Varlun

This is probably asking for too much, but what do you guys think about a point-specific durability damage system? What I mean is, the way it is now, you shoot a vest, and the entire vest gets damaged, and once it's destroyed damage goes through. What about, the vest gets shot, and only that specific point gets damaged? Then, if you get shot in that spot 1 or 2 more times, you'll take damage, but if you get shot elsewhere, you'll be fine. Wouldn't be that hard to implement, would it? Part two: The way it is now, once your vest or whatever is destroyed, the excess damage and any damage you receive after that to your vest, will 100% carry over to all the items in your vest. I think it should take into account exactly where your items are stored in/on your clothing. So what's in your pocket will only be hit if they actually shoot your pocket. Also, perhaps if I have a canteen hooked on the outside of my pants/belt, that won't be offered protection at all, but be even quicker to get to? Let me know if you guys agree. I realize that the damage system they have now was JUST implemented and that they probably plan to improve it, but just in case they don't, let's make sure they get the message. And feel free to add your own suggestions below. I'll add them to the main post if I and others like the idea. Finally, if you like this post, feel free to post a simple "I like it!" or whatever to bump the post, so I don't have to bump it myself, which is always awkward. I'll give you beans! :3

I believe they plan to have realistic storage spaces. Rocket said they plan on adjusting them. Right now, as a placeholder, everything has six slots. I think, for example, if you have the typical shirt with one pocket in the front, then it'll only have one storage slot. So there won't be any magical storage spaces.

I disagree about the difficulty. And I myself am going into programming, -just- beginning actually, and I'll tell you that this wouldn't be too hard to implement. I virtually even explained how it would work, look at my quoted post in the first post. You're also wrong about something else. If they started work on this system, they wouldn't have to finish it before they could release the Alpha. They've said many many times, that the moment the network bubble is done, unless something random comes up, then they'll release. Even with other stuff unfinished. For example, vehicles.

What's your point, anyway? This doesn't really have anything to do with what I'm proposing, unless I'm missing something.

Maybe. But that could be a for-sure thing, to a degree, rather than a random percentage chance. The game could keep track of where those items are, and if you actually land on them when you fall, then sure, they should take a little damage. If something is in your backpack and you fall forward, though, it should be fine. Night vision goggles, if they're sitting on your head, should only be damaged if you're crouched and you run into a wall, for example. I definitely don't think that if you trip and fall belly first to the ground, your head never touching it, that there should be a 10% chance for your NV goggles to be damaged. That would be infuriating. Sort of like the bug where repair would randomly not work. People hate that. Don't be lazy and give things a % chance of happening. Make it a realistic scenario or leave it alone, in my opinion.

I disagree. Solid objects are much more durable than people. Even cellphones can be dropped from the top of buildings and be fine. The fact that a cellphone for example would be in your backpack or pocket, would make it virtually immune to damage. Clothing, however, might be -slightly- damaged, but in this game you're probably only going to land on your feet, which means only your boots/shoes/feet will be damaged as a result of fall damage. Maybe your legs, from absorbing the shock. Definitely no item damage, though.

That's definitely the lazy way of going about it. That's definitely not as realistic, though. I'd figure in a game like this, centered around realism, you guys would be more supportive of a more realistic system.

I believe what he meant by "the values are being worked on", was simply things like, how durable things are, and how much damage things do. I definitely don't think he meant that they were reworking the entire system.

I made a post about an alternative. What do you think?

I think all of you are wrong when it comes to how difficult it would be to implement. They already have a system where you'll bleed from exactly where you got shot. Couldn't they use that exact same system? I'm studying to be a Computer Programmer myself, and I think it would work something like this. I'll try to make it as non-techie as possible. Instead of what you guys are proposing, where you'd have to create all the different parts of clothing, this system would kinda create itself. As said before, the game can already tell exactly where you were hit. So what it would do is this: When hit, it'll tell what piece of clothing is covering that spot, or whatever else is covering that spot, and it'll save data based on that exact same spot. So, let's say for example someone is wearing an armored vest, with a little square piece of metal in a front pocket. (This isn't built in, it's just something the player put in the pocket for added protection.) The player gets shot in that front pocket. The game knows the player got shot there, so it creates a... "variable" with the data of that exact spot. It looks at what the character's wearing. It recognizes that there's a pocket in that spot. It recognizes that there's something in that pocket. If there is no previous data for something, it is assumed to be in perfect condition, so it'll take from a default value, aka best condition. So the game looks at the damage of the bullet and the protection of the vest, and calculates how much of the bullet's damage is absorbed. Anything leftover penetrates the vest, hitting whatever's in the pocket. In this case, the player decided to stick a square piece of metal in that pocket, which will absorb 1 or 2 extra bullets. Here, we -could- try to make the game even MORE specific by trying to calculate where on that piece of metal the player got hit, but honestly I feel that's going too far. It'd be too difficult to do, unless they decided to make the physical models actually be represented on the player when they're stored. So if you put a can of beans in your pocket, the beans don't just disappear and are assumed to be in your pocket, the avatar would actually open his pocket and shove them in, then you'd have a bulge in your pocket, and from the right angle might even be able to see the can of beans. If they did that, then maybe that could be done. But that's wishful thinking. So, what this system would do is, every time the player gets shot in that destroyed pocket, it'll take away durability from whatever's in that pocket. So the piece of metal absorbs a couple hits, and after that if the player gets shot there, it'll tear through his shirt and damage him. What do you guys think?

NOTE: This guide may be outdated in some areas. I am no longer maintaining this guide. Overall though, it should still be a pretty good read. I'm still following this topic, so if you find something that's no longer true, post about it and I'll remove it, or modify it if you tell me how it works now. This guide is basically still a rough draft and is still under work. I'll be adding things, perhaps reorganizing things and maybe even shortening things. I've put a lot of personal comments and whatnot alongside the information itself, but I feel it all makes for a pleasant read. Please leave a reply and let me know what you think of my guide, and how it's structured, and the commentary, and of course absolutely anything else. Thank you. --- Coastline *Memorize your coastline. This is something that really just happens over time, but if you actually try to memorize it, it could benefit you earlier. Having your coastline memorized is much more important than you'd probably think. When you spawn a new character, it tells you where you are, somewhere on the coast. Now if you've spawned in a crappy little town with nothing but a little residential loot, then you need to go somewhere else. If you don't know whether to go east or west, you could waste a lot of time. --- Buildings *Learn your buildings, and what types of loot they spawn, and where these buildings are. You've got 3 types of loot, and all but farm buildings spawn their specific loot. You've got your residential buildings, industrial buildings, military buildings, and farm buildings. Each building type spawns their respective loot. The farm buildings are a mix of all low grade loot from every loot type. They're a great place to hit for a fresh spawn. There's also hospitals, which spawn medical supplies. --- Loot Types *Learn your loot types. Residential loot spawns things like clothing, food, water, maps, GPS, and other useful gear for your character other than weapons. Military loot of course spawns weapons. Industrial loot spawns things you need to fix vehicles, including fuel. Also, they're an amazing place to find hatchets. --- Zombie Loot Zombies carry loot. Lots of different loot. Items like bandages, tin cans, beans, and soda, those all change your crosshairs when you aim at a zombie, giving you a context-option to pick them up directly from the body. But if you search bodies using the 'gear' key, you can find substantially more. Military zombies carry everything from STANAG ammunition, AK mags, to grenadesand such. So if you're running low on ammunition for your primary... try shooting some military zombies and checking the bodies! Tedious to check every body manually, but very rewarding. (Courtesy of Xianyu) --- Hold Breath Button Unbind the hold breath button and assign it to a button of your preference. As default hold breath it is the right mouseclick. This is the same button as zooming in when looking. So every time you are zooming in you are holding your breath, which in turn leads to you catching your breath every 15 seconds like a chimney smoker. If you happen to get in a firefight after zooming in you are always out of breath. (Courtesy of wellwellwell) --- No Rangefinder? If you don't have a rangerfinder you can use waypoints to find the distance between you and your target. (Courtesy of ShokeR) --- Hackers *If you see a random message pop up on your screen, with a bunch of random stuff that only programmers would understand, then there's a large chance that a hacker is on the server. Get off immediately, unless you want to risk a dude teleporting to you in a black SUV and running you over, or shooting you, or causing your vehicle to explode, or teleporting you to an arena with a bunch of other people in a free for all with a helicopter in the middle for the winner, which the hacker will force eject them from so they don't even get the chopper. Personal experience. --- Private Hives *Try to find a good private hive to play on, instead of a public server. Characters won't transfer to this server, so there's less of a chance of random people with full gear logging on in important places and taking you out. You usually get to know the community after a while, and you learn who you can trust and can't. You learn where the bandits like to camp. Besides all that, FPS usually gets a significant bump when you're on a private hive. Some also have nice perks like more vehicles, so it's more like a real apocalypse. Also, there's a lot less hackers in general, and when they do show up, they're usually taken care of pretty quickly. Admins will roll the server back, etc. The server might be down by the time you're reading this, but in case it isn't, I'm going to recommend the one I play on. Search for Privateers, and the name is something like Beck's Privateers. You can also search for the exact IP: --- Backpacks/Tents Eating Items *If you put your gun in your backpack and the backpack eats it due to not having enough room, step back until you can't see the grass in the area where you were and you will see your gun/item laying on the ground within a 5 or so meter radius of where you were. Same for tents eating items. (Courtesy of Hetstaine) --- Avoiding/Losing Zombies *Most of you reading this probably already know that you can hide in large bushes and trees in order to avoid being hit by zombies, so I'm just going to tell you how to lose zombies without stopping. If you're around enterable buildings with a horde behind you, just run through the buildings and duck around corners. See, the way tracking works with these zombies is, if they lose sight of you, they run to where they last saw you. If they see you again, they'll keep going. If they don't, you've lost them. So you need to round two corners to lose a zombie, not just one. Now, as far as zombies are concerned, trees and bushes, even small ones, act like walls for them. Some people simply say to bob and weave back and forth between bushes as you run to lose zombies, but this only somewhat works. Because see, when you're on the left side of a line of bushes, and you cut to the right, that zombie horde is going to rush to where they last saw you, the left. If you cut back to the left, they'll see you again. So you either have to imagine where your horde is, or actually look with the 1 and 3 numpad keys, and just stay out of their sight. Cut through bushes, and if you still have some on you, cut through some more, but don't pick back up what you've already dropped off. You can ditch an entire horde of like 20 zombies by running around a couple trees. So there you go. --- DayZ DB Map *A handy thing to use is the DayZ DB map... Google it. It's a map of the continent that you can use when you don't have an ingame map, or even when you do. Because it isn't just a map. It puts a small colored dot (red for military, yellow for industrial, green for farm, blue for industrial) on buildings that have a low amount of item slots, a little square on buildings with a medium amount, and a large circle on buildings with a high amount. You can customize this display all you want. I personally disable low and med residential, low and med farm, and low residential. It also shows you where vehicles spawn, which you can disable for each type of vehicle. It shows you where water pumps are for fulling up your canteen, fuel pumps, hospitals, supermarkets, and deer stands. --- Deer Stands *Don't neglect deer stands. They have a small chance to spawn basically everything valuable. You can potentially find some really amazing stuff in deer stands, and the risk factor is insanely low compared to say, raiding the Northwest Airfield. --- DayZ Commander *I've been surprised by how many people don't actually know about or use DayZ Commander. If you use the Six Updater, stop now. And it doesn't matter what else you use. Ask around. DayZ Commander is by far the best server manager. And it goes beyond that. It manages your Arma II and DayZ update status, as well as its own of course. It also has the ability to conveniently download other maps and spinoffs of DayZ right there, like DayZ Origins or DayZ+. When a new update shows up for any of this stuff, it lets you know. It tells you the update status of servers when you're browsing for them. Also, deupdating is as simple as updating, it's just a dropdown list where you choose what update to play in. There's also a very nicely done server filter. You can filter by what maps you want to play on. Maybe you only want to play DayZ Origins, you can search specifically for those servers. Maybe you want servers where nameplates are disabled, or death messages disabled. It's all there. Get DayZ Commander. --- Zombie Spawning, Loot Spawning, and Power Looting/Loot Cycling *Zombie and loot spawning. Zombies spawn from a building when you're within 200m of the outside of the building, not the center. Loot spawns between 30m and 120m of a building, again the walls. Loot is also on a 10 minute timer for each building. This timer stops when nooone is within 120m of the building. It doesn't reset, it just pauses until someone comes back within range. The timer will continue with someone within 30m of the building, but loot won't spawn. Also important is the fact that loot does not spawn when you're in a vehicle, unless we're talking about a chopper crash site. Crash site loot spawns when the server restarts. Also, all loot already spawned despawns on server restart. *Something that most pro players do is something I like to call power looting. The more well-known word for it seems to be loot cycling, but whatever. Power looting is just taking advantage of the looting mechanics to loot the same building or a set of buildings over and over, and get the good loot out of them. Something to note is the amount of loot slots the building has. Some have more than others. You want to power loot the ones with more. Now, when you spawn loot at a building (by walking into range of it), the server saves what you spawned. So when you take what you want and leave, all the trash you left behind is saved, taking up those slots. So what you need to do, is pick up all that stuff you don't want and drop it right outside the door. Once you've cleaned it up, get about 35m away from the building. Remember the 10 minute timer. More often than not, it'll take you about 10 minutes to completely loot and empty the building, so you won't have to worry about it, but still be aware of it, so you know what happened if you walk back to the building and no loot spawned. Also consider that you might not have walked far enough away. And that's all there is to power looting. --- Hatchet Tips (Stuff about the glorious hatchet) *A great starter weapon to consider is the hatchet. Its range is longer than you'd think, enough where you can usually take out zombies before they're in range to start attacking. It'll one-shot zombies and two-shot players, with the first shot usually making them bleed. If you hit them in the legs, you'll break them, and if you hit them in the head, you could knock them unconscious as well. *The hatchet functions as a short-ranged, silenced gun. Far from hack and slash. You even have a circle for a crosshair, just aim and click. Don't click constantly, as that makes your swings insanely inaccurate. Wait for your character to finish the swing animation and your circle to come back, then swing again. If your aim is good, you'll take out zombies literally left and right. Now of course, if they're in your face, it doesn't really matter. Swing away. Other than that, they are of course a silenced weapon. Players can usually tell if there's someone else in a town before they enter because of the spawned zombies, but unless you're firing a loud weapon or pissing off zombies, they won't really have a clue where you actually are. Also, infinite ammo. Now there is a glitch with the hatchet. When you log in with it equipped in your weapon slot, it'll act like it has no ammo and you won't be able to swing. To fix this, just add it to your toolbelt and remove it again. --- Helicopter Tips (Tips having anything to do with a helicopter, vehicles, or flying) *Fire up Operation Arrowhead without DayZ active and practice flying. The Armory is a great place to start, since it gives you infinite choppers and infinite respawns, making it easy to practice without wasting time in the editor making a practice run. For some added fun and challenge, check out the single player scenario E06: Littlebird. I can play through that three or four times without getting bored, and it offers a great blend of flying, fighting and landing for you to enjoy. Try to fly along the highway at the beginning, and keep your altitude below 10m the whole way to the first town. (Courtesy of Beez) *I want to stay away from glitches, because they're temporary, but there's a glitch with choppers I want to cover because so many people don't know how it actually works, and it's kind of annoying. Choppers will leak fuel if your glass is not fully repaired. Nothing else causes fuel to leak, even if it's completely broken. Just glass. The worse the glass is broken, the worse the fuel will leak out. To give you a bit of perspective on how bad it is, 4 pieces of yellow (barely damaged) glass is enough for the chopper to leak out 3 cans of fuel in about 10 seconds. Yeah. So if you're using a chopper, stock up on glass. Guess what happens if you land a little too hard? You screw up all your glass. Guess what happens if you land or are trying to take off and a zombie attacks you, even just once, while you're sitting inside the chopper? You screw up all your glass. So yeah, this is a major pain in the ass considering that the fuel will always leak, no matter what state the chopper is in. Flying, landed, engine on or off, occupied or not, even if noone's around the chopper or the server's completely empty. As long as the server's on, your chopper will leak. So don't be surprised if you log off with half a tank of fuel and some broken glass, and your chopper's empty when you log back on. *Have you ever found yourself face-to-face with a fully-functional chopper that had no fuel? Maybe you had one or two filled jerry cans on you, and you wondered if it'd be enough to fly it to the nearest gas station? Well I'm here to tell you, that unless it's changed (which it probably won't), a single can of fuel will easily take you at least 2000m. I did this myself. I also hovered right above where I was going to land until the fuel ran out, and I hovered longer than the entire trip of 1800m took. So I would say that you could safely take a chopper 3000m on a single can of fuel, assuming you don't take forever taking off and getting going, or take forever landing etc. Now, if you ever find yourself in this situation, don't forget about the fuel leak glitch with broken glass. If you have just one piece of broken glass, or even just slightly damaged (yellow) glass, then there's no telling how much it'll cut out of your travel time. Regardless, 3000m is easily enough to get to the nearest gas station, unless you're parked at like the northern edge of the map. *I'm going to give you a quick rundown on how to fly a chopper. It's not hard at all, yet most people who already know the ropes of DayZ don't feel comfortable with a chopper, so that's why I'm sharing. First, if you're not an inverted type of person, I recommend you go into your keybindings and reverse the W and S keys for flying... that way W tilts your nose up, and S tilts it down. I also recommend you hotkey AutoHover to 5 on the numpad. It'll save your life. Now, Q will power up the engine. You don't have to hold it, there's only on and off for the engine, no inbetween. Once your engine's running, double check to make sure you have AutoHover on. Now press Q to fly up. Z will take you down. A and D will tilt your chopper left and right respectively. I don't use the WASD keys while flying, as I find using the mouse to be more precise. To go forward, take off AutoHover and hold Q, to give yourself continuous upward thrust. Tilt the chopper forward, and watch your altitude gauge. You typically want to fly at least 100m or higher. Keep tilting forward and balancing that out, so you're not going up or down while flying forward. To stop, you can just press your AutoHover key, or you can hit W (or S, depending) to tilt your chopper back and stop faster. Only do this if you're comfortable with the chopper. X and C will twist your chopper counterclockwise and clockwise, respectively. Now, landing. Have your AutoHover on, and just slowly go down. As far as landing on slopes, your chopper will slide forward and back, but not sideways, so angle it appropriately. Note that if you land on a slope, when you take off, your chopper will try to fly sideways off the slope, so make sure there's nothing there that you'll hit. Also, sometimes when you're taking off, your chopper will try to twist for some reason. Just take off your AutoHover and use your X or C key to keep the chopper in place, so it won't hit anything. If you ever find your rear rotor damaged or destroyed, your chopper will try to spin. If you're moving fast enough, it won't spin, so you can still get from place to place. The trick is landing. But that's all it is, a trick. You just have to know what to do. Guide the chopper to an open, flat area, by having AutoHover on and using W and S to tilt the chopper back and forth as it spins around. When you're in a chopper, you have a GPS, so use that to gauge how you're moving. Once you're in a good area, just keep AutoHover on and gently, gently tap Z and start moving down. That's all you have to do, is be gentle. Make sure that when you go down, your AutoHover isn't making the chopper rock back and forth, trying to compensate. You may have to temporarily take AutoHover off in order to get it steady. But that's all you have to do is gently hug the ground. Once you touch the ground, it'll quickly stop spinning. If you're good, you should have done no damage at all. Now go get some scrap metal and fix your rear rotor. *Another note about choppers, as well as every other vehicle. This is mainly with choppers, but more often than not, the look of a vehicle or the symbols once you get in a vehicle will lie to you about the true condition of it. In order to accurately tell what a chopper or other vehicle really needs, you need to look at the repair options on your scroll list when looking at a vehicle. You of course need a toolbox. This list will never lie to you. Also, you may want to give it about 3 seconds after looking at a vehicle and scrolling. Sometimes there's a delay before repair options pop up. *When you're in the gunner seat of a chopper, you have a scroll option to add M240 ammo. Unless you actually have this ammo in your main inventory, you'll be kicked if you attempt this. *You must be at least 50m or higher in order to eject from a chopper and get a parachute. Any lower, and you'll just jump to your death. I also wouldn't push it. Have your pilot do at least 55.

Haha, thanks. :P

Shameless bump after a few days. Even if you don't have a tip to leave, feel free to let me know if you got anything useful out of my guide, and I'd also love to hear exactly what helped you out!

I appreciate everyone's input so far. I'm definitely still accepting criticism and tips from everyone. Just leave a comment and let me know what you think!

This is a case by case situation thing. I appreciate your submission, but I don't think I'm going to be adding this one. Thank you, though.

Hmm. I might have to start checking them myself, actually. I generally considered them to be empty when I saw the little weapon symbol with the dots. But maybe I've been missing things.

I kind of considered this somewhat common knowledge, but I guess I'll add it in.

Thank you for your tip, I'll add it in.

Thank you, I'll add this one in.

I'm going to need a confirmation that the DMR to M24 and back to DMR rounds will actually combine the rounds before I include that tip. It doesn't sound like an exploitation to me, which would do something like give you more bullets/mags than you originally had. It sounds like just combining mags. But again, confirmation needed that it works. As far as the tire thing goes... at this moment, I'm hesitant on suggesting that, because as of this patch, 1.7.6.1, vehicles really love to glitch up and not let you repair anything on them. I'd hate for someone to log in and be unable to fix their wheel. Perhaps I'll put it up with the warning, perhaps I'll hold off 'til the next patch. Thank you both very much for your suggestions.

If anyone can offer their own tips, advice or anything else, I'll gladly consider them!

I do what I can.

There. Gave the main post a little organization... better than nothing I guess. Should be an easier read now.

Thanks for the tips man, I appreciate them. This is however what I like to consider an advanced guide, and anyone who has played DayZ for more than a few days should already know this stuff.

Heh. It was an interesting moment. One of my first hacker encounters. I was so sad when he ejected me from the chopper... I saw it crash right in front of my eyes... straight into the firehouse at the NW Airfield. D: