7 Days To Die V3.1.0 "Henpocalypse" Is Stable Now (July 27). Everything In It, And The Preset-Code Trap.

Is V3.1.0 out? Yes, on all three platforms at once

V3.1.0 "Henpocalypse" went stable on July 27, 2026 on PC, PlayStation and Xbox simultaneously. There is no separate later console patch this cycle, the same as the 3.0 launch. It followed the experimental branch that opened on July 22 and a b13 experimental build on July 25.

The one operational catch is dedicated servers: if your players get connection failures right after the update, the server needs to be on the Default Public Version branch, which is now v3.1.0 stable. A server left on a pinned or experimental branch will not match 3.1 clients.

Chicken farming, which is the whole point of the name

The loop is deliberately awkward, and that is the joke. You sneak up on a chicken, fail, chase it, catch it, then defend a loud fidgeting bird from zombies all the way home. Then it goes in the coop and starts paying you back in eggs and feathers.

The Chicken Coop workstation

The Chicken Coop is a workstation with three tool slots, and which tools you fit changes the economics:

| Tool slot | What it does |

|---|---|

| Brooding Lamp | Speeds up production and chicken maturation |

| Chicken Run | Lets chickens hunt for bugs, cutting feed cost by 50% |

| Nesting Box | Unlocks chicken breeding and adds nesting slots |

Once a chicken is in the coop you have to feed it. Feed is Rekt's Chicken Feed, crafted from corn and rotting flesh. The Chicken Run halving feed cost is the difference between a coop that pays for itself and one that eats your corn, so it is the first tool most servers will want.

The Chicken Stress event

Carrying a chicken is not free. A captured chicken builds stress, and by default at 100% stress you drop it and trigger an event scaled to your game stage. Those range from simply losing the bird, through angered zombies, up to angry chickens. There is a sandbox option to tune or disable the whole mechanic, which is the one most PvE and family servers will reach for first.

Four chicken recipes

Each of the four new recipes carries a temporary buff, and three of them need a domesticated chicken, so they are gated behind having a working coop:

| Recipe | Crafted from | Effect |

|---|---|---|

| Chicken Nuggets | Grilled meat, feathers, corn meal, animal fat | Filling, and temporarily removes encumbrance |

| Chicken Wings | Domesticated chickens, corn meal, eggs, oil, honey | Temporarily boosted melee damage and infection immunity |

| Ash Chicken Stew | Domesticated chickens, mushrooms, corn, coal, water | Plenty of food, and no smell to zombies |

| Roadrunner Chicken Jerky | Domesticated chickens, yucca fruit, nitrate powder, beer | Moderate food, temporarily boosted run speed |

Chicken Wings granting infection immunity and Ash Chicken Stew removing your scent to zombies are the two that change how you plan a run, not just your food bar.

The new sandbox options

3.1 adds ten sandbox settings on top of the 3.0 layer. Custom presets built on 3.0 may need updating to include them:

• Chicken Coop Time - speed of production

• Chicken Coop Yield - amount produced per cycle

• Chicken Coop Input - required feed per production cycle

• Chicken Stress Event - controls what happens when chickens get stressed

• Infection Chance - controls the chance to get infected

• Hunger Multiplier - rate of food consumption

• Thirst Multiplier - rate of water consumption

• Stack Size Multiplier - capped at 30,000 for all items

• Density and Respawn split into day and night values

• Density and Respawn split into enemy and animal types

Enemy Density and Respawn also no longer inflate rare biome spawns such as Chuck and Rancher, which was a common complaint about cranking those sliders on 3.0.

Why your 3.0 preset code behaves differently on 3.1

This is the part the release notes summarise as "please check your preset codes to make sure they are still valid", and it deserves more detail than that, because the failure is quiet.

A SandboxCode is a positional format: each option lives in a numbered wire slot. Between 3.0 and 3.1 the option table changed shape:

• The build went from 150 options to 165, and from 62 value sets to 65.

• Eighteen options were added, including the day/night spawn split, the Hunger, Thirst, Infection and Stack Size multipliers, and the Chicken Coop settings.

• Three options were removed: BiomeEnemyDensity, BiomeZombieRespawn and BiomeAnimalRespawn.

• Critically, the removed options' wire slots were reused by the new Day variants.

The consequence is that an old code is still structurally valid, so nothing rejects it, but the values land in different meanings. In our own decoding of the two schemas, one slot's value set also gained a leading entry, which means a 3.0 BiomeEnemyDensity setting decodes on 3.1 as BiomeDayEnemyDensity one notch lower than you set it. You get a working server with a quietly different difficulty.

Thirteen of the seventeen official preset codes changed as well, so "I use an official preset, I am fine" is not true either. Difficulty presets no longer touch block and terrain damage, and the gameplay presets gained night records.

The safe move on patch day is to rebuild the ruleset rather than re-paste the code, using our SandboxCode generator, and to re-copy the official preset if you were relying on one.

Fixes that matter for server owners

The b13 changelog is mostly client polish, but several entries are squarely aimed at dedicated servers and at data safety:

• A save-corruption bug is fixed. The EndofStreamException and corrupted game caused by converting copies of saves to v3.0 is resolved. If you were bitten by that during the 3.0 cycle, this is the fix.

• Corruption when rapidly loading and unloading multiple chunks is fixed, which is the class of problem that shows up on busy servers with players spread far apart.

• Clients could not see the results of the getsandboxoptions console command. Now they can, which makes verifying a live server's ruleset possible from the client.

• An EOS exception in TileEntityNetPackage during POI reset is fixed, along with a serverside exception related to memory stream.

• Server Browser fixes: the filter would not show all available filtered games, list totals did not add up in some cases, and filtering long paged lists no longer produces a null entry.

• Solar Cells are now in loot, so they are obtainable on servers that turn trader options off.

• Zombies can now target and chase rabbits and chickens, which is worth knowing before you leave a coop undefended.

• Several Discord linking fixes, including unlinking after lost account access and cancelling a login that would otherwise block all input on Xbox.

Also changed: a Boar spawn was replaced with a Bear in house_construction_02, several localization syncs landed, and four new loading screen images replace the old ones.

What server admins should do now

1. Put the server on the Default Public Version branch. This is v3.1.0 stable. A mismatched branch is the first thing to check when clients cannot connect after patch day.

2. Back up the world before you update. The dedicated server save file locations guide shows where saves live so you can copy them first. Existing worlds carry over, so this is insurance rather than a migration.

3. Rebuild your SandboxCode instead of re-pasting it. See the section above for why an old code can decode to different settings without erroring. Build the new one with the SandboxCode generator.

4. Re-copy the official preset if you use one. Thirteen of seventeen changed.

5. Update the server and every client in one sitting. Version mismatch remains the usual cause of a server vanishing from the list after an update.

6. Check your overhaul mods before you flip. New options and a changed option table mean modlets that write sandbox settings need a look. The 2026 Mod Status Tracker follows what is current.

Frequently asked

Is 7 Days to Die V3.1.0 out?

Yes. V3.1.0 "Henpocalypse" went stable on July 27, 2026 on PC, PlayStation and Xbox at the same time, and it is the default build. The experimental branch opened on July 22.

Do I need to start a new game for 3.1?

No. Existing worlds carry over, which is why this is a content update rather than a world-breaking one. Back up first anyway, and note that if you are coming from an older line, the 3.0 world generation changes are still the reason people start fresh.

Why did my preset code stop working?

Because Density and Respawn were split into day/night and enemy/animal, three old options were removed, and their wire slots were reused. An old code often still loads, but some values now mean something else. Rebuild the ruleset rather than re-pasting the code, and re-copy the official preset if you used one.

What is the Big Beak armor set?

A cosmetic outfit, originally worn by Nana's Famous Chicken Mascot, releasing Wednesday, July 29, 2026, two days after the stable build.

Is 3.1 on Xbox and PlayStation?

Yes, both, on day one alongside PC. This is the second release in a row where console did not lag behind PC.

What is the current stable version of 7 Days to Die?

V3.1.0 (July 27, 2026). The previous stable was V3.0.1 (July 13, 2026) on the V3.0 "Dead Hot Summer" line.

Related

• V3.0 Dead Hot Summer - the major release 3.1 builds on, including the 150-option sandbox layer

• SandboxCode generator - build and encode your ruleset in the browser, no game launch needed

• SandboxCode server guide - the serverconfig.xml walkthrough

• V2.6 Stable patch notes - the older fallback line

• 7 Days to Die Roadmap 2026 - where 3.1 sits in the wider plan

• Crossplay setup guide - PC, PlayStation and Xbox on one server

• xegen world generator - generate a fresh world in about a minute

• Official 7 Days to Die news on Steam - the studio's own release announcements