally cause more damage.

In addition, the spears as a weapon have generally undergone a revision. You can’t throw them anymore, but they have a strong attack.
This makes the spear even more effective as an ambush weapon – and incidentally makes them one of the most effective weapons to benefit from the changes to the doors.

Recipe tracker

With Alpha 21 you can display recipes in a tracker, which then shows you all the items you need. If you have all items of one type, the items will be displayed in green and if you have all items for crafting, the game will tell you that as well.

Selection of the crafting quality

You can now select the desired crafting quality for an item, so you are guaranteed to use only the materials you really need to get the desired result.

Loot balancing

All loot in the game has been adjusted and rebalanced. This ranges from food and water to quest rewards, improved merchant inventories and a better distribution of magazines for crafting items.

Trader changes

Previously, there was sometimes early access to very high level and/or rare items with the help of merchants, including the secret inventory (safe icon).
This has been removed and a new system called “Trader Stage” has been introduced.
The system ensures that the availability of items is also based on the player level and the progress of the game state.

Starter Quests

The starter quests have been reworked and simplified so that both newcomers and veterans can complete them quickly and easily.

Play without HUD if you want

If you want to get completely sucked into the experience of 7 Days to Die, you can now turn off your HUD. Simply press the F7 key and all HUD elements will disappear.
However, you can still use the interaction menu.

If you press the F7 key again, all HUD elements will really be hidden and the third time F7 will bring you back to the default setting with all HUD displays.

Respawning at backpack

Another new feature in Alpha 21 is the ability to spawn near your backpack after you die. All you need to do is place a sleeping bag somewhere beforehand.

Vehicle damage

Colliding vehicles with any element of the game now causes more damage and leaves effects (sparks) and/or marks (blood splatter) on the car and in the game world.
Repair kits now restore only a portion of the damage, making them even more important.

Twitch integration

For all streamers on the Twitch platform, Alpha 21 brings a new Twitch extension. With this, viewers can interact with the streamer.
Depending on the setting, actions like subscriptions, gift subscriptions and bits can be used to trigger certain things in the game.

Performance & Network

Alpha 21 has moved 7 Days to Die to a new Unity version, which should result in a significant performance improvement.

This is accompanied by improvements to the AI, which is now throttled at greater distances from the player to use less power, and the AI should now be able to move better.
The improvements also lead to reduced memory usage.

As another plus point, the developers were able to significantly reduce the network load and especially improve the gaming experience in multiplayer.

How to play the Alpha 21 Experimental

As the name suggests, this is a still experimental build of a new version. But of course you can already play it and this is how it works:

• Right-click on 7 Days to Die in Steam.
• Select the item “Properties”.
• Then select the tab “BETAS”.
• Next select the option “latest_experimental – Unstable build” in the dropdown.
• Now the game will download the Alpha 21 Experimental version and you can start playing.

Important: Game saves and old worlds from before Alpha 21 Experimental are largely no longer compatible with this version, so be prepared for a restart and save your previous worlds beforehand if you wish!