7 Days to Die 'Alpha 19 Experimental' is out with HD Zombies

Playing it now. So far so good.

I had lots of funky issues with video when I first started a game, but after playing about with the presets, then turning off things like motion blur and ssao, I've got a nice stable image. I had some texture flashing initially, but it seems to have settled now and I played an hour with no issues.

Other than the improved lighting and much improved zombie textures (mostly - there's still some original zombies out there, like the business man and hoodie boy), the biggest thing I notice is that:

a) The starting bow seems mildly less useless. Still not great, but at least I was hitting with it more than not. That's a relief!
b) Melee feel chunkier. It was always a game that didn't quite "connect" before, and there's still that strange distance that you need to just experiment with to know when you can hit, but they can't. In the past, that felt a bit floaty, but now it feels more solid. Can't wait to get my sledgehammer to try it out more... directly.
c) There's loads of things you can't scrap now. Tins, crafted tools, crafted clothes - you can only drop/modify/repair them now.

Otherwise, it's all very familiar and I'm looking forward to spending a bit more time in game to get a feel for it.

I don't think the Dynamic Music System is working in Linux, they disabled it in one of the early A18 versions because it caused crashing anytime you talked with the trader. They blamed Unity and said that they are waiting for them to fix it. Played for about 2 hours now and I didn't hear any ingame music, so it still must be disabled probably.

Did someone manage to run it with Vulkan without constant crashes? Specifically Nvidia, but I wonder how AMD works too.


Last edited by Solitary on 29 June 2020 at 9:39 pm UTC

I can't play it because the loading screen won't go away for me.

Seriously Liam? The Food and Health bars made it into your top 5 of changes? ;D

I don't think the Dynamic Music System is working in Linux,

Yes, it's still disabled in Linux due to the mentioned crash. Actually I'm not sure if we can't work around that though and as the DMS is more "important" now I'll have a look myself ... Linux users would be missing out quite a big part otherwise :(

Did someone manage to run it with Vulkan without constant crashes? Specifically Nvidia, but I wonder how AMD works too.

Seems to really depend on the GPU/driver combination, some play without issues (and obviously better performance than GLCore) for hours, some crash all the time.

Seriously Liam? The Food and Health bars made it into your top 5 of changes? ;D

Never said it was my top, was just listing stuff changed ;)

Hopefully the dynamic music can be added in too. As for Vulkan, I assume that's because Unity's Vulkan renderer in the Unity version used by 7 Days to Die was still rough.


Last edited by Liam Dawe on 30 June 2020 at 11:11 am UTC

Seriously Liam? The Food and Health bars made it into your top 5 of changes? ;D

Never said it was my top, was just listing stuff changed ;)

If you're ever on the 7D2D forums, you'll know that the outcry when food/water meters were removed was very real and that there is general delight that they've been brought back...!

As for Vulkan, I assume that's because Unity's Vulkan renderer in the Unity version used by 7 Days to Die was still rough.

In my experience it already became quite a bit more solid with the update to 2019.2 in A19.

As for Vulkan, I assume that's because Unity's Vulkan renderer in the Unity version used by 7 Days to Die was still rough.

In my experience it already became quite a bit more solid with the update to 2019.2 in A19.

Ohhhhh! Didn't see that Unity update noted in the changelog, could well be a lot more solid then!

I played for an hour using Vulkan and it looked and performed fine for me on nVidia 440.82.

I can't play it because the loading screen won't go away for me.

See if you have any mods installed. I forgot to rename the Mods directory my first run and has similar problems.

Admittedly, I haven't been to Navezgane since v. 18, so things may be different now, but I've been playing since v.8 (I think) and I have a couple combat pointers you may find helpful in the early game:

a) The starting bow seems mildly less useless. Still not great, but at least I was hitting with it more than not. That's a relief!

Since I love the bow, even the early one, I find it far from useless (or vise versa) but you gotta land --- often multiple --- headshots, two or three as I recall, fwip, fwip, thunk. You'll also have to learn to gauge the arc on the shot. The starter bow isn't very powerful, as is only proper, so aiming above the head is normal at range. Pay attention to the visual space between the tip of the arrow and the target's head. If you overshoot, reduce the space a bit, and if you undershoot, increase the space.

b) Melee feel chunkier. It was always a game that didn't quite "connect" before, and there's still that strange distance that you need to just experiment with to know when you can hit, but they can't. In the past, that felt a bit floaty, but now it feels more solid. Can't wait to get my sledgehammer to try it out more... directly.

It's true you gotta experiment with how close you need to be to hit the zombies, but it's not random, I don't think. It seems to equate with the length of the weapon in hand. In most cases, in the hurly-burly of a fight, if you're able to hit them, they're probs able to hit you. And the shorter the weapon, the more likely that is to happen. Rather than worry overly about that exact distance, I focus on quickly jumping in and out of striking distance and, or trying to get on their side or behind them. Jump forward (usually right after they take an unsuccessful swing) whomp 'em, then immediately jump back again. Rinse, repeat. :)

Admittedly, I haven't been to Navezgane since v. 18, so things may be different now, but I've been playing since v.8 (I think) and I have a couple combat pointers you may find helpful in the early game:

a) The starting bow seems mildly less useless. Still not great, but at least I was hitting with it more than not. That's a relief!

Since I love the bow, even the early one, I find it far from useless (or vise versa) but you gotta land --- often multiple --- headshots, two or three as I recall, fwip, fwip, thunk. You'll also have to learn to gauge the arc on the shot. The starter bow isn't very powerful, as is only proper, so aiming above the head is normal at range. Pay attention to the visual space between the tip of the arrow and the target's head. If you overshoot, reduce the space a bit, and if you undershoot, increase the space.

b) Melee feel chunkier. It was always a game that didn't quite "connect" before, and there's still that strange distance that you need to just experiment with to know when you can hit, but they can't. In the past, that felt a bit floaty, but now it feels more solid. Can't wait to get my sledgehammer to try it out more... directly.

It's true you gotta experiment with how close you need to be to hit the zombies, but it's not random, I don't think. It seems to equate with the length of the weapon in hand. In most cases, in the hurly-burly of a fight, if you're able to hit them, they're probs able to hit you. And the shorter the weapon, the more likely that is to happen. Rather than worry overly about that exact distance, I focus on quickly jumping in and out of striking distance and, or trying to get on their side or behind them. Jump forward (usually right after they take an unsuccessful swing) whomp 'em, then immediately jump back again. Rinse, repeat. :)

I'm sure others will find that useful, but with my 700+ hours in the game, you're preaching to the choir with me!

My point about the starter bow is that the A18 starter bow is too inaccurate for it to instil any joy. Sure, you could practice and compensate a bit, but it felt like a chore. Whereas the A19 bow feels more reliable and useful.

My point about melee is that the act of landing a blow feels "heavier" now, in a good way. I can only assume they've tweaked the hitboxes, and I seem to notice more stuns from even the starting club, so early melee doesn't feel as grindy.

I'm loving the changes so far. Hopefully get some time to play a little more towards the end of the week. I love what they've done with the crawlers too. Very creepy!

Seems to really depend on the GPU/driver combination, some play without issues (and obviously better performance than GLCore) for hours, some crash all the time.

Well that's unfortunate, but it gives me hope that it just might be something about my setup. Even though A18 manage to run with Vulkan for me (only tested it for a moment), because once I joined a game with friends and it crashed/froze immediately on spawn (and even deleted the tutorial quest) I havent try it again since. Now it just crashes back to desktop once I try to start a session, menu works fine though.

I played for an hour using Vulkan and it looked and performed fine for me on nVidia 440.82.

I am running the newest 440.100, which you probably also have queued up looking you are also running Fedora. But the fact you manage to run it gives me hope its just something with my setup.


Last edited by Solitary on 30 June 2020 at 6:00 pm UTC

I really hope the performance improves and doesn't get any worse with the graphical updates. I've only played A18 and even with a GFX 2070 Ultra the FPS is only passable, not amazing. Contrast that with Conan Exiles which I've been (obsessively) playing through Proton 5.0 and getting outstanding FPS with nearly every graphical feature maxed.

still not managing to setup a server on 18.04..

did follow this guide https://onovia.com/2019/11/08/7-days-to-die-alpha-18-linux-dedicated-server/

did disable EasyAntiCheat

server is up and running all be it complaining about "[S_API FAIL] SteamAPI_Init() failed; SteamAPI_IsSteamRunning() failed."
server shows up on the client
logging in.. hangs

when i try again i get kicked because of "duplicate player name"

any ideas?

I played this a while back with friends.
Kinda lost intrest when an update made progression more grindy.(to skills)
Is it sitll the case ?

I played this a while back with friends.
Kinda lost intrest when an update made progression more grindy.(to skills)
Is it sitll the case ?

That depends on whether or not you know what you're doing. Currently in a game around day 165, but haven't die since day 12. By day 50 we were pretty much OP. So it might seem grindy if you're also trying to figure things out, but if you do progression is fairly quick.

I played this a while back with friends.
Kinda lost intrest when an update made progression more grindy.(to skills)
Is it sitll the case ?

It's always been grindy, so I'm not sure what you mean. In the pre-A14 days, the grind related to what you did. So if you did a lot of mining, you got better at mining. That makes sense, but they dropped that because lots of the other skills didn't - you don't get better armour by bumping into cacti, but that's what the game gave you if you did it enough. It was also very difficult to progress the science skills, because you needed certain items (forges, beakers, etc), but for balance, they needed to level-gate those items, or people would have ended up riding around in gyrocopters by day 10.

So it's now xp based. You gain xp from killing zeds, obviously, but also from looting, mining, and building - especially building, and especially upgrading blocks from wood, to cobble, to cement, to reinforced. After a certain amount of xp, you gain a level, and that gives you a point to put into anything you like.

So, yeah. Still very grindy, just a different grind now. And still a fun grind, in my opinion, given the hours I've put in.

I played this a while back with friends.
Kinda lost intrest when an update made progression more grindy.(to skills)
Is it sitll the case ?

It's always been grindy, so I'm not sure what you mean. In the pre-A14 days, the grind related to what you did. So if you did a lot of mining, you got better at mining. That makes sense, but they dropped that because lots of the other skills didn't - you don't get better armour by bumping into cacti, but that's what the game gave you if you did it enough. It was also very difficult to progress the science skills, because you needed certain items (forges, beakers, etc), but for balance, they needed to level-gate those items, or people would have ended up riding around in gyrocopters by day 10.

So it's now xp based. You gain xp from killing zeds, obviously, but also from looting, mining, and building - especially building, and especially upgrading blocks from wood, to cobble, to cement, to reinforced. After a certain amount of xp, you gain a level, and that gives you a point to put into anything you like.

So, yeah. Still very grindy, just a different grind now. And still a fun grind, in my opinion, given the hours I've put in.

Hmm , might need to give it another go then.
I remember i liked the old system for crafting/mining
Science was annoying to level up but it made finding a chemical workbench VERY exciting.