7 Days To Die: The Best Materials To Farm In The Early Game (2024)

7 Days To Die is the quintessential zombie survival game, and at the time of this writing, it has the dubious honor of being the game that has stayed in early access the longest. That shouldn’t put players off, as this is a fantastic zombie action survival title.

The survival aspect of 7 Days To Die follows the general ethos of farming raw materials, and then using those materials to craft more advanced components or finished items. Some materials are also used for base building. Therefore, it is well worth farming certain materials from the very first few hours of gameplay, so that a stockpile is established for the later game.

Updated on August 8, 2024, by Mac Wheeler:Additionally, there are some resources that are best farmed early game, as they cannot be crafted until much later, or are needed very early on in a playthrough. Although the 1.0 release of 7 Days To Die didn't add any new resources or materials, the updated crafting requirements for weapons means that collecting these materials in some quantity is now vital.

11 Scrap Polymers

Plastic By Another Name

• Used for weapon crafting
• Harvested from any item that could have plastic parts, including some cars

Scrap polymers are one of the crafting materials that a) cannot be made by the player, and b) are used for many useful crafting recipes, including almost all weapons and tools. Therefore, the player will need to harvest plenty of these. One piece of good news though, is that scrap polymers are not used in the recipes for many of the consumable items the player will need to craft stacks of continuously.

Luckily, scrap polymers are easy to get. Anything that the player uses a wrench on that could have plastic parts, can provide scarp polymers. This can be anything from a whole car to a traffic cone. Many pieces of machinery, such as a laundry machine and other household appliances can also give a fair few scrap polymers. Overall, 15 minutes with a wrench can provide enough scrap polymers to make a tier 5 weapon easily.

10 Springs

Needed For Consumables Such As Grenades

• Used for weapon crafting
• Can be harvested from old beds and chairs

Springs are another material that a 7 Days To Die player will need in abundance, but that cannot be crafted. They are used in most mechanical objects the player crafts, such as weapons. Additionally, they are a common component in many consumables, with all types of grenades being the most demanding drain on a stock of springs.

They are quite easy to acquire though. Every old bed, chair, or mattress is a good source of springs. As are most pieces of machinery such as kitchen appliances. As long as the player harvests as they clear POIs, they should end up with plenty of springs. However, in the endgame stage, when grenades become almost a must-have item, a player might need to spend some time farming springs now and then to replenish their stocks.

9 Iron Ingots

Needed Before They Can Be Crafted

• Used for weapon and armor crafting
• Can be harvested from broken vending machines and cars

Most 7 Days To Die, players, know that they are going to need some iron ingots long before they can build a forge and start crafting this resource themselves. And because of this, veteran players know never to pass by a possible source of iron ingots early in the game. However, there is a need to be selective in what to harvest from. For example, a car might give a couple of iron ingots, but a broken vending machine could give many more.

The reason for being so selective early in 7 Days To Die, is that a player won’t be able to keep repairing their wrench every time it wears out. Simply due to the fact they won’t have enough repair kits for this. So it makes sense to use the wrench in the most efficient way possible. This means harvesting resources such as iron ingots from places that are known to give more per use of a wrench. As mentioned, early game this will mean tracking down broken vending machines. Don’t try harvesting from working machines, they are electrified.

8 Wood

Useful Basic Resource

• Acquired by using an axe on trees and tree stumps
• Useful for building basic structures and burning as fuel

Wood is one of the most basic resources in 7 Days To Die, but an important one nonetheless. In the early game, the player will use wood to build basic structures for their first horde base, preparing for the first Blood Moon.

As the game progresses, wood becomes a very important source of fuel for cooking fires, forges, and all of the different crafting benches. In the mid-game, wood will be the player’s primary fuel, although they will likely switch over to burning coal by the late game.

7 Stone

Sturdier Building Material

• Acquired by mining stone nodes with a pickaxe or an auger
• Useful for grinding down to create advanced building materials

New players to 7 Days To Die won’t have an awful lot of use for stone in their first few hours of gameplay. However, after this point, they will need vast quantities of stone, so it is worth farming right from the start. Stone is used to create more robust building materials than basic wood can build.

Stone can be turned into cobblestone, which is a good upgrade over wood in the early game for building a defensive base. Later on, stone can be turned into the components for cement, and then put into a cement mixer to produce concrete, which is much tougher than wood. Put simply, start farming stone early. It will be needed in huge quantities later on.

6 Eggs

Good Early Game Food

• Acquired by looting birds nests
• Useful as early game food source, used in more advanced food recipes later

New players to 7 Days To Die need a good source of food in the early game, not just to keep them full up, but also as a source of healing health points, as they will not have access to suitable healing items such as first aid bandages until later in the game.

Eggs are easy to find, and can be boiled on a campfire once the player has looted a glass beaker to boil them in. Some of the early-game advanced recipes, such as bacon and eggs, also need eggs to craft them. Put simply, the player will need eggs for the entire game, so the sooner they start stockpiling them the better.

5 Meat

Another Good Early Game Food

• Acquired by killing uninfected creatures and butchering them with a knife or axe
• Useful for early game food and advanced recipes later on in the game

Meat is another great early-game food in 7 Days To Die. It can be cooked on a campfire once the player has looted a grill. Furthermore, there is an excellent early game recipe for boiled meat that gives not only fullness, but also hydration in the same package, making it something of an early game superfood.

Meat is also needed in many later game recipes, such as the aforementioned bacon and eggs, and all sorts of pies and stews. Only uninfected animals such as rabbits, chickens, bears, and wolves give meat. Infected creators give rotten meat, which is toxic to the player.

4 Clay

Needed To Keep Forges Running

• Acquired by digging earth with a shovel or a pickaxe
• Useful for keeping forges running

Clay is one of the more annoying resources to farm in 7 Days To Die. Yes, it is very easy to get, all that is needed is a shovel. The problem is that it is slow to dig up, relying on player stamina for digging with a shovel. It can take quite some time to dig up a whole stack of clay.

Unfortunately, clay is needed any time a forge is running to smelt ores or create alloys. This means that the player needs to keep going out to farm clay. In the early game, it is a good idea to run low-level Buried Treasure missions from the Trader, simply because they are a) easy, and b) leave the player with plenty of clay for the later game.

3 Coal

Needed To Make Gunpowder

• Acquired by mining a coal node with a pickaxe or auger
• Useful for making gunpowder and as an advanced source of fuel

Coal is a raw material that all 7 Days To Die players will want to farm in large quantities, simply because, along with nitrate, it is one of the main materials needed to make gunpowder. Any player who wants to use ranged weapons is going to need to constantly be making gunpowder in a chemical station.

Coal is also a great source of fuel. It burns much slower than wood, and is therefore better to use for long-term fueling of crafting stations, especially if the player wants to leave the crafting station running for some hours.

2 Nitrate

Only Used For Gunpowder

• Acquired by mining a nitrate node with a pickaxe or auger
• Useful for making gunpowder

Every 7 Days To Die player will end up spending a long time mining nitrate, as it is needed to make gunpowder. The game has a pretty realistic crafting system when it comes to making advanced materials. By mid-game, it becomes hard to keep up with gunpowder consumption, so it is worth starting to stockpile nitrate at the very start of the game.

The good thing about mining nitrate is that it is the easiest mineral to see while underground, as it is white and sparkly. Something like coal is black, and it is very easy to lose the seam. This is not so with nitrate, and it can be mined easily followed.

1 Honey

Needed To Cure Infection

• Acquired by using an axe on a tree stump
• Useful for curing infection

When a player is bitten by a zombie, they have a chance of becoming infected. If the infection is not cured quickly enough, they will turn and die. The only source of medicine that can cure infection in the early game is honey.

There is around a 25% chance of looting honey when destroying tree stumps with an axe. However, tree stumps can be hard to find and are simply not available in some biomes such as the desert. Therefore, it pays off long-term to farm a stack of honey in the starting zone at the beginning of the game.

7 Days to Die

Survival

Horror

OpenCritic Reviews

Top Critic Rating:37/100 Critics Recommend:6%

Platform(s)

Linux , macOS , PC , PlayStation 4 , PlayStation 5 , Xbox One

Released

December 13, 2013

Developer(s)

The Fun Pimps