Whyherro123

There is no such thing as "too much realism". There is only "realistic" and "unrealistic". Want to avoid "constantly searching for medical gear"? Easy, don't get injured. Avoid unecessary PvP, walk slowly/don't jump over things (to avoid tripping and falling, as well as other leg injuries), and think of ways to take out zombies that leave you with the least possible risk to self. If you get injured, you did something wrong.

Not even including the fact that your immune system would be depressed as a result of the poor food, lack of quality rest (inferring our characters sleep on the ground, etc), increased metabolic requirements due to temperature, as well as the fear and stress they would be under.

You won't die from the scratch, no, but you will probably die from the infection it causes. There is one facet of survival that people not trained it it often do not realize: in a survival situation, when (not if) you get injured, it will get infected. Bandages, antibiotic creams, and alcohol wipes are all excellent things to have, but life (microbiotic life, to be exact), will find a way. I have developed infected wounds while working at a summer camp, after they were covered via bandage and cleaned with alcohol. The sweat, dead skin cells, and gunk from the outside still got into the wound. Was it a major infection, oozing pus and interfering with my life? No, I recognized the early stages, re-cleaned it, and the infection cleared itself up in short order. Now, imagine this in a world where there wasn't a sterile dressing to cover a wound with, no alcohol prep pads or Triple Antibiotic spreads to clean them. Splinters (let us say, from your fence example), were the worst, combining puncture wounds and "foreign" organic material for a one-two punch of infectious matter.. Most of my infections were due to splinters. I had one (a particularly large splinter) in my hand, and I couldn't get all of it out. It developed into a nasty infection, one where I had to go to the actual hospital, let the doctors cut it out, and get a shot of antibiotics right in the ass, because the oral antibiotics I was already taking weren't doing jack shit. Infections should be a constant concern when injured. If you don't have synthesized antibiotics available, there are some "natural" sources that can help. Honey: honey has antimicrobial and antifungal properties.Sphagnum moss: has been used for thousands of years as a dressing due to its antimicrobial properties.Salt/Sugar: dump a whole shit-ton of either/or on a wound. It will hurt like a motherfucker, but the salt/sugar will;create an environment where infection-causing bacteria cannot live create a larger surface area for blood platelets to stick to, often stopping bleeding earlier. Just don't peel off the scab. (Sugar only) be absorbed by the body, giving a burst of energy and often helping treat the symptoms of shock.

In my opinion, the Blaze 95 is literally the most efficient longarm in the game. Powerful, common ammunition, amazing accuracy out to 300m (unless you are a sniper, you will never be making shots past that. In fact, most combat happens within 50m). If they do get close, you can give em both barrels, like a rifle-shotgun. Amazing iron sights, which also glow in the dark. The only reason I prefer the Repeaters is for ease-of-logistics, as the Repeater and the Revolver use the same ammunition. Other than that, unless I already have a Repeater and a Revolver on me, I will take the Blaze every time.

Ugh.

I actually rather like the sights on the Repeater.

Pretty much. By that standard alone, it makes any internal magazine-firearm "better" than any AK or M4.

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Don't listen to the fools who rate guns in "tiers". PvP is more dependent on skill, reaction time, awareness, etc than on firearm. I've gotten FAR more kills with the Blaze 95 rifle than with an M4 or an AKM. The SKS comes in a distant second. Use what you like and you feel comfortable with. SKS: common ammunition, decent range, semi-auto (can't really waste shots, decent in CQB), can mount a decent scope Repeater: common ammunition with probably the most effective sidearm in the game (.357 magnum), decent range, good firepower .22LR: Probably the best rifle in the game, once you look at it long enough. Sure, the .22LR round won't be 1HK anyone, but they can be found (in 50 ROUND BOXES!) almost everywhere, and with a 30rnd magazine, the Sporter becomes a poor-mans assault rifle. It has good iron sights, and due to it's low recoil, can be spammed like nobodies business.

I say the same thing about coastal New England. Without the Cyrillic writing, Day Z looks almost exactly like Autumn along the New Hampshire/Maine coast. The resemblance is uncanny.

Ugh. Gasmasks are cliche. I don't quite understand the fascination with them, alongside wearing them with helmets. Are they some sort of "tacticool" thing? More related to the thread, don't we have enough military bases already? You can literally reach a military base within 15 minutes of running.

So, I was using the improvised bow today to hunt cows (and realized too late that the hide cannot be used for a pack : ( ), and I was thinking about arrows and arrow storage. Just a couple of points: 1) In reality, a sharpened wooden tip will not be all that effective. A stone, bone, glass or metal tip is what causes the damage. 2) How how are we attaching these fletchings? It looks like sinew, but apparently the process is abstracted. This is lame. An animal carcass should be a great resource, with hide, bone, meat, intestines, sinews, etc all having a practical purpose. You can make water-carriers from intestines, just as an aside. 3) Right now, carrying arrows is nonsensical. I would hope some sort of quiver is implemented, to make carrying them easier. I have been looking at a Neolithic quiver, made by "Otzi the Iceman", which apparently doesn't even require you tan the hide. Just make rawhide (a simple task), and stitch it together. The pattern looks to be simple and effective, and apparently is water-resistant and can carry a good number of arrows, as well as other important bowyer tools. As an aside: does anybody else actually use the bow? From some of the responses on the forum, I kind of think it isn't that popular....

Just confirmed by myself, the improvised bow with improvised arrows is capable of making shots of about 30 meters or so, on a moving target. Usually, I make my shots from closer (>15m,), but I thought, "the hell with it, lets try it out!". Said shot was taken at Msta, from a hill on the west side of town, on a moving zombie about 30 m away. I was in 3rd person (in my experience, 3rd person is easier to use the bow from, as you can more easily see the ridiculous amount of sway), aimed a about 1/2 in (on my screen) above the zombies head, drew back, and released the arrow when the bow "swung" all the way to the left. The arrow sailed straight as a....well, arrow, and nailed the zombie in the neck. Not bad! Now all they have to do is fix the stupid sway, add some actual bows (flatbows and such), and let us make our own arrowheads and quivers, and I will be golden.

I want to hear more "sounds" coming from the character when they get injured. Whatever happened to the little mutterings and groans your character made earlier in the alpha? Those were awesome. If you get shot, I expect you to scream in pain, at the very least, if not fall unconscious due to the shock. This screaming could draw zombies in, so your friends aren't just rushing to save you from bleeding out, they are trying to stabilize you enough so you can be moved "outta Dodge", away from the incoming zombies. A groan and a curse, whenever you step on a twisted ankle, could add verisimilitude to a limp.

So, with the implementation of .50, the Devs have introduced limited trapping. Trapping is, for those not in the know, is the act of setting of a device that, when activated, will remotely catch an animal. Traps allow you to hunt for food without actually being present (AKA hunting, foraging, etc). Find an animal run, set up multiple traps, and wait. In my perspective, besides knowing edible plant species, trapping small game is the most important skill to know with regards to keeping yourself fed in long term survival. Why do you want to trap? Easy, you want some of that tasty, tasty meat. Also, animals provide extra energy in the form of fat, clothing and materials in the form of fur and hides (both excellent insulators against cold and wet when properly treated, which is possible with what the animal corpse provides), as well as bindings and containers in the form of sinews and intestines. I myself am making hunting broadheads for arrows out of the thighbones of a deer. So, let us discuss traps. There are MANY different "methods" of trapping animals, each aimed at different species, used in different conditions, or to different outcomes. Probably the easiest and most important ones are the twitch-up snare, "Figure 4" deadfall, and the "Spring-Spear". All can be sized differently, are easily capable of taking out game ranging from rabbits and squirrels to deer and bear, and can be made using only cord/wire, a knife, and some ingenuity. "Twitch-Up Snare": Take the current in-game rabbit snare, attach it to a springy sapling, and you are all set. It traps the animal, (usually) suffocates it quickly and humanely, and removes the prey out of the reach of other predators. I recommend this trap only for small game, as it is inhumane (doesn't kill, only lifts by the leg) for larger animals. "Figure 4 Deadfall". This is a killer, and easily scale-able from small game to large game. It requires a steady hand, but once it gets set up, it WILL kill anything it ensnares by crushing the head/spine. Only thing is, it doesn't remove the prey from predator access, so check it frequently "Spring-Spear": This one is really only good for large game and, yes, people. It will kill whatever it hits, through shock and blood loss. Be careful when setting it up and approaching it, because the spring is under a lot of tension, and doesn't require a lot to set off. I've smacked myself in the thigh (with the central spar), when practicing setting one up (no spikes, for safety), and it knocked me on my ass and gave me one hell of a bruise. (Look for alternate methods. I prefer the "horizontal version", with a different toggle release) Now, where to set up a trap? Look for irregular paths between bushes or in tall grass, especially leading to/around watering holes and streams. Most animals do not leave these paths. Be careful when setting up traps, as the prey will smell you on them, so either cover the traps with mud, or make them in the smoke of a campfire. Finally, set up more than one. Most traps have less than a 5% success rate, lower if inexperienced, so setting up a long "trap-line" will increase you chances of getting something. For trapping small game like rabbits or squirrels, I actually keep 2 large mousetraps in my pack, with a hole drilled in them so I can stake them to something. Work every time.

This is a good example of how the "Figure 4" Deadfall (by far my favorite style) can be scaled from small game to large game. (Warning, the 1st video shows a chipmunk being...well, deadfalled.) (abut halfway through the video)

That is the thing. In Day Z, there are no surgeons available. Almost every single wound you take, with the exception of superficial surface scratches, will ultimately be fatal. You might not die right away from a lung shot, but you would eventually expire due to the lung collapsing. Or, you would bleed out over the course of a couple hours from a lacerated kidney. I want this to happen. It would make playstyles much "slower", where people wouldn't rush into combat.

NOTE: I made this post because the "Favorite location on map" is over 2 months old, and I didn't want to necro. I have made the habit of "living" in Dolina recently. It is small, but has pretty decent loot (Police Station and Arch-house), a well (when they were working), a pond down the road, apple orchards everywhere, and good hunting up by Pavlovo. ' However, I really like it because, if it wasn't for the Cyrillic lettering everywhere, Dolina and the surrounding river valley (which is what the landform is, pity there isn't a river there.....) looks like someone copy-pasted it from a tourist map of New Hampshire. The area is VERY pretty, and reminds me of home kind-of. I can just picture myself building a cabin and growing some good old Yankee corn and potatoes on a hill overlooking Dolina. Anybody else have a favorite town? EDIT: Holy shitbisquits, that second picture is HUGE. My bad.

Yep, that is some good stuff! As you can see, very deadly.

I've actually been getting a rather decent number of kills recently with the improvised bow, an underpowered weapon in almost every sense of the word. You'd think people wouldn't stop to look at that pile of opened food in the middle of the intersection....surrounded by dead bodies!

Nope, never seen it. However, there are numerous variations of the above traps, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was one. And, I agree. Traps are the "smart man's" method of waging war. I prefer "guerrilla warfare" to "running in and spray n' praying up a place with automatic gunfire". A broken limb with infected wounds (and the accompanying terror) is worth more a fully-kitted out assault rifle any day, in my book.

Exactly. The recoil felt by the shooter is generally the same amount of force the shoot-ee(?) feels, as per Newton's 3rd Law. I was a Biology major, not a Physics major, so if I am incorrect, feel free to enlighten me.

I can confirm that the spring-spear trap is horrifying. I (already mentioned) that I accidentally set a practice spike-less version off by accident, and took the full force of the trap on my thigh. I was knocked down, and it hurt so bad I thought I broke my leg. I ended up having a REAL NICE bruise covering pretty much my entire thigh, and had a "dead-leg" for a couple of days. Don't fuck around with that one. For a more "person-oritented" trap, how about punji stakes? Easy to make, effective (can easily stop someone from moving, due to leg damage), and can be poisoned/contaminated to in order to kill the afflicted. Just dig a put, insert spikes, cover with lattice of sticks and foliage. As for the current in-game rabbit snare, it works. REALLY well. TOO well, in fact. I set one up on a hill overlooking Dolina, and within 5 minutes had a rabbit caught in the snare. Really, traps should have a much lower success rate, and you would need to set up a whole trap-line in order to approach an acceptible levels of kills.

Oh, for the days when we won't have the ability to choose from multiple assault rifles with multiple magazines of ammunition! Survival, here we come! (eventually)

I can uninstall over whatever I damn please, thank you very much. Reserve your judgement for yourself. If I feel the game is going in the wrong direction, like with foolish, unrealistic arbitrary difficulty, then I will stop playing. And, no, you have a slightly incorrect view of foraging. Did hunter-gatherers move from place to place? Yes. Did they do so randomly? No. They usually moved from set place to set place, usually with a seasonal pattern. Agriculture only became more "efficient" than hunter gathering when moldboard plows were invented. And there were still groups that practiced agriculture AND were nomadic hunters, human technological development doesn't work in "levels" like many people think it does. Look at the Wampanoag Native Americans, they practiced agriculture in the summer, living in villages on the New England coast, as well as fishing, but when the cold weather came, the whole tribe would uproot itself and travel north to specific hunting grounds. Some scientists also think that hunter-gatherer groups actually practiced agriculture, they just didn't live in the area year round. They would travel to a place where they had planted crops earlier, harvest it, replant some more, and travel to the next plot.