7 Days to Die is a zombie, crafting, and survival game that places the player in the context of the zombie apocalypse. The game itself has been in development for over a decade, and they are still adding new content, albeit slowly, to this day. Some of their decisions on certain game features have been… interesting, to say the least, and I had a few ideas of how some of these could be changed.
Biome & Storm Reworks
In the most recent update, released this past June, they revamped storms in the Storms Brewing update. Each of the five biomes now have their own environmental challenges, storms, and barriers to entry. This is rather important as the best loot in the game can be found in the wasteland, the hardest biome in the game, and players were able to ‘cheese’ their way into high tiered loot containers and get extremely powerful gear early on.
Current Implementation & Thoughts
As of now, you need to progress through the biomes as follows:
Forest > Burnt Forest > Desert > Tundra > Wasteland
If you try to enter another biome, you will be given a small grace period where you don’t take damage from the environment, and after that time, you will consistently take damage. This lasts indefinitely throughout the biome unless you complete some challenges to unlock the respective biome badge, granting immunity to the base effects of the biome.
As for the storms in each biome, they are simply boiled down to damage-over-time effects that take place outside, where the only counterplay is to remain indoors. In my opinion, the way the game punishes the player for not meeting the requirements of the biome, in addition to the implementation of how storms “affect” the player. They don’t differentiate in how they effect the player, and is, in my opinion, a cheap way to force the player to a specific location (indoors, another biome, etc.).
Rework Potential
Each biome could have different ways of interacting with the player, along with how storms can influence the player. Two areas need to be considered when determining how things work, being the penalty inflicted by a biome, and the penalty of a storm. Below are potential side effects of exploring a biome without the biome badge present
| Biome | Biome Penalty (without badge) |
| Burnt Forest | Lowered Visibility Reduced Max Stamina Reduced Stamina Regeneration |
| Desert | Reduced Max Stamina Reduced Stamina Regeneration Increased Hydration Depletion |
| Tundra | Reduced Max Stamina Reduced Stamina Regeneration Increased Hunger Depletion Reduced Movement Speed Reduced Attack Speed |
| Wasteland | Reduced Max Stamina Reduced Stamina Regeneration Reduced Health Regeneration Speed Greatly Increased Infection Chance Increased Infection Rate Gradual Damage over Time |
The effects above offer penalties for exploring a biome without simply dealing damage continuously until they leave or die. The effects make sense for the respective biomes, and players can still survive in the biome, only they have to be a little more careful when exploring. As for storms, each storm can have their own effects on the player, such as reducing vision, empowering certain zombies, or in some cases, dealing damage over time, when it makes sense.
| Biome | Storm Effect |
| Forest | Reduced Visibility Consistent Exposure to Rain Reduces Body Temperature |
| Burnt Forest | Reduced Visibility Increases Body Temperature Reduced Stamina Regeneration Burnt Zombies are more Hostile Infernal Zombies are Stronger |
| Desert | Reduced Visibility Reduced Stamina Regeneration Greatly Increases Body Temperature Increased Hydration Depletion Plague Spitters are more Hostile |
| Tundra | Reduced Visibility Reduced Movement Speed Reduced Attack Speed Greatly Decreases Body Temperature Frostclaws are more Hostile Charged Zombies are Stronger |
| Wasteland | Reduced Max Stamina Gradual Damage over Time Gradual Infection over Time Increases Body Temperature Mutated Zombies are more Hostile Radiated Zombies are Stronger |
Learn By Crafting Integration
Throughout the game, you can craft numerous items of varying quality. This quality and tier of item is determined by your level in that specific proficiency. For example, iron tools are locked behind max quality stone tools, and more specifically, axes, shovels, and pickaxes are under the harvesting tools skill. To upgrade these skills, you must read the proper magazine to level up those skills. Previously, you could upgrade skills by crafting a certain quantity of the item, incentivizing resource collection and harvesting. The old system could be appended to this current, “learn by reading” system.
System Integration
For an example of this integration, we’ll use the harvesting tools skill as it caps out as a flat 100. While each magazine increases the level of the skill by 1 per, crafting tools could provide a secondary source of skill experience, that can grant an additional skill level upon reaching enough experience. Lets say, that going from level 1 to 2 requires enough experience gained from crafting 4 stone axes. Instead of reading a magazine for that level, I can use resources to craft enough tools to level up. The amount of skill experience needed per level increases, making it harder to achieve higher skill levels with common items.
This would significantly helped out with early game progression, as it’s quite easy to make stone-quality tools and basic weapons, like the primitive bow, pipe-based guns, and clubs. This can help accelerate the player’s skills if magazines are hard to come by.
Biome Lootstage
Loot stage is the value that dictates how much loot you get, along with the quality of loot you obtain. Your loot stage is governed by your player level, a point-of-interest bonus, a biome bonus, and consumable bonuses. While most of the bonuses are somewhat reasonable, the biome bonuses can feel extremely bloated, as if the game is handing out great loot to the player constantly.
Current Implementation
All of the biomes below are listed alongside their loot stage increases. Note, the percentage increase is to your total loot stage, so +100% means that it would be doubled.
| Biome | Loot Stage Bonus |
| Forest | No Bonus |
| Burnt Forest | +10 and +150% |
| Desert | +10 and +150% |
| Tundra | +20 and +200% |
| Wasteland | +30 and +250% |
From those numbers alone, it’s pretty apparent as to how much biomes matter when looting containers and points of interest. Being level 30 in the forest biome for example nets you a loot stage of 30, while in the wasteland, it’s bumped up all the way to 150. In cases like that, it can be easy to skip over entire tiers of loot, such as iron tools or semi-optimal firearms.
Potential Fix
A simple fix for this would be to tone down on the loot stage bonus in each biome. To be honest, the percentage scaling seems a bit unnecessary, and seems to be the biggest contributor to the absurdly high loot stage. By removing the percentage and increasing the flat values, each biome will still feel better than the last to explore, but within reason.
Each biome beyond the forest can provide a +15 loot stage bonus, so 15 in the burnt forest, 30 in the desert, etc. This provides a smaller loot stage bonus, but still makes it somewhat noticeable when you loot containers and such in harder biomes.
Themed Zombie Balancing
In the most recent update, two new zombie types had been added into the game, being the plague spitter and frost claw. As of writing this, they seem to be a bit over tuned in how aggressive they are towards the player, as well as their behavior. Some minor changes could be made that makes fighting these zombies less frustrating, while still making them unique.
As for the plague spitter, it currently spawns bees every so often, which have a very high tolerance to ranged damage sources (99% resistance), as well as a very high infection rate on hit. Toning these down wouldn’t be the worst, as you still have the unique ability of the spitter, but less egregious in how it functions. For the frost claw, simply reducing the distance it can throw it’s projectile would make the enemy much better, as it can currently launch projectiles from extremely far away and still hit you.
Concluding Thoughts
While the above content is only a part of my overall thoughts on improving this game, I believe they have a significant enough impact to make the game better. I’ve put numerous hours into this game, and I only want it to improve with each update, and to not make some things better while unnecessarily modifying things for the worse.
