Tips for cooperative multiplayer (mainly a list of what not to do)

[Peter34]

7 Days to Die Tips for co-operative multiplayer by Peter Knutsen (7D2D is (c) The Fun Pimps, and it's an excellent game - go buy it on Steam!) 0. Craft a Stone Axe and a Crossbow within the first 2-3 minutes of playing. You can make these in any biome that has Grass, Wood, Small Rock and Feathers, which is all of them (to get your first Stick for the Stone Axe, punch a bush - anything that looks like a bush or small tree or shrubbery, then use your Stone Axe to fell a tree). 1. Agree on where to set up your base. Find a meeting point, meet there, then set up the base (this writer prefers to set up a from-nothing base on one of the low hill plateaus in the Grasslands/Plains biome, right west of Husker Avenue. Setting up base in an existing building may look attractive but it can be difficult). 1b. If you need to cross the Burned Belt biome to reach the meet point, be careful (cooperate with other players about the crossing) as there might be dangerous zombie dogs, even on day one. 2. Share what you find (that's why it's called cooperative multiplayer). 3. Don't be afraid to use the Appropriate Tool. Granted, iron is scarce early game, but the expensive part is crafting a tool in the first place (usually 2 to 4 Iron Ingots), not repairing it after (a few Metal Strips will take you [I]far[/I]). Don't go around doing everything with the Stone Axe. Use Fire Axe for any wooden items, Pick Axe for stone or metal (or bricks), Shovel for Dirt, Sand and (unfired) Clay. 3b. Likewise, use appropriate nourishment. Don't drink Bottled Water (let alone Murky Water!) if there's Tea available. If there isn't Tea available, then brew some. And don't eat raw Corn (let alone raw Meat) when you can cook it. 4. Don't underestimate the need for gathering stuff. Don't just gather 32 Wood Trunks then think you've done your daily contribution to the base building. Building a base requires large amounts of gathered materials, Wood, Stone, even Iron sometimes. A couple of stacks (128 Wood Trunks) per player per day is more like it. 5. Likewise, don't underestimate the need for crafting-processing gathered materials in order to build or defend your base. Unless the server is set on instant-crafting tie, it takes a lot of time to make a bunch of 1x1x1 Woodframe or Rebar blocks or WoodSpikes. Do your part, ask what needs crafting, then do it. Look at the bright side: Crafting is a lot less boring than gathering, because you can actually walk around and explore or even fight (or do more gathering) while the crafting takes place continously in the background. Again, your daily contribution shouldn't be half a stack, but more like multiple stacks (3-5 stacks, at least, of 64 each). 5b. Also help the building process, by upgrading WoodFrames and Rebar frames placed by other players, and by digging or placing down traps. If you're not sure where to dig and so forth, the other players can place down WoodFrames as temporary markers, then when those markers are no longer needed they can be used for building, or burned as fuel in Forges and Camp Fires. (For this reason, also, you should not uncritically upgrade any WoodFrame you see - some of them may be temporary makers, and it's a total bitch getting rid of a temporary WoodFrame if somebody has already upgraded it). If you're not sure what to do, ask. 6. Don't waste materials due to laziness or stupidity. Early game, all materials are scarce. Even mid game, some materials still are. IF you're unsure about something, ask a more experienced player. It's okay to experiment or make mistakes, but don't just destroy something that another player spent 10 or 15 real-life minutes gathering. Don't use tools or weapons until they self-destruct. Keep your gear repaired. If you have a weapon you can't repair, and it's low Condition (say, within 10% to 25% of max Condition), stash it away until repair becomes available (even this reader, rather experienced, sometimes gets carried away and looses a Pick Axe due to Condition dropping to zero). If you need to quit the game, for whatever reason, even temporarily, remove anything from the "Crafting Canvas" part of your inventory (otherwise you might lose it due to a bug- losing a Shovel has a cost of 4 Iron Ingots, and you want to avoid that). Don't waste a lot of Crossbow Bolts (Feathers are somewhat rare) shooting at night-sprinting zombies that you have no chance of hitting anyway. 7. If someone drops something in order to give it to you, pick it up. Items dropped on the ground will de-spawn after a short while. Failing to pick up something that someone is trying to give to you, i.e. when the other person is being helpful, marks you as ungrateful, and wastes resources (see item #6 directly above). 8. Understand that some places are dangerous. Diersville has a perma-spawn going on, making it almost certainly the most dangerous place in the game. Gravetown might be more open in layout but could be similar (I've never dared go in there). Large indoors areas such as the Factories in the Wasteland biome are also very dangerous. It's okay to want to go look for some action, but try to get other players to come with you (they're probably bored with spending 100% of their time gathering, crafting and building, [I]too[/I]), then try to cooperate against the zombies, especially in terms of entering zombie-infested buildings (try to lure as many as possible of the zombies out of the building, then kill them, before you go in). 9. It's perfectly all right to want to experiment with explosires, but not on day one - probably not on day two either. Wait until you and your friends are reasonably established. And then do your experimentation some distance away from where they are (if you'll think it'll look awesome, Mythbusters style, tell the other players to come to where you are and watch). Not only might your experiments destroy important base structures (perhaps even expensive base structures), the noise of the explosion could attract zombies, even a horde of zombies. Same with water. If you don't know what you're doing and what effect it will have, don't pour water out from Buckets anywhere in or near your base. 10. Try to play as if for real. Try to stay alive. Once XP and Skill Trees are implemented, there'll almost certainly be either a reward (such as faster XP) for not dying, or a penalty for dying (slower XP). You might as well prepare for that evolution. Besides, 7D is a horror game. If you play as if you have a death wish, you're doing it wrong. 11. Agree on a doors-policy, then stick to it. It's bothersome to have to cycle through a triple-iron-door security system every time you want to enter and exit the indoors section of your base, so one suggestion is that it's okay to have doors open during daylight hours as long as everyone (or at least most) are present in or near the base, but that after 1800 hours (which is several hours before the zombies becomes fast) it's policy to [I]always[/I] close all doors. A more safe compromise is to have the outermost door closed, but say that it's OK for the middle and innermost door to be open until a few hours before moonrise. 12. First time you place a chest or door, make sure it's accessible to the other players (i.e. not locked). If it is locked, unlock it right away, then know that you must do this with all chests and doors your place. 13. Develop a Chest System, so that you can keep track of all the materials and gear and consumables you find. 7D contains a lot of items, ammo types, weapons, mats and so forth. You can't just have 4 chests of random crap (that's [I]only[/I] 144 slots, which is far from sufficient), and it's not currently possible to label chests with txt. Do have a Random Loot chest cluster, for people to drop stuff in to be sorted later, but also have a systematic set of Chests where everything is neatly sorted, or ideally two sets, one for consumables and weapons and stuff you use, and one for mats, meaning for stuff you use to make other stuff. In my experience, the second set needs to be larger than the first. I use 4 Sort Later chests, 12 Mats chests and 6 Re-Equip chests, for single-player, plus a small cluster of Forge Chests and Camp Fire Chests (and a single outdoors Chest for Trap materials such as WoodSpikes, and repair building mats) but that's probably also suitable for small-group coop play.

[Peter34]

14. Don't carry around a lot of stuff. Put it in chests, so you're ready to take in loot as you find it. I myself am a pack rat so my single player "loadout" does take up nearly half of my inventory slots (more than half, if you count together the backpack slots and the belt slots - but that also means I'm prepared for freakin' [I]everything[/I]), but that still means I have something like 15-20 slots free for stuff I find, when I set out to explore. It sucks to find something good (such as Brass) but be forced to leave it because you can't carry any more. 14b. If you travel several together, exploring, divide carry duties and loot duties. For instance, if you are four guys, two should carry Fire Axes, 2 should carry Picks, 2 should carry Shovels, and so forth. Everyone carrying one of each is inefficient. Everyone should carry a bit of food and Tea and a few Healer Bandages, but one guy could be the Provisions Guy(/Girl), carrying reserves, another could be the Medic, and a third could carry a lot of Weapon Repair Kits and Metal Strips (and the mats to make more of the later). Also with loot, designate one guy to carry all Iron and Brass, one to carry all found spare weapons and ammo, and so forth. That way, you'll have a lot more inventory slots as a collective. Don't over-do this part (nor should you never not carry your favourite weapon (or tool) just because someone else got assigned that duty - if you love the SMG, feel free to carry one), it can get boring, but try not to be wildly inefficient. (Also, whenever you loot a large structure, or a cluster of small ones, plonk down a Chest for people to put found stuff in, so it pools into large stacks.) 15. Don't hog containers. As long as you are interacting with a given Chest (or Car, or Pile Of Trash) other players can't interact with it. Don't feel rushed, do take the time you need, but don't take [I]much more[/I] time than you need. Players who desire to indicate irritation over Chest-hogging, but who aren't on voice, can try to hop up and down repeatedly until the hogster gets the clue. 16. Routinely, each morning or evening (not both - that's usually too pedantic and might well sour most people on the game), everybody should go out of the base and repair what needs repairing, and replace worn-out trap-type items such as WoodSpikes or Barbed Wire (or Land Mines). If your base has a "primary defence type", such as WoodSpikes, everyone should carry a full stack (e.g. of 64 WoodSpikes) when they go out to do this. 17. If there's something you're unsure of, ask a more experienced fellow player (that's why it's called cooperative multiplayer). 7D isn't an opaque game, but its hardcore realism will often surprise players who grew up on non-realistic games.

[Aldranon]

My chest system from right to left (You could do left to right, not important) it goes chest for input into forge; Forge; Output from forge that's not food or ammo basically building material and iron ingots; Input into campfire; Campfire; Output from campfire; Ammo and ammo parts plus spare guns. Its good for me, I feel like some production manager sometimes :) Oh my last chest has healing goods too.

[Caldeon]

Nice suggestions, but you forgot rule nbr 18: Put some land mines on unespected spots, like on top of ladders, behind doors or near sleeping bags - always good for a laugh :)

[J 7dtd player]

Help any one that just joined in they could be helpful and they would be thankful

[zombie4hire]

Why not update this list instead of just linking to it? Parts are pretty out of date. Noone is making a crossbow day one.

[Crater Creator]

This looks like it [u]was[/u] very helpful in 2014 when it was written. The problem is the game has changed since then. There are no wood trunks anymore, for example, so references to them in an active thread can confuse people. That's the big reason so-called grave digging is against the rules.