Player FAQ
Short answers for players — installing and updating Gears, who controls which settings in multiplayer, where the values are saved, and what to do when something looks wrong.
Short answers for players. For the longer version of any of these, start at Getting Started.
About Gears
What does Gears do?
Gears draws a settings page for other mods, saves what you pick, and hands the values back to those mods. It adds no items, blocks or gameplay of its own.
Do I need Gears for every mod?
No. Only mods that were built to use it. Those mods say so, and they usually stop working, or fall back to their defaults, without it.
Is Gears safe to remove?
Yes, but the mods that use it lose their settings pages, and most of them need it to run at all.
Your saved values stay where they are until you delete them: global settings in
%APPDATA%\7DaysToDie\Gears, and each world's settings in its WorldModSettings.xml. Reinstalling
Gears brings them back.
Installing and updating
Nothing happens when I install Gears
Gears adds a Mods button to the main menu and a Mods button to the in-game menu. If neither appears, the mod is not being loaded:
- The
00000-Gearsfolder has to sit directly insideMods, with itsModInfo.xmlinside it. A second folder in between stops the game finding it. - EasyAntiCheat has to be off. Gears ships a
.dll, and the game refuses to load code mods with EAC on. - The game has to be restarted after installing.
To check, search the log for [Gears] Initializing Gears' Setting Manager.
Gears writes that line every time it loads. If it is missing, the game did not load Gears.
Gears does not work on an experimental build
Gears has no official releases for experimental builds of 7 Days to Die. Any Gears build published for an experimental update is for mod developers to test their mods against. It is not meant for playing, and it may not work.
To play with Gears, use the game's current stable build and the latest official Gears release.
Which version of Gears do I need?
The latest official release on the
Gears page on Nexus Mods, on the game's current
stable build. Your installed version is the Version value in 00000-Gears\ModInfo.xml.
If a mod was built for a different Gears version than the one you have, the log shows a [Gears]
line saying the mod "was built against v…" a different version than "Gears is running". If the
mod's version is newer, update Gears. If it is older, the mod needs an update from its author.
How do I update Gears?
Close the game, delete the old 00000-Gears folder from Mods, and put the new one in its place.
Your settings are stored outside the mod folder, so they are kept. See
Update Gears.
Changing settings
Where do I change a mod's settings?
Your own settings are under Mods on the main menu or the in-game menu: pick the mod, open its Settings tab, change the rows, press APPLY.
A world's settings are on the Mods tab of the New Game and Continue Game screens: press Mods World Settings, change the rows, press SAVE.
Why can't I change a world setting while I am playing?
A world setting is fixed while the world runs, because everyone in the world has to be playing with the same value and mods read it when the world starts. Leave the world, change it on the Continue Game screen, and start the world again.
How do I put a mod's settings back to normal?
Open the mod's Settings tab and press DEFAULTS, then APPLY. On the world settings screen the button is DEFAULTS, then SAVE.
Both act on the page you are looking at, not on every mod at once.
Multiplayer and servers
Who decides world settings in multiplayer?
Whoever starts the world. Their values are written into the save and sent to every player as they join, replacing whatever those players had. Nobody but the host can change them, and a client's own copy is never sent to anyone.
Do my settings follow me onto a server?
Your global settings do. They live on your machine, apply in every world, and no server overwrites them.
Your world settings do not. Those belong to the world you are in, and you receive the server's values when you join.
I joined a server and all its mod world settings look like defaults
The server does not have Gears, or does not have the mod. When no world values arrive, Gears puts every world setting back to the value the mod shipped with, so the session runs on defaults. Ask the server's admin to install Gears and the mod.
How do I change settings on a dedicated server?
A dedicated server has no menu, so you edit its files with the server stopped. See World Settings on a Dedicated Server and Global Settings on a Dedicated Server.
Saved settings
Where are my settings saved?
| What | File |
|---|---|
| Your global settings, shared by every mod | %APPDATA%\7DaysToDie\Gears\ModSettings.xml |
| One world's settings | WorldModSettings.xml, in that world's save folder |
| The values your next new world will start with | newGameWorldModSettings.xml, beside your saves |
On Linux, replace %APPDATA%\7DaysToDie with ~/.local/share/7DaysToDie. On macOS, replace it
with ~/Library/Application Support/7DaysToDie.
Can I copy my settings to another PC?
Copy %APPDATA%\7DaysToDie\Gears\ModSettings.xml and your global settings come with you, as long as
the same mods are installed there. Values belonging to a mod that is missing stay in the file, and
apply once you install that mod.
Will I lose my settings when a mod updates?
Only where the mod renames something. Gears matches a saved value to a setting by name, so a renamed setting starts at its default, and the old value is dropped at the next startup. Values for settings that kept their names are unaffected.
Problems and logs
A setting shows text like myModHudScale instead of a name
That mod is missing a localization entry for that key. Nothing is broken and the setting still works. It is the mod author's to fix, so report it to them.
A mod I installed has no Settings tab
Gears found no valid settings file in that mod. Either the mod does not use Gears, or its
ModSettings.xml was rejected — which is the mod author's to fix. The game log says which, on a
line starting with [Gears].
Where is the log?
In the game, press F1 to open the console, then press the button in its top-right corner to open the
log folder. This works on Windows, Linux and macOS. On Windows, the folder is
%APPDATA%\7DaysToDie\logs.
The same lines appear in the console. Search them for [Gears].
How do I get more detail in the log?
Mod authors sometimes ask for Gears' extra logging. Open the console with F1 and run:
gears debug onoff turns it back off, and running gears debug alone flips it. It works in the main menu and in
a world, and lasts until the game closes.
Where do I report a problem with Gears itself?
Ask in the #laydors-toolshed channel on
Guppy's Unofficial 7DtD Modding Server, a community Discord for 7
Days to Die modding, or open an issue on GitHub. Include
your game version, your Gears version, and the full log file from the session where the problem
happened. See Where is the log? to find it.
A problem with one mod's settings goes to that mod's author.
Getting Started
Install and update Gears, change each kind of mod setting, and find where the values are saved.
World Settings on a Dedicated Server
A dedicated server has no menu to pick world settings in, so edit WorldModSettings.xml in the save folder while the server is stopped. This page covers the file, the order to do it in, and how to confirm the values took.