Darker nights. Thicker fog. Dread that climbs while you are alone in the pines. Classes, farms, dogs, war wagons and something tall between the trees. Survive the dark.
84Wiki articles
6Hollow classes
7Difficulties
58Survival tips
9Overhaul switches
Darker nights. Thicker fog. Dread that climbs while you are alone in the pines. Classes, farms, dogs, war wagons and something tall between the trees. Survive the dark.
The same guide you read in game, from the first night to the Raider Bus. Pick a card.
The Hollow is a harder 7 Days to Die: tougher zombies, hungrier survivors and new things in the dark. The first days follow a short story chain, "First Night in The Hollow", on the Challenges page.
Start hereSwitch the overhaul systems on or off for this PC: every world you host or play alone.
SurvivalNights are darker, fog sits a little thicker and every biome has new weathers.
SurvivalSome animal bites carry rabies, some carry venom. Both get worse in stages if left alone.
SurvivalFish lakes and rivers with the two-handed Hollow rod for catfish, perch, pike and salmon. Play the fish on the line to land it, and read Angler's Almanac to get better at it.
ThreatsNew hunters roam The Hollow, each with a home and an hour. They get tougher as your gamestage climbs.
ThreatsA director watches every player. At night, alone, in the wilds or near Hollow creatures your dread rises and strange things start to happen.
Skills & progressBounty quests at tier 2 to 3 for burnt packs, alphas and the Wendigo.
Base & homesteadCrops can fall sick, need water and draw the dead at night. Eleven new crops join corn, potato and pumpkin.
Base & homesteadKeep chickens, cows, sheep, pigs and goats behind your walls for milk, eggs, wool and meat.
Base & homesteadA dog follows you, fights what attacks you, barks when the dead come close and grows stronger with every kill. Seven breeds: Shepherd, Husky, Black and Tan, Farm Collie, Black Lab, Wolfhound and Mutt.
Base & homesteadA powered turret with an M134 minigun on the auto turret tripod: a storm of small 9mm rounds that has to stop and cool off when the barrels overheat.
VehiclesThe old minibike from the early days, rebuilt: rusty red tube frame, duct-taped seat and fat little tires. Its kits bolt real parts on, including a sidecar that carries a passenger.
VehiclesA light electric bicycle: a hub motor in the back wheel, a battery in the frame and a little gauge on the top tube. With charge it hums along a bit faster than a minibike; when the battery is flat you simply pedal it.
VehiclesA monobike: one huge wheel with you sitting inside it. Satin black, red rim, fast, and exactly as stable as it sounds.
VehiclesA post-apocalyptic motorcycle on the vanilla bike frame: antler bars, a spiked front and a jerrycan on the back. A bit more grunt and a bigger tank than the stock motorcycle.
VehiclesThe old 4x4 from the early days, rebuilt: an open roll-cage pickup with a spiked ram, a lamp rack over the windscreen, twin stacks and a spare in the bed. Light, quick and loud.
VehiclesA four-door off-roader on the 4x4 frame, a little lighter than the truck. Its own kits show on it as real parts, and dyes repaint its body.
VehiclesA lifted crew-cab pickup on the 4x4 frame, rebuilt with parts off the Trail Rig: its winch bumper and bull bar up front and its big mud tires. It has an open bed, the Trail Rig kits show on it as real parts, and dyes repaint its body.
VehiclesAn angular stainless pickup on the 4x4 frame that runs on a battery, not gas. Weathered steel panels, mud tires, welded steel bumpers and a rear wing; it is almost silent and pulls hard off the line. Its own kits bolt real armour and gear onto it, and dyes paint its body.
VehiclesThe wrecked army trucks you pass on every road, restored: six wheels, olive drab, an open bed and the biggest hold of any ground vehicle.
VehiclesA rusted bus cut down into a raider wagon: caged windows, barbed wire, a ram plough on the front and a machine gun on a roof ring. It carries five.
VehiclesA rusted two-wheeled dump cart you push on foot: thirty slots of storage on wheels, long before any bike.
VehiclesA four-wheel-drive quad on big mud tyres for two: slower than a motorcycle on the road, but it climbs and does not tip.
VehiclesA small skid-steer loader that digs. Drive its bucket into a hill or a mountain and it cuts a passage it fits through; everything it digs goes into its own storage.
VehiclesA front-deck riding mower. It cuts tall grass into plant fibers as you drive, and it does the same to the legs of anything standing in the way.
VehiclesA one-seat electric flyer: four guarded props on a tube cage with carbon fairings. Quick and nimble, it runs on its battery instead of gas, and the Hollow Charging Station fills it back up from your power grid.
VehiclesA tandem-rotor heavy transport helicopter. Its bay takes a 4x4 and a couple of motorcycles: drive them up the rear ramp, close it, and everything inside flies with you.
Start hereIt started as a fever in Diersville. Three weeks later the dead were walking the interstate and the Guard stopped answering the radio. When the outbreak reached the river, the Guard drew a fire line and burned the forest to hold it. It held nothing. The ash still runs for miles, and the things that walk it were never stopped by flame.
Start hereA round minimap sits top right, the NOISE / NERVE / SCENT row above your bars, and the windows wear the Hollow theme. Both hide while you are dead.
Start hereYour toolbelt has 14 slots instead of 10, so more weapons, tools, meds and food stay one key away.
Start hereWeapons, tools and armour have a quality from 7 to 600 instead of 6 tiers, and your guns and tools grow stronger the more you kill with them.
Start hereTraders hand out work on a job board and sell from a card shop. The more jobs you finish for a trader, the higher your standing with them: harder jobs and better prices.
Start hereTrader work runs to tier X, and some jobs come with rules of their own. A job can also carry a condition for the week: more danger for more pay. The job board shows all of it before you accept.
Start herePlay The Hollow in part of your screen and keep the rest for something else, without fighting the game's own video settings.
SurvivalTwo things the Hollow watches on you, shown in the NOISE / NERVE / SCENT row above your health bars. Nerve is how steady you are. Scent is what the dead can smell on you, and it drifts with the wind.
SurvivalWhen your nerve cracks, your mind plays tricks. Let it break all the way and the world thins: the Thin Veil, where some of what you see is real.
SurvivalWhat you eat matters, food goes bad, and a powered fridge is worth building. Eat across all four food groups and you are rewarded; live on one thing and you slow down.
SurvivalThe NOISE bar (first of the three bars above health and food) shows how loud you are: the same number zombies hear.
SurvivalThree things make the Hollow feel like a place: a real ground fog that pools in low ground, rain that soaks the world, and nights that are properly dark.
SurvivalLight indoors behaves like light: the torches, candles and lamps around you cast real shadows, the room throws a little of their glow back, and flames move.
SurvivalThe ground under your feet is rebuilt from high-quality photo scans: forest floor, dirt, burnt ground, the desert floor, snow, gravel and stone cliffs.
SurvivalThe wrecked vehicles along the roads are sharper up close, and no two rows of them wear the same.
SurvivalDew collectors fill only while it rains.
SurvivalSafes, gun safes, hardened chests, ATMs and police cars open with the DSD lockpick instead of a timer: a real lock, a bobby pin and a screwdriver. Padlocks have a wide sweet spot, safes a tighter one, vaults a hair-thin one.
SurvivalClear every sleeper room in a building and it is marked on your map with a red tick, so you never walk back into a place you already emptied.
SurvivalSupply crates land with a siren wailing. The noise draws the dead: get there first, and be ready.
ThreatsZombies from the old days walk again, and the ordinary dead no longer all dress alike.
ThreatsThe Heart under the Ashgrove Annex does more than raise the dead. Where its black roots stay in a body long enough, they rewrite it. Survivors call them the Special Infected: eight strains, each with one ability, a tell you can learn to spot, and a way to beat it. They were people once; the Heart remade them. (Rift demons are something else: they come through from outside.)
ThreatsHordes in The Hollow grow with you. Blood moons and wandering hordes start a little bigger than vanilla and climb with your game stage, so the late game is a real siege. Your difficulty and the HORDES tab in Hollow Settings set how hard.
ThreatsThe late game comes for your base, not just for you. Screamers bring worse things, demons go for your power, Juggernauts break walls, and blood moons stop coming from one direction.
ThreatsThe Hollow has more of the dead out in the world than vanilla, and the worst places are much worse.
ThreatsThe Ashgrove dig went past the Heart and cut into a wound in the world. What climbs out is Hollow-born: demons that grow with you. The wound feeds on fear, so it opens wider as the days go by, widest on dread nights and under the blood moon. Every demon has a tell before its special attack: learn them.
ThreatsThe thing at the bottom of the Rift, 3.6 m of burning hide. The endgame fight: it will cost stacks of your best ammo and every med you carry, and it gets tougher with every extra player and with your game stage.
ThreatsHow the dead come apart in The Hollow: what your weapon does to a body, and what each creature bleeds.
Skills & progressThe Skills page replaces the vanilla perks. You pick one of six classes and grow its tree with skill points; Legends, after six mastered classes, is bought with Hollow Marks.
Skills & progressOne page that tracks every crafting magazine series, every book series and the schematics you know.
Skills & progressThe Challenges page is a web: one tab per category, every group an arm, every challenge a sigil on it.
Skills & progressEvery gun counts your zombie kills and every tool counts blocks harvested, destroyed, upgraded or repaired. Thresholds unlock camos you paint on at the Mastery Bench.
Skills & progressSeventeen modern guns rebuilt from scavenged parts, each with its own model, sounds and reload. They sit beside the vanilla guns: same ammo, same perks, same magazine series.
Skills & progressSmall keychain charms that clip onto the left side of any gun, bow, crossbow or launcher and swing as you walk, turn, aim, reload and shoot. Fifteen to collect, purely cosmetic. Each one is earned with a feat.
Gear & craftingDuskiron is the metal past steel: a violet-black ore found in the burnt forest and the wasteland, smelted only in the Hollow Foundry and worked into class armor with its own powers.
Gear & craftingTwenty-four new weapon and armor mods, and four Hollow Cores for the end game. All are built at the workbench once a magazine series teaches them.
Gear & craftingEnd-game ammunition tipped with Duskiron, one kind for each kind of threat, and a machine that presses every round in the game faster than a workbench.
Gear & craftingThe OG blunderbuss is back: a flared muzzle-loader that fires a sack of shot, with the old reload: powder from the paper bag, the ramrod, then a cap on the nipple.
Gear & craftingHome-made throwables for when the dead get too close: the Tin Can Grenade, crude, loud and cheap.
Gear & craftingChange your face, hair and beard at a Barber Mirror, and your outfit looks at a Wardrobe.
Base & homesteadFences, railings, bars, walls, plates and pipes go down a whole line at a time: hold place, drag, let go.
Base & homesteadSolar output follows the sun and the weather, panels get dirty, and your base has one power grid you can open.
Base & homesteadWall and ceiling cameras that watch your base, a Security Laptop that runs them, and monitors that show any camera live, or cycle through the ones you pick.
Base & homesteadThe old log spikes are back: a sharpened log that stands a full block tall, hurts whatever walks into it and outlasts the small spike traps by a long way. You know how to make them from day one.
Base & homesteadThe building tier past steel. Duskiron Steel blocks and Duskiron doors take far more punishment, and you get there the vanilla way: by upgrading what you already built.
Base & homesteadPowered neon panels and tubes for your base. Every lamp has its own colour, brightness and effect, and you change them in the lamp itself whenever you like.
Base & homesteadRestored arcade cabinets with six games nobody remembers making. Play them for a high score, or stand behind a friend and watch on the cabinet screen.
Base & homesteadTwenty old posters from the Hollow: warnings, ads and wanted notices. Rare finds.
VehiclesEvery car and bike gets a round-gauge HUD, cruise control, nitro, seat switching, passengers who can shoot and a car radio that plays internet stations. The keys show as key images on the HUD.
VehiclesROAD (the tan card on the Skills page) is a driving tree every class can learn with skill points. It works on whatever you drive: the skills of the driver count.
VehiclesThree Hollow vehicles run on a battery instead of gas: the Hollow Volt Bike, the Hollow Razorback and the Hollow Wasp. They all charge at a Hollow Charging Station wired to your power grid.
Bikes, war wagons, work machines and things that fly. Every one with its own kits.
A tandem-rotor heavy transport helicopter. Its bay takes a 4x4 and a couple of motorcycles: drive them up the rear ramp, close it, and everything inside flies with you.
A one-seat electric flyer: four guarded props on a tube cage with carbon fairings. Quick and nimble, it runs on its battery instead of gas, and the Hollow Charging Station fills it back up from your power grid.
An angular stainless pickup on the 4x4 frame that runs on a battery, not gas. Weathered steel panels, mud tires, welded steel bumpers and a rear wing; it is almost silent and pulls hard off the line. Its own kits bolt real armour and gear onto it, and dyes paint its body.
A rusted bus cut down into a raider wagon: caged windows, barbed wire, a ram plough on the front and a machine gun on a roof ring. It carries five.
The wrecked army trucks you pass on every road, restored: six wheels, olive drab, an open bed and the biggest hold of any ground vehicle.
A monobike: one huge wheel with you sitting inside it. Satin black, red rim, fast, and exactly as stable as it sounds.
Every tier has a name from The Hollow. The moon grows as the nights get worse, up to Last Light, a step beyond Forsaken.
What changed, newest first.
New ground textures: forest floor, dirt, burnt ground, desert, snow, stone and gravel.
2026-11-09Trader jobs go to tier 10: strongholds, strain nests, Rift breaches and Dread Hours, the night job.
2026-11-08Diet and spoilage: eat a balanced diet for real bonuses, food rots unless you can or chill it, powered fridges.
Tips from the people still broadcasting. The same ones you read while the world loads.
Found a bug or need a hand? Report it on the support server and hear about updates first.