7 Days to Die Alpha 16 has now fully arrived. On July 12^th, the Fun Pimps released the stable build for Alpha 16. They had released the experimental build of Alpha 16 about a month ago for players to be able to opt into to play. But now all players have the alpha 16 version to play by default.

With this update comes some significant changes and added content, which I covered in a previous article. For this article, I will draw upon my experiences playing Alpha 16, to help give some tips on gameplay Alpha 16.

Progression and Skills

The way that players progress their characters and abilities has changed. Previously the quality of items crafted increased based the amount of times you crafted it. The developers didn’t like the spam crafting that resulted from this, so they changed it. Now the quality of items you craft is based on the level of certain skill perks you purchase in the skills menu. So now the key to getting the best quality items comes from leveling up and using your skill points to buy skill perks.

Overall, the skill perks have become a more important aspect to the game.

Here are my recommendations for what perks to get early on. Tools are key to getting resources and weapons are key to survival. It’s a good idea to get the tool crafting and weapon crafting perks, and to upgrade them to higher levels when you are able to. The miner 69er perk is important for helping increase your resource collection, and should be upgraded when one is able to in order to maximize the amount of resources your bringing in. There are also the health and fitness perks the survivor (which reduces the amount of food you need to keep fed over time), the camel (which reduced the amount of water you need to keep hydrated overtime), and run forest run and sexual tyrannosaurus (which help reduce stamina cost and increase stamina regeneration. These perks help to make it easier to maintain yourself and allow you to operate more efficiently. Its good to the first levels of these perks early on and to progress to the higher level of these skills when you are able.

Another key element of progress is being able to produce the forge, workbench, cement mixer, and chemistry station. These things allow you to craft certain things and provide other benefits (such as how the workbench allows you to combine items to produce a higher quality and you can craft items in it instead of your regular crafting que, and how the chemistry can create twice the amount of certain things). They are key to be able to produce iron and steel, iron and steel tools, concrete, and electrical objects. Having higher quality tools and building materials will be important as you progress into the later stages of the game. For that you will need to get the workbench, steel smithing, concrete mixing, and chemistry station perks.

Though in order to get the skill points to get all these skill perks, you will need to level up your character a lot. Most of the things you do in the game generate experience points, which allow you to gain levels. Early on you can focus on doing the basics of surviving, setting up your initial base, scavenging, and building up the things you need to have a firm position. Though, once you got basic survival covered, you can start doing specialized work focused on building yourself up and leveling.

There are various ways to gather large amounts of experience. Though, the easiest way I found, is to; 1. get some decent picks and shovels, 2. gather a lot of stone, especially from the boulders that are scattered across the landscape, 3. gather a lot of clay from clay areas on the map, 4. Use the clay to craft cobblestone rocks, 5. Use the cobblestone rocks to make cobblestone blocks, and 6. Use the cobblestone blocks to make buildings. This combination of activities has allowed me to increase levels faster than anything else I’ve tried.