Learn by Doing v1

7 days to die learn by doing

Description

This mod changes progression to be something you feel, not something you read about in a book. No more being stuck behind an intrusive loot or magazine system that pulls you out of the game.

Instead, your survivor grows through what they actually do. Chop trees, break rocks, fight, harvest, craft, every action teaches you something. The more you play your way, the better you get at it.

It’s immersive, natural, and keeps you in the world instead of sending you off to hunt for the right book. Progression happens because of how you survive, not because of what you happen to loot.

How to use this mod?

When you log into your game craft the item “learn by doing system” and read it, then forget it and play the game.

FAQ.

Is this Serverside? – Yes, only the host needs to install this.

Will I have to restart my game to install this? – there might be some cases where bad things happen but 9/10 times it should be fine, short answer is no.

What does this mod actually effect? – how you learn those weird little magazine recipes, it doesn’t replace them, it just lets you earn them through gameplay rather than “I need to get better at farming, better go loot this T5 poi for books real quick” instead of.. yeno… farming?

Any books not covered by this mod? – Trap Books, but i’m more than happy to add a way to earn them, I’ll be honest I couldn’t think of a creative way to add this and didn’t want to add it for the sake of it.

Is this mod open to feedback for changes? – Yes, I wanted to make this mod to somewhat scratch the itch of people wanting older systems back without losing the polish and QOL TFP have added in recent versions.

Tested only on single player, 2.2+ and the most recent unstable version (2.3)

Download

DOWNLOAD (6 KB)

Credits: Mickkpewpew

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Richard Payne
Richard Payne
August 31, 2025 3:32 pm

A thought on traps progression: This may be beyond (a) your ability, (b) your interest, or (c) the games capabilities but the way I’d do this is to have a low level craftable trap that draws in wildlife. Animals trapped with this would increase your trap experience. I’d also add some more basic zombie traps that follow the same principle.

Mickkpewpew
Mickkpewpew
August 31, 2025 7:38 pm
Reply to  Richard Payne

100% doable and serverside, this is actually a fantastic idea, much appreciate your contribution and if I go with this i’ll credit you for the idea, thanks a million Richard

Ludy
Ludy
August 30, 2025 11:16 am

USING THIS MOD CAN I STILL FIND AND READ MAGAZINES IN THE NORMAL WAY TOO?

Mickkpewpew
Mickkpewpew
August 30, 2025 1:19 pm
Reply to  Ludy

Yes

Joseph
Joseph
August 30, 2025 7:25 am

Will you be doing something about the intelligence tree that finds more books and gets extra skill points?

Mickkpewpew
Mickkpewpew
August 30, 2025 1:22 pm
Reply to  Joseph

My goal with this mod isn’t to curate the game, intelligence is strong because it offers so much utility, this mod also doesn’t incorporate how you get extra books outside of the system I made, it doesn’t get influenced by anything either except progress using specific tools/weapons. hope this answers your question

Pride
Pride
August 30, 2025 4:29 am

For anyone that it doesn’t let them craft it, I typed “CM” into the command console and gave my self the note.

Btw I have literally 20 mods active in my game so I guarantee that is the reason why lol. I am trying to combine the “your end overhaul” mod and your learn by doing system. Lets see if I can make it work lol

Mickkpewpew
Mickkpewpew
August 30, 2025 1:25 pm
Reply to  Pride

it’s more than likely a load order situation, I don’t know what mods you have so I can’t really help but a little cheat would be rename my mod with Zzz at the start of the name, so it loads last. let me know how you get on

No allies
No allies
August 28, 2025 10:49 am

crazy how this was once a feature in the base game a while ago… now its being introduced as a mod? Its like the game going backwards

GrumpeeMonkee
GrumpeeMonkee
August 28, 2025 1:23 am

Mod is working great for leveling skill magazines, but makes me unable to read Volumes? Is this something intentional? I have no other mods affecting books or skills.

Mickkpewpew
Mickkpewpew
August 28, 2025 4:36 am
Reply to  GrumpeeMonkee

I tried to replicate your report with no success, can you tell me if it happened as soon as you installed the mod? did it happen over time, do you’ve other mods installed that call “twitch debuffs” as their own code? any more info you can give me will help.

GrumpeeMonkee
GrumpeeMonkee
August 28, 2025 10:26 am
Reply to  Mickkpewpew

It happened only after reading the letter item. It must be conflicting with something on my end that I am not awared of. I will try messing around in mod list and load order tonight and will keep you update.

GrumpeeMonkee
GrumpeeMonkee
August 28, 2025 9:44 pm
Reply to  Mickkpewpew

Ok, so It must have been a conflict with something else I’m unaware of, but I’ve put this mod at the end of my loading order and now it works just fine.

Mickkpewpew
Mickkpewpew
August 29, 2025 6:17 am
Reply to  GrumpeeMonkee

Love to hear it and thanks for taking the time to test it

purplespudz
purplespudz
August 27, 2025 8:20 pm

a restart is needed correct?

Mickkpewpew
Mickkpewpew
August 28, 2025 4:24 am
Reply to  purplespudz

you shouldn’t need to restart, make a backup of your save folder just incase though if you try adding it to an existing world

Taffy
Taffy
August 27, 2025 7:51 pm

You should change how getting work station books work, using a forgetting elixir and just re spending all your skill points lets you max out workstations super fast. It should be maybe using workstations?

Mickkpewpew
Mickkpewpew
August 28, 2025 4:23 am
Reply to  Taffy

oh I hadn’t considered that… hmm i’ll have to find a way to fix that, yea the problem is there’s nothing in the game that checks if you’re inside a workbench or not, really appreciate that feedback I missed that one in testing haha

Taffy
Taffy
August 27, 2025 6:51 pm

How does armor work with this?

Mickkpewpew
Mickkpewpew
August 28, 2025 4:41 am
Reply to  Taffy

originally I had it as “onEnterCombat” but TFP code goes in and out of that state for each zombie (which is fine) but realizing that I changed it to a flat number of kills, a couple of them might change going forward as there’s a lot more testers than just me now that it’s public and people are wild at finding things I wouldn’t even think of.