7 Days to Die Alpha 20 – Everything New Added to the Game

Alpha 20 of 7 Days to Die is a massive update that arrived on December 6th. TFP have a long list of changes that’ll likely take a book to list out.

To make things a bit easier, we’ve narrowed down the changes into more easily digestible chunks for you.

New Random World Generation System

TFP has overhauled the way their Random World Generation works. This new system is built from the ground up to significantly improve almost every aspect of the worlds created when you launch a new game.

The list of changes is pretty massive, so here are the highlights:

• The new Random Generation Preview tool has many options for tweaking custom maps. For example, you can tune the frequency of towns, wilderness, rivers, craters, mountains and more.
• POI placement has been smartened up to account for the cost of different POIs. For instance, denser POIs won’t be placed near each other as often, which will help improve overall game performance.
• There are new districts and tiles that generate a variety of new areas, such as industrial, commercial and residential zones.
• A new stamp system enables the creation of art features inside of biomes. This is also in place to provide modders with more flexibility.

Shape and Building Updates

TFP have used A20 as an opportunity to overhaul their building blocks. They’ve increased the number of unique shapes for crafting materials to over 1300. In addition, there are five basic helper blocks to craft, Frames, Wood, Cobblestone, Concrete, and Steel. After adding them to your belt, you can use a radial menu to select the shapes you want by category.

New Locations

Alpha 20 includes a slew of new areas and POIs as well as improvements to existing ones. These additions were made possible thanks to the expansion of the TFP Level team and the subsequent improvements they were able to make to their design tools.

Here are some of the cool things you can see in the update:

• There are over 175 new POIs to explore.
• Over 25 older POIs have been redesigned and reimagined to align with the latest additions.
• Navezgane has received a few new POIs, and the team have stated they aim to do more with it in Alpha 21.

Improvements to Questing

7 Days to Die needed a bit of love with its questing system, especially for the new player experience. Here are all the additions TFP have made:

• New quest markers in the tutorial missions will show you where to find required items.
• Restore Power is a new nighttime quest type that requires you to re-activate generators.
• Each Trader now has their quest progression.

Feral Sense Game Option

This option lets you increase the radius from which zombies can sense you, making it much farther than it is by default. In addition, stealth has become more challenging due to the heightened senses of zombies.

Some Biomes Have Higher Difficulty

Specific biomes have had their difficulty settings tweaked to make them more challenging. On the flip side, they’re also a lot more rewarding, thanks to better loot prospects. The Snow and Desert biomes now have more difficult enemies, whereas Wastelands takes that further up a notch.

Twitch Integration

Alpha 20 includes new integrations that allow Twitch streamers and their viewers to interact through the game. Through special chat commands, viewers can either help or harm the streamer as they play.

New Items, Characters and Visuals

Alpha 20 of 7 Days to Die features many new and shiny additions and improvements. There are new and improved weapons, including a collection of pipe guns and rifles. Zombies and characters have received HD overhauls, and new unfriendly faces also join the fray. The game engine features better blending and faster rendering for terrains across the board. Finally, weather conditions occur more frequently and have had a new coat of paint added.