7 Days to Die has a feature called Skill Books that can grant players certain perks after reading them. These skill books can be found all over the game’s world and often help in learning or enhancing a certain skill. However, not all skill books are created equally and some of them are simply not worth the time and effort required in unlocking them.
This guide will tell you about the top 5 worst skill books in the game.
The Top 5 WORST PERKS
1. Treasure Hunter
This skill book reduces the treasure search radius by 1m for every 3 blocks that are dug up while allowing 30% more items to be found in treasures. While it does make treasure hunting more lucrative and easier, the problem is that it is a niche skill that is only useful for a handful of players.
Most players don’t spend the majority of their time digging treasures regardless of their playstyles as the maps do not offer loot frequently. Another problem is that in most treasure hunts, time is wasted on finding the treasure itself rather than digging for it.
While the skill book does help in doing buried supplies quests, you often get surrounded by zombies when engaged in those quests and dealing with them is much harder than looking for the supplies.
These quests only go till tier 3 which makes them less time efficient and lucrative in later stages of them.
2. Animal Tracker
The second skill book on the list is the Animal Tracker which is another perception perk that allows you to find the tracks of small animals like rabbits, snakes or chickens.
It requires 7 perceptions and has three ranks. The good thing about this perk is that it does help in finding those animals especially if you are not good at listening to the sounds of predatory animals.
However, the downside is that it costs three pairs of cranks and requires you to reach level 7 in a relatively weak skill tree just to unlock it. You also need to sneak in order to activate the perk which can be really annoying at times.
The method to trigger this perk is also pointless in that you can save your time and skill points just by looking around instead of stopping, sneaking and opening your map to find tracks of animals nearby.
It also doesn’t affect zombie animals which would make it somewhat useful in dealing with zombie dogs nearby. Overall, this skill book doesn’t offer any practical usage and falls more under the role-playing category for players with abundant time
3. The Infiltrator
The third skill book on the list is another perception perk called The Infiltrator which heightens your senses to reduce the damage taken from traps. It requires 7 perceptions to unlock and has three ranks in it. The problem with all the perception perks is that they have too many ranks requiring too much investment making them unviable for new players.
The skill book triggers land mines and loose board traps 2 seconds slower allowing you to navigate through traps safely and easily. It also reduces the damage taken from land mines by 50% while allowing you to pick them up. The good thing is that you can grab land mines and sell them for some extra bucks.
The problem is that the Urban Combat skill book offers similar resistance to land mines in a much more efficient manner which makes this skill more or less redundant.It costs no perks or attributes and is a relatively common reward obtained by completing quests or getting loot.
Even selling landmines won’t fetch you much money and you will be better served by the Salvage Operations perks which allow you to scrap a much larger variety of items with a higher value as opposed to landmines which are mostly found in the Wastelands.
The Salvage Operations perk also gives you XP while giving you supplies to craft new items. This makes the perk a much better investment as compared to the Infiltrator skill book.
4. Well Insulated
The fourth skill book on the list is Well Insulated which contains three ranks and requires 7 fortitude to unlock.
As the name suggests, this skill will insulate your character from severe weather to allow you to survive even in the harshest of climate conditions. You won’t be affected by the more severe category of weather effects.
The problem is that is very easy to counteract the threats posed by bad weather as you can simply eat food to increase your body temperature in cold weather. Food is pretty common and can be found everywhere even when you are lurking in the snow biome where food containers can be seen in abundance lying on the ground.
Similarly, when you are wandering in the desert, you can drink water to decrease your body temperature and water is also very common, especially in hotter biomes. The desert is covered in Yucca plants which can be converted into a drink to deal with the effects of rising heat.
This makes the Well Insulated skill book useless as food, water and clothes can be found in each and every biome without spending a lot of time.
You can build a campfire to deal with the effects of cold or jump into water or take cover inside a building if it is too hot. It is better to invest your three skill points into the Iron Gut ability which reduces the food and water consumption of your character thus helping you survive longer.
5. Pack Mule
Last but not least is the Pack Mule skill book which allows your character to carry 4 extra items without getting hindered on your movement.
This skill is basically redundant as you can use pocket mods as a better substitute. The 5 ranks of Pocket Mule are located under the Strength attribute which will free all the slots of your inventory and help you deal with encumbrance.
The problem with this mod is that Pocket mods are much more common to find unless you are playing on restricted loot settings. You can often find clothing pocket mod recipes in mailboxes and craft them in the first week itself.
Rank 4 and 5 of the Pack Mule will offer you six inventory slots which are completely useless as you can get them by using double clothing pocket mods on your jacket, top and legs.
Instead of investing your precious skill points on Pack Mule, you are better served by looting containers and finding triple clothing pocket mods to increase the size of your inventory.
That’s it, these are the top 5 worst perks in the game that you should avoid investing especially during the early stages of the game!
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