V2.6 EXP

/ Febbraio 26, 2026/ 7 Days to Die

Hello Survivors!

V2.6 Experimental is here with a group of fixes, tweaks, and gameplay changes.

Here are some of the highlights:

  • Dew Collectors now require jars as “fuel” to produce water.

  • Jars no longer require the crucible to be crafted.

  • The default jar refund chance is now set to 60%.

  • Zombie XP has been rebalanced based on type, HP, and Damage.

  • Added tougher biome spawn zombies to the snow and wasteland biomes.

Here is how you participate:

  1. Right click on the game in steam

  2. Click on properties

  3. Click the “betas” tab

  4. The drop down menu will have latest_experimental available <— you want THAT

  5. Select that and wait for the game to download

Continue reading below for more info!

Added

  • Discord friends’ sessions now appear in server browser’s friends tab

  • Replaced properties list for zombie xp values at the top of entityclasses.xml

  • Added Roaming sounds for animalChicken and animalChickenHostile

  • RWG town planner removes some connections between pairs of districts to increase the amount of T, L and Cap tiles

  • Radiated, charged and infernal mutated zombie’s ranged attacks now have increased distance, speed and different patterns

  • Enemy AI now play an alert sound when they run away from either an entity or being hurt

  • RWG conversion of one L tile to a Cap per district group unless the group would split

  • Stag and Doe now have roam and alert SFX

Changed

  • Removed the Bone Knife requirement from the Harvest Animals Challenge

  • Updated loot list parameters to include ignore_loot_abundance=”true” for construction crate, hidden stash, and buried treasure

  • Adjusted spawn groups for the snow biome to include Radiated, Charged, and Infernal Chuck zombie variants

  • Adjusted spawn groups for the wasteland biome to include Radiated, Charged, and Infernal Mutated zombie variants

  • Increased the snow biome gamestage_modifier from 2 to 3 and gamestage_bonus from 20 to 30

  • Increased the wasteland biome gamestage_modifier from 3 to 5 and gamestage_modifier from 30 to 50

  • Adjusted the wasteland weather with new hot and cold events

  • Refactored zombie xp progression based on zombie HP and Damage

  • Reduced block damage on zombieSteveCrawler and zombieMaleHazmat hands to align better with other zombies in their group

  • Adjusted various zombie HP values to align better with other zombies in their group

  • Increased player kill XP

  • Removed legacy “Boss” EntityDamage passives from Radiated Utility Worker and Radiated Businessman

  • Updated chuck hand variants with new boulder projectiles that have progressive entity and block damage

  • Updated loadingTipApiary to warn about closing the Apiary instead of when opening it

  • Dew Collector requires jars as a “fuel type” to produce water

  • Crafting jars no longer requires the crucible

  • Updated the hit mask override on chuck zombie hands from arrow to rocket to prevent boulders from passing through bars

  • Gyrocopter can now have 5 mod slots (requires a new gyro to be crafted)

  • PC/Mac/Linux now use an uncompressed texture for the road splat map for higher quality blending

  • Increased dire wolf and zombie bear hearing and sight ranges

  • Increased mutated zombie ranged attack damage

  • Bears can now fit through 1x2m openings

  • Snakes now play footstep sounds

  • Improved terrain blending where topsoil is removed

  • Disabled allharvest HarvestCount penalty on several melee weapons to allow basic resource harvesting such as plant fibers, wood, and stone

  • Updated harvest tags on several blocks for perkJunkMiner

  • Updated oreWoodHarvest tag to only be applied to wood, stone, ore, clay, and sand

  • Updated localization for armor perks to describe their loot boosted items

  • Separated the dew collector and apiary fuel windows in code and XUI

  • Dew Collector output now has 3 rows for a total of 9 slots

  • Replaced old buff names used in logic for Stage 2 storm buffs

  • Reduced completion requirements of several medical challenges to 5 – If the challenge cannot be redeemed, one additional cure will trigger the completion

Fixed

  • Paint rotation on baseboard in hospital_01

  • Switching Challenge tabs should no longer cause them to flicker

  • Large Quest Generators now display their smoke particles correctly

  • Localization keys for shapewedge60TipTrimQuarterLeft2Sided and shapewedge60TrimQuarterRight2Sided were flipped

  • Localization typo in some quest reward bundle descriptions

  • Removed debug logging of friend IDs

  • Vultures on a dedicated server would only attack once

  • ChangeBlocks could set the wrong neighbor block’s topsoil to broken

  • AI targeting range for nearest player was too short and inconsistent

  • Bear attack was hitting before animation hit

  • The spawner source was set after the entity was spawned in four cases

  • RWG mixer was using mountains instead of burntForest_mountains

  • Tagging issue that would prevent Legendary Parts from spawning when any armor perk was active

  • Apiary fuel is no longer lost when the apiary is picked up

  • Progression bar no longer resets if fuel is removed from collector class workstations

  • Shift-Click for “fuel” items in the collector class workstations is now working

  • Set the default jar refund rate to 60%

  • Floating platforms on growing trees are no longer possible

  • Issues with adding/removing vehicle storage mods and item loss

  • Large ragdoll forces no longer launches small animal corpses long distances

  • Sleepers had too short of a kill off timeout

  • Rogue Armor Set cowl would not show correctly