Just a few pointers for the newer players (Alpha 14.7)

[narib414]

Ok guys and girls. I just wanted to take a little time to hopefully give a few points of advice for our newer players to the 7DTD community. Please keep in mind, these are my thoughts, and I know there are other players out there with a much more vast wealth of knowledge than I, and hopefully they'll chime in with some helpful tips and hints. With out much more rambling, lets get to it shall we?

If you're just starting out, try to set the day cycle to 60 minutes, (1 day will pass for each hour in rl that passes)or longer if you prefer, and the daylight length to max. This will be a bit more forgiving as you get your toes wet, and you'll have more time to farm, grind, build, explore before you get the running zombies that come out at night time.

Remember ABC (Always Be Crafting). Arrows, frames, clothing, axes, ect. When you are having some down time at night or just traversing the wilds, try to keep your crafting going. This will build up your crafting skill, as well as weapon skills exp. One friendly tip, before settling for your first main bow, try to craft as many arrows, clubs and iron clubs as possible. This will increase your weapon crafting skill, thus leading to a better quality bow for when you venture out.

I'll use the big rock boulders (the lighter colored ones) to hop on top of to help give myself a better view of the area. Really helpful especially when you're trying to watch out for zombies or bears. Btw, if you see a bear, don't go near it till later in the game. If a bear is chasing you, you better haul buttocks. Unless it's a zombie bear. Then you're S.O.L. They don't stop running, and will keep tracking you.

If you start out in the snow or burnt biome, I'd highly recommend to either get out of there asap, or just re-launch for a better spawn area. The burnt and snow biome's have some pretty beefy zombies that can tear you apart early on.

When you are ready to build your first bone shiv, I'd suggest you go for the putrid girl. Typically 2-3 clonks to the head w/ a iron club will take her out. After looting, use your stone axe on the corpse. You'll “typically” get at least one bone (just make sure you toss the rotten meat, won't need that), and the bone is used for the shiv. This will help get you harvest more meat when you're out hunting wild game.

Keep in mind that if you've got any raw meat, it will emit a smell so cook, boil or store it in a chest. Cooked and boiled meat can still emit a smell, but not as extreme as raw meat. So if you're planning on poking around a area that's got a lot of zombies, it may be a good idea to quickly make a chest, place a waypoint on it on your map (M button, and right click to bring up the waypoints menu) and store the meat in it. This would also be a good idea to do if you're clearing out a village or city and you're pretty far from your base, since you only have so much inv space.

When the day hits 2-3 pm, you really are going to want to figure out a temp base layout if you're not going to bunker up in a prefab(pre-built house). If you are lucky enough to find a good house or building that you can claim for yourself, just make sure you get close enough to the attic as possible. This will help reduce the amount of entries that the zombies can get to you. Granted many times it's better to just build temporary outpost for yourself to help get yourself through the night.

Here would be a basic example of a temp base that you can build for yourself for the first few nights.

X = wood frame blocks
Y = wood frame ramps
Z = wood frame ramp corners

Top down layout of 5 X 5 basic floor:

Z Y Y Y Y Y Z
Y X X X X X Y
Y X X X X X Y
Y X X X X X Y
Y X X X X X Y
Y X X X X X Y
Z Y Y Y Y Y Z

You can build as high as you'd like, but I personally like having the walls go 4-5 blocks high from the floor lvl. (Don't forget a door :P )

The ramps will help protect the floor so if you have any random zombies that are coming by, they can't knock the floor out from underneath you, and destroy your base by undermining your structure. Just remember to upgrade the frames by at least one lvl (right clicking w/ your stone ax). You can always add a ceiling and make a second floor if you'd like but this is just a basic layout for starting off w/.

When you're hunkering down for the night, and you're going to be spam crafting, put down two frames, one on top of the other. Then place two chests on the sides of the top frame. This way, you can load up the chests w/ what ever you're spam crafting, then remove the top frame. The chests will fall, and neatly discard all the junk that you've spam crafted. Saves on clutter, and just makes things that much easier to manage.

X = frame
Y = chest
Z = floor

YXY
X
ZZZZZ

All in all, I hope that this will help the newer players, and I hope that some of the veteran players can chime in with some helpful tips as well.

[Tux]

my tips are like hints

-you dont need 'a home' you just need a place to place your stuff and your campfire etc.
-zombies will run to you, if you run around they will follow your path and spikes hurt when they do that.
-less mats are required in my view to build up rather than down
-you dont need walls you need just need support

:)

oh side note: spikes are going to change in A15 (in my view for the better). less damange but they slow them down which is nice for ranged attacks

[MeDaDaddy]

Excellent advice all round, except for the spam-crafting.

That's just wrong IMO.

It'll create heat & level your toon so you get harder zeds without having the experience or weapons to deal with them (especially with A15 and scaled encounters.)
When you dump your spam-crafted items into the world, it causes a "lag" spike due to increased memory use so you adversely affect other players' game (RAM use increases and fps drops) on MP.

And doors.
Don't place a door unless it's behind another door (or 3) and you can hit zeds that are trying to open your door.
Zeds retain some memories of before they were infected, and really prefer to use doors rather than bash through walls.

[narib414]

Originally posted by MeDaDaddy:

It'll create heat & level your toon so you get harder zeds without having the experience or weapons to deal with them (especially with A15 and scaled encounters.)
When you dump your spam-crafted items into the world, it causes a "lag" spike due to increased memory use so you adversely affect other players' game (RAM use increases and fps drops) on MP.

Oh snap! That I didn't know thank you for pointing that out.

[Splatter58]

Originally posted by narib414:

Originally posted by MeDaDaddy:

It'll create heat & level your toon so you get harder zeds without having the experience or weapons to deal with them (especially with A15 and scaled encounters.)
When you dump your spam-crafted items into the world, it causes a "lag" spike due to increased memory use so you adversely affect other players' game (RAM use increases and fps drops) on MP.

Oh snap! That I didn't know thank you for pointing that out.

you can place a frame on the ground and put a chest on top. Fill it up with spam craftings and then pick up the frame, the chest will drop and break but wont dump it`s contents. Turns into a simple wood debris to clean up.