TwoHammers

A great help, worked for me anyway. Many thanks guys :) good luck everyone trying it as well.

Origins Mod GX Pirates, Kazna server. (whitelist, PVE, donation required) really friendly bunch, and PvE with AI NPCs to keep you on your toes. LAB DayZ UK basebuilding auto refuel Pve/PvP nice admin, quiet server, lots of vehicles to go exploring and find your feet. Actually most of the servers have friendly admins when they are online, and there's helpful people if you say hello and tell em you are new you'll be surprised how people like to help out.

well the spawns are random on the coast always, so it might take you some time to meet up with your friend unless he has a vehicle. so you might want to think about playing some of the servers that have a lot of vehicles, there are quite a few. or you might want to try the Origins Mod where you get a choice of places to spawn that will often put you a lot nearer your friend.

Yes it absolutely is worth buying arrowhead and getting the dayz mod. with Epoch and Origins and other mod-on-mods, its probably better now than Standalone will be on its initial release. And in the process you'll get arma as well, the best military simulator you'll ever get your hands on. Its a no brainer really. Steep learning curve. Well worth it.

I think OP is fairly much spot on. I've ended up playing my "own game" which is probably a bit wierd, I spend my time beteween an Epoch mod server that has just enough murders and banditry to keep you on your toes, and a PvE Origins mod server doing the "bear grills" thing, building houses and bases, stockpiling ammo and gear and loot all week, then every saturday night we go on a co-op raid to Salvation city. The motto "we're not here to kill each other, we're here to kill patient zero", on that one there are some NPCs to worry about. Yea, its all in the end-game. One thing I have noticed in DayZ, you live for the moment however you choose to play.

go find your feet on one of the PVE servers to get the hang of everything and the maps. you actually meet a nice bunch of people in those servers, and often tag along and team up to go out to PvP servers. as a fellow recent-noob the best advcice I have is to try lots of servers until you find a bunch of players you like and get on with, then try and find yourself a server with a "if you say you are friendly be friendly" policy, I play epoch on one server like that and there are just enough murders and occasional maimings to keep you on your toes. Youtube is your friend. Loads of DayZ how-to videos on there that are worth their weight in gold. another tip: don't get too attatched to your gear or character, because dying comes sooner rather than later. Have fun. If you suddenly turn into a goat and then someone drops a battleship on you it'll just be a hacker. At least in this game they have a sense of humour. There are a lot of other new players and friendly people in this game lately - probably due to them deserting that awful WarZ in droves, so I don't think you could have picked a better time to start playing DayZ. see you in Cherno :) ps. and if you survive long enough to get hunger, don't eat raw meat, you're not a zombie, and it'll give you an infection, you got to cook it first.

I got incredibly lucky the first day. I logged into a random empty server with good ping just to get the hang of everything. and over the course of the evening it gradually filled up with a reall good bunch of regular players who happened to be helpful to noobs, and there's just enough murder and woundings to keep you on your toes but most people are friendly and play "survival style".. So I made that my regular server and I'm having a great time.

OP: thanks mate. appreciate this. thanks for taking the time. very handy for this new DayZ player.

OP: me too mate. good here, isn't it. after literally months of trying to get this game to run without freezing every 20 seconds I find out to set DayZ commander to close when game starts. what a muppet eh? I'm finding the help threads and links really useful on this site. so thanks to everyone who took the time and trouble to make them. I'm an old Arma2 player, and never thought I'd take to this zombie survival thing, but its pretty addictive. I just escaped from that miserable War Z. enough said :( Anyway, like he said, better late than never :)