7 Days To Die A19 Release

Hello Survivors! The Alpha 19 official release notes for 7 Days To Die have now been announced. These are exciting times for 7DTD players, especially those who have been fans from pre-Alpha 10 like myself.

A17 and A18 brought a fair few changes to 7DTD, reigniting my passion for the game. Now that the Alpha 19 B-173 Experimental build is out, I’m eager to give it a go and share the updates with you.

Pre A19 7DTD Games

The Fun Pimps have confirmed that Alpha 19 is not compatible with previous Alpha worlds.

If you have saved game data on other worlds prior to A19, you won’t be able to play them on the A19 experimental build.

It’s a little frustrating as I recently spent a lot of time playing 7DTD and was pretty kitted out, but I understand why they’ve done this.

How to Access A19 Experimental Build

If you want to give the A19 experimental build a go (and let’s face it, who wouldn’t), follow these simple steps to get set up:

1. Right-click on 7 Days To Die in Steam
2. Click on Properties
3. Select the Betas tab
4. Open the drop-down and select latest_experimental available
5. Wait for the game to download

Summary of updates

You can find the full list of updates from the link above at the top of this article.

As it’s a gigantic list, I wanted to break it down to some of the most exciting updates here:

New & Reworked Injuries:

• Abrasions – The most common injury that you get in fights. They cause no additional problems.
• Sprained or Broken Arm – Lowers your swing speed and decreases your reload speed and weapon handling. The cure for a broken arm is a splint, which lowers the time for healing. Power attacks or ranged attacks increase the time needed to heal it.
• Sprained or Broken Leg – Lowers your mobility and jump height. You can get a sprained or broken leg in a melee fight or when jumping from heights. The cure for a broken leg is a splint, which lowers the time for healing. Jumping, falling, or sprinting increases the time needed to heal it.
• Deep Lacerations – Make you more vulnerable to receiving bleeding criticals. They are cured with a first aid kit or a sewing kit.
• Concussion – Taking more hits while being stunned can cause a concussion. It periodically causes a stun effect and is cured by painkillers.
• Infections – Infection is not something that enemies cause directly. Any critical hit has a chance to cause an infection. An infection is completely harmless until it reaches 5%. At that point, it starts getting worse, and you need medication to cure it. While you have an infection, any hit you take will make it worse.

UI:

You can now check your food and water levels on your UI under your tool belt inventory.

Whilst only a minor update, this is a great visual improvement for me, as I did find it pretty annoying needing to go into the player screen to see these stats.

HD Updates:

Many of the zombies, traders, and characters have now been completely overhauled for visual and performance increases.

As 7 Days To Die has been out for some time now, I must say, it really is great to see Fun Pimps keeping up with some graphical updates.

Progressive loot:

Ever played 7DTD and found a shotgun or end-game items within the first couple of days? Well, that won’t be happening anymore.

“Loot distribution has been smoothed out so that you do not find end-game loot too soon and have no more upgrades to look forward to.

Loot has been balanced to provide a smooth progression from primitive, iron, and steel items. This change provides a steady progression for the player and gives some incentive to craft, while slowing the economy a bit in the early game.

The loot quality for player parties is equivalent to that of the highest-level player, and perk effects like Lucky Looter are not shared. The only loot advantage is that parties face tougher opponents, who have a higher chance of dropping loot of better quality.

There are 4 tech levels of items in the game. These start appearing in loot at the following Game-Stage intervals.

• Tech 0 (GS 1-11) – Primitive tools, weapons, and armor, including a bow and the blunderbuss.
• Tech 1 (GS 12) – Iron or similar melee items and armor, and the first proper firearms, like a pistol or double-barreled shotgun.
• Tech 2 (GS 50) – The best melee items, bows, and armor, and mid-range firearms like a pump-action shotgun.
• Tech 3 (GS 91) – The most advanced firearms, like an M60 or the Sniper Rifle.

Trader quest rewards scale similarly to this system. You won’t immediately get a shotgun for a day-one quest.

We will be continuing to fine-tune loot progression in patches. In the future, we plan on making loot progression, quest loot reward progression, and trader for sale item progression more unified. We are planning on having biomes and/or POI with both harder enemies and better loot.”

Quest Updates:

Quest Sprites: On-screen sprites have been added to make it easier to find rally markers and quests.

Dig Quests: These used to drive me mad. I found myself digging for ages and zooming in on the map to find that I was completely off the mark.

Now there is a dotted circle that shows the exact area, which will get smaller as you dig deeper and get closer. This really is going to save so much time.

Although a simple update, it may be one of my favorite 7 Days To Die A19 updates.

Opening Routes: Once you have completed all the starter quests, you will now get more directions to the location of every trader on the map. (5 in total)

Navezgane Update:

7DTD A19 is finally making Navezgane more interesting, with a massive update that will make the map much more enjoyable.

What was once radiation zones have been pushed back, making way for more buildings, cities, and developments for us to explore.

• New Desert business development
• New Snow modern development
• New Forest old housing development
• New Desert modern housing development
• New Desert old housing development
• Desert City of Departure has been updated
• Snowy city of Perishton has been updated
• Wasteland City of Gravestowne has been updated
• Some Trader locations in Navezgane have been moved to improve the distances between traders

It’s not just Navezgane that has been updated; random-gen has also been improved to ensure maps are unique for every playthrough, no matter which map you choose.

We have improved Random Gen in A19 to use every POI possible in the game so players will see the breadth of content like never before along with a lot of tagging updates and improvements. In fact an A19 Random Worlds can have over 500 unique POIS!

Fun Pimps – Random Gen

Many of the old buildings have also been updated, making them more compatible with quests and generally improving the looting and survival experience.

Some of the updated buildings include:

• 2 Grocery Stores
• 2 Gun Stores
• 2 Pharmacies
• 2 Hardware Stores
• 2 Clothing Stores
• 2 Electronics Stores
• 7 Ranger Stations
• Carlot_01
• New High School
• sawmill_01
• house_modern_12
• house_modern_13
• house_old_gambrel_04
• 12 Remnants
• departure_city_blk_plaza
• park_basketball
• park_plaza_01
• park_plaza_02
• red_mesa
• celltower_01

There have been a ton of other visual changes, which we won’t list here, but can all be found on the official patch notes.

New Weapons & Items:

Firstly, before I go into the new items… Bandits! Yes, the patch notes mention both new special infected and bandits, serious excitement!

Tech level 3 – we’ve added a whole new line of weapons to give you the firepower you will need to face future special infected, bandits and more!

Fun Pimps – Patch Notes A19

So with the upcoming new threats, it’s great we can start stockpiling some new tools and weapons in Alpha 19 now to prepare for this.

The new items and weapons listed are as follows:

• Desert Vulture – This .44 magnum caliber pistol packs some serious stopping power and is governed by the gunslinger skill.
• Automatic shotgun – This new tech level 3 firearm sports a large drum magazine and allows use of the trigger group automatic mod to unlock full automatic weapon fire mode, making it the most devastating short-range shotgun in the game. If you like to see limbless zombies and superior crown control, this is the weapon for you.
• Sniper Rifle – This 762 sniper rifle has a larger magazine, fire rate, better handling, and superior damage to the hunting rifle and marksman rifles.
• Impact Driver – This tech level 3 tool is the fastest way to harvest mechanical items. Strip down cars and mechanical items in seconds!

Tech level 2

• Ratchet – This new tech level 2 harvesting tool is faster than a wrench and degrades more slowly.
• Tactical Assault Rifle – This new tier 2 assault rifle is a step above the 762 in range, accuracy, and fire rate.

Tech level 1

• Robotic Sledge – This robotic weapon is a stationary turret with a large sledgehammer-shaped pulverizing arm that punches enemies and can knock them down more easily at higher quality levels. It is governed by robotics
• Blunderbuss – Not a new weapon, but with the loot re-balance, this weapon might save your skin in the early game and is craftable from basic components.
  All existing tools and weapons have either been remade from scratch or had an art update to PBR textures for the new linear lighting.

Candy:

Another amazing update from the 7 Days to Die Alpha 19 Update. Candy can be found in vending machines and adds new abilities once consumed.

Some of these new abilities are going to make surviving the zombie apocalypse much more bearable and hopefully taste good too!

Some of the new perks are:

• Increased explosive damage by 50%
• Find treasure more easily and better loot
• 100% chance to pick a lock
• Fall damage immunity
• 20% more mining resources
• Increased melee damage

Prepare for some cavities, because we’re going to be consuming all the candy we can handle now.

3 New Perk Books:

3 New perk book sets have been added with several new perks to unlock.

• Bar Brawler set
• Spear Hunter set
• Tech Junkie set

Other Noteworthy Changes:

• Blood moon zombies have an increased loot drop rate after every x have spawned
• Blood moon vultures chase vehicles at 250% speed
• Added more friendly animals to all biomes 
• Enemy animals can spawn during the day in forests 
• Chickens can spawn in forests now 
• All animals respawn much faster than before 
• Enemy respawn time is reduced in the wasteland. At night, Zombies will respawn immediately, making the wasteland harder to survive in at night 
• Removed candy tins, hub caps, and air filter items from the game. 
• Land mines no longer use candy tins, hub caps, or air filters in their recipes. Land mines now need duct tape to craft. Candy tin mine can now be crafted in a backpack. Hub cap mine uses a nail instead of a spring 
• Reduced the distance to the backpack after death if no respawn point is set

There are tons of others listed on the official patch notes. I would highly recommend checking them out before jumping straight back into the game.

7DTD has always kept me entertained over the years with its ever-changing exploration, hardcore horror gameplay, character growth, and its unique and rich environments. Each update has brought me back to the game without fail, and 7DTD A19 has managed to keep that trend going.