One of the most useful basic resources in 7 Days to Die is clay. Having a good source of clay is important as you’ll need it to craft one of the most important early game crafting stations, the forge. Clay, has a lot of other uses in the game which will be explained later in the post. We’ll cover what you need to get clay, what is the best way to get it and talk about some of the things you need clay for.
How to Get Clay in 7 Days to Die
Getting clay is one of the easiest things you can do in 7 Days to Die. To get clay, simply look at the ground in any biome in the game and destroy the ground. I personally recommend using a shovel in order to break the ground and get clay, but it is possible to hit the ground with your bare hands to get clay as you can see in the image below.
As you can see in the image above, when hitting the ground even with bare hands the player can get clay from the soil. Along with plant fibers, clay is one of the resources gathered when digging on grassy soil. If you are in the desert, you will get clay and sand when breaking down the ground. To make the most out of your clay hunting experience, I personally recommend getting yourself a shovel.
Getting Clay using a Shovel
As you would expect, using the shovel to dig in the ground makes the process a lot faster and has the player yielding more resources for their efforts. Every time you hit the ground with the shovel in 7 Days to Die you will get 3-5 units of clay. Once the piece of dirt is destroyed, you will get a further 10 or so clay. Not a bad effort for a few shovel loads.
As you can see in the image above, the character managed to get 38 units of clay in one hit. This is all just using a stone shovel as well. A stone shovel is definitely good enough to dig up the dirt and get some clay for your crafting purposes.
Crafting a Stone Shovel
In order to get clay, you’re probably going to want to craft your very own shovel. luckily, there is a stone version of the shovel so you won’t have to worry about smelting up any metal just yet. You can crft a shovel without any kind of workbench or anything.
You will need three different types of materials to craft a shovel:
- Small Stone: Found on the ground and picked up using the interaction button
- Plant Fibers: Found on the ground as tall grassy plants. Also found by destroying soil
- Wood: Obtained by hitting trees with tools or bare hands
As you can see from the items list above, crafting a stone shovel is pretty easy. All of the resources are pretty easy to obtain even at the start of the game when you don’t have anything. Once you have all of the item, open up the crafting menu and just type shovel into the search bar at the top of the menu.
You should see the shovel in the list. Click on the stone shovel and select the option on the left of the small menu which reads Craft or alternatively just press the W key when you have all of the items needed to craft the shovel.
What is Clay Used For?
Clay is one of the most useful starting resources in the game. At some point in the game, everyone is going to have to find clay in order to progress. Because of the fact you need 60 Clay Soil to build the forge, among other things, means that without first obtaining soil, the player will never be able to smelt metals down in order to make advanced ingredients.
There are a few other recipes that require clay in order to craft them in 7 Days to Die. For example, the player will need clay and rocks in order to craft walls and floors made from cobblestone. Funnily enough clay is one of the most versatile ingredients in 7 Days to Die. You can use clay to make dirt blocks, farming blocks where food and plants can be grown, the indoor potted plant furniture item and even Breaching Slugs which are used as ammunition in the shotgun.
Clay is a very versatile crafting material that the player will have a great time crafting with once they have found some. I hope this guide has helped you find all the clay you need whilst playing 7 Days to Die whether you’re playing on PS4, Xbox or PC. Until next time!
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