Blood Moon
7
Days Remaining
Survival · Horde · Crafting

SEVEN DAYSto Die

An open-world survival game where every seventh night the dead rise in relentless waves. Build, scavenge, forge, and fight — because the blood moon always comes back.

Enter the Wasteland
Scroll to Survive
Overview

A world that remembers you died.

7 Days to Die is an open-world survival game set in a brutal, post-apocalyptic Navezgane County, Arizona. Released from early access in July 2024 after more than a decade of development, it combines first-person shooting, voxel-based building, crafting, RPG progression, and tower-defense mechanics into one of the most punishing survival experiences on PC.

There is no story holding your hand. There is a hunger bar, a thirst bar, a stamina bar, a wellness bar, and a horde of zombies that gets smarter every seven days. You learn the game by dying to it — and the map stays the same, so every death teaches you where the next trap, the next forge, and the next safe room should go.

100km²
World Size
2024
V1.0 Release
7
Day Blood Moon
Confirmed Wasteland
7 Days to Die combat screenshot
Gameplay Pillars

Five ways the world kills you.

7 Days to Die is not one survival game — it is five systems layered on top of each other. Master them one at a time, because ignoring any of them means the seventh night finds you unprepared.

Base Building

Every block has structural integrity. Build too tall without support and it collapses — with you inside it. Voxel destruction means zombies chew through walls, floors, and foundations in real time.

Deep Crafting

From stone axes to forged steel to motorcycle frames. The tech tree spans primitive, iron, steel, and late-game electrical systems. Forges, workbenches, and chemistry stations gate your progression.

Blood Moon Cycle

Every seven days the moon turns red and zombies spawn in waves that path directly to your location — no matter where you hide. They sprint, they climb, and they never stop until dawn.

Survival Needs

Hunger, thirst, stamina, and wellness all interlock. Eat spoiled food and you get sick. Drink murky water and you get dysentery. Wellness drops on death and only climbs back slowly through good food and rest.

RPG Progression

Perk into 50+ skill lines — miner, chef, gunslinger, father capacitor, the works. Skills improve by doing. Swing a club enough and your stun chance climbs. Read the right book and a whole perk tree unlocks for free.

Co-op Survival

Host up to 8 players, or join dedicated servers running 40+ survivors at once. Roles emerge naturally — one player farms, one forges, one builds, one shoots. The horde does not scale down for small groups.

Blood Moon

The seventh night always comes.

The blood moon is the heartbeat of 7 Days to Die. It is not a boss fight you can skip — it is a calendar. At sunset on day 7, 14, 21, and every seventh day after, the sky turns red, normal spawning rules are suspended, and zombies spawn in escalating waves that pathfind directly toward your heat signature.

They sprint. They climb. They destroy blocks in their path. If you are not in a defensible base with a kill corridor or kill pit, you will not see dawn. The horde does not de-spawn — it persists until the sun rises and burns them down.

Survivor Log — Day 6, 21:00:
"Spent the afternoon reinforcing the stairwell. Spike traps set. Shotgun loaded. I can hear them already, on the horizon, and the sun has not even set yet. The moon is already red."
Day 7
First Blood Moon — Small waves of normal zombies. Survivable in a poi with a door and a fire axe.
Day 14
Second Horde — Ferals appear. They sprint regardless of light. You need a real base now.
Day 21
Third Horde — Crawlers, spiders, and climbers join. Walls alone are no longer enough.
Day 28+
Endgame — Radiated zombies, screamers calling in more waves, and brute zombies that smash through reinforced concrete.
7 Days to Die forge crafting interface
Crafting Tree

From stone to steel.

Crafting is not a menu — it is a progression system that takes most of a playthrough to fully unlock. Each tier of gear requires the previous tier's tools, the right workstation, and the right perks.

  • Primitive Tier

    Stone axes, plant fiber clothes, wooden frames. The first 24 hours. Everything you need to survive day 7 if you are careful.

  • Iron Tier

    Iron tools, iron armor, the forge unlocks. Requires a forged-iron ingot to bootstrap — which itself requires a forge. Solve the chicken-and-egg with scavenging.

  • Steel Tier

    Steel tools, steel armor, the workbench. Needs forged steel from a forge with a crucible. Steel blocks are the only thing a brute zombie cannot punch through in one hit.

  • Electrical Tier

    Generators, wire, blade traps, auto-turrets, sensor lights. Late-game horde bases run on electricity. Needs the electrical perk and a steady supply of mechanical parts.

Bestiary

Know the dead by name.

Not every zombie is the same. 7 Days to Die has distinct zombie archetypes — each with its own AI behavior, attack pattern, and threat level. Recognizing the silhouette in the dark is the difference between a clean headshot and a respawn screen.

Normal Zombie

The shambling infected. Slow during the day, faster at night. A single headshot with most firearms drops them. They only become dangerous in numbers.

Common

Feral Zombie

Always sprints, day or night. Glowing eyes give them away in the dark. They do not react to light or sound — they only react to you. Expect them from day 14 on.

Feral

Screamer

The scout. If she sees you and screams, she calls in a mini-horde — even on a non-blood-moon day. Kill her first, always, before she opens her mouth.

Feral

Radiated Zombie

Glowing green. Heals over time, so you must out-damage their regen. Only spawns after game-stage 100+. The default reason your old horde base stops working.

Irradiated

Brute / Demolisher

Huge, armored, and carrying a mine. He does not path — he punches straight through your base. The single most dangerous non-boss zombie in the game. Demolishers explode on death.

Elite

Spider Zombie

Crawls and climbs walls. The reason a flat roof is not a safe base. Spiders can scale vertical surfaces to reach you on top of a four-story poi.

Climber
Survivor Tips

Six lessons learned the hard way.

Every tip below comes from dying to the thing it describes. Read them now so the horde does not teach you instead.

1

Do not fight on blood moon

The horde is not a fight — it is a siege. Design a base where zombies walk a path into spike traps and your gun barrel, not where they reach you. A kill corridor wins blood moons. A flat roof does not.

2

Water before food

You die of thirst faster than hunger. A dew collector or a pot + murky water boil is the first real base project. Without clean water, dysentery drains your wellness and your run is over.

3

Read every book you find

Bookshelves in pois drop skill books that unlock free perks. A full set of shotgun slinger books gives you the entire perk line without spending a skill point. Always loot bookshelves.

4

Heat attracts screamers

Forges, campfires, and workstations all generate heat. A clustered base draws screamers, which draw hordes. Space out your workstations, or build a base specifically designed to absorb the heat-scream cycle.

5

Underground is not safe

Since V1.0, zombies will dig down to reach you. A buried base is a grave. Build up, not down, and let the pathing AI walk into your traps rather than try to hide from it.

6

Vehicles are blood-moon insurance

If your base falls, a bicycle or minibus lets you kite the horde until dawn. Driving in a wide circle keeps the zombies chasing you instead of breaking into your storage. Do not be caught on foot on day 7.

Community

Find a server to survive on.

7 Days to Die ships with a server browser. Below is a sample of the kinds of communities running right now — these are illustrative entries, not live server pings. Join the official Discord or the in-game browser for current listings.

Navezgane Forever — PVE

Vanilla V1.0 · Navezgane map · PVE · 8-player co-op

6 / 8 42ms Online

Ravenhearst Modded — Hardcore

Ravenhearst mod · Generated world · PVPVE · 32 slots

27 / 32 68ms Online

Darkness Falls — Co-op

Darkness Falls mod · Custom 8k map · PVE · 16 slots

14 / 16 112ms Online

Undead Legacy — Roleplay

Undead Legacy · Generated world · RP-PVE · 40 slots

31 / 40 85ms Online
FAQ

Questions the new survivor asks.

Is 7 Days to Die still in early access? +
No. Version 1.0 released on July 25, 2024 after over 10 years in early access — one of the longest early-access runs in PC gaming. The game is now considered feature-complete and is available on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.
What happens on blood moon? +
Every seventh night the moon turns red. Normal zombie spawning stops, and instead a horde spawns in escalating waves that pathfind directly to your location. They sprint, climb, and destroy blocks in their way. The horde does not end until dawn. You cannot skip it by hiding — the zombies will tear through the floor to reach you.
Can I play it solo? +
Yes. The entire game is playable single-player. Blood moon does not scale down for solo players — the horde is the same size as a small co-op group. Solo is harder, but completely viable. Most long-time players have hundreds of solo hours.
Is there a story or quests? +
There is a loose lore about the infection that wiped out Navezgane County, and a set of trader quests that act as guided missions — fetch, clear, fetch-and-return, and bounty jobs. The main draw is sandbox survival, not narrative. The traders are the closest thing to a story questline.
Do I lose my base when I die? +
Your base stays. Your death drops a backpack with your inventory at the spot you died — it persists for a limited time. If you can get back to it, you can recover your gear. If a blood moon killed you, the backpack is usually inside the horde path and you will need to wait for dawn.
What platforms is it on? +
PC (Windows, Linux, macOS via Steam and GOG), PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. The console versions received the V1.0 update alongside PC. Crossplay is not supported — console players and PC players are on separate server pools.