Dagwood

Where are these servers you speak of? And are any of them official servers?

This might be a long one: Background: Yesterday a A buddy (hero) and I were south west of stary-ish on our way to zub castle to the east. We'd just logged in so we were just sort of meandering through the woods. Suddenly I spot a helo crash and a bandit and ghillie killing infected around it with what sounded like a Winnie. So of course I pull out my m24, zero to 500 meters and take a shot: hits the ghillie in the torso and the two of them run east ish over a low rise and are out of sight. Set up: My target (harmonica) begins trash talking me in side chat and telling me how terrible I am for not being able to headshot a stationary target at 500 meters. While I do a bit of snobbish trolling in response, we head eastward (on a heading that would take us just south of zub castle). We find a Huey on our way that only needs engine parts. We decide to head north east to attempt to locate engine parts. As we begin the ascent toward the castle, we spot a few dead infected corpses. Once we reach the south western retaining wall near the gatehouse, I hear voices in direct chat. He is laughing about how my buddy and I (same clan tag) are a clan and were still unable to kill them. At this point Aaron and I are both shaking with sweaty hands; anticipating the sweet, sweet punishment we would administer upon these two (Silence and Harmonica). The stakeout: So after making a lot of threats in his direction over side chat, him telling us to meet him at the castle (which he informed me he was well over a mile south of) and me telling him he was an idiot to think I would actually go to a place he'd announced over sidechat, I told him I was gathering engine parts on the east coast for a heli I had found (I would say we had been lying in wait for 15-25 minutes. With the adrenaline it's hard to say now.) Immediately after I sent this blatant lie over sidechat, his buddy exclaims over direct, "they must have found that help south east of here. Lets go f**k it up so he can come back and find it all messed up." What I haven't mentioned yet is that I was equipped with an m4hologl an had 2 HE rounds on my person. "Let's go out one by one just in case somebody is outside." I see movement at the top of the doorway as 2 sets of legs move right to left on the landing opposite the door. I tap F twice and lob an m203 through the doorway and am rewarded with: Harmonica was killed. I reload and quickly hammer a :) into side chat. I fire off a second round: Silence was killed. The complaining and accusations of bad sportsmanship (because i tricked them?) that ensued nearly brought tears to my eyes. I'd told him that I was going to smash a frag through his teeth and done just that. Aftermath: between the two of them they had an m14, l85 holo, fal, and Winchester. The 3 antis in the survival acu were nice too. One of the more exciting encounters with bandits/hostiles I have had in a long time.

NEAF. On vanilla there isn't a barracks there and it is so far away from everything it's not worth the run to just find an ak74 or Remington. Btw, does anyone ever find anything good in ATC towers? I always just find smoke grenades and pistol mags.

If you are alone in the woods and hear an MK, it is probably the last thing you'll ever hear. I lost my first dmr to the same weapon. Approached cherno from the north, stopped to check the map: yatata...yatata! "F**kin hacker! I was in the forest what gives!?" Ya, welcome to dayz; in all of her unforgiving glory

Get in close to unsuspecting survivors and talk to them in direct, always maintaining at least minimal cover. Measuring what to do after that is the best par of this game

I'm sure you can find plenty of servers with all that you seek. The issue is finding one with anyone on it. Unfortunately the only servers that would come close to meeting your requirements AND have people on them are vanilla public servers. And those have crosshairs, 3rd person and map waypoints. Hopefully in the SA they will have official hardcore servers that have some decent traffic

Those little industrial garages have been a better source of food and drink for me since the update. Anyone else had the same experience?

Rangefinders for one of the acogs

For dayz survival all you need is one other person. When infected are more dangerous we'll see how that changes

I've seen a few suggestions on the forums to make ammo more scarce to reduce the ease/tendency with which survivors kill one another. Some have agreed and some have argued that loot scarcity would just promote more killing to attain gear (whether it is on sight or not). I'm curious as to why people believe one way or the other. To keep this from regressing into another anti-KOS thread, let's assume that we are talking about the SA (infected will likely need to be killed to neutralize the threat), and we are not talking about players already in organized groups. We are talking about (the now rare) solo players. I personally believe that if the infected are more "intelligent" and cannot be beaten with bugs (walking indoors, getting stuck in trees, hill bug etc.), making ammo rare would almost necessitate cooperation to enter higher intensity areas. But that is just my opinion. Let's hear your thoughts.

Ammo scarcity will do little to nothing to affect the mentality of some. But it will make it more difficult to get to a point where one has the supplies to effectively lock down elektro or cherno with a few friends. At the moment it is too easy and there is usually someone online who is willing to fill that role.

Low value military porch spawns. People rarely check them and I often find assault rifles and ammo that I need.

One word: headshots

^^ what did your mother tell you about trusting strangers?

Stricter requirements to achieve independent survival is the key. The game is boring without pvp in its current state. For the majority of players anyway. When the SA drops and the game is more about exploring and survival, many of these coast dwelling spawn killers will move on or stick to breaking point and overwatch

Threats. Don't yell out friendly or ask if they are friendly. What had worked consistently for me is "I don't want to have to kill you. If you turn around I have to shoot you. If you lower your weapon we can talk" this gives them the opportunity to just run away and yell friendly or whatever and then I can gun them down or just run to cover in the opposite direction. Or, they lower their weapon and we talk and then anything can happen. Yelling out to a stranger that you won't shoot them until fired upon basically is giving them permission to take their sweet time to line up a headshot. Make them respect the fact that you are armed and likely dangerous

Dave, do you have the sa58v or the m16?

It ceases to be a survival game when the means to prolonged survival are achieved right out of the gate. Less ammunition and a larger focus on melee weapons are key to preventing this IMO. Survivors that are in premade units will always kill wanderers and other groups with extreme prejudice. This is the nature of the beast. But when it's a one on one situation and we're fighting with pistols and axes, cooperation or neutral encounters may become much more likely; although probably not the norm. What the majority of the current player base WANTS and what this game NEEDS are not mutually exclusive in the slightest. We all WANT L85s and über leet gear, but if we ALL have that, the game continues to be a survivor games free for all. Plus, if ammo is scarce, prolonged survival will be rewarded by the chance to gather more ammunition. Which means that the people congregating in elektro and cherno will be squabbling over axes and spare shotgun shells while the survivalists in the north will be gathering ammo and essentially the means to out-do their fresher counterparts. Because a Lee-Enfield is just as effective at putting someone down as an M14 or DMR, the survivor equipped with the latter isn't actually at that much of an advantage. But if they are the only one with rifle cartridges, the balance swings dramatically in their favor. If you are one of the people arguing that loot scarcity will lead to more KOS, can't you agree that it will also force players to invest more time into their character to reach a point where they can even effectively kill other players? If ammunition was REALLY rare; like, weapons never dropped with ammunition and maybe only one loaded magazine dropped per barracks, that sniper on elektro hill would probably be much less inclined to stay there for more than one or two kills an risk is hard earned rifle and ammunition.

To elaborate on my idea about infected mangling bodies and gear; I'm pretty sure weapon durability has been confirmed for the SA, but what about clothing? Maybe the infected could tatter clothing so that when looted off of a corpse it would be fairly obvious that it had been worn by a now deceased survivor.

Currently there is no penalty for dying. Yes, if you have hard earned gear, death definitely stings. But if you are a fresh-ish spawn charging into elektro or cherno, what have you got to lose? In my opinion, the biggest problem with the mod right now is player concentration in the south. If you're a fresh spawn, you can head into elektro or cherno, check fire stations and other spawns for a weapon of some kind, and then try to kill another player that has done more looting than you. The alternative is to spend more time looting smaller towns to achieve the same ultimate goal. The only benefit to taking the latter route is a greater chance of survival. But the truth is that going into a bandit infested city is more exciting, and can be much more rewarding if you can kill one of these geared snipers/campers. So how do you get people out of the south? You make each player's life more valuable. This could be done with some kind of leveling mechanic, but the community and the developers have made it clear that the game will/should not go in this direction. What I would suggest is punishing players that get themselves killed over and over. Here is an EXAMPLE of a punishment that could be administered: John runs into elektro as a fresh spawn. He dies. 10 minutes later John runs back into elektro to get revenge upon his killer. John dies again. As John spawns in again (after his second death within a certain distance or certain time period or both perhaps), he has a decrease movement speed for a small period of time. This could be explained by being drugged or some other in game explanation. Or perhaps players have a finite number of spawns per day. Anyone else think player concentration in the south is an issue? And that punishing death should be a part of the game? Discussion and criticism is always appreciated

I just want more people to come up north with me :( Everyone is content with dicking around in elektro. I don't understand where all of this top tier weaponry is coming from if nobody is ever looting stary or NWAF on a full server....

I've got 1 m24, range finders and a ghillie. Looking for sa58 acog or m16acog and camo clothing. Also 1x sandbag if that's what you're in to...

Tick the hide unofficial box on the too left of the screen when you have dayz commander open. Only public hive servers will appear. You can carry one character over on all of these servers

Maybe nerfing the firehouse loot tables would help too. If only submachine guns, shotguns and pistols spawned here players would have less incentive to hang around these buildings (and draw in pvp seekers.

It also keeps them from picking up a book and learning proper syntax and basic writing skills