everyone

Kind of surprised at how low most of these numbers are. I've had three characters now that have each lived 10+ days, the longest being 14 days. The 14 day old character had a little under 800 zombie kills, 28 murders and 4 bandit kills before dying to some guy with an M4 who happened to be prone in a group of bushes in the middle of a forest in the middle of nowhere. The other characters each had 500-600 zombie kills, but only a small number of murders. To be honest, the most fun I've had is usually within a couple hours of spawning. The long-lived characters are what made me take a break from dayz. A combination of boredom due to living in the middle of nowhere and never interacting with other people (friendly or hostile), and frustration that after such a long life and MANY airfield raids I'd still never seen any top-tier loot (machine gun, NVG, sniper rifle better than a CZ, coyote elite...), or driven a vehicle. Whenever I get back to playing the game (maybe trying it again after 1.7.2) I'll probably just deathmatch it up in cherno/elektro/stary/airfields.

Probably shenanigans, but an important note: The things the guy describe are not a part of the base Chernarus map that Dayz is based on. In other words, flying around the area or checking it out in the editor would not find the alleged camp. Same goes for the military camp at Stary Sobor for instance (fly there in the editor to see what I mean... it's an empty field in 'normal' Chernarus). These things are created in the editor by placing objects. There are C130 crash models that you can put down, and obviously plenty of different types of military tents. There are a few different tower types as well that you can add. I can go into the editor and in maybe 10 minutes create a pretty convincing military camp surrounding a crashed C130... but I've also had a relatively large amount of experience with the editor. I seriously doubt that it was hacked in, that's just not the kind of thing a hacker would be able to add to the game (and if they could, it would look very obviously hacked... to add a crashed airplane model to the map requires quite a bit of placement and adjustment work to make sure it doesn't do any crazy clipping through trees/bushes/ground etc). So either a) the poster is lying about it (lack of screencap corroporates this assessment) or b) it was some insanely low chance spawn that nobody has ever seen before that is buried somewhere in the dayz code. My money is on A.

I've never had any trouble with it. You can climb just fine with a broken leg. Just be aware that as soon as you stand up when you reach the top of the ladder, your character will flop forward into the prone position.

News flash: if you start with a pistol, people are just as likely to shoot you. No gun: 'maybe i'll shoot this guy cuz he can't defend himself'. Gun: 'maybe i'll shoot this guy cuz otherwise he'd shoot me'. Next!

Again, I'm super glad it works for you. You're still wrong though, and you're probably not as accurate as you're saying you are. Don't get all butthurt about it, just accept that what you're doing is an extremely rough estimate, and it is in no way shape or form representative of how the mildot system actually works.

Part of the problem with continued confusion about scope use (especially with the DMR) is that there are so many people out there who have landed a few shots with extremely gross estimates, and gone 'oh this estimate must be exactly how it works'. Sandy and Warden, I'm super glad that works for you. But it's wrong, and your shots are not nearly as accurate as those of someone who uses the scope correctly (a half dozen shots to land one on an 800m target? seriously?). It is great that you land shots with your gun sometimes. But if you are using the scope incorrectly, then those hits are due in large part to luck. The least you could do is stop spreading misinformation to others.

Oh AND: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?80754-Arma-2-Weapon-Ranging-and-Correction-Tables There's a nice forum thread on range-finding, and how to use mildot scopes. It's also nice that it shows how to use the under-barrel grenade launcher sight. Edit: first link in the thread is: http://wolverine.cameron.edu/~ac113448/ARMA2/ARMA2WeaponRangingAndCorrectionGuide.pdf which actually has all of the conversion tables. Takehome lesson: this shit ain't easy. There's a reason military snipers only become so after completing a very intense set of schooling.

Wrong. It's a misconception (and a frighteningly common one) that mildots represent set distance intervals (eg one mildot down = 100m further away). Look at the SVD scope. The spaces are not linear, they are parabolic. Those spaces actually do represent bullet drop over a set distance. Think about it this way: if a bullet traveled downwards according to the mildots on a scope, then it would be traveling down in a linear fashion. Have you ever seen a bullet that when fired, travels in a straight line, diagonally down from the barrel? Didn't think so. For more information on how a mildot scope ACTUALLY works (this includes both real life, and in-game), check out: http://www.mil-dot.com/articles/the-mildot-reticle For a guide on how to use the mildot reticle accurately in-game, watch: He covers all of the scopes quite accurately. The only bad thing about the video is that he trashes the CZ550, which I find to be WAY better than he gives it credit for.

It really does just all boil down to luck. And a ton of luck at that. Most of the airfields and military zones are picked over constantly by server hoppers. On my last 12-day character, I made at least 10 runs to the NWAF, and 5 to the NEAF. I literally not once found a gun better than an AK-74 in any building, on any of those runs. On one run I found an M4A3, held by a dead guy on top of the firestation (I saw the corpse out the window as I was coming down the firestation tower). I have yet to even see a DMR, M24, M107, AS50, FAL, Bizon, M16A4, SVD, or pair of NVG in the game, after probably 200+ hours of play. I usually play on servers with ~25 people on them. On a couple instances I've experimented with server hopping to try to find good loot, and it has never worked. A few days ago entered a 0/50 server where it was a very dark night out. I ran through the entire airfield and didn't find a single thing. I constantly hit p to see if anyone was joining up, and nobody did. As I worked from the north towards the south barracks, I arrived and found the place lit by a chemlight, so at some point in the past hour you know someone had already picked it clean.

Significantly changing Chernarus is just not going to happen. The best that can be done is to add small structures, for instance the military camp at Stary (which is not a normal part of the Chernarus map, but instead something that rocket added). Arma 2 bakes a whole map together, so all the terrain, buildings, and even the pathing is all smushed in together. Adding an entire new city would require working on Chernarus basically from the ground up. For an idea of how map building in Arma works, check out some of the better custom maps out there. It is very possible to make entirely new, very good looking maps. It's just a TON of work, so it doesn't happen very often. http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=8791 - Podangorsk, similar to Chernarus http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=9150 - Isla Duala, very fun http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=9861 - Thirsk - the winter version is one of my favs http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=10792 - Lingor - the most impressive map I've seen, the jungles are insanely nice. Hard to believe it was made w/ the arma 2 engine.

AKM hands down. The ammo isn't particularly rare, a couple deerstands will usually net you an ammo cache. The magazine is considerably larger than the enfield as well, so realize that a single AKM mag = 3 enfield mags. This is very nice for inventory space. The key feature for the AKM is its ability to zero the sights. Learning how to zero on the fly is a *huge* advantage that very few people realize. Tip: the vast majority of encounters in which you're firing at someone/zombies occur at ranges of under 100m, and often under 200m. Default zeroing on all rifles (including the AKM) is 300m, so by popping that down to 100m or 200m (especially in urban environments) you're going to experience much better accuracy. When you're out in the field you can zero to 200-300m for better long-range ability. I've plugged people before at 300-400 meters thanks to being able to quickly eyeball how far away they were, and adjust the zeroing accordingly.

I think side chat is still a feature that can be enabled per server. I'm fully up to date, and yet there are a few servers I've joined that still have sidechat enabled, and I can speak in it. Having spent a lot of time in servers with sidechat on, and servers with sidechat off, I strongly prefer the servers with sidechat on. I really don't use sidechat for any game purpose (though I do tend to be nice and answer questions for noobs). Instead, it's just a chat room to keep me entertained while I'm spending hours running alone through the wilderness. I found pretty quickly that on servers with sidechat disabled, I'd get really very bored after just an hour or so of hoofing it from deerstand to deerstand with no outside contact.