zemalf

What makes this really sad, is the fact that the majority of the most populated servers are these "spawn with sniper, NV, GPS, 500+ vehicles" type of servers. At least most are nicely labeled, but I honestly struggle to find servers with enough players that doesn't have silly starting gear.

Sure (and that's the way it should be), but running through a barn (especially a long one) and you still lose most of them. Firing Lee Enfield, or some other loud weapon, just makes it easier to get'em all on you and make the town even safer after they're all in the barn.

What keeps me playing? The challenge. The joy of finding beans when you're about to die of hunger. Permanent death. Not taking things too seriously. And I think reddeer1 said it well above: The tension and the paranoia in DayZ are something I haven't experienced in any other game (not even close). For the most part it's thanks to the awesome combination of zombies, open PvP and permanent death.

Disagree on slowing down the zombies. I think the zombies are not fast enough! They're not any kind of threat because they can't catch you when you run. At least now they keep up and don't leave behind. If they'd be slower, and you can hide from them, the zombies wouldn't be any kind of a threat. Melee weapon for starters is a better idea, but on the other hand, I'm fine starting without, it isn't that hard to find a weapon. It just means you need to be careful not to aggro Zs before you have means to deal with'em.

This was added/changed back in 1.7.1: You can hide from an infected chasing you The idea is great, and realistic, but does it make handling the zombies too easy? I think it does. Ever since that one, this has become the common tactic: = run through town, aggro all the zombies in town, run through the barn in town = all zombies lose sight in/around the barn & stay there, town is free & safe for fast looting. It's very rare one needs to fire a weapon on the zombies when "exploiting" this with buildings you can run through. Perhaps a fix would be that zombies can run inside(?) And maybe improve their sights and senses even further when they've spotted the player. Anyway - thoughts? What do you think? Zombies - too easy now or not? Do you do the sprint/barn/loot trick all the time?

Why it would be douche? And why it would be bannable? It's a feature in ArmA2. They just haven't added camo face options to the graphical user interface. Because there's no UI, we're forced to edit the profile-file manually, but it's totally fine. Similarly it is possible to tweak graphics further than the settings UI in-game allows. Camo face = Totally legit. Not douche. And won't get you banned.

As the title says, I play it slow, focus on survival, not action. If you want fast action and goofing around, this DayZ LP is not for you. However, if you enjoy slower, more serious and honest gameplay, then my let's play and videos might be for you. Check'em out and decide yourself. At the moment there's 65+ videos and about 33 hours of gameplay on the playlist (Intro and bit of a "trailer") (Series 1, Starting Out) DayZ Playlist (all videos): My channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/TheZemalf Some technical stuff and other notes: I play only on "hardcore" servers (No 3rd person view, no crosshair, no playertags), so all gameplay is in first-person view. My rig is (in short): i7-2600K OC@4.4Ghz, 16GB RAM, NVidia GTX 590, SSD for OS and games. I record Day Z with (near) maxed graphics 1920x1080 using Dxtory. All videos are available as high quality 1080p HD. If you have any comments, feedback or questions - feel free to post here or on any of the videos.

Excellent video and guide. (edit) I'll repeat what I commented on the video on YouTube: By far the most "professional" video guide I've seen for DayZ.? Heck, it's almost too professional, it's so rare to see thoughtfully scripted gaming videos these days :) But yeah, the fact that you've put a lot of thought, planning and effort into this shows - and this is very good viewing for new DayZ players. Good job, kudos and here's to awesome upcoming parts of guide!

Good guide, but in the long run, I found this simpler: I didn't copy the beta exe to OA directory and replace the original. Lots of hassle, and you need to repeat it everytime you update beta = almost everytime you play = a lot. Instead, I just use the 'Launch Arma2 OA Beta Patch' shortcut that the beta installer creates on the main dir. To get Steam overlay, I used "add new game" in Steam and chose that Beta shortcut, renamed it (for convenience) as "DayZ mod" and added ' -mod=@Dayz' in the Steam properties. Once the "launch Beta" shortcut is added to Steam, you don't need to anything when you update Beta and/or DayZ - just update and launch 'DayZ mod' from Steam. EDIT / CORRECTION: I didn't add the "launch beta" shortcut to Steam, but the arma2oa.exe from /Expansion/Beta folder directly. So in short: In Steam, "Add a Game", browse to the \Expansion\beta\ folder in "arma 2 operation arrowhead" Then edit the properties of the newly added game like this (directory is different if you're on 32-bit Win or have Steam installed somewhere else): Target: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\arma 2 operation arrowhead\Expansion\beta\arma2oa.exe" "-beta=Expansion\beta;Expansion\beta\Expansion" "-mod=C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\arma 2;Expansion;ca;@dayz" -nosplash Start In: "c:\program files (x86)\steam\steamapps\common\arma 2 operation arrowhead"

I enjoyed the vids. Great idea and well put together. As a side note, I admire your ability to answer so gracefully to the first comment ("boring as hell"). My answer would've been somewhere along the lines of "go watch some CoD tomahawk kill videos then".

just logged out. in the session I saw wild life (at least wild boar, goat, rabbit), and with random luck also found a heli crash site (no loot)

it's pretty much covered above, but here's the full 1-2-3: box of matches and firewood in the inventory (and raw meat) find a relatively flat area (I've had fireplace not show up on a slope) right-click matches >> create fireplace (right-click on firewood might work too) 1-2 steps back, look at fireplace mousewheel on the fire >> light fire (have all raw meat in the inventory before cooking, not backpack, and all is cooked at once) mousewheel on the fire >> cook meat mousewheel on the fire >> put out fire om nom nom nom