The zombie hordes are relentless. They're not going to stop until you're dead, so you need to do everything you can to get stronger. Building more powerful weapons and defenses is essential to survival in 7 Days to Die, but you must also carefully upgrade your skills and perks, and navigating the 7 Days to Die perks can be a tricky process. With that, we've outlined everything you need to know to become a zombie-killing machine, perfect to put to use with friends on a dedicated server today!

7 Days to Die Perks Guide: Every Perk, Effects, & How Skill Points Work

As you play 7 Days to Die, you will constantly earn XP. Killing zombies, crafting, harvesting resources, and building your base all give you XP. Earn enough XP to level up, and you receive a Skill Point. The max player level is 300, so you can earn plenty of Skill Points throughout your zombie-slaying journey. However, you can also receive Skill Points from completing quests as an extra boost. Once you have a Skill Point, you can choose to spend it on one of five different Attributes:

• Perception — Increases headshot damage with spears, rifles, & explosive weapons.
• Strength — Increases headshot damage with shotguns, clubs, & sledgehammers.
• Fortitude — Increases headshot damage with fists & machine guns.
• Agility — Increases headshot damage with bows, handguns, and knives.
• Intellect — Increases headshot damage with robotic turrets and stun batons.

As listed above, each Attribute increases your headshot damage with specific weapons. Additionally, each Attribute will increase the chance of dismembering enemies with their corresponding weapons. The more Skill Points you spend on an Attribute, the greater that Attribute's stats become. Remember that you can spend your Skill Points however you'd like! It all depends on your personal playstyle preferences.

Unlocking Perks with Skill Points

As you spend more Skill Points on attributes, you'll eventually be able to unlock Attribute-specific Perks. These Perks can be upgraded with multiple Skill Points, and most require you to have a certain Attribute level before being able to unlock them. Within each Attribute, there are three different types of perks. For example, Perception has Perks that assist with combat, general gameplay, and scavenging, while Strength has Perks that assist with combat, general gameplay, and construction. Look below to see what each Perk is and what its in-game description says it can do for you:

Perception

Combat Perks

• Dead Eye: Specialize in taking keen aim with rifles and wasting your target with an expertly-placed bullet. One shot, one kill.
• Demolitions Expert: Specialize in explosive weapons to stun, cripple, and dismember your foes.
• Spear Master: Learn to inflict more damage and slow your enemies with powerful attacks.
• Quick and Perceptive: You are quick and perceptive. Improve attack speeds with spears.

General Perks

• The Infiltrator: Use your heightened senses to take less damage from traps.
• Animal Tracker: Learn to detect and track animals within 100m and never go hungry.
• The Penetrator: You find weak spots in a target's armor and can use AP rifle bullets to shoot through multiple organic targets.

Scavenging Perks

• Lucky Looter: Specialize in tracking down the motherlode, and maybe getting a little extra for your trouble. You can find better loot with every perk level.
• Treasure Hunter: Become one of the greatest treasure hunters of all time learning tricks that would even make Blackbeard envious.
• Salvage Operations: Waste not, want not! Salvage items for more resources with a wrench, ratchet, or impact driver.

Strength

Combat Perks

• Boomstick: Specialize with shotguns and send your enemies to meet their maker. Do more damage, blow limbs off, shoot, and reload faster.
• Pummel Pete: Specialize in knocking your foes senseless with clubs and bats.
• Skull Crusher: Specialize in destroying enemies with heavy weapons like sledgehammers.
• Big and Fast: You are not just strong, but you are fast as well. Increase club and sledgehammer speeds.

General Perks

• Heavy Armor: Specialize in shielding yourself with iron and steel, becoming an unstoppable behemoth on the battlefield.
• Pack Mule: You're a pack mule and can carry more items in your inventory without suffering movement penalties.
• Master Chef: Create more filling meals with advanced benefits and learn to cook faster.

Construction Perks

• Miner 69'er: Maximize your mining efforts by increasing tool damage to bring down rocks and trees faster.
• Mother Lode: Harvest more resources and bring home the mother lode.

Fortitude

Combat Perks

• The Brawler: Learn martial arts and use your fists to stun, knock down, disarm, and ragdoll your opponents.
• Machine Gunner: Become a commando using automatic weapons to slay your foes.
• Lightning Hands: Pulverize your enemies with faster brawling strikes.

Survival Perks

• The Huntsman: Specialize in hunting your prey and harvesting more meat, bone, and leather.
• Well Insulated: Specialize in using a combination of clothing and natural resilience to weather even the harshest of environments.
• Living Off the Land: Specialize in harvesting more crops using your hands or a tool.
• Pain Tolerance: Specialize in shrugging off blows, fighting through pain, and staying in the fight when others would be down for the count.

Recovery Perks

• Healing Factor: Specialize in boosting your natural healing rates as long as you're not starving.
• Iron Gut: Specialize in gastrointestinal health to reduce chance of food poisioning and nutrietn uptake to use less calories and oxygen when swimming.
• Rule 1: Cardio: Train your body in the number one tactic against the zombie menace: Running away from them.

Agility

Combat Perks

• Archery: Master the use of bows and crossbows.
• Gunslinger: Settle your disputes the old way and be a gunslinger in the apocalypse. Master the use of handguns and SMGs. Unlocks pistol crafting.
• Deep Cuts: Specialize in using bladed weapons like knives or machetes (not axes) to bleed your foes dry.
• Whirlwind: Learn to swing your blades fast and become a whirlwind of destruction and carnage.

Athletic Perks

• Run and Gun: Improve your hip fire accuracy and run faster while reloading any ranged weapon.
• Medium Armor: Specialize in medium armor to reduce degradation, stamina, and movement penalties.
• Parkour: Specialize in acrobatically getting anywhere you want to go, no matter how far up or down that may be.

Stealth Perks

• Hidden Strike: Specialize in catching your enemies unaware while you are sneaking and they are resting or wandering aimlessly.
• From the Shadows: Specialize in sneaking around in the dark and making less noise in general.

Intellect

Combat Perks

• Executioner: Learn how to use stun batons more effectively. Incapacitate your victims more easily and do more damage.
• Robotics Inventor: You are fascinated with robotics. Learn to use and craft deployed weapons.
• Calculated Attack: Use your intellect to determine the shortest trajectory to the target and effectively increase attack speed with batons.

Influence Perks

• Better Barter: Specialize in convincing area traders to give you a better deal and open up their secret stashes of the really good stuff.
• The Daring Adventurer: Be a daring adventurer! Get better rewards for doing quests.
• Charismatic Nature: You are an inspiration to your allies, increasing their combat prowess.

General Perks

• Physician: Use medicine and health items more effectively.
• Advanced Engineering: Engineer advanced items such as workbenches, electrical items, and traps, and craft 20% faster on workbenches.
• Grease Monkey: Learn to build vehicles from junk in the wasteland! Vehicles can be assembled from parts without this perk.
• Lock Picking: Learn to pick locks faster and break fewer lock picks.

Unlocking Perks with Perk Books

As if leveling up your character with Skill Points and Attribute Perks wasn't enough, you can become even more powerful with the help of Perk Books. These helpful items are scattered throughout the world of 7 Days to Die. You can find them in mailboxes, on bookshelves, as quest rewards, or by purchasing them from Traders. However you get your hands on a Perk Book, you can read it to gain a permanent Perk boost. These handy items offer different Perks than the ones you redeem with Skill Points, and each book is part of a series. There are 19 Perk Books with seven volumes each. You'll receive an additional Perk if you read all seven volumes of a specific set. We've outlined each series of Perk Books below so that you can get an idea of what bonuses you can expect.

The Art of Mining

• Lucky Strike: Adds a small chance to mine rare gems from ore.
• Diamond Tools: You can craft diamond-tipped blade mods for tools that dramatically increase durability.
• Coffee: Harvest 10% more ore when buzzed from coffee.
• Blackstrap: Can craft blackstrap. A super strong coffee.
• Resources: You can craft basic resources like ore into compact stacks.
• Avalanche: Take 50% less damage from collapsing mines.
• Damage: Mining tools do 10% more block damage.
• Full Set Perk — One Shot: Gain 20% more ore mining.

The Automatic Weapon

• Damage: Automatic weapons do 10% more damage.
• Uncontrolled Burst: Fully automatic mode does 1% more damage per hit.
• Maintenance: Automatic weapons have 20% less degradation.
• Drum Magazines: You can craft drum magazine mods for automatic weapons.
• Recoil: Fully automatic fire is more accurate with each shot fired.
• Ragdoll: Fully automatic mode has an increasing chance to ragdoll an enemy with each hit.
• Hip Fire: Hip fire accuracy is greatly increased.
• Full Set Perk — Offensive Strike: Each kill boosts your run speed by 20% for 20 seconds.

Batter Up!

• Hits: Do 10% more damage with clubs.
• Stealing Bases: Sprinting with a club drawn in combat uses 0% less stamina.
• Hit and Run: Power attacks to the legs slow enemies.
• Knockdown: Power attacks increase chance of knockdown.
• Maintenance: Bats and clubs degrade 20% slower.
• Foul Balls: Ragdoll enemies.
• Metal Chain Mod: Craft chain modifications for bats and clubs.
• Full Set Perk — Home Run: Power attacks that kill your enemy refill your stamina meter.

Bar Brawler

• Basic Moves: Deal 10% more damage with fists.
• Drop a Bomb: Sprinting power attacks can knock down your opponent.
• Killer Instinct: Gain 5% more damage with each kill, up to 15%.
• Finishing Moves: Do extra damage to knocked-down or stunned enemies.
• Adrenaline Healing: Recover health in combat with every punch.
• Rage Mode: Attack and move faster after getting hit.
• Boozed Up: Drinking beer no longer blurs your vision.
• Full Set Perk — The 7th Curse: The 7th unarmed strike landed in a short time does 300% damage.

The Fireman's Almanac

• Conditioning: Add 10% hyperthermal protection.
• Mods: Craft the fireman's axe mod.
• Speed: Increase attack speed with axes by 5%.
• Fire with Fire: Fire-based weapons burn 10% longer.
• Prevention: Reduced chance of being lit on fire by 25%.
• Search and Rescue: Do 10% more damage to coal and burnt wood.
• Gear: Craft firemen helmets and take 5% less damage.
• Full Set Perk — Fire Adrenaline: Sprint longer and never encumbered in the burnt forest or wasteland.

The Great Heist

• Safes: Do 10% more damage to safes.
• Gems: Find more jewelry and precious gems.
• Gold Rush: Find 10% more dukes and cash in safes and ATMs.
• Claimed: Do 20% more property damage to land-claimed property.
• Adrenaline Fall: Fall great distances! Fall up to 15 meters without taking damage while carrying 5000 dukes or more.
• Stealthy Sprinting: Use no stamina while sneak sprinting.
• Motion Detection: Sneak past motion detection devices.
• Full Set Perk — Lock Picking: Find 20% more lockpicks in loot, break into locks 20% faster, and have 10% lower chance of breaking your lock pick.

The Hunter's Journal

• Bears: Do 10% more damage to bears.
• Wolves: Do 10% more damage to wolves.
• Coyotes: Do 10% more damage to coyotes.
• Mountain Lions: Do 10% more damage to mountain lions.
• Deer: Do 10% more damage to deer.
• Vultures: Do 10% more damage to vultures.
• Self-Defense: Do 10% more damage to humanoids.
• Full Set Perk — Harvesting: Harvest more bones, meat, and leather from animals.

Lucky Looter

• Dukes: Find more dukes coins in loot.
• Ammunition: Find more ammunition in loot.
• Brass: Find more brass in loot.
• Lead: Find more lead in loot.
• Junk: Find more junk in loot.
• Food: Find more food in loot.
• Medical Supplies: Find more medical supplies in loot.
• Full Set Perk — Lucky Bastard: Enemies have a 20% higher chance to drop loot.

Magnum Enforcer

• Damage: Do 10% more damage with .44 guns.
• Apparel: Take 5% less damage when wearing a suit.
• Unlucky Punks: The last shot in the chamber does double damage.
• Intimidation: Bartering with a magnum drawn gives you a 5% better deal.
• Armor-Piercing Ammunition: You can craft armor-piercing .44 Magnum ammunition.
• Hollow Point Ammunition: You can craft hollow point .44 Magnum ammunition.
• Criminal Pursuit: Sprinting with a .44 gun in combat uses 20% less stamina.
• Full Set Perk — Penetration: All shots with .44 ammo penetrate enemies. Bulk craft ammo.

Needle & Thread

• Winter Wear: Sew flannel shirts, sweatshirts, & skull caps.
• Legwear: Sew your own denim jeans, skirts, and overalls.
• Footwear: Craft your own shoes & boots.
• Desert Wear: Sew your own shorts, tank tops, & T-shirts.
• Dusters: Craft leather dusters.
• Puffer Coats: Sew your own puffer coat.
• Pockets: Learn how to sew pocket mods.
• Full Set Perk — Military Clothing: You can craft military clothing.

The Night Stalker

• Stealth: Do 10% more sneak damage at night.
• Silent Night: Sneak 5% better at night.
• Blades: Bladed weapons do 10% more damage at night.
• Thief Adrenaline: Never encumbered at night.
• Archery: Bows do 10% more damage at night.
• Twilight Thief: Gain 5% more XP from kills at night.
• Slumber Party: Do an extra 50% sneak damage to sleeping victims at night.
• Full Set Perk — Cutthroat: Sneak Attacks with knives at night deal 200% extra damage.

Pistol Pete

• Take Aim: 9mm weapons have 20% more range when sighted.
• Swiss Knees: Each successive leg shot increases chance (10%) to cripple.
• Steady Hand: More accurate when rapid-firing 9mm weapons.
• Maintenance: Pistols and SMGs degrade 20% slower.
• Hollow Point Ammunition: You can craft hollow point 9mm ammunition.
• Armor-Piercing Ammunition: Craft AP 9mm ammunition.
• Maximum Damage: Inflict 10% more damage with 9mm weapons.
• Full Set Perk — Powder Burns: Shots from 9mm weapons fired at point-blank range ignore 20% of armor and cause bleeding damage. Bulk craft all types of 9mm ammunition.

Ranger's Guide to Archery

• Arrow Recovery: Can retrieve 20% more arrows.
• Exploding Arrows: Craft exploding arrows and crossbow bolts.
• Crippling Shot: Leg shots slow your opponent.
• Armor-Piercing Arrows: Craft armor-piercing steel arrows.
• Flaming Arrows: Craft flaming arrows and crossbow bolts.
• Maintenance: Bows degrade 20% slower.
• Knockdown: Sneak attacks have a 20% greater chance of knockdown.
• Full Set Perk — Bulk: Bulk craft all types of arrows and bolts.

Shotgun Messiah

• Damage: Shotguns do 10% more damage.
• Breaching Ammunition: Craft breaching ammunition used to breach security.
• Limb Shot: Targets within 3 meters have a high dismemberment chance.
• Shotgun Slugs: You can craft shotgun slugs.
• Maintenance: Shotguns degrade 20% slower.
• Magazine Mods: You can craft shotgun tube extender mods.
• Party Starter: Targets with full health take 20% more damage.
• Full Set Perk — One Shot: You can one-shot most wood blocks. Bulk craft all shotgun ammo.

Sniper

• Damage: Weapons do 10% more damage when using a scope.
• Crippling Shot: Leg shots cripple all but the strongest enemies and have a chance to dismember.
• Head Shot: Head shots have a chance to stun and a greater chance to dismember.
• Quick Reload: Reload 10% faster with rifles.
• Controlled Breathing: Zooming uses 15% less stamina.
• Armor-Piercing Ammunition: Craft armor-piercing 7.62mm ammunition.
• Hollow Point Ammunition: Craft hollow point 7.62mm ammunition.
• Full Set Perk — Ghost: You can craft a ghillie suit. Bulk craft all 7.62 mm ammunition.

Spear Hunter

• Damage: You do 10% more damage with spears.
• Maintenance: Spears degrade 20% slower.
• Bleeding Damage: Spears have a 25% chance to cause bleeding damage.
• Kill Move: Power attacks do 50% more damage to downed targets.
• Rapid Strike: Increase attack speed by 10%.
• Penetrating Shaft: Penetrate multiple enemies.
• Deadly Combo: Hits scored in quick succession deal 10% more damage, up to 30% per hit.
• Full Set Perk — Primal Kill: Kills with spears refill your stamina.

Urban Combat

• Military Stealth Boots: Craft military stealth boots.
• Cigars: Craft cigars and look cool like a sexual tyrannosaurus.
• Sneaking: Sneaking over trash makes no sound.
• Jumping: Sneak landing makes less sound and sneak jump height is not reduced.
• Land Mines: Land mines won't detonate when stepped on.
• Armor Adrenaline Rush: Armor doesn't slow you down when in combat.
• Room Clearing: Take 5% less damage and deal 10% more damage when indoors.
• Full Set Perk — The Silencer: Silencers have no damage penalty.

Tech Junkie

• Damage: Robotic weapons do 10% more damage.
• Maintenance: Robotic weapons and stun batons degrade 20% slower.
• Armor-Piercing Robotic Turret Ammo: Craft armor-piercing robotic turret ammo.
• Robotic Turret Shells: Craft robotic turret shotgun shells.
• Stun Repulsor Mod: Craft Stun Repulsor mods.
• Charged Strike: Stun Baton charging.
• Hydraulics: Increase the fire rate of robotic weapons by 10%.
• Full Set Perk — Robotic Ammo Bulk Crafting: Bulk craft all robotic turret ammo.

Wasteland Treasures

• Honey: Adds a 5% chance to harvest honey from trees.
• Coffins: Harvest coffins for bones, jewelry, and precious gems.
• Acid: Adds a chance to harvest acid from cars and medical equipment.
• Water: Purify pure mineral water, the tastiest water in the wasteland.
• Door Knobs: Harvest brass from most doors.
• Weaving: Learn to weave plant fibers into cloth.
• Sinks: Harvest more lead and brass from sinks.
• Full Set Perk — Legendary Parts: Legendary parts are 3x more common in loot containers.