7 Days To Die – Alpha 21 Update Roadmap, Release Date Speculation, & Features

The Alpha 20 build has been around for a few months now, so it makes sense that fans are highly anticipating the Alpha 21 build of the sandbox survival game. The good news is that the developers over at The Fun Pimps are keeping the community happy. They have recently shared the patch notes for what's going to be new in the Alpha 21 build of 7 Days to Die.

7 Days to Die Alpha 21 patch notes and release date

According to The Fun Pimps, the Alpha 21 patch is done when it's done. However, that doesn't stop the fans from speculating. Given that the game typically receives one major update per year, fans anticipate Alpha 21 to arrive in mid to late 2023. The good thing is that the developers at least shared the patch notes for us to find out what Alpha 21 is really going to include.

What's new in 7 Days to Die, Alpha 21?

These are the official notes from the 7 Days to Die, Alpha 21 Developer Diary:

• New Places of Interest
• New Decorations
  • Cars, trucks, tractors
  • Furniture and many many new items
• Additional Advanced World Generation Options
  • Biome Percent Sliders (included in Alpha 20.6)
• Learn By Reading System
  • 23 new skills to govern the crafting system 
  • 23 new magazines added to loot
  • Perks no longer unlock recipes or govern crafting at all
  • The only schematics that still unlock recipes are mod attachments. 
  • Crafting skill is increased by finding and reading magazines
  • Skill increases unlock recipes at certain points as well as increase the quality of crafting for items with quality
  • Each tech level has a separate range in the skill spectrum so that you have to work up through primitive tech and then iron tech and then steel tech and being able to craft a blue stone axe no long means you automatically can also craft a blue iron axe.
  •  Some skills have 100 levels but others have fewer depending on how many unlocks there are for recipes and quality tiers.
  • A new skill page showing your progress has been added to the player interface 
  • Skill magazines can be found, bought, and/or received as quest rewards. The topic of the magazine matches the location you would expect to find it in the world.
  • Perks slightly affect the probability of finding like-themed magazines and parts for those recipes. Perk into shotguns and you will notice more shotgun magazines and shotgun parts appearing in the world. It isn't a significant bonus but it does prevent the player from being screwed over.
  • When you max out a skill, that slight probability bonus granted by perks for finding the corresponding magazine for that skill drops off. The magazine will still show up randomly in loot but no longer have a boost. The probability boost for finding matching parts will remain.
• Interactive Environmental Hazards 
  • Flaming broken gas pipes blocking the way. A valve to turn off the gas flow is located elsewhere.
  • Alpha 21 Interactive Fire Hazard Demo
• Doors
  • Double Doors
  • Partially damaged doors with large holes can be shot/meleed through to damage enemies on the other side
• Water Simulation
  • All new water coding--water is no longer a block but a water voxel
  • Water voxels flow into neighboring voxels that are marked to allow it.
  • Water can be in the same space as a block
  • Water does not flow or fall continuously like a river or a waterfall
  • Player movement in water has been enhanced

Related: When is the 7 Days to Die console update?

• Armor
  • New Iron Armor 
  • New Commando Military Armor
  • More details to come.
• Drinking Water Rebalance
  • Murky water is only water found in loot
  • Empty Glass bottles were removed from the game to match all the rest of the containers in the game
  • A dew collector work station added
  • Players can drink directly from water sources with an empty hand by pressing "e"
  • Pot is now required to boil murky water
  • Glue crafting has been taken into consideration
• Spears
  • Spear damage increased
  • A spear power attack is a thrust instead of a throw
  • Throw attack for spears removed
• Chunk Reset Option
  • Default is disabled
  • Options for days up to 70 days
  • The chunk resets to its pre-generated state if no player has entered the chunk after the number of days selected.
  • An active LCB or bedroll will prevent a chunk from resetting.

• Trader Changes
  • New Trader compounds
  • Trader inventories rebalanced with the new crafting progression
  • Removal of Secret Stash
  • Further specialization of traders and what they carry
• Electricity Changes
  • Wires only visible when holding wire cutting tool

• Player HUD changes
  • Danger Meter added to show danger level of biomes and POIs
  • Crafting Recipe Tracker can be toggled to show on the HUD to help players as they gather materials needed for crafting
• Perk Rebalancing
  • Sexual T-Rex removed. Stamina improvement now incorporated into the separate perks for each relevant weapon
  • Each attribute will get its own version of Flurry of Blows as an additional perk for the melee weapons within that attribute
  • Grease Monkey now increases the amount of health that repair kits restore to vehicles. (One repair kit no longer restores a vehicle back to max health)
• Vehicle Changes
  • Repair kits restore a fixed amount of health and each level of Grease Monkey adds 10% of the vehicle's total health to the amount restored.
  • Increased vehicle damage to blocks, terrain, and entities by various amounts.
  • Increased vehicle damage received from collisions by various amounts
  • Improved vehicle block collision calculations
  • Greatly increased damage given and received to and from block collision.
  • Increased bicycle, gyro, and 4x4 health
  • Vehicle spark effects on bigger self damage hits
  • Vehicle blood splatter effects on high damage collisions with entities

Related: Where to find Antibiotics in 7 Days to Die

Roadmap to Gold and Beyond

• Bandits
• Armor
• Weather
• Factions & Story
• Steam Workshop Support

There is no doubt that the developers over at The Fun Pimps have ambitious plans for 7 Days to Die, not only with the Alpha 21 update but in general. Here's to hoping that the update comes as quickly as possible.

For more on 7 Days to Die, check out How to get and use Lockpicks in 7 Days to Die here on Pro Game Guides.