Have you spent several days surviving zombie masses and looting buildings only to be short on Dukes? Have you been suffering from infection on 5% health only to have the antibiotics price just out of your reach? This guide will show you how to make money in 7 Days to Die in several different ways. Let’s dive in!
Questing at Traders
There are some really good options for earning the most amount of Dukes in a short time. These options are all available at the onset of the map. One of the best, if not the best method of making money in 7 Days to Die in my experience, is by visiting your local traders and completing quests.
Note: Available quests change as you rank up your perks. You can only accept one quest at a time per trader.
What Quests Should You Take?
There are several quest types you can accept that result in different objectives at different locations. Quest rewards are displayed on the screen when selecting a quest. The different types of quests are as follows.
- Fetch
- Clear Zombies
- Fetch and Clear
- Buried Supplies
Let’s talk about which quests you should be choosing over the others. There are two different ways to look at what quest options fit your style. With the exception of a buried supplies quest, all quests have the option of going slow or going fast. Take these skills while questing for maximum gains:
- Better Barter – This skill provides a stacking 5% reduction in costs at any trader and access to additional loot.
- The Daring Adventurer – This skill provides a stacking 5% increase in Dukes per quest as well as additional quest reward options per quest.
- Treasure Hunter – This skill reduces the radius of possibility when digging for treasure or buried supplies, reducing the time it takes to find the cache of goods.
- Lucky Looter – Lucky looter grants you a stacking bonus to loot amount and loot speed with every rank.
- Pack Mule – Pack mule is essential for increasing inventory space and reducing your penalty to movement speed while looting
- Salvage Operations – Salvage operations help those who enjoy the “Loot Everything” play style and grant a stacking 20% increase in speed and resource gain when using a wrench, ratchet or impact driver to break down items into materials.
- Scavenging – Scavenging is a great all-around skill that grants an increase in loot quality in every container you open.
Fetch Quests
Fetch quests are quite fast by default as all you have to do is enter an area, loot the quest bag, and return it to the trader. You can speedrun the quest for faster rewards. As a result, you can complete a fetch quest within minutes, allowing you to move on to the next one much faster and gain more quest rewards per in-game 24 hours.
Or you can take your time and milk every location for the full value. This means stripping down electronics, breaking furniture, and basically destroying the house from the foundation up. And if you clear a quest area before you activate the quest, the area will reset when you activate the objective resulting in double loot.
Clear Zombies
Clear zombies quests are similar to fetch quests, however, instead of looking for a bag to loot within a location, you’re simply exterminating the swarms of undead in that area. A good way to make money in 7 Days to Die especially if you have a variety of weapons and ammunition.
You may treat clear quests as if they were fetch quests. You can choose to either clear the zombies and get out for a speedy quest reward, or you can take your time clearing the area pre-quest, start the quest, and do it again for more rewards. I typically find it easier to bring a melee weapon rather than a ranged weapon.
Fetch and Clear Quests
Fetch and clear missions are a combo mission of the two listed above. You can follow the same method and achieve similar results. The only difference is that you have two objectives to complete versus one objective.
Buried Supplies Quests
Buried supplies quests are essentially your treasure hunter quests. Your map is pinged with a location, you travel to said location and dig until you find the box of supplies. Once you find the box of supplies a small horde of zombies will be spawned and attracted to your location.
I recommend digging at an angle that allows you to easily climb back up and fight off the zombies before they drop down the hole and turn you into an unwilling and eternal mosh pit participant.
Making Money by Being a Merchant
Being a merchant in 7 Days to Die is another way to make money and it means knowing what sells and what doesn’t. Taking the perks mentioned above assists greatly with this. You will always have excess supplies and materials giving you that extra boost of wealth.
Better Barter skill specifically is S tier for this method as you reduce the cost of anything you buy speeding up access to higher tier tools for faster gains. You will often want to sell stack items in bulk anyway.
What to Sell
The items I like to prioritize when selling to traders are as follows:
- Old Cash – This can be found in abundance all over the world and sells at a 1:1 ratio
- Spare Weapons – Any weaponry you won’t be using can be sold.
- Power Tools and Components – If they are not upgrades to your own power tools, they can be sold for a hefty amount depending on their quality rating.
- Mechanical and Electrical components – These sell for a large amount if sold in bulk. If you are not currently crafting in the technological stage of the game, this is a good option.
- Raw material from mining – Things like iron, coal, and potassium nitrate sell for a good amount if you’re able to sell them in bulk. If you’re lucky, you will come across precious metals like silver and gold or even gemstones like diamonds that you can sell for a very large burst amount of Dukes.
What Not to Sell
There are some items I recommend you never sell unless you are absolutely swimming in them. This includes things like:
- Spare Ammunition – You may think you’ll never use ammo if you’re a melee or bow build for example, but turrets you can craft later in the game all use ammunition whether it’s 10mm or shotgun shells. I recommend stocking up on these. They also do not sell for much in comparison to other items.
- Food and Drinks – Even though this game has a large crafting requirement and you can cultivate your own food along the way, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve needed food and didn’t have it because I sold extra food to the trader. The game punishes you for sitting on low survival stats like hunger and thirst with a drop in performance stats like health pool and stamina. It’s better to have them and not need them than to not have them at all.
- Vehicle parts – I find it very useful to have multiple vehicles across the map with stashes full of gas. Just in case my vehicle was to be destroyed in a zombie horde, was inaccessible, or out of gas.
The best part about being a merchant in 7 Days to Die is that it comes passively while you do ANYTHING else. Whether you’re looting buildings over and over, mining the earth, slaying zombies, or just building bases, there’s always a way to sell your leftovers and make a profit.
That about wraps it up for how to make money in 7 Days to Die. There are many more things to explore and craft in 7 Days to Die, so here are a few more guides if you are a fan of this survival game:
How to Get Wheels in 7 Days to Die | Trader Locations in 7 Days to Die | What to Do at Night in 7 Days to Die
