I’ve played quite a bit of 7th Continent and bar none the most confusing aspect of it is combining and using items. In this guide I will break everything down for you, step by step, so that items become easy and you can use simple strategies to maximize your survival on the 7th Continent.
Can you stack food in the 7th Continent? Yes you can stack food in the 7th Continent. Be sure to put the food under other items with at least one matching keyword though so that you don’t waste any item durability pips. If you don’t put food under items with matching keywords, or in it’s own item stack, you can potentially waste your food and/or items.
With food, unlike with regular items, you don’t get to use all of the abilities on each food card for each pip used. Food has a white action on it so while you can stack food you can only reap the benefits of that food one time.
I think a lot of people are unsure why you can stack food and exactly how it works but basically it works much like any other item where you stack it and if keywords match you pip up the durability die and if not the die stays the same. Food follows all of the same rules as regular items. Read on and this will all make sense to you shortly!
How to Craft an Item in the 7th Continent
- Take a card from your hand
- Perform a craft action(the little wrench)
- Deduct cost for any resources that are on your terrain card and/or item card
- Move the card from your hand to a free item slot, or place it under another item you have already created, provided it doesn’t go past your item combining limit(based on # of characters – see table below)
Remember that you don’t need the resources to craft they just make it easier and reduce the # of cards you have to pull so that you don’t waste too much of your action deck building something.
Making items should have a net positive effect on your action deck overall, so only build when you have the resources to at least reduce the cost or you REALLY need the item right then and are sure it will have a positive benefit. Don’t just make items for fun!
Item & Stack Sizes
Depending on how many characters you are using in the game you will have both a total item limit and combined item limit. In this 2 player example you can see that with a 2 character setup you are allowed to have 3 total item slots, and under each one of those items you may combine a maximum of 3 items. (unless you have the woven basket, which I will talk about later)
| Item | Item | Item |
| Combined Item | Combined item | Combined item |
| Combined item | Combined item | Combined item |
How to Combine Items: The basics
Once you have crafted an item you can either place it in an empty item slot or you can combine it with an existing item. Combining is actually very simple but it’s not intuitive so I will quickly go through how it works.
When you combine an item, you take the card and slide it part way underneath the item you are combining it with so that you can see all of its benefits. Ensure that you don’t exceed your item combining limit.
Food can be combined in this way but just remember that if you stack food underneath an item and they don’t share a keyword you will be losing 1 durability off of the item stack when you eat the food. You should always try to have 1 slot open for food before you hunt and you may want to use up an item if you currently have max items.
Combining Items Strategy
When combining items you get to pip up the durability die if you combine items that share at least 1 keyword with the top item in the stack. That means if your top item has 1 pip on the die and contains the keyword stamina and you craft another item with the keyword stamina that has 4 durability, you will increase the top die to 5 pips. This can help you use the same item multiple times, so make sure you understand what items work with other items and you should be able to maximize usage of your best items.
Pro Tip: Having an item at the top of an item stack that has multiple keywords can really help you to have flexibility in what items you combine with it!
Discard Upon Use Items
Some items have only 1 durability and are discarded upon use. These function like normal items except that you can discard them once they are used up, freeing up that spot within the item stack.(you cannot voluntarily discard an item to deconstruct a stack!) Often you will have a couple of these types of items, and they are frequently used to start fires, so if you have a great item in your hand you can use the discard item, in this case create a fire and thereby freeing up an item slot within a stack so that you can craft an item and increase the stack durability again.
Item Stack Usage
Important! When you reduce the durability die on the top of the stack you get to use every single ability of every single item within the stack and it will never cost you more than 1 pip of the die! Remember though that some items have two boxes where you can only choose one set of abilities; in this case you do not get to use both of those abilities. However if you see the text and/or then you can use them all! This is so easy to miss, I played it wrong for probably 10 hours in the beginning and it makes a big difference to how hard the game is.
Woven Basket
The woven basket allows you to combine more items than you normally would for the item stack it is contained within. This allows you to make a super item and is almost as good as having an extra item slot. It is especially useful for holding food. Make sure you are using it!
Important tip! Be careful with items that you find on your journeys that do not have any keywords. Never put this as the top item in a stack because you will never be able to add any extra durability to it so any item you add to the stack will mostly be a waste!
Item action vs Item modifiers
When you can take an action vs when an action is being modified is actually a bit confusing. You can NEVER take an action unless there is a white action box. The brown boxes modify an action of the same symbol but do not allow you to take the action. So if you want to rest you will need to see the little hammock action in a white box, not a brown box. This was quite confusing to me in the beginning so hopefully that helps!
