Quickest Ways to Gain XP and Level Up

There are plenty of ways to gain XP and level up in 7 Days To Die, however, some ways are much faster than others. Here are a few efficient ways to gain xp and level up quickly.

Game Settings

The first, most obvious and easiest way to increase XP gains is through the game settings. When you start a new game, click on the Basic tab and scroll down to “XP Multiplier”. The available options are 100%, 125%, 150%, 175%, 200% and 300%. The higher you set this option the faster you’ll gain XP.

Clothing Mods

The Nerdy Glasses are currently the only clothing mod available in the game that increases XP gains. When you put those fancy glasses on, your XP gains are increased by a hefty 10%. Nerdy Glasses can usually be found in desks, nightstands, lockers, rare loot or sometimes at the Trader. Once acquired, wear them pretty much all the time, as you will gain 10% more XP from everything you do in the game.

Consumables

Grandpa’s Learn’n Elixir is currently the only consumable that increases XP gains, and by a juicy 20%. You can buy this from a Trader or craft it once you have the recipe unlocked. You’ll need the following list of ingredients:

• 2 x Can of Dog Food
• 2 x Red Tea
• 1 x Bottle of Acid
• 1 x Beer

So make sure to keep those items stored away for when you’re ready to craft the Grandpa’s Learn’n Elixir. Once consumed, the buff will last for 4 minutes. The best time to use this would be during hordes, base builds or when trading.

Building and Upgrading

My favorite and easiest way to gain XP is through simply building and upgrading blocks. If you start your build from a Wood Frame and upgrade it all the way to reinforced concrete or steel, you’ll be rewarded a hefty amount of XP. You can also use Rebar Frames as a starting point and upgrade straight to Concrete then Steel but that will require the use of Iron and more Concrete. It won’t make much difference in XP.  Here’s a comparison between upgrading from Wood Frames and Rebar Frames.

So go ahead and get creative with your base building, but make sure to start from simple Wood Frames and upgrade them gradually all the way to Reinforced Concrete or Steel, as this ensures maximum XP gains and remember, if you do have those Nerdy Glasses I previously spoke about, put them on for even more XP gains.

Mining

We spend most of our day looting but when night falls we tend to spend most of it mining.

To increase the rate at which you mine and gain XP, simply upgrade your Miner 69’er Skill to the max. This will break down blocks 50% faster in return, loading you with tons of XP faster.

Another way would be to craft and Auger. Not only does this bad boy turn stones to dust, but also provides a lot more XP. The only downside is the amount of noise it makes, which brings unwanted attention. So be ready to fight some zombies and possible screamers when using the Auger.

Resource Piles

There’s plenty of resource piles to go around and they are an awesome way to accumulate XP quickly. There’s always at least one type of resource pile found in every POI. Here’s a list of 6 resource piles that give lots of XP from highest to lowest.

In general, we don’t really gather resource piles specifically for XP but rather for the purpose of using them as resources to craft, build and upgrade. Still it’s good to know how much XP you can gain from each one.

Disassembling

Using your Wrench, Ratchet or Impact Driver to take apart things is not only fun but rewarding. There is no fixed number of XP you can gain from disassembling electrical or mechanical components, for instance, if you were to take apart the same refrigerator 3 times, the XP gains will be different each time. I usually like to take everything apart from a POI before moving on to the next one, I don’t leave any stone unturned.

To take full advantage of disassembling, first max out your Salvage Operations skill all the way down to Master Scavenger, this increases both your harvest amount and speed by 100%. Here’s an example of a POI I took apart, this led lead me to gain a whopping 8,884 XP and all these goodies currently worth 3,419 Casino Dukes if I was to sell it all. This was a 10 to 15 minute job which resulted in a total of 12,303 XP

Note that not all POIs have the same abundance of resources, this is just an example.

Killing Zombies

Killing zombies is one of the main reasons why we play 7 Days To Die to begin with; however, there are 3 particular ways you can kill zombies that will further increase your XP gains. First would be to take care of wandering hordes, those usually appear randomly during the day, sometimes they will run directly towards you because of the noise you created or they might just
run past you. Don’t let them wander off, go after that horde and those juicy experience points!

Second way is the obvious one which happens every 7 days, the blood moon horde! I try not to kill them using traps as you only get a maximum of 50% of xp gains. Use traps only to slow them down, my favorite being the Electric Fence Posts. Make sure you are giving the final killing blows which rewards you with full xp gains.

Third way is through screamer farming. Simply place a ton of campfires in a single area causing a tremendous amount of heat, which in turn attracts zombies, especially screamers. Once those screamers arrive, they will attract even more zombies, it’s pretty much endless as long as you keep the screamers alive while you kill off every other zombie. This isn’t my favorite method and to be honest I never use it. Even though it’s not considered a bug in the game, it feels a little “cheese”. Hopefully in the next few updates they can come up with some sort of cooldown feature. just a thought 🙂

Trading

Trading is by far one of the best ways to quickly gain XP. For every Duke you earn you receive 1 XP, so to maximize your XP gains, aim to maximize your profits. So first let’s make sure we are prepared to make the most rewarding trades possible with an ideal trading setup.

• Purchase all the skills relating to Better Barter found under the Intellect attribute. Make sure it’s at the maximum level called Corporate Marketing CEO. This will increase the amount of Dukes made from each sale, thus increasing XP up to 25%.
• Read the Magnum Enforcer –  Vol 4 perk book. Bartering with a Magnum or Desert Vulture drawn, gives you a 5% better deal. Books can be purchased from a Trader or usually found in libraries and book shelves.
• Eat “Sugar Butts” candy. These bad boys increase bartering by 10%. They can be purchased at any vending machine.
• Wear a Cigar, which will increase bartering by 10%. Cigars can be crafted, looted or purchased from a Trader.
• Drink Grandpa’s Awesome Sauce. This drink alone increases bartering by a hefty 20%, but only lasts 3 minutes, so be sure to make your trades quick! It can be crafted or purchased from a Trader.
• Wear Nerdy Glasses, these will increase XP gains by 10% from trading. Can be found in lockers and desks
• Drink Grandpa’s Learnin’ Elixir which increases XP gains by 20%. This drink can be crafted or purchased at the Trader.
• Eat a Pumpkin Cheesecake which further increases bartering by 5%. This recipe can be crafted or purchased at the Trader.

I would keep everything I want to sell stored away until I am fully prepared and have all the recipes, clothes, and perks I need to make the best profits possible. Let’s go ahead and compare a sale made with and without the previously mentioned items.

• Level 6 Steel Pickaxe sold at regular price     =     1120 Dukes and 1120 XP
• Level 6 Steel Pickaxe sold with bonuses     =     1904 Dukes and 2475 XP

There’s also another way to gain XP through trading and that’s through a “Buy / Sell Loop”. Grab 20,000 Dukes from your stash and head to your friendly neighbourhood Trader. At this point all you have to do is sell and buy the same item repeatedly, you will lose Dukes with every sale but with the bonuses we previously mentioned you can make 30,000 XP or more with a single stack of 20,000 Dukes. Basically you’re buying XP with Dukes.

Quests and Challenges

Gaining XP through challenges or quests can be fun but most of the time, very time consuming. The time you spend to complete a quest or challenge doesn’t justify the XP you get out of it. I would only do these if they are on the way to my main goal. For example if I have a destination to a specific POI and by chance the quest is nearby, I will go for it. There are 3 types of quests/challenges.

• Trader Quests, which can be offered by a Trader. With difficulty tiers from 1 to 5. The higher the difficulty the more time it will take to complete that quest.
• Treasure Maps, which are found randomly in loot.
• Challenge Notes, which are also found randomly in loot. A challenge could be for example to kill 5 rabbits with a shotgun.

Crafting

There’s a good way to make a ton of XP from crafting and that’s by crafting Stacks. Once you read The Art of Mining – Vol 5 perk book, you’ll be able to craft compact stacks of Wood, Stone, Coal, Iron, Lead, Oil Shale, Gas Cans, Gunpowder, Nitrate Powder and Lockpicks. For example, crafting a stack of Wood can give you a whopping 18,000 XP. Keep in mind that each additional stack you craft will give you less and less XP.

So there you have it, hopefully this has taught you something new and you’re now ready to gain some serious XP and level up quickly! If there are more efficient ways to get XP please share and comment so we can all benefit!