PC The first time you played 7dtd

[SylenThunder]

A 7 Days First Timer Tale

Sharing this from Reddit, because it was just amazing.

The beginning is just a story of how I got to know the game and my first and second playthrough, telling my experiences and fears on this game. If you want to skip for the "real" story, my third playthrough, go for the giant headline down bellow.


I'll start with how I got to know the game, somewhere in the past, it was on steam and I saw the "bad review" and just clicked "Ignore", then 3~4 days ago I decided to steam binge for a game to play, and then I saw "GREENHELL", I was surprised by the graphics in the preview and the positive feedback, so I did what everyone else does, youtube search it, found a video from a youtuber, PartiallyRoyal, watched 3 minutes and didn't see much so I decided to check his other videos and saw a catchy phrase for a game, "7 Days to Die - Horde Every Night with a twist", well, I decided to watch and oh boy, I liked what I saw...liked so much that I've spent more than 5 hours watching 7DTD gameplay.




So I searched the game again on steam and found it ignored, read the reviews again and it was still bad, but now I dug deeper, the revies were bad because of "grinding" and "only zombie kills give exp". I searched through the net to find out if it was ever on sale or if it would be and one commentary (a bad review) said that the game is often at discount when an update is deployed to "lure" players to this "♥♥♥♥ty game"...I also read that A18 was almost deployed and could probably wait to see if I'd get a discount...but man...oh man...I didn't care, I just bought the damn thing...and it was a good decision.




So now, to when I started playing, to my surprise I couldn't connect to steam, I got mad...seriously thought of getting a refund, a game this old that doesn't offer online multiplayer? Well, to my luck it was a problem on steam, not on the game, so I created my character and entered the game, a big loading time (with SSD) and I was feeling down already..."this game is going to be heavy on my notebook"...but nope, it was just loading the map and the second time onward it didn't take more than 3 seconds to load.




And there I was, in the middle of a road in Navezgane, the forest biome, from watching videos I knew what to do so I started gathering everyhing on sight, walked a few meters ahead...dog...ok...walk back. After leaving the "begginer zone" I started hearing those falling rock noises (changed biome), everytime I'd hear this I'd do a 360؛ to see what made that noise, when I saw my first zombie my heart raced as the thing got near...I thought I was prepared from watching the videos but I wasn't at all, oh boy.

Fast forward a little, my first night, I just entered a house and didn't move at all...for 15 whole minutes I was just there, staring at the wall, scared ♥♥♥♥less from the zombie noises from outside, thinking that anytime one would start breaking the walls and I'd be in the cold dark night, running for my life, but it never happened, zombies probably don't want to eat a coward like day 1 me....and the same repeated on day 2 and day 3, by day 4 I thought "hey, Now I have a sledgehammer and a pistol, this thing hitkills zombies and the pistol kill dogs and vultures, I'm fine"...well...I wasn't, because I didn't account the DARK of the night, so there I was, caught in the middle of the desert with no light source, I went to a settlement and tried to climb a house to stay at the top, but t0 my surprise...dogs on the neighboors house (Beware dog snake pig man), I thought I'd be fine with my pistol but the darkness didn't let me see the thing before a pack of dogs ate me alive.




I got a little bit down...until I found out about "gamma"...it was set to 50%...when I turned it to 100% it was perfect, it was what I'd expect to see in a full moon night so I didn't complain saying that it was "cheating", I started again on another place and rushed to the trader to finish all the beginner missions, while leaving I saw broken glass on my inventory and that it had recipes to use with it, so I pressed A....oh wait, A is eat, no no no no...dead...


...

Continued in next post because it was 1000 characters too long for one post.

 

[SylenThunder]

The Story

Part Deux....

"The STORY starts here"



So there I was, 2 times killed in 2 different games, and I went for my third one,...but now I was experienced, I knew what to do and not to do, I started on the burnt forest biome and lived to day 4, in daytime I was brave, killed all the zombies around, night time...not so much, but I still left the house to search for stuff...at day 5 a thought ocurred to me "Day 7 has a horde and this ♥♥♥♥ty falling house is probably not gonna resist it...I might lose my forge and 5 storage chest worth of loot..."




And then I spent my time digging an 11x11 3 blocks deep hole 80m away from the house...this would be my horde fort, if I die the zombies will not destroy my home, after that I built a 5x5 Iron Frame for the bottom layer...."wait...I have some concrete mix, I can get a concrete layer!" so I hit the trader, bought some rebar and did a 7x7 frame circling through the iron frame "yeah, I have 200 concrete mix, this is going to be perfect for this 6x6...wait...oh no....".

Stupid me thought "well, after 5 comes 6 so If I want to circle 5x5 I'll build a 6x6 frame...right?"...and I did the math wrong and had to leave 4 rebar on the bottom...hopes were also getting destroyed with the lack of iron (didn't mine), I had spent all my iron building a 2 blocks tall 5x5 so now I was in danger of not having resources to build defenses and have to rely on wood..."damn...it's over...I'll die again"...until I saw some cobblestones on my inventory...checked for recipes and saw my savior...Cobblestone Block...oh my god, it saved my life, I had a lot of cobblestone from farming cement on houses and digging this 11x11, not to mention the 5k+ clay, I managed to get enough to fill the 7x7 above the cement and upgrade it, after that it was time for the wood and so I did the 3rd and 4th height of wood, made a wood frame ceiling to prevent vultures, at around day 7 21:20 I had no more wood...I couldn't go farm more, "this is it, do or die", I had 60x 7.62, 115x 9mm, 90x shotgun shell, 60x stone arrows and my beloved quality 3 BATsy (iron bat), every weapon with at least 1 dye.

I remembered that from the videos I watched, the first horde was easy so it was probably more than enough....right?

A little bit of story of day 7, at the start of the day I thought I was prepared with my base and supplies...until the thunder started...oh boy...it scared the ♥♥♥♥ out of me...so much that it threw me off and I fought the horde without being full on food and water and not reading the 2 manuals for extra skillpoints for 30minutes....

Well...you see, I had watched 3 videos of "first horde", 1 was from PartiallyRoyal's "playing with friends" and 2 were from "Horde Every Night" challenges, from PartiallyRoyal and Glock9...you see...this isn't good reference...first, it wasn't that recent, so some stuffs might've changed, second...they were like...level 3 or 4 in the horde every night and the "day 7 horde" from playing with friends was actually a 4 player fort, experienced with the game...and there I was, sitting on my fort, level 17...NO EXPERIENCE AT ALL, only fought small daylight hordes of 7~9 normal zombies for exp...




The sky turned red...only dim light and some candles I lit around the place...and I heard the first cry..."that's it! bring it on!"...my blood raging, my heart thumping, banging on my torax, my legs shaking...I aimed my marksman rifle at the first zombie...BOOM! Headshot!...he died instantly...now the second one...BOOM!...he fell on the ground..."one more and he's dead"...BOOM!...he didn't die..."Ok, third time is the charm!"....BOOM! I got the exp..."Yes, easy peasy lemon...what is that punching sound?"

My tunnel vision didn't allow me to pay attention on my surrounding...the horde that I thought would be 4 or 6 zombies coming from 1 area turned into 12+ zombies coming EVERYWHERE, they circled my base as I was in the middle and started banging on the walls...."OK! OK! OK! No need to panic, I still have plenty of ammo!" I started shooting everything...I fell off the wall 3 times but for my luck the digging slowed down the zombies that tried to climb after me so I could put a wood frame and jump back into the base safely, I shot and shot, I killed and killed many zombies, I heard a different noise and to my surprise, SPIDER ZOMBIES!!! I never thought I'd face one of them on my first horde night, so I focused on it with all my might since it was dangerous to have him jump on me or above my wooden framed roof, the horde didn't stop, I kept shooting until all my 9mm was gone, I then changed to the 7.62mm until it was also gone, I then got my shotgun and used all my ammo and they were still there...but now I noticed that they didn't "respawn", so it was only 8 zombies left for my stone arrow bow...I aimed all my shots and finished the horde night by killing a bugged zombie that spawned inside a road sign.




My legs were still shaking...hell, they still are while I type this...just by remembering this first solo horde night...all my ammo is gone, for my luck, the Cobblestone Blocks resisted a lot while the zombies spread all around the base, only getting 5 destroyed (I still had an Iron block behind the cobblestones and concrete on the bottom), other than that the fort wasn't damaged at all.




And now I finish this wall of text...of my first 7 days in this game without getting killed...the story of a survivor from the first horde....my story....a survivor that now has no ammo...a survivor that now has 6 days to prepare for the next horde....a survivor that levelled up 5 times in that damned horde night....







My review for the game:

Gameplay: 9/10

Graphics: 8/10

Crafting: 10/10

Terror: 9/10

Price: 10/10 (I'd rather pay this game in full twice than almost the triple for some AAA games)

Would you recommend this to a friend: [ ] YES [ ] NO [X] ABSO-efing-LUTELY




This is the true "zombie survival" game, I still have to play online and see other people but since I'm kinda shy and not a frequent player, I think that the solo life is the one for me.

 

[bobrpggamer]

Im old school. So single player mentality is just fine by me. But I will admit I've had some amazing times while playing with others on various games.
That said, playing with others is also risky. Everyone ha's their own idea of what needs to be done. And if everyone is the creative type mentality, who gets the say on what to spend those resources on? I got lucky, I ended up being the builder, I also put more into the game by grinding for the materials, so I built whatever I saw fit with that 1st building. We did start a new navezgane under their account, and actually lived in different places. I was in the Junkyard as usual, they took the Farm. We only interacted when I started to get ahead on farming, if they needed items to finish something, and on horde night we'd team up. I was able to make the minibike rather quickly in the game, so I can remember driving to him and dropping off a new bike for him to use. But we never got to far, as usual. And one day the game glitches for me with my bike and it resulted in me losing everything in my toolbelt. There went my good sniper, my hand gun, my spiked club and steel tools that I had worked so hard for. The melee and tools I knew was a little work but easy to get back, but the guns?... ugh.

However, in one RWG game, where we put some time into it, we were just west of the Hub city in a forest biome. The game really shined when we decided to go there together. It was only two of us, but the fact we went looting together made the situation feel so very different. And building a huge rectangular base with accommodation's for everyone to have their own apartment in a sense was a fun aspect to build. I only recently with my previous game finally built a base that didn't include room for anyone else. That felt amazing in itself, yet with a hint of sadness I must admit...

Well, I would be the architect and anything else is a deal breaker, so I would probably not be liked for it but with good friends, I would not see that as an issue and I would pull my weight and go scavenging and looting of course.

I have had my trouble playing online before so I would never attempt to do that with strangers. All I would need is some goofball trying to funny and screwing around and that would be it. the last game I played online was either Day of Defeat Source or Battlefield 2, I don't remember exactly.

 

[bobrpggamer]

That was cool Green Dragon thanks for that.

 

[ARRANOX]

i had a roommate that mooved in from sweeden in my 1 room 45m3 apartment.

so he rigged himself up playing 7DTD with some friends in my living room/kitchen.

and they where having a blast yelling about potatos and stuff, and when i looked in on what they where doing i just saw this crappy old game.

so i just kept playing Assassin`s creed and and all my top of the line games instead.

on day my friend was really exicted about the nekst alpha coming along ( think this was A15 or A16 ) so he told me about all the additional content and improvments, but i was like nah.

sometime went before the update came and they updated the engine aswell, and my freind was so mad becouse now the game would not run on his computer anymore... but it peaked my interest since the grapichs was my problem with it.

so i installed and started playing realizing that what i had seen from the game before the update was also the bare minimum graphic settings on a crappy old windows XP computer on a old AMD GPU displayed on a 60" TV.

so when i hooked this game up to a top of the line rig with a 4K ultrawide g-sync monitor, it was more than good enough for me to play.

then i died and died and died, until i found some other british people to play with so i could hide inside their base.

 

[crazywildfire]

I'm actually quite happy to be an "older gamer" these days. Got to play some amazing games, as well as seen how games evolved beyond belief. Of course, I also appreciate the fact that I had a childhood that didn't revolve around gaming. My experience with gaming was ocassional Arcade games, and my Stepdads son lived with us for a short time who had a NES, but I still was outside 95% of the time. My Mom had an Atari though, and that was pretty much off limits lol.
But I agree with this game being on a personal top tier list that I've ever played. May only have the console version at the moment, but the atmosphere it brings, the work towards obtaining materials, to the level of creativity that can be done is addictive. I lost count of how many hours I spent at work drawing up designs and learning how to manipulate structural integrity.

I spent my days outside and stuff but I had my days inside as well as well as night time. I visited my grandparents on my moms side for a month sometimes longer in the summer because they lived states away. My grandma was a big NES gamer and when the SNES came out was into that as well. She didn't play fighting games like street fighter and so on or any racing games besides Mario Kart but she kick my but in Burger time or tetris or things like that lol. We stay up till 3am playing games. But at the same time during day time it was chores and I had to read at least a chapter a day in a book before being able to play. Then grandpa had to watch the news so between 5pm and 7pm no games then 11pm no games lol. But I say because of her I got really addicted to playing games. It was a bonding thing and now when playing i can't help but think of playing with her. I mean she in no way would be into something like this game if it was out back then but still lol. Also back then NES and SNES games had a bunch of text paragraphs that popped up in games and I wasn't allowed to just hit the button to get back to the game she made me read it no matter how many times I have played the game before. Lol

Anyway off topic just thought I share a little extra

 

[bobrpggamer]

Sounds like you had cool grandparents and they were teaching you to read, which is a good thing. As a pre-teen to teen I hated reading I just wanted to play football or go to my friends house where the lucky guy had an Atari 2600, I was the only kid who did not have an Atari 2600. I got more into sports and then shifted to PC gaming with my C64 and CRPG games. I did buy an Atari 2600 in 1988 which was bizarre at that time.

It is funny how far a shift in topics can be.

 

[Jysen]

Well, I would be the architect and anything else is a deal breaker, so I would probably not be liked for it but with good friends, I would not see that as an issue and I would pull my weight and go scavenging and looting of course.
I have had my trouble playing online before so I would never attempt to do that with strangers. All I would need is some goofball trying to funny and screwing around and that would be it. the last game I played online was either Day of Defeat Source or Battlefield 2, I don't remember exactly.

Well, the intention of the first place was function over style. It was meant to be our beginning staging area and from there, head off and find our own place to build. Had we played longer, it would've served as a good outpost down the road.

It's one reason why I hosted the games. I spent more time on the game then they did, and as I didn't mind digging, always had tremendous resources stocked and ready.

I always kept it in mind that when/if they joined, then they would have access to the materials to start building whatever they wanted. But it ended up being me playing solo more than anything.

When I started my previous random gen, I went into it solo, but kept them in mind as well, just in case... what I built was satisfying. I built basically a mansion just south of the main hub on a small island. Complete with a tunnel system to a centralized forge north of my location. And the amount of resources I have stock in that game is ridiculous, but I could do virtually anything I want in that world. Except build in a snow biome which is why I recently started a new game.

Playing with others is indeed fun, but I still find solo to be just as good. Yeah there isn't any of those moments of exploring together and whatnot, but then again, no conflicting opinions either lol

 

[Jysen]

I spent my days outside and stuff but I had my days inside as well as well as night time. I visited my grandparents on my moms side for a month sometimes longer in the summer because they lived states away. My grandma was a big NES gamer and when the SNES came out was into that as well. She didn't play fighting games like street fighter and so on or any racing games besides Mario Kart but she kick my but in Burger time or tetris or things like that lol. We stay up till 3am playing games. But at the same time during day time it was chores and I had to read at least a chapter a day in a book before being able to play. Then grandpa had to watch the news so between 5pm and 7pm no games then 11pm no games lol. But I say because of her I got really addicted to playing games. It was a bonding thing and now when playing i can't help but think of playing with her. I mean she in no way would be into something like this game if it was out back then but still lol. Also back then NES and SNES games had a bunch of text paragraphs that popped up in games and I wasn't allowed to just hit the button to get back to the game she made me read it no matter how many times I have played the game before. Lol
Anyway off topic just thought I share a little extra

Ah yes, back when we had to read game dialog lol. While my Mom owned the Atari, she wasn't a hardcore gamer per say. Though years later, she still plays games, Mario Kart, Mario Party, Harvest Moon (I got her into that series), with various other titles throughout the years that were classic in nature, like Centipede. However, did manage to get her to play Goldeneye every once in awhile when we all got together and gamed lol.

My Gramma didn't play games, but when I spent my summer vacation with her back in '93, I remember renting Family Feud, Wheel of Fortune, and we sat for hours playing that together. But for the most part, she was happy to just watch me play. Plus, it had been a few years since I last saw her, we had moved away few years before.

I didn't own any units until I was about 12. Then I got an NES, then followed shortly after when the SNES released. I still didn't spend all my time gaming, but I went from a city boy in Chicago where all my friends where around me or a block away, to Texas, where there were cows lol

 

[alphaniner]

I actually kickstarted the game, but didn't like the earliest releases because I'm really bad at FPS (it was the open world / crafting / sandbox features that attracted me). I may be wrong but I want to say zombies would run even during the day (maybe depending on light level?), and I couldn't handle it. Regardless, I more or less forgot about the game until years later.

The first thing I remember clearly (and without loathing ) is my first horde night. Say what you will, but I hadn't put any thought into the name of the game so it came as a complete surprise.

Night falls. That was a strange howl I just heard. I hurry upstairs, then listen for another. Maybe I didn't hear what I thought I heard. Back to crafting, inventory management or whatever. Wait, is something banging on my walls?!? Probably a fluke, no way it could have sensed me. I'll just sit still until it goes away. Okay, now there are three and they definitely seem to know I'm here. I'm not prepared for this. I panic and abandon ship, without a light source, still not fully aware of what was going on. Somehow kill a few dogs I couldn't outrun (I had nerfed zombie speed). Manage to run to a nearby diner I had cleared recently and held out on the roof till morning.

I don't play straight-up horror games, so very few things in my gaming experience compare to this. The only things I can think of are the first time through Minefield in Fallout 3* and Shalebridge from Thief 3.

* Even though I believed it was a scripted sniper causing the mayhem outside, with the rumors of it being haunted I genuinely expected ghosts or something to appear while looting the houses. Especially when I looted kids' rooms... ghost children are ****ing terrifying!