Hey Survivors, We are proud to announce that the Alpha 20 Streamer Weekend is finally here. We have partnered with over 200 streamers from 30 countries. The Alpha 20 Streamer Weekend event starts Friday, December 3rd starting at 12:00 pm CST through Sunday, December 5th. Many streamers broadcasting in several languages will be streaming all weekend and giving away Free 7 Days to Die Keys. Expect a public experimental build to follow sometime Monday afternoon, December 6th. Official Alpha 20 Streamer Weekend Participants List

Alpha 20 Official Release Notes

Alpha 20 is by far the largest content drop TFP has ever delivered. This is partly due to TFP nearly doubling the team size over the last two years and vastly improving our proprietary tools to improve the game and speed up new content creation. Alpha 20 takes some big leaps towards Gold with these major improvements:

• A brand-new version of Random Gen World creation with new cities, city tiles and a part system spawner. You will be blown away by it!
• Over 200 new POIs and updates to many of the older POIs. Over 550 Explorable locations total
• Navezgane has many city improvements, terrain improvements and new rural and wilderness communities
• Nearly 25 new HD characters with a couple with improved shaders
• 6 New weapons and 13 HD remakes with the addition of new primitive pipe weapons
• Overhauled shape menu with hundreds of new shapes organized and buildable from a simple frame with in-game, creative and level design support
• Block Placement Improvements
• We have added a Robotic Drone Companion to carry your extra gear, heal you and more
• Dynamic Imposter System renders accurate changes to POIs and player bases at far distances
• Rendering improvements with 100s of new PBR models
• Quest Improvements including new restore power night Quests
• AI Enemy Improvements including city spawning, ducking, obstacle attacks, head tracking and burst attacks.
• Feral Sense Game options for a completely new game experience
• Vehicle Improvements with coop passenger support and mods to improve and customize your Vehicles
• Loot Progression Improvements include a new Loot Stage System, Biome and Tiered POI loot bonuses and early game balance
• Improved dynamic music and ambient audio system with added new content
• Improved weather system with more distinct and varying weather
• Video Options for Anti-Aliasing - Temporal (TAA) and AA Sharpening have been added along with an auto detection system that will set your game settings to better match your hardwares capabilities.
• Animations have been improved from 1st person to 3rd person to provide a more immersive experience
• A new Dismemberment system has been integrated with some of the zombies
• Twitch Integration has been improved with many new commands, voting and more
• Modding support has been improved with better world editing, level editing, RWG and Server.XML settings and tools

Alpha 20 is not compatible with previous Alpha worlds or save game data. New Pregen-Maps have been created and can be used. We also advise that you delete the 7 Days save Game data folder before playing. TFP is extremely excited for this release. Its by far the biggest Alpha ever and is jam packed with new content, bug fixes, optimizations, and game balancing. Read on for more information!

Random World Generation

TFP is very proud and excited to bring a brand new Random World Generation System to Alpha 20. The System has been re-engineered from the ground up with a focus on generation speed, flexibility, quality visuals, believability, replay-ability, POI dispersion, Trader positions, and so much more. We took a more content-driven approach for POIs, City Tiles, and Stamps. Cities and roads are much more believable and detailed. Wilderness paths connect in a believable way to POIs. There are really too many changes to list but here are some of the main features included:

• New Districts which includes downtown, industrial, commercial, residential, rural, country town, wilderness, and country residential
• New RWG Tiles support city and town construction which includes tile variants of: Intersection, straight, corner, caps and T-sections with nearly 50 unique tiles.
• New stamps to improve and create unique terrain for every biome
• New stamps to support rivers and canyons
• New faster RWG creation supports 6k, 8k and 10k maps
• New town types: City, Town, Country Town and Ghost town. Custom townships can also be added.
• New Part Spawn Markers which add unique Prefab possibilities to tiles and POIs
• New Road exit markers that align POI driveways to the end of roads
• POI distribution has been improved to better use the over 550 unique POIs and nearly 50 city tiles that the game has to offer for nearly infinite replay value
• POIs except for wilderness have all been redone to to improve how they work with the new city tile system. Sizes include: Small 25 X 25 meters, Medium 42 X 42 meters, Large 60 x 60 meters, Extra large 100 x 100 sizes
• POI placement has been improved to account for each POIs overall performance cost and as a result, very heavy POIs will not be placed near each other which helps keep the game running better.
• 3 Brand new Pre-generated maps will be offered.
• XML support for modding in your own tiles, parts, unique town types, and more see Server.XML and Modding section below for more detail.
• New Random Gen Preview tool mix options to support tweaking custom maps to your liking changing many things including: Frequency of Towns, Frequency of Wilderness POIs, Frequency of Rivers, Craters, Cracks, and Lakes, Frequency of Plains, Hills, and Mountains, Global amount of Randomness

Locations

The TFP Level team doubled in size by late 2020. That paired with many improvements to the proprietary level tools, shape tools, and world tools have helped the POI team generate an enormous amount of new and updated content for Alpha 20. Here are just a few of the great things coming to Alpha 20:

• Over 175 Brand new explorable POIs
• Over 25 reimagined old POIs
• Over 550 Explorable locations
• Many Tier 3 and 4s have been added with some new and updated tier 5s
• Alpha 20 POI Tier breakdown includes:
• Tier 5 POIs - 7
• Tier 4 POIs - 29
• Tier 3 POIs - 52
• Tier 2 POIs - 102
• Tier 1 and Remnant POIs - 360
• There are over 200 new and overhauled POIs, too many to mention but some notable larger POIs include:
• Countrytown_business_05 - Butcher Petes (Overhauled Tier 4)
• Factory_03 ( New Tier 5)
• Apartment_brick_6_flr (Overhauled Tier 5)
• Apartment_01 (New Tier 4)
• Downtown_strip_05 (New Tier 4)
• Downtown_strip_07 (New Tier 4)
• Downtown_strip_09 (New Tier 3)
• Downtown_strip_10 (New Tier 3)
• Downtown_strip_11 (New Tier 4)
• Warehouse_01 (New Tier 4)
• Warehouse_03 (New Tier 4)
• Skyscraper_01 (Overhauled Tier 5)
• Skyscraper_02 (Overhauled Tier 5)
• Skyscraper_03 (Overhauled Tier 5)
• Skyscraper_04 (Overhauled Tier 4)
• Navezgane has gotten a little love with some new POIs added. Diersville, Departure, Gravestowne, and Perishton Updates. New suburban, rural and wilderness communities were added. Road and Terrain Updates.

Characters

Our character team has been busy overhauling and re-imagining all of the zombies and NPCs in HD. Nearly 25 new HD characters have been completed for Alpha 20 in fact all non player characters and enemies are now HD. There are also new improved character shaders for zombies, NPCs, radiated zombies and burnt zombies. The New HD zombies include:

• New HD Wight Zombie
• New HD Thug Zombie
• New HD Tom Clarke Zombie
• New HD Worker Zombie
• New HD Mechanic Zombie
• New HD Hazmat Zombie
• New HD Dog Zombie
• New HD Biker Zombie
• New HD Spider Zombie
• New HD Soldier Zombie
• New HD Lab Zombie
• New HD Cop Zombie
• New HD Tourist Zombie
• New HD Nurse Zombie
• New HD Lumberjack Zombie
• New HD Businessman Zombie
• New HD Mutant Zombie
• New HD Screamer Zombie
• New HD Stripper Zombie
• New HD Burnt Zombie
• New HD Trader Joel
• New HD Trader Rekt
• New HD Trader Hugh
• New HD Trader Bob

Weapons

Alpha 20 introduces a new line of pipe weapons along with an overhaul of several current weapons for a total of 6 new weapons and 13 upgraded HD remakes to further the look and feel of an apocalyptic environment. Pipe weapons are new early-game weapons easily crafted in your backpack, and only require basic ingredients like short iron pipes, wood, glue, and leather. Players will now have access to a Pipe Baton, Pipe Pistol, Pipe Shotgun, Pipe Rifle, and a Pipe Machine gun in earlier gameplay to be in tune with the new loot and level balancing. These weapons all have custom sounds and animations with variable mod slots similar to existing in-game weapons. Pipe weapons are easily repaired with short iron pipes. As part of weapon cleanup, the Blunderbuss was removed and replaced with the new Pipe Shotgun. A new Lever Action Rifle was added to round out and complete the existing rifle tier. The Lever Action Rifles firing speed and range make it a great gun for outdoor survival. This rifle also uses 7.62 mm rounds and has variable mod slots similar to existing in-game weapons. Existing weapon overhauls include new models, textures, and/or sounds for already favorite items like the AK-47, SMG, M60, .44 Magnum, Hunting Rifle, and the Rocket Launcher. These texture and model upgrades add some nice polish and align with the look and feel of other art upgrades throughout the game. In addition to model and texture updates, the Bows, Crossbows, and Compound Bow all received a damage increase. Arrow models received an update to complete the new look and feel of the bows.

Shape and Creative Menu

Building blocks have received a major overhaul. For starters, there are now over 1300 unique shapes to select from for every craftable material. Players can now craft 5 basic material helper blocks which are: Frames (OSB/Weak Wood texture), Wood, Cobblestone, Concrete and Steel. After crafting, equip them to the toolbelt and then use the radial menu (or shortcut keys Shift+R) to open the shape selection screen. This screen shows several shape categories that can then narrow down the search: Basic, Square, Round, Wedge, Poles, Stairs, Catwalks, Trim, Windows, Destruction, Construction, Deco and Letters For you modders out there, the shape menu brings with it an easier way to add new shapes to the game. Simply add the new shape definitions to shapes.xml and let the game fill in the materials for that shape at runtime. The new shapes are then automatically added to the material shape helpers in game. This feature also greatly reduces the amount of crafting recipes needed. The creative menu has also been overhauled with a new category system and look.

Stability Preview

Placing blocks has had several changes. The block preview now animates smoothly through the world and the shading is improved. The preview will also change color to indicate the effect of adding the block. Colors Include:

• Yellow - The block is stable. As the block becomes more yellow it means it is getting less stable
• Red - Placing the block would cause some type of collapse. Adding blocks to reinforce other parts of the structure may allow this block to then be placed without collapse
• Pink Placing would cause this block to fall as it does not have sufficient support

Robotic Drone Companion

The new Robotic Drone is a companion that gives the player extra storage and some enhanced end game features. The drones abilities can be augmented and enhanced by the player's intellect, but players can still acquire and use a Drone without perking into it. The Robotic drone is modded in the players inventory. Dyes are added to the cosmetic slot and mods to the modifier slot(s). Some of the Additional Mods and Enhancements to the Drone include:

• Robotic Drone Armor Plating Mod - Increases the Drones Defenses
• Robotic Drone Cargo Mod -Increases the Drones carrying capacity
• Robotic Drone Medic Mod - Gives the Drone the ability to heal the player
• Robotic Drone Moral Booster Mod - Player Stamina regen is increased by 10% when near the Drone
• Robotic Drone Headlamp Mod - Gives the Drone a headlight

Dynamic Imposters

We have added a brand new Dynamic Imposter System to the game which renders changes to Distant chunk POI meshes caused by players or zombies. Changes such as destroying a building, building your own base or adding to or modifying an existing building can now be appropriately displayed by the Dynamic Imposter System. Updated imposter meshes are automatically shared with new players who join the game. What does this mean for players? With this option turned on you can renovate existing POIs, fortify a whole town or build a castle on a hill top and see the changes from anywhere in the world.

• Depending on PC strength we have several game option settings that can be edited in serverconfig.xml
• DynamicMeshEnabled - Setting to true will enable the system
• DynamicMeshLandClaimOnly - Setting to true will make the system only active in player Land Claimed areas
• DynamicMeshLandClaimBuffer - Dynamic Mesh Land Claim Base chunk radius size
• DynamicMeshMaxItemCache - How many items can be processed concurrently, higher values use more RAM

Big Thanks to Danny Richardson from the 7 Days to Die modding community for working with TFP on this awesome new system!

Environment Art

The Environment Art and Shader Team have been improving much of the rendering tech and creating hundreds of new PBR environment models to enhance the world, POIs and overall game immersion. Improvements include:

• Terrain Shader - Updated for better quality and performance including improved roughness and specular shading modifications
• Foliage Shader - Updated for improved rendering effects like subsurface scattering in addition to physically based rendering and packed textures for performance
• Entity Tint Shader - This shader provides support for tinted color variations on models in addition to improving performance due to packed textures
• New Terrain Textures
• New Block Textures
• Lighting and Sky Improvements
• Meshes - Short plant meshes, like grass and cotton, have been greatly improved to generate more detail and much more variety of shapes with less mirroring. Mesh complexity now uses the grass quality setting which allows for less detail on lower end computers
• Biomes - Plant distribution has been improved and the forest has a new short grass sub biome. Grass placement on slopes has been improved as well
• Trees - Trees now have a root ball to seal holes at the base of the trunk
• Clouds - Improved blending of cloud layers and we now can keep cross blends for much more variety and to better match the weather system
• Lightning - Adjusted values, added a cloud area brightening effect and fixed a bug with the world not being lit
• Wind - The weather system's wind speed now changes the speed of plants blowing in the wind and we added wind gusts
• Along with all of the new POIs of alpha 20, there is plenty of new content to add to the visual immersion of the game.
• Cities are detailed to a whole new level, with props such as newspaper stands, mailboxes, street lights, parking meters, planters, operational manhole covers, traffic signals, new street signs as well as business signs, ATMs, Etc.
• Industrial locations are enhanced by new assets like new conveyor belt systems, construction site material stacks. Tarp fencing, etc.
• All new functioning and destructible doors such as cellar doors and shutters.
• More immersive destruction for the world youve come to love with a variety of new rubble piles.
• A new Mesh tinting system and shader bring you more color variations of new art content to further customize your creations.
• Hundreds of new and updated PBR meshes have been added to the game overall.

Quests

Questing improvements have been made all over the world in 7 Days To Die. Starter quests now have helpful on screen icons to show you where to find the required items. Weve decided to retire the challenge notes to allow focus on new quest types. Buried Supplies have been updated to increase the challenge. Weve also added a new tier 3 version of this quest type. Trader to Trader progression has changed. Each trader now has their own set of tiered quests that must be completed. Players can now navigate between those tiers when selecting a quest from the trader. Weve also added a new quest type, Restore Power. Restore Power quests are activated at night and require the player to re-establish power to the locations. Find the generators inside and activate them. Be careful as the generators may alert nearby zombies.

AI

The AI and spawning of enemies have gotten some great improvements including:

• Biome Spawning - Zombie spawning in biomes is now based on the types of buildings in the area, so industrial, commercial and downtown areas are more populated. These areas also spawn more challenging enemies in the harder biomes
• Ducking - Zombies can now duck down to help them not get stuck on obstacles
• Obstacle Attacks - Zombies now stand more reliably at the point of attack without sliding around
• Head Tracking - Added more variety with when and where they look
• Burst Attack - Added a new AOE burst attack, which is used by the new mutant zombie

Feral Sense Game Option

With standard settings Zombies have limited distances that they can hear and see you. The feral sense option allows you to greatly increase their hearing and seeing, which makes the game more challenging. This also makes the world seem more populated as zombies you may not have noticed will find you. Features include:

• Increases the range that all types of zombies can hear and see the player by over double the normal amounts
• Stealth still works, the zombies will just detect you more easily
• Game options are Off, Day, Night, All (Day and Night)

Vehicles

We have added mods, coloring and additional improvements and bug fixes to Vehicles. Mods improve different aspects of your vehicle like using less fuel. Any of the dyes you get during gameplay can be added to the cosmetic slot to tint the vehicles color. Mods

• Expanded Seating - Allows 2 riders on the minibike or motorcycle and 4 on the 4x4
• Fuel Saver - Your engine uses less gas
• Reserve Fuel Tank - Increases tank capacity
• Off Road Headlights - Brighter lights
• Super Charger - Increases acceleration

Colors - You can place dyes in the cosmetic slot to colorize parts of each vehicle Camera

• Tracking - Improved camera tracking and fixed some popping issues
• Zoom - Camera can now be zoomed in and out using the mouse wheel or gamepad

Fixes - Vehicle duplication or getting relocated to a new position in the world has been addressed along with better out of bounds checks

Loot

Loot Progression has been separated from Game Stage with its own Loot Stage system. Players will increase their loot stage similar to their game stage, but there are many bonuses that can add to it. The biome the player is in, the POI the player is looting, and even the container they are looking at can have a loot stage bonus. Loot stage will then boost the quality and/or the tier of items found. For example, adventurous players that explore the more difficult biomes and POIs will find iron tools or advanced weapons a little faster than those that stay in the pine forest. When it comes to biome bonuses, the progression is as follows:

• Pine Forest
• Desert
• Snow
• Wasteland

(NOTE: Burnt Forest in Navezgane is the same as the Desert) Loot has been adjusted to provide early game weapons and tools a chance to shine. This grants the player time to find and use a higher quality item before finding the next tier. Books have also been realigned to deliver players books like Spear Hunter and Archery earlier for the most benefit. Food, Drink, Medical, and Ammo Supplies have been adjusted to keep players on the hunt for more in places you would expect to find them. To bring back the fear of infection, items that cure it have been greatly reduced. There are also 5 new Tiered Loot chests that are placed according to the POI Tiers

Music

For the Dynamic music system In previous Alphas, our goal was to maximize the uniqueness of content by leveraging the power of combinations. Working around a theme, we could build complex musical compositions by layering loops on and pulling them off. These layers function as individual instruments do in standard compositions. By defining how a given layer would be used in a given configuration, and by sorting a number of interchangeable loops into these layers, we were able to get a very high number of unique combinations across all of our configurations. While this schema allows for a high degree of versatility in the way of content, it is not reactive to gameplay on the content level. That is where our new "vertical dynamism" comes into play. In A20 we have created a theme just for Bloodmoon. There is an ebb and flow to the intensity of combat during Bloodmoon, and we have revamped our threat level system to tap into it. Our new theme accounts for this, and the music now reacts in real-time to the intensity of Combat as if a conductor is watching your every move.

• New Bloodmoon Music with threat-responsive layering system
• Improved layering with added complexity for layered tracks
• Improved randomization
• Over 6.5 million combinations of tracks across all configurations
• New Threat-Responsive Ambient Audio System

Audio

The game audio keeps improving and the audio team has kept up with the needs creating new custom sounds for all the new content including:

• Twitch Sounds
• Custom sounds for all new pipe weapons
• New Door Sounds
• New game vent activation sounds (keys, buttons, etc.)
• Restore power quest sounds
• Custom sounds for new loot chests

Weather

The worlds weather system continues to improve with weather now being more distinctive and varying. Improvements include:

• Randomness - Improved calculations and shorter durations, so less likely to get stuck with the same weather
• Weather groups - Added grouping of values like fog, clouds, and precipitation to allow distinctive types of weather like foggy, raining, snowing or storming. Each biome now uses these groups for their own weather

Video Options

Several quality settings have been changed to better control the games rendering. Auto detection was added, which looks at your GPU to determine what quality preset seems best for your computer. The first time A20 is run it will reset the video options and a preset will be chosen. New Options Include:

• Anti-Aliasing - Temporal (TAA) is an added choice. It is an advanced rendering technique that smooths edges based on motion
• AA Sharpening - With TAA on, you can use the sharpening option to increase how strong edges look in the game

Animation

The Animation Team has been busy improving the overall animation quality of the game. Some of the animation improvements that have gone into Alpha 20 Include:

• Overall improvement of First and Third person Weapon hold, attack, power attack and idle animations
• Overall improvement of First and Third person Tool hold, attack, power attack and idle animations
• Better 3rd person blending of upper and lower body while walking, running, strafing and general movement while carrying weapons
• New Zombie dog animations
• New Jiggle Tech adds dynamic movement based motion for the following Zombies and Parts:
• Bloated Tourist - Stomach and overall body fat
• Cop - Stomach and overall body fat
• Big Mama - Stomach and overall body fat
• Lab Tech - Hair, body wounds, dangling hand
• Soldier - Torso body wounds and torn uniform
• Mutated Zombie - Acid bubbles on skin, including blended animation
• Screamer - Clothing, hair and movement of jaw and tongue

Dismemberment

Alpha 20 includes a preview of a new dismemberment feature to eventually replace the original system first introduced in Alpha 13. The new feature will allow zombies to have better-looking dismemberment effects, as well as unique effects per zombie. The initial release will include support added to a small number of zombies, with subsequent updates expanding support to all zombies.

Twitch

Twitch Integration has been improved in A20 with balance, new commands and a new voting system. Weve extended our point rewards for subscribing, gifting subs and raids. Weve also added spam delay to help keep chat cleaner and support for custom events. Voting introduces a new dynamic to the integration. Random polls are introduced, giving viewers options for new buffs and debuffs, attack hordes, and debuts brand new Boss Hordes! If the Vote Hordes eliminate the streamer, all voters receive a set reward. Custom Events have been added to allow the streamer to customize their experience when viewers interact. These are based on bits, subscriptions, gift subs, raids and channel point redemptions. These are defined in the twitch_events.xml. New features and commands include:

• New Twitch Voting Mode
• Progression mode has been improved with balance
• Many new commands include:
• #celebrate - Its a party and everyones a pinata.
• #dance_off - The Fun Pimps groove, and everyones invited.
• #silly - A silly command sounds silly.
• #reverse - Turns you around 180 degrees.
• #confuse - Flips the movement controls.
• #no_robo - No robotic help.
• #no_explosives - No explosive use.
• #no_vehicle - Vehicle use is painful.
• #no_safe - Safe zones are painful.
• #no_stealth - Bombs go off eliminating stealthy movement.
• #painting - You see the apocalypse as a work of art.
• #deafen - You cannot hear.
• #spawn_mutated - Spawns a Mutated Zombie
• #spawn_tourist - Spawns a Tourist Zombie
• Custom Events based on:
• Bit donation amounts
• Subscriptions based on months
• Number of gift subscriptions
• Raiding with defined numbers of viewers.
• Channel Point redemptions

Modding Tools

The Tools Team has been busy the past year improving proprietary tools to speed up internal development and continue to support the 7 Days thriving modding community. Here are just a few of the many tools and modding support improvements Alpha 20 has to offer. World Editor Improvements

• When placing a new prefab it is centered with its front side on the position you selected and are aligned with the ground level in that position
• While moving prefabs around they show a preview of their contents
• Moving prefabs becomes faster the farther the player is away from them, making it easier to move prefabs across bigger distances
• Placing/removing prefabs is now managed from the prefab browser known from the POI Editor
• Show prefab names on the POI selection boxes (can be toggled in the World Tools tab)
• Show info about the selected POI in the ESC menu
• Prefabs you are close to always show their orientation

POI Editor Improvements

• Allow highlighting all blocks of a certain type from the Level Tools 2 tab
• Allow restricting paint brush operations to blocks within the current selection box
• Add option to select the biome used for playtesting
• Debug mode and creative mode are enabled in playtesting by default
• ESC menu shows the quest tier of the current POI
• Allow rebinding the keys to change block density
• Added Paint Surface radial painting option to paint contiguous coplanar surfaces

RWG Preview and rwgmixer.xml

• XML support for modding in your own tiles, parts, unique town types, and more
• New Random Gen Preview tool mix options to support tweaking custom maps to your liking changing many things including:
• Frequency of Towns
• Frequency of Wilderness POIs
• Frequency of Rivers, Craters, Cracks, and Lakes
• Frequency of Plains, Hills, and Mountains
• Global amount of Randomness

Blocks.xml

• Added a command line argument -debugshapes to get output on which block material / shape
• combinations are created by the shape system
• Added console command placeblockshapes to easily place all variants of the shape / helper block you are holding
• Added property PlaceAsRandomRotation making blocks get placed in a random allowed rotation
• Added console command placeblockrotations to place the currently held block in all supported rotations
• Added property AllowedRotations to specify which rotations a block can be placed in

Modding

• Clients now allow loading mod DLLs the same way as on the dedicated server - as long as EAC is disabled
• HarmonyX is shipped with the game to allow patching game code at runtime. In combination with loading DLLs on clients patching game code files should no longer be necessary for almost all mods
• The mod code initialization call IModApi.InitMod is now passed in its own instance e.g. to get the mods base path
• Class names specified in XMLs now always support namespaces and not having to use any hard coded class name prefix (e.g. custom block classes do not have to start with Block in their name)
• LootContainer references are now based on names instead of numeral IDs, making collisions between mods less likely
• XUi controls and styles can be shared between the menu XUi and the in-game XUi XMLs
• The XUi pager now supports showing the max page number
• Added a new XUi dropdown box
• XML patch type names (like insertafter, set) are no longer case-sensitive
• XML loading and patching shows line numbers on most errors during loading/patching them
• Added better error messages when using set-patches

Server Administration and Multiplayer

To future-proof our game, including allowing us to use the latest anti-cheat and expanding to other platforms later on for future crossplay capabilities, we added Epic Online Services (EOS) to the game. For regular players this should not have any noticeable effect, you do NOT need an account on Epics platforms. EOS only knows your SteamID which is public anyway and matches that to an ID for EOS that is only valid for 7 Days to Die. The change for server administration is in the user IDs that are used to store data and reference players, i.e. the filenames of user files, IDs in the serveradmin.xml or console output / commands which now refer to the users EOS ID. Serverconfig.xml changes

• Changed default "WorldGenSize" from 4096 to 6144 to match in-game default
• Added "ZombieFeralSense"
• Changed default LootRespawnDays from 30 to 7 to match in-game default
• Added DynamicMesh options - see section about Dynamic Imposters for details
• Added Twitch options - see section about Twitch Integration Improvements for details
• Fixed the Server Terminal Window sometimes not showing any output

More change log info here

[ 2021-12-01 20:18:27 CET ] [ Original post ]