Nitrate powder is an item you can tend to live without In 7 days to die but nonetheless, it can be a useful item. In this article, we will be teaching you how to get nitrate powder and what it can be used for.
What is Nitrate Powder Used For?
Nitrate powder can be used for a few useful items like gun powder, antibiotics, herbal antibiotics and fertiliser if you want to give the farming side a shot.
The gun powder is probably the most useful item nitrate powder can be used for as you will probably use more ammo than you can find. The antibiotics are good to have on hand if you can’t find any.
Antibiotics can be crafted in the campfire with the beaker attachment. The herbal antibiotics are also crafted in the campfire using the cooking pot.
The farm plot can just be crafted in your inventory and the gunpowder can be crafted in the chemistry station.
Finding the Item
Nitrate powder can be found randomly throughout the game, as most items can be, but there are a few faster ways to get it.
The trader might have some up for sale, it’ll never be too expensive, especially compared to the items you can produce with it. Some containers will randomly have some nitrate powder inside.
Gathering the Item
Nitrate powder can be mined, like a few other materials in 7 Days to die. The nodes of ore can be found above ground and usually extend underground. The potassium nitrate nodes can be found in 3 of the 4 biomes, the only one it doesn’t appear in is the forest biome.
The desert, burnt forest and wastelands all have potassium nitrate nodes.
Nitrate powder can also be mined from stalactites and stalagmites. These can be found in the caves scattered in 7 Days to Die (more info here). On the Navezgane, the base map for the game, the caves can be found at the following coordinates;
- Cave 1: 849 E, 1888 N
- Cave 2: 769 W, 1043 S
- Cave 3: 968 W, 454 N
- Cave 4: 979 E, 1036 S
- Cave 5: 1194 W, 1024 N
Each cave holds loot, zombies, and some stalagmites and stalactites.
The final way the resource can be collected in 7 Days to Die is to harvest already dead corpses.
No, not the zombies walking about, when you kill them you can’t harvest anything. In some buildings and structures, there will be decomposing corpses or body bags, harvest these and you will get some nitrate powder.
Crafting a Pickaxe
To mine the resources, you will need to craft a pickaxe. 7 Days to Die has a stone shovel and a stone axe, but there is not a stone pickaxe. The stone axe can be used as a placeholder early on as you will need to work your way up to an iron pickaxe.
To craft the iron pickaxe, you will either need the Miner 69’er skill in the perception tree, or you can unlock it through the iron tools schematic.
The iron pickaxe can be crafted using 20 forged iron, 10 wood, 2 leather and 2 duct tape. It takes 3 minutes and 24 seconds to craft. The forged iron for the pickaxe can be randomly found or crafted in the forge.
Crafting the Forge
Although the forge is not needed for getting nitrate powder, it will make getting a pickaxe to collect it go a lot faster. To craft a forge you will need:
- 50 small stones
- 60 clay
- 10 leather
- 3 duct tape
- 3 short iron pipes
This recipe will only take 30 seconds to finish crafting. The advanced engineering perk of the intellect tree is required for crafting the forge unless you have read a forge schematic.
