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7D2D: Alpha 18, Asinine Developer Edition
Let’s play a game. Taking this Perk, would you expect to be able to craft a Wooden Bow?
If you answered No… you’re wrong! You can actually craft a Wooden Bow after taking that Perk. Trouble is, a Wooden Bow requires:
That’s right, Bow/Crossbow parts. Can you craft those parts? Nope! You can only find them from looting, purchasing from vendors, and/or dismantling already-constructed bows/crossbows.
My first reaction to this was shock. I have been playing 7D2D for a number of years now, and this was perhaps one of the most unintuitive things ever added to the game. In prior Alphas, you could not just construct guns or compound bows from nothing, which made some sense. But as updates have progressed, the amount of things you can otherwise craft, and their complexity, has increased.
This all might have just been whatever. But when I started searching forums to see if I was missing something, I came across this series of Roland (one of the Fun Pimps) posts pushing back on someone complaining about Bow parts:
Even beginners should know that crafting involves both the knowledge and also a recipe. What craftable item in the game can be made with knowledge only and no recipe? None. There is nothing disingenuous about it. You gain the knowledge and then gather the mats to craft. You cannot craft wood or stone or feathers– you go out and find them. You also cannot craft bow parts– you go out and find them. There is nothing different about this than any other part of the game.
Later on, he says:
[…]Sounds like the frustration comes from not getting an immediate payoff for spending the point. You wanted to spend the point and then make your better bow and you couldn’t because you were missing some recipe items. So what? That should give you purpose. It is like an emergent quest for you and you alone.
Guess what? When you perk into the Workbench you aren’t going to immediately be able to make everything on the list. You’re going to have to go out and gather mats.
This line of reasoning is incredibly asinine. Instead of actually offering up the real reason Bow parts are a thing now, e.g. for balance/time-gate reasons, Roland here is getting all sanctimonious over shit that doesn’t even make sense in the rest of the game. Here is a non-exhaustive list of shit you can craft in this game from basic materials:
- Gyrocopter
- 4×4 Truck
- Radiation Removal mod
- Laser sight mod
- Lead Car Batteries
- etc
Do those require a found schematic or Perk? Yes. Do they require “Gyrocopter Parts” found via RNG? No. The fact that I can make a functioning laser from Scrap Plastic and other debris I can wrench out of a car on Day 1 – nevermind what science-fiction a “Radiation Remover” is attached to a spear – but can’t actually craft a baseball bat without a Perk AND baseball bat parts is ridiculous.
Thought I was joking, did you? “Baseball Bat parts.” Meanwhile…
For context, Irradiated Zombies are a class of special zombie you can encounter that otherwise rapidly heals itself. This can make them all but immune to traps, as they out-heal the damage. Adding this mod to a weapon though, disables their healing for like 60 seconds. Just some steel, glue, springs, and “mechanical parts.” Meanwhile, you are physically incapable of crafting a baseball bat without special parts found in the world.
Look, I understand the actual reason for these changes from a game design standpoint. The devs are worried about the game being “solved” before Day 14 as veterans craft all the endgame goodies from the debris around their starting location. Why leave your spider-hole when everything you want is within reach?
The tension of the 7th day Blood Moon comes not just from the zombies themselves, but whether you can find enough materials within the six days to outlast the night. Forcing people to go out and loot buildings lets you treat each house like a mini-dungeon (which they are these days) plus adding the time element to things. Do you spend the morning of the 7th day reinforcing everything, or do you roll the dice and loot one more place?
The issue is when the devs won’t just say that. Is it because that would be too “gamey”? Or do they not actually know themselves? There will be complaints whether the devs are straight-forward or not, but at least telling the truth will save them from embarrassing themselves on the forums and insulting their fans besides.
In An Age 
7 Days to More Money
Apr 24
Posted by Azuriel
In a completely unexpected turn of events, 7 Days to Die is actually coming out of Early Access. Soon!
I say “completely unexpected” because, well, it is. The game has indeed been in Early Access for 12 years already, with Alpha 22 (now “1.0”) slated to come out in a few months. However, the Early Access period has been so long due to the dev team having no project manager – each major release has radically redesigned the scope of the game, changing progression mechanics, and otherwise putzed around art assets without actually making forward progress on systems or endgame.
But now they are, so… why aren’t I happy? Take a gander at the roadmap:
I don’t think you really even need to know anything about the base game to intuit that the stuff in the 2025 columns would, in fact, be a more appropriate 1.0 experience. In particular, Bandits have been promised for literal ages, and are still nowhere to be found. Do I believe we will get a UI/Main Menu Overhaul? Yes I do. Will there also be Bandits? Not falling for it this time, Lucy.
What is really going on with this 1.0 release is the increase in base pricing.
Look, my intent is not necessarily to paint The Fun Pimps as capitalistic assholes. I bought the game 7 (!) years ago for $10, and even now you can still purchase it this week for $5.99 ahead of the $44.99 (!!) price increase. In those years, I have played for over 327 hours. And regardless of any price increases, my copy will be upgraded for free, I’ll get all the updates for free, and so on.
It’s just that this “release” is clearly a business decision first.
This is especially true in terms of the console re-release. The history is that the game was released on consoles back in 2017 but had been stuck in Alpha 15 ever since then because porting company went bankrupt. We’re in Alpha 21 on PC, for reference. The Fun Pimps reacquired the rights a few years ago, but financially it never made sense for them to hire out another porting team. Until now.
Again, good on them for trying to get console fans a discount, assuming such a thing materializes. It also makes sense that you may have to cut your losses and start fresh with a new version given all the difficulties up to this point.
I just… I dunno. It’s complicated. As I mentioned last year, each Alpha has included a seemingly pointless overhaul of the progression system, although each iteration has taken it further and further away from zombie MineCraft and more towards something generic. Once upon a time, you would come across a small town and break into houses to scavenge for supplies and hope a big wandering mob of zombies didn’t stroll in after you. Now, 100% of the Points of Interest are mini-dungeons with traps, blocked corridors, zombies popping into existence when you cross thresholds, and a loot chest at the end. Which is cute the first time you come across the PoI, but later you just stack wooden frames and hack your way through the roof to get the loot chest and skip the mini-dungeon part.
Assuming you aren’t just spam-completing quests from the Traders, since that is actually the best way to get gear; crafting shit with resources you gather is sooooo 2017. Oh, and base-building? Yawn. Despite the fact the entire game is premised on a wave of zombies attacking you every 7 days, the devs have decided that the zombies are omniscient structural engineers who know both the shortest distance to your brains and which specific wall cubes in the way have the least amount of HP. Which, of course, means “traditional” structures like bunkers or buildings with a bunch of traps surrounding it are pointless. Instead, you need to construct Ninja Warrior obstacle courses for zombies to tight-rope walk towards you single-file for anything you build to have meaning.
Or just sit on top of a roof for a couple of weeks before moving to a different building. Whichever.
In fairness, all of this nonsense was introduced in patches, and it’s entirely possible to remove it in the same way. Given the consistency in which the devs have moved backwards though, I don’t have much faith in them spontaneously understanding why their game was popular to begin with and to stop undermining it. So while the business decisions they are making with 1.0 are rational and the last-chance deals magnanimous, I still don’t like it.
About the only bright side to all this is that, perhaps, having a firmer foundational codebase will encourage more modders to fix all the bullshit. Darkness Falls is already a transformational mod that improves the game in about every way, and I know of others (Undead Legacy). That last Q4 2025 slide does says “Steam Workshop Support” so that may be the golden ticket. We’ll just have to see.
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Tags: 7 Days to Die, Early Access, It's Just Business, Release, The Fun Pimps