Darkness Falls - - WE FOUND HOW TO SURVIVE BETTER, SOONER.

[azure.symmetry]

After having played over 250 hours of the base game, me and my friend gained enough experience with 7DTD to consider it ''completed''. We had finally reached Quests TIER 5, and we were completing the hardest missions in the vanilla game.

Happily for us (and our 7DTD addiction), another friend introduced us to the MOD called ''DARKNESS FALLS''... soon after, we ventured into another 400 hours of gameplay, getting our ass kicked repeatedly, witnessing our ridicule strategies being CRUSHED with outstanding brutality by these new types of zombies.

The last month was ENLIGHTENING for us. We changed our ways of doing things.
You want to survive longer and better and have a great start in 7DTD DF ??

1 - DO NOT SPEND YOUR BULLETS NEEDLESSLY ON HORDE NIGHTS, UNTIL LATER.
Yep, you heard me right. Until you feel strong enough with a super amazing supply of bullets, simply let the zombies roam around your base, attempting to destroy it. The more zombies you kill, the more the game itself will replace these zombies with multiple new ones, including the most dangerous types of zombies. It all starts when you kill your first 3 Radiated Zombies ; they get replaced by a Stalker (the transparent one who says ''YOU WILL SUFFER''). Then, when you kill the Stalker, real trouble begins ; he gets replaced by more Stalkers, or a Zombie Bear, or even worse - - a giant mutant Octopus/Spider. The more you keep killing them, the worse they become. Also, when it's Horde Night/Blood Moon, the zombies will keep spawning continuously whenever you kill one of them.
We started killing only a handful of zombies around day 29th, so we saved like 3000 bullets total. These bullets will be used later in the game.

2- WAIT FOR THE MORNING, 4 AM.
Yep, If you are running low on resources, there is no point in getting killed repeatedly. Wait until the Horde Night is done and the chimes at 4 AM happen. Now you can kill any zombies roaming around your base. They won't respawn and you can now benefit of all the Yellow Bags. So stay cozy near the campfire, cook some food, repair your weapons and organize your loot in appropriately named crates. Chillax and relax, and let the zombies walk around your base.

3 - MAKE YOUR BASE A SOLID BLOCK. COBBLESTONE OR HIGHER RANK.
We made the mistake of making the base stand on 4 pillars. It quickly becomes unstable.
Instead - - create a base of solid blocks in the following format :

9 blocks wide, by 9 blocks long, by 9 blocks high. Make sure your ACTUAL LIVING SPACE starts at the 10th layer of blocks.

Whenever you gain access to COBBLESTONE, immediately start changing your REINFORCED WOOD structure for the COBBLESTONE structure. Once you gain access to CEMENT repeat the process, once you gain access to STEEL and REINFORCED STEEL repeat again. We recently opened a bag of popcorn and watched 5 ZOMBIE TITANS and 3 ZOMBIE BEARS ''Attempt'' breaking into our base. It was funny.
Make sure you have a Bridge, or some other structure that enables you to reach your main structure for safety. We made sure the entrance was 5 blocks high. No zombie ever got in.

4 - GET STEEL AND START DIGGING WITH THE AUGER.
As soon as you get the AUGER it's time to harvest iron, stone, steel, and sand like a madman. Dig like a madman. You want to reach an insane amount of these resources. You also want to get a WRENCH really fast and start harvesting car pieces ASAP. Like, get your hands on 30, 50 cars.

5 - INVEST POINTS INTO THE IRON GUT/STRONG STOMACH
This Perk available to all players will slow down the consumption of water and food, thus, allowing you to resist hunger and thirst a bit longer every time. It's actually the most useful Perk in the early beginnings, from day 1 to day 14.

6 - MASTER THE BASICS OF ELECTRICITY WIRING ASAP.
Watch at least one or two videos on how to properly set up an electrifying cable to paralyze the zombies.