The Loot Lounge — Season 1 Survivor's Guide

⚠️ This is the SEASON 1 guide, and it is out of date

It describes the server as it ran in July 2026. Season 2 is a different server, and several things below are now simply wrong:

• AEC is gone. The whole AEC boss and quest ladder was removed for Season 2 and replaced with our own content. Every mention of AEC tiers, tokens and contracts below is Season 1 only.
• There is PvP now. This guide says the server is PvE-only. Season 2 has The Pit and contested turfs.
• New map, new economy. TLL Chips, the Cashier's Cage and House Contracts did not exist when this was written.

Read Season 2 Is Live instead, and Patch 2.0 for what has changed since.

Everything below is kept as a record of Season 1.

---

Everything you need to understand how this server works: leveling, unlocks, the economy, quests, bosses, and the endgame. Bookmark it — you will come back to it.

The server runs 7 Days to Die 3.0 with Project Z 3.0, AEC AIO Boss Extreme Edition, AEC Endgame Overhaul, and International Market, tuned and balanced to run together.

---

GETTING STARTED

Your starter kit. Every new survivor spawns with a free bundle: a bicycle, a Quality 5 pistol with a suppressor, flashlight, and 2x scope, 1,500 rounds of 9mm, a stack of meds (first aid kits, bandages, painkillers, splints), food and drink, repair kits, and a torch. You are not starting from nothing.

Your first five minutes:

1. Open chat and type /tp — your nearest trader is already unlocked. Teleport there.
2. Do the opening trader quest. It starts both quest lines below.
3. Set your home teleport near your bedroll: /tp home set
4. Press ESC any time — the server panel shows live server status, the rules, and every command.

Two quest lines start automatically:

• Project Z intro notes — you spawn with a note in your inventory. Read it. Each note leads to the next.
• AEC tutorial — finishing the opening trader quest hands you the first AEC Tutorial note. It is an 11-chapter chain that walks you through tokens, contracts, mutators, and boss hunts, paying XP the whole way (12,000 XP plus 2,500 Dukes at the finale).

---

CHAT COMMANDS

Teleport rules: 600-second shared cooldown, no teleporting for 30 seconds after taking damage, and /fav and /tp home are disabled on Blood Moon day. Undiscovered traders show as "???" until you walk in once on foot.

---

SERVER BASICS

(Season 2 note: the difficulty, day length, trader hours and PvP rules above have all changed. See Season 2 Is Live.)

---

SURVIVAL IS DIFFERENT HERE

Project Z adds three meters that vanilla players have never managed. Ignore them and you will wonder why your character feels terrible.

• Strength Reserve (fatigue). Drains as you exert yourself. Low reserve costs stamina regen, mobility, and carry weight — and near zero, sprinting or jumping can knock you flat. Recover with rest, beds, and food.
• Stress. Drops at night and around enemies, recovers in daylight when nothing is near. Low stress means less melee damage, worse loot quality, more weapon sway, and faster hunger. Alcohol, candy, kills, and a good bed bring it back.
• Hygiene. Get dirty and wounds heal slower, buffs fade faster, and infection chance from hits climbs up to +50%. Wash in water or use wipes.

Also new to you:

• Radiation. Elite and boss zombies feed radiation into you with every hit — so does the wasteland. It stacks into Radiation Sickness: less damage resist, slower movement, faster gear decay. Carry ANTIRAD.
• Frostbite stacks in the cold, up to brutal attack-speed and HP penalties. Dress for the biome.
• Your bed matters. Better beds restore fatigue and stress faster.
• Overeating and starving both have body-composition consequences. Yes, really.
• Nights are dark. Genuinely dark. Your starter scope helps; bring a light.

---

LEVELING AND SKILLS

Max level is 5000. The first 100 levels feel normal; past level 250 each level costs a flat ~2.1M XP — the long game is real.

You have five skill areas:

1. Attributes and perks — vanilla system, 1 skill point per level.
2. Master Skills — Project Z's crafting mastery. These do NOT use skill points: find and read Master Skill Magazines to level them. They gate all the top crafting (see the unlock ladder).
3. Passive Skills — level up by doing: mine to mine better, run to run better.
4. Perfection — 10 ranks costing skill points; each rank improves your trader buy and sell prices and opens the advanced perk trees behind it (resource gathering, armor set bonuses, self development, and the expensive endgame Superiority tree).
5. Self Traits — no points at all. Use a Reset Self Traits book to roll personal traits, then train the good ones by playing (drive to level Schumacher, read to level Genius) and shed the bad ones through exposure.

Note: the "AEC Low/High Tier Access" entries in the skill menu are automatic progress trackers, not perks. You cannot and do not need to buy them — they advance on their own and show which quest tiers your traders offer.

---

THE UNLOCK LADDER — WHEN STUFF OPENS UP

Gear power is deliberately tied to your progression. Here is the honest map:

Gamestage gates the loot side. Your gamestage is roughly (level + days survived) x 1.2 — it grows as you live and drops a little when you die. Vehicle contract drops open at gamestage ~30 (motorcycle), ~88 (4x4), ~146 (gyrocopter). Boss crates start rolling Unique weapons around gamestage 88 and Legendary weapons around 146.

Party warning: gamestage blends in a group. Partying with a much higher-level player raises the whole group's gamestage — tougher spawns and higher-tier loot rolls for everyone, including you. Squad up knowingly.

Master Skills still apply on top. Level 150 alone does not craft a Gaus — you also need the rifle mastery magazines. Both gates, always.

---

THE ECONOMY

There are four things that matter: Dukes, zombie ears, market coins, and AEC tokens.

Dukes — normal trader money. Earned from selling, trader quests, AEC quests (100 up to 7,500 per clear), and boss kills (roughly 1,100–1,700 from a boss corpse, several thousand from the big ones).

Zombie ears — the raw material of the market economy. Butcher zombie corpses with a knife or butcher tool: 2 ears each, with Feral, Radiated, Charged, and Infernal ears worth progressively more. Corpses despawn about 90–120 seconds after death — loot the bodies fast after a fight.

Market coins — the International Market currency. The chain works like this:

1. Build an International Market terminal — cheap, no level gate: 1 car battery, 5 electrical parts, 5 forged iron.
2. Trade ears for battery packs at the terminal.
3. Find a Connexion Card in the world (chests, safes, backpacks — they cannot be crafted).
4. Feed batteries plus your card into a Crypto Miner to mint coins.
5. Spend coins on the market's 18,000+ item catalog: ammo, guns up to Q6, resources, solar gear, building blocks — and vehicles: minibike ~2,800, motorcycle ~6,700, 4x4 ~10,700, gyrocopter ~12,400.

Market purchases arrive by airdrop quest: buy the item, place the signal, defend the drop zone from a small wave, and collect your crate — with bonus XP.

Passive Crypto Miners exist too: placeable rigs that generate coins or Dukes on a cycle. They are priced in Research Papers (bought with coins) — a real investment that pays off slowly.

AEC Tokens — earned only from the AEC quest ladder, spent only at the AEC Extreme Mod Crafting Table on Mutator mods: the stacking weapon/armor/tool upgrades that carry you through the higher tiers. No shortcut — the ladder is the only source.

The Black Market — the back-room terminal the traders pretend does not exist. Unlocks at level 150: build it for 20,000 coins plus steel and parts. Sells what the regular market will not: the SuperCharger, top-end crafting accelerators, Quality 6 Assassin armor, 8x scopes, suppressors, HE rockets.

Vending machines are disabled on this server — the market IS the player economy.

---

QUESTS

Vanilla trader tiers work as normal — complete tier 5 to open the good stuff below.

Project Z contract notes. Themed stores hide readable contracts in their loot: vehicle contracts at gas stations, medicine contracts at Pop-N-Pills, food at Shamway, and so on. Each is a repeatable kill-contract with a 4-choice reward. Vehicle contracts pay out actual vehicle parts — and they are gamestage-gated, so no day-1 gyrocopters.

The AEC quest ladder (T00–T15). The heart of progression. Trader clear-quests where T-number = how nasty the zombies are (T05 Veteran up to T15 Mythic — which hit about ten times harder) and A-number = POI size (A1 cabin to A5 skyscraper). Each clear pays XP (1,000 up to 750,000), Dukes, loot picks, and that tier's tokens. A new tier unlocks roughly every 15 levels, and you keep every tier below it — the crafting ladder consumes low-tier tokens forever, so they never go to waste. You can hold one copy of each contract at a time.

Boss calls. Craft a boss-call item at the Project Z Radio Station, place the bait, and Bull, Shocker, Veteran, or the Carrier comes to you.

Expeditions. Endgame money-sink: assemble a 50,000-Duke expedition with guns, ammo, and food, dispatch it, and wait for it to come back with reward crates — or not.

---

BOSSES

The Huntmaster. Craft an AEC Contract Relay (or buy one from a trader), place it, activate it — and the Huntmaster arrives, selling 25–50 boss contracts, restocked daily. His catalog is star-rated 1 through 9 and grows with your gamestage.

Trader boss contracts appear in the quest list from level 50, up to your star ceiling (rising to 9-star by level ~145). Up to 30 show at a time, rotating daily — if the one you want is missing, check back tomorrow.

The roster is deep. AEC brings Doomlord, the Witch, Siren Head, Dumdum, the Sheriff, Electric Demon, Hammer Guardian, Ghost, the Archer, and dozens more, in Hunt, Siege, Patrol, multi-boss, and 100-wave endless-challenge formats. Project Z adds its own line — MAJOR through ALEX and BIBA, the Devourer and Bear Daddy, up to Bull, Shocker, Veteran, Ancient Yeti, the Z-Boss Carrier, and the apex ULTRA BOSS PROJECT Z.

What bosses pay: big XP, Dukes, boss loot bags, trophy bundles (boss hearts are worth a fortune), mutator heads for crafting, and reward crates with real odds on Legendary and Unique weapons — gamestage-curved, so the top rolls come when you have earned them.

The Nemesis system. Thirty-plus NAMED bosses live permanently in the world — "GRIMTOOTH the Butcher" and friends. They hold territory, migrate every few hours, fight each other for rank, and hold grudges: kill one and it may come hunting YOU personally. Each nemesis dies for good after a few defeats, and a new name takes its slot.

The world fights back. Every 1–2 hours a world event fires somewhere: boss invasions in the wilderness, mega hordes, ghost hours after dark, hazard surges. Killing a lot of zombies in one area builds local heat — at 70% you get a warning, at 100% a boss walks in with an escort. Storms make everything one tier meaner. New players under gamestage 100 are protected from being directly targeted, and bosses will not spawn within 100 meters of your land claim — your base is your castle.

Biome danger ladder: Forest is capped and safe at any gamestage — no random monsters ten tiers above you. Desert is a step up, burnt forest and snow above that, and the wasteland is uncapped: the full elite and boss roster, the best farming, the best drops. Elites and bosses mix into every biome except forest from early-mid game onward.

---

THE ENDGAME LOOP

1. Clear vanilla tier 5 → the AEC T05 ladder opens.
2. Run contracts → tokens and Dukes → craft Mutator mods → survive higher tiers.
3. Level 50+: boss contracts appear. Build a Contract Relay, meet the Huntmaster.
4. Farm elites and bosses outside the forest: mutation samples, ears, boss crates, Legendary and Unique gear.
5. Gamestage 600+: Mythic-grade zombies take over the wasteland and blood moons. The Ultra Boss starts appearing. Your nemeses know your name.
6. Gamestage 250+: buy the All-In-One Hunt — ten boss pairs, twenty bosses, back to back, on your position. 150,000 XP and a reward airdrop. Repeatable, if you dare.
7. Level 150: full T15 ladder, 9-star contracts, everything unlocked. Now it is just you against the curve.

---

QUICK REFERENCE

• 10 trader quests count per day · 30 boss contracts shown, rotates daily
• One active copy of each AEC contract · Huntmaster restocks daily
• Corpses last ~90–120s — butcher fast · Teleport cooldown 600s
• Traders: 5:00–23:00 daily, 24h Fri/Sat · Blood moon every 7 days
• Forest = safe biome, wasteland = endgame · Party = shared gamestage

Track your kills, deaths, playtime, and ranking live at thelootlounge.com → Rankings. See you out there.