I've actually been getting up to something like this as well, I think it's a great idea to challenge yourself. On top of the things you mentioned, I also restricted myself to using only in-game means of navigation (road signs, book for translation of said roadsigns, in-game map/compass, knowledge of land). Quite fun!

Personally, I think at this point it becomes a conflicting issue between realism and authenticity. Ultimately, permanent death will never be permanent death unless it takes on the type of mechanic like SP Hardcore Diablo 2 or Minecraft. Once your character is dead, he's dead to the point where Minecraft simply deletes your entire world. In DayZ, you'll always be able to run back to your body unless external circumstances happen (i.e. server restarts, glitches, crashes, player hides your body). That aside, from a personal standpoint in the mod I never really used my tents to "re-gear". My tents were stored so far up north that I didn't even bother going back until I at least had done some serious looting for an hour or two and got a decent amount of gear back. Sure, maybe a few military grade weapons to upgrade what I had already found, some medical supplies for loot runs, and mostly base building/vehicle repair parts. Essentially, my tents were an emergency supply with the exception of guns for the random time I didn't already find one by the time I made my way back to them. On a side note, I imagine that storage containers will be fairly rare, so it's not like it'll be a walk in the park like finding a tent on the mod. Not to mention item degradation (I can't see food becoming spoiled once implemented, as well as other features) would make it so you can't store everything forever. A huge part of my enjoyment out of the mod itself was scavenging and storing, I just found that to be incredibly fun, the key thing being persistence. EDIT: I'd also like to add that these storages can be found by anyone and everyone on the server. Often times I'd go tent hunting simply to find and raid camps, so there certainly will never be a truly safe place (unless rock exploits are in). Still, balance is always acceptable in my eyes and would be interested to see some of the ideas both the devs and the community come up with.

Graphically speaking, just turn your shadows up to Normal in the video options, that should stop the image of rain coming through buildings. As for the actual mechanics of the rain being inside buildings, I'm not sure if that/will be working as intended right away. EDIT: Configure -> Video -> Quality -> Shadows:Normal

Depends, one or two I'll give them the left and right hooks. Three or more then I'm out.

I chose C, mostly because if they were drawing a weapon on me that shows me hostile intent. It's hard for me to completely describe the thought process I go through when I encounter another player, but I'll try. Essentially when we spot someone from a distance in a town, like Guba, we'll track them down and follow them for a bit. I'll keep an eye on them and get a general feeling about them, the way they move, the way they loot, if they have any potential friends around, the way they handle zombies. Sometimes I just get a bad feeling about people, other times it's a cautious feeling and that feeling goes a long way towards my decision on whether to shoot or not. If I decide to interact instead of shoot, I'll make sure I call out to them if and when they get into a spot where it'd be easy for me to take them down while it being more difficult for them to turn my way and act faster. In my opinion, it's all about forcing an encounter on someone when they're at the disadvantage, especially in regards to reaction time. An example would be waiting for them to have a melee weapon/no gun out, waiting for them to have their back turned towards you, even waiting for some good cover for yourself while they have none. Even simply hiding and calling out, you'll be able to shoot them before they turn around if you're difficult to see more cases than not. If they don't respond, that's already suspicious in my books. If they respond infrequently and not using many words/fairly calm also a very suspicious move. So much stuff goes into my decision making regarding killing someone in most cases. Other times there's just a clear indication that he wants to kill you and if you give him the chance he will (usually run into these types of situations at military areas myself). I find it is easier to make a decision based on intelligence gathering if you have the time do so, but other times you really don't have that option and need to be quick on your feet. :)

Actually had a friend die to a noclip ladder free fall the other day. Took off all his gear just in case he couldn't get back in 10 minutes, his body actually stayed for the entire roughly 25 minute duration. We left before we saw it disappear which had been maybe ~30 minutes after his death, so they must have increased the time for body despawn or something. Like other people have suggested, I've had people log out after I knocked them unconscious with my fists and just disappear maybe 10 - 20 seconds after before I could kill them. If I had to make an assumption, that is my guess as to what happened in this case.

I can't necessarily say how complex the system is in general, but there could be a number of reasons why Combat Logging/Server Hopping was addressed prior to loot respawning. Keep in mind that just because a feature is completed first, doesn't mean it has a higher priority: - It could have been a lot easier to implement anti-combat logging/server hopping compared to loot respawn and they just wanted to get it out of the way. - Perhaps there's performance issues that need to be touched up on before loot respawning can be considered. - Maybe there's been a bigger outcry for a fix to server hopping/combat logging. Nothing else really comes to mind, but I guess the Devs had their reasoning. It's also worth to note that this game is only about a month and a half old... if you look at the changelog from the entire time since it's been released you would notice there has been a lot of stuff fixed/added to the game, quite impressive really. This early on in it's development, they're still working on very big core features while trying to balance it with performance fixes.

Hm... you know, lately I've noticed that just thinking about reading the forums causes me slight anxiety. You might be on to something here! Also, the map feels close to similar for me. I think the biggest difference is the run speed, and even then it doesn't seem that bad. If I had ArmA2 still installed, I'd test it out myself... but too much work. Would be interesting to hear someone's findings.

Personally, I actually like re-gearing after a long time surviving. At a certain point my life and the lives of my squadmates don't really mean anything to me, I start doing a lot more dangerous things and taking bigger risks until I die and can enjoy searching for loot again. It doesn't have anything to do with the amount of gear in-game currently, but more just knowing that the character I've worked so hard for is just a bambi under all of that armor, if that makes any sense. There's nothing really to work towards in my eyes is what I'm saying. What I would like is something that would make me actually cringe if I died after surviving a month simply because I lost it, something that is character based instead of gear based. That would be something worth fighting for or even worth giving up during an encounter with someone else in the hopes they might spare my life. Gear can always be found again, but something that made me truly feel a sense of loss at the point of my character's death would be amazing!

If you're referring to whether it's possible or not, it is. Saw some private hives run a script that spawned them in the air, flying like any other normal chopper, then randomly explode and hurtle towards the ground. Often times you could follow it's general direction for a long time and maybe come along it with loot spawned and everything. I'd imagine if that were possible in the mod, it'd be for DayZ despite the changes made to the engine.

Found one today for our first night of playing since the patch went stable. Random house in Berezino, gave it to my friend.

Unreal Engine... but oh the possibilities!

In the mod, I pretty much killed everyone and everyone pretty much killed me. :P In DayZ, at the start I killed a lot of people, but as I played more and more I realized it's a lot more friendlier than the mod in my experiences. Stopped killing so much, now it's more of a neutral state. I was running around Zelenogorsk the other day unarmed with my other unarmed friend. Our gear in general probably didn't look really threatening, but of course I hear a couple bangs off in the distance and my friend told me he was dead. I let out a sigh of annoyance because Zelenogorsk... ('nuff said). I charged out with my fists up thinking "I don't care if I die, this guy is going down for his heinous crimes." After locating him, he starts firing his SKS at me... goes through seven rounds, emptying the rest of his ammo. I charge him, he runs away and then pulls out a sawn off! I do a complete 180, ran around trying to make him think I was terrified of him and waited for the perfect moment... that sweet, sweet moment where he would empty his last of two rounds. One of them hit, one of them missed, I charged up and punched his lights out, effectively avenging my friend. If we had run into him and he didn't shoot at us and instead had a different response, he'd probably still have all of his decent gear... and pride. I'll get to the point, I used to be a killer. Now I'm neutral, I probably won't kill you unless you've brought it upon yourself. Actively helping people? Sometimes, but not often. Personally I've found far more enjoyment in the game while not killing people or at least not killing them immediately.

Been playing since release, 150+ hours. Only came across one obvious hacky type of cheater... Server I was on crashed while I was inside the east entrance corner of the eastern hangar in the Balota airfield, so my friends and I switched to another. I log on, poke my head out, see a guy at the top of the ACT, no way he could have seen me (I was using 3rd person at the time), I walk back towards the mid of the hangar so I could scan the airfield and out of nowhere the guy on the ACT shot directly at me through the hangar, barely missed at all. Not to say that shooting through walls is cheaty, just that he knew exactly where I was. Friend of mine saw him aim straight for me like he had a type of radar. ;) Apart from that, I have not run into any OBVIOUS or what I'd consider to be suspicious encounters with other players... and I've met a lot of players. @NoCheats: That is believable, if I remember correctly I once saw a guy bragging about hacking on DayZ and providing pictures of a hack that did exactly that on his Steam screenshots. Definitely hackers out there which is a shame, but nowhere near as much "scripters"/hackers like the mod which I'm entirely grateful for. Sadly no game will ever be perfect in that regard.

A lot of people are having the same issues, please check here for more info. Hope this helps. EDIT: Friend had some serious Desync issues while using AVG anti-virus, fixed it by switching to Microsoft Security Essentials (more info in the link regarding any other fixes).