Vicco

Well, after another 3 hours of play, me and my partner are getting a bit frustrated. Mind you, we play on my server with no PvP to contend with. Just zeds. And we have a car we use to run over zeds. The car is really our "fort." So we can't comment on running to lose agro, because we just run to the car and drive away. We aren't "too" resistant to crawling for long distances if that's what it takes to avoid infection, and do our share of it. But that's very tedious, and would be a game-killer if this stays as it is. As it is, we go to loot a store, house, farmstead, etc., in the car. Just killing the spawned zeds with the car is tedious. Leave the car, go immediately prone, enter the loot location, find nothing of value (we just want anti-biotics) and nearly always more zeds will locate us for some unknown reason. Run back to the car and cruise for more loot locations in "out-of-the way" areas. We spawn with an M9SD and 4 mags. Basically useless except for non-agroed zeds with a head shot. If agroed and on us, you'll use a full mag for one zed in the panic of not letting them close to infect you. So the axe is by far the best weapon. We leave our Winchesters behind. We very much enjoy the survival aspect of Dayz. But what is our solution to infection? Suicide and respawn. Because infection removes all hope when anti-biotics aren't to be found. And that's the biggest problem aside form the agro issue. I really think agro should be addressed first. Back to where it was, except increased for gunshot sounds. As to the infection, perhaps less infected zeds, and remove the death sentence for infection. We tried to beat infection with massive food intake, but saw no end to it. You just can't spend all your game time chomping on food and/or looking for rare anti-biotics. We can't, anyway. Then there's the coughing, which is fine if there's hope for cure, but not if you think the coughing never ends. Like color - you know there's a fighting chance to get your color back. Somebody mentioned a "blood count" cure, and that could work. Maybe 24000 blood, either food or blood bags. I'm expecting all of this will be addressed, because as is the game can only appeal to much smaller numbers than before, and we need a good balanced base of survivor/PvP. As for my partner and me, we had planned using my server for training before entering PvP servers, and we are as about good as we'll get at PvE, and that doesn't look very good at all with the current environment. Our next session will be going north for military weapons and ammo. We'll try "brute-forcing" the zeds to find anti-biotics. I suspect we'll run out of ammo quickly. And that suicide is our future until infection is balanced, or we just give it up.

I agree with this. Adding purely mechanical moves with common items to treat infection takes too much edge off. I see the new "infection element" as a valuable addition to the game. I'm still working on using total zed avoidance as my strategy, since I haven't located anti-biotics. But I don't want anti-biotics spawning with the frequency of morphine or heat packs. That basically eliminates fear of infection, just as broken legs or cold aren't serious in most scenarios. I've heard sleeping in a tent cures infection, and that might work. Never slept in a tent. Even that sounds a bit easy, since carrying and sleeping in a tent would take less slots than a supply of anti-biotics. Perhaps 3 test rests over an hour of game time to cure? Don't know. But your idea of tweaking infection and anti-biotic spawn rates sounds right. Seems to me real fear of infection is what the change is all about, and shouldn't be overly nerfed. I have no problem with bandits, but REALLY want them to fear infections when they unload their AK into a new spawn. Massive zed agro from gunfire with a good possibility of infection is a pretty good mechanic for balancing survivor/bandit PvP. In fact, meshing infection with humanity might be tried out.

You got a lot of good tips here. I'll just add mine. Not a "pro," but I manage. Arma II has a "Basic Training" mode. I did that, and it surely helps some. I started Dayz on a server with "regular" difficulty, with something like "Noobs learn to play" in its description. It was active, with 40-50 players. I had no plan. Teamed up with a guy who had an axe within a few minutes, then he was shot dead a couple minutes later, and me after another minute. I guess some call that "Noobs learn to play." Didn't seem like too much fun, so I went back onto the same server when it had about 10 players and started gathering gear without much issue. Also looked at a map first and paid attention to where I got spawned. Watch right bottom corner, and know it only stays there a few seconds. Anyway, using a map is your call, and depends on how much pain tolerance you have. Server selection and players on the server is something you will consider. As you said, 1.7.7 is here. I've only played it with a partner on my own server. It's a struggle to stay alive with no PvP. I wonder how that is playing out on public servers, but don't know. That's another element under your control. Selecting a server playing the old or new version. Let us know how it works out for you.

Something else. See http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/138577-one-noob-plan-might-be-useful-to-some/ It's a bit of a PITA unless you have good computer skills, but look at that as a challenge. Your other option is to pay up and rent a server for your own use. I play with a partner, but sometimes solo a bit. Dayz 1.7.7 itself is a challenge for a noob even without PvP.

Nice work GOOOgle. Meter it out properly and you'll be fine. And best to garble the English a bit more. Adds to the confusion.

Cool. I've been looking for a tent to fill up with anti-biotics. I mean, that's a viable strategy. Now I might just change that strategy, and just carry a tent. I'm really liking 1.7.7, and the different strategies it offers. I fully expect to get infected occasionally, because sometimes I just want to mix it up a bit with the zeds, or I'll just make a mistake. I could deal with using meat to keep me alive a long time until I find anti-biotics. But that strategy is unacceptable, because the coughing absolutely drives me crazy. I so hate the coughing, that in itself will direct my strategy.

This one is pretty good and maybe not as well known: De4DCert. A little bit slow sometimes. I'm lowering my expectations as I've seen most of the familiar and most popular ones. Favorites are shosho and Frankie. They put a lot of editing work into their productions, so they always move along very well. Sadaplays is good also. A clear and mature speaking voice works best for me, and I sometimes get off a series because of a voice that grates. Seems the Brits do the best commentary - and maybe the worst - but I've not seen all the series by far. Also I immediately get off squads killing noobs, and don't watch live-streamers with their faces taking up part of the screen. That seems very odd to me. Don't want to see that. This one especially, which link I sent to my Dayz partner as an example of how far some people go. My God! That's Sacriel! Live stream invites hangers-on and hackers. One otherwise good series I was watching had 2 episodes messed up because the uploader was teaming with Sacriel, who was live-streaming. Haven't watched much Sacriel at all, but might later. I've seen most mentioned here, but now have to check out a few unfamiliar names I've seen in this thread.

Best bet is eBay. Look for motherboard/cpu combo, but try other variations because sometime people use descriptions that don't get indexed in certain searches. I've seen some really good deals there. You have to know if your case take the MB form factor and if the ram works with MB, but you can look that up. Same with hard drives, but always check retail prices. Some people bid eBay items past retail.

Yeah, I like being able to see humanity point too. As far as hospitals being in high traffic areas, why? Hospital med loot. So I guess "high traffic area" has just been redefined. After 2 hours shuttling between the Cherno and Electro hospital/stores in a fast car and barely surviving, me and my partner decided we won't be part of that traffic any more. Maybe check the apartments/houses/fire station. Tonight we plan to strike out to the farms and smaller towns and cities. We'll see how that goes. There have been suggestions from the devs that loot spawns are spread around. Seems like players will need to make considerable adjustments to their play style. I can roll with that. Something new. Don't know about spawn loadout yet, as I'm geared. That's server controlled and can be set up as desired. Doesn't much matter anyway now. A Makarov with 5 clips is more likely to get you killed than not. Rather have an axe, knife and matches. That's the big issue for new spawns now.

Shitcan him. He's a kiddie-scripter.

Haven't played new patch enough yet to decide, but found it difficult to survive. That's probably only because we haven't learned to deal with infection yet. I've seen suggestions that antibiotics aren't as important as it seems at first. It appears that the patch is designed to spread people out and away from the big cities, with pure survival loot spawns decreasing in the common attraction areas - supermarkets and hospitals. Another element is the effect on KOS'ers, spawn killers and the like. Looks like murdering bandits won't have long lives, but a balance has to be struck there too. But I hope kiddies killing a new spawn will find that extracts a very high price. High and strong zed agro from gunshots should work wonders. My partner and me spent a couple hours traveling between Cherno and Electro in a car just looking for antibiotics and blood bags to survive. Alone on the server and just trying to gear up with meds because of infections. Thought the med spawns were bugged. We never even checked the apartments, as we already had the gear commonly found there. Didn't check outlying areas. A mistake, so we'll adjust our strategy next time in. Soon, survival tips, spawn locations, etc, will become known as players report in. I expect some tweaks, but like the direction it's going. It'll be interesting to see if the more difficult survival aspect leads to more banditry or less, and I think that is a major purpose of the patch - to find a balance. The players will decide.

I'm game. And I admit I just now read the release notes. My bad. So the only bug I've seen is the blood bagging interruption. Happened when both players were absolutely motionless. This looks very interesting. I just hope it doesn't turn me into a murderer.

Just me and a buddy playing a couple hours on the server, we could barely stay alive traveling in a car back and forth between Cherno and Electro looking for antibiotics and blood bags. Not a single cardboard med box spawned at the hospitals in about 8 trips, and we only found 2 antibiotics - in the grocery. He took his, I blood bagged him, losing a blood bag due to the "interrupted" bug. The second one worked, but it infected him again. Looks like besides getting infected by about every second or third zed hit. the blood bags are tainted too. Losing every other blood bag due to the "interrupted" bug. I'm also getting knocked down from a single zed hit, even with full blood. No way anybody could stay alive if they go anywhere near zeds, unless they spend all their time rolling around prone looking for rare antibiotics. We found a quiet hillside to log out, but we're both infected and out of blood bags. Decided to wait a few days and see if this this gets fixed. It was basically unplayable. And we started the session with about 12 blood bags, and picked up another 6-7. Of course halve that, because you lose every other blood bag doing the transfusion. The infection drains blood pretty fast. Way too fast. So we've quit for now.

Go to options>controls. "All controls" is a drop down menu. Select "Custom controls" from the dropdown. At the bottom, action 20 is the debug monitor. I assigned tilde and that works. Use a key that works for you. The monitor has only kill tallies and humanity count. You can't remove it from the screen with a key. But it's timed at maybe 10-15 seconds, then it disappears.

Pretty good plan, especially the tent part if you can make that work. Balota often spawns an AK in the tower, but a Winchester is all that's needed for most work unless you turn murderer. Don't even think of pitching a tent in a town. It will get robbed and maybe flattened. Has to be under tree branches. There's a least one good YT vid showing how to do it. I found my first tent last night after about 7-8 runs to a supermarket. It took only one slot when I picked it up, but maybe that's because of the server I'm using. Don't know. I want at least 2 hidden away, but that's just part of my plan. I've heard servers sometimes mess up your tent plans, but we'll see. Then no matter how well a tent is hidden, there's always a chance somebody will stumble upon it. You could practically make an entire game on just tent hiding/finding alone. Some players play the finding game. If you're playing on a server that doesn't mark your current location on the map, you can triangulate your position if it allows waypoint setting. Just check distances to map waypoints when out of map until you can set a waypoint on your head. And there you are.

What's your plan? Ya gotta have a plan. Your choice. If you want to survive as long as possible, first follow mat9813004's advice. You'll need plenty of cooked meat to stay alive without a friend to blood pack you. It takes a whole lot of patience to stay prone most the time while looting, and zeds will get your blood down. Then you'll start panicking, and make mistakes that will kill you. You'll for sure spend a lot of time hiding under trees at first if you lone-wolf. Another option is just wing it and learn that way. You'll get killed a lot, but might learn the ropes faster. Might as well get used to "You Are Dead," because it's going to happen a lot. So just have a plan, whatever it is. Then you can watch it come together or fall apart. Low player count on the servers you join could be part of your plan - or not. But a plan keeps you focused. You can decide if your plan is fun. Hiding and perhaps surviving longer, or mixing with other players, and maybe dying a lot more. If a plan doesn't work for you, try another plan. Your choice. Ya gotta have a plan.

It’s working for me and my partner. A new player watches some YT vids, see's these guys basically avoiding all zeds, having no or few problems with players shooting them, and no problem surviving at all usually. Looks pretty easy. So the noob jumps into a public server, and lasts 5 minutes before getting shot - still totally unarmed - by a kiddie. That's what happened to me the first time on a public server. The second time I was more careful, got most basic gear including an AK, and lasted maybe 7 hours hours and a couple real time days - by joining only when the player count was very low on the server. How did I die? Basically slow blood loss because I found no matches (that was weird, because I looked at the likely spots twice in Cherno) and not enough canned food to replace the blood that zeds took from me. And I was really panicking the last few hours. There's that. Panic. Didn't expect that. :) So, simple survival isn't exactly a piece of cake for a noob, even with few players on the server. Add 30 KOS kiddies, and it's bad news. I really think starting on the wrong server keeps the player population down. Many noobs just walk away, especially those who didn't at least do some map looking to find loot spawn points. I mean who enjoys getting repeatedly killed every 10-15 minutes? Wears them down. When I decided to play Dayz after watching some YT vids (Frankie of course) I did quite a bit of research - because that's what I always do before making a move. The first thing I saw about the game was it required "a plan" to work for me. There's no "end game" and I don't want to play to just socialize and make friends and shoot people, nor to die every 15 minutes, so I want a plan. Some people don't need a 5-10 step plan and enjoy the game without. Just jump into a server. That's all good. But even they set some goals for their play session at some point, even if the goal is simply stay alive for an hour. I’m more of a long-term “plan guy.” On that note, I heard a YT interview with Rocket that was done when Dayz was first taking off. The guy doing the interview posted about 22 Dayz YT vids. Started out good with thoughtful comments about this new type of game, but deteriorated into a lot of complaining about this and that. During that hour long interview with Rocket, Rocket gave three recommendations for new players. Number one was "Have a plan. You gotta have a plan. Ya know, you can’t just turn up and sorta walk around. If you do that you’re gonna have a bad time." His second and third recommendations were “Open mind” and “Sense of adventure.” Apparently this guy never heard the plan part, because I never detected a plan in any of his vids. That's why he quit doing Dayz I think. He just never got it. You’ll notice the best Dayz YT vids have a plan. The plan might fall apart, but the initial plan is there. All right, to the post topic itself. During my reading I came across Dayz Server Controlcenter. Just google it. In short, it’s a free Dayz server. Not hard to set up and run on your PC. Perfectly legal. It’s vanilla Dayz, and also supports about 9 different maps – Lingor, Tavania, etc. Gear spawns aren’t exactly the same as the latest Dayz patch, but that doesn’t matter. You probably need a decent PC to run it. Mine is 3 years old, an I7 920, 2.6 GH, and runs it fine. I had 6 gb memory and was getting swapped out of the game with a low mem message but I didn’t have a swap file set up because I didn’t need it before. That may have fixed the low mem, but I just added another 6 gb and no issues since. Since setting up the swap file and adding the memory occurred at the same time, I can’t say for certain the swap file handled the low mem issue, but I believe it did. I’m running all the Dayz stuff off vanilla 7200 rpm HD’s and except for the “Connecting to Host” part, which can take a minute to complete, it runs sweet with 2 players, with no lag or desync at all. Sometimes the yellow connection chain appears, but that’s just internet speed. Anyway, it might run fine on a lower spec computer. You’d have to try to see. You should have a least moderate PC skills for this, but a PC noob could set it up with no issues if he just follows instructions closely. If anybody’s interested, I can post a few links to help, and answer basic questions. I don’t get into the SQL/scripting that’s it’s capable of and just use it vanilla. The “help” forum assumes you’re familiar with MySql and basically caters to admin types, so doesn’t look like the place to go for noob help. But Dayz Server Controlcenter has a a simple install executable and a decently intuitive GUI, so if you follow basic instructions you’re good to go. I set up a Cherarus server pretty quick, 2 player, PW protected. It doesn’t show up in Dayz Commander, probably because it’s not up long enough to get polled, but that doesn’t matter, and it’s probably a good thing that such a private server doesn’t clutter things up. It’s always there in the game multiplay internet menu and me and my partner easily join the game. This is working well. Me and my partner are learning the ropes of zombie avoidance and gearing up with no kiddies killing us as we spawn. So we've been playing a couple hours every night for a week now on my personal little Dayz Control Center server, exploring and gearing up without getting killed by zeds for a few sessions now. No KOS’er’s to deal with. Found a working and gassed off-roader, but didn't use it as we want to stay on foot to get familiar with gear spawn locations. We know Cherno pretty well, and logged out in Electro last night. After we get Electro down we'll foot it to Balota and get familiar with that area. Balota airfield is where I found the AK on the public server. That way when we join a public server we can gear up pretty fast, and won't be pure sheep. To me and my partner you gotta have "a plan" to make this game good. Though I admit I had fun lone-wolfing on the public server without much of a plan - but it was more like "lone-sheeping." Anyway, this private server setup is a plan for noobs, which I am. Can’t say I’m even comfortable avoiding zeds in close quarters yet. Last night after my partner had to go, we logged in the Electro grocery. I decided to log back in later to see if I could score the tent that is part of our plan. Full blood. Grocery was empty, so I ran to the fire house to see if there was an AK there while letting the grocery respawn. No AK, and I got caught on the stairs going down by the zeds I’d aggroed. They were already at the corner ladder glitch, so I had to start shooting with my revolver to clear them. I jammed myself by bad movement and they started drawing blood. I realized I’d been firing without reloading. And aggroed all of Electro. Started panicking thinking I’d lose all my gear. Calm down Vic! Reload! Run! Got past them, gushing blood, and into the grocery behind the front counter. Bandaged myself, ate 2 cooked meat, went prone and started aborting with less than half blood. Got to about 25 seconds on the countdown clock when I started getting hit, bleeding again, and the clock stopped due to being in combat. WTF? More panicky thoughts. Kneeled again and saw no zeds near, so I bandaged again. Figured I got hit through the wall, so I moved closer to counter and logged – with about a quarter blood. Lots to learn. We’re really having fun just doing the survival bit for now, and have plans to prepare ourselves before we join public servers. If you don’t want to or can’t try out Dayz Server Controlcenter, another option is to just go into public servers when there’s few players on them. A bit more dangerous, but that should work. Just have a plan, and expect that it will probably go wrong. But at least have a fighting chance and some fun seeing it all happen. PS. To verify what I said about about the server not showing up in Dayz Commander but always showing up in the game multiplayer menu, I started my server and checked both. Just joined the server – don’t know why I did that, but it went into multiplayer setup in the game. Never hit “Ok” to continue, but apparently there’s a timer that hits that for you. Swapped back to finish writing this, and just now swapped back to the game. “You Are Dead.” Probably spawned back in the grocery standing up and got clobbered by zeds. So much for my “plan” and the gear I collected the past few sessions. What a great game!

"All the world's a stage." The acting wasn't very good, but it was good work. The guy driving them away was the best. When he said "What, you think this is a game!??" I was laughing out tears for a good minute or two.

Nobody knows what server GOOgle plays on, or what little world has been set up there. See attached for an example The first 4 minutes are pretty funny. I never heard of "Medic Clans," but I've seen plenty of side chat such as "Can anybody bring me morphine?" So it's quite possible for a server to have such a Clan. So what if a medic gets killed. Clans have bases, so the medic just gets picked up and re-equipped when he respawns. Part of the job. But the medic should at least be equipped with an SD to get zeds off victims. That's the part I don't understand. What good was the medic? I don't think anybody expects adulation from such work. The game already provides humanity for medic work, so that's built in. Might as well say Heroes expect adulation, or bandits. Sounds like a troll, but it's pretty funny. The garbled translations help that along.

Keep in mind that a major complaint about the game is rampant killing of unarmed and lightly armed new spawns by murderers. The bandit skin is a great way to identify murderers so they can be avoided or killed on sight. The tension will still be there, as anyone can turn bandit at any time. One of my favorite moments was watching Frankie or shosho - can't remember which - see a "Survivor" shoot another Survivor for no reason. He had the "Survivor" in his scope, waited a second or two until the game donned the "Survivor" with bandit headgear, said "There he is, filthy bandit now," and killed him. It was a thing of beauty. The game-imposed bandit skin is very nice indeed, and just needs some tweaking (perhaps an understatement) of the humanity system. Perfection isn't required, but a "who shot first" check before assigning a murder to a player defending himself would eliminate most the complaints about false assignment. Redemption for a bandit seems to be in place, but that's the other major consideration. Banditry is a vital part of the game, but if bandits aren't identifiable at range, the game turns into a kiddie killfest on public servers. I don't think the "blood" idea is a good one. Too hard to identify, especially since there are many gamers with color deficiencies, from minor to extreme. Mine is minor, but still gives me issues with the icons, which is why I also think the text "debug monitor" is an important tool for survival. It should be hideable for those who don't want it. My thoughts, but I don't think I'm alone here.