Whyherro123

They aren't. They only have value because we think they do. People that hoard silver and gold for the "apokalyps" are fools, that gold and silver will be little more than paperweights. In "reality" (and exhibited in real-life events), the things most likely to be used as mediums of exchange are things that are 1) lightweight 2) capable of being made to a certain standard, and 3) useful. I personally (not that I seriously entertain the idea of a collapse of civilization) have sheet-metal arrowheads stocked up. Lightweight, easy to carry, and undeniably useful. So, basically (in no particular order): weapons/ammunition, preserved food, materials to make clothing (measured lengths of cloth, animal hides), medication, safe drinking water, and, yes, drugs (lumping alcohol in with drugs). In the Colonial US, various forms of alcohol were used as unofficial and even official currency. Roadbuilders were paid in applejack. Animal hides were another one. The reason US currency is called "bucks" is because on the frontier, a deer hide was worth $1 (which, back then, was a large amount), and deer (and other animal) hides were used directly to barter at trading posts. Alcohol is just too plain useful to not have in a post-apocalyptic scenario. Safe drinking water, source of calories, disinfectant, and perfectly viable trade good. Same thing with drugs, even though I am vehemently anti-drug in real life (my state has a severe opioid and drug problem, with associated gang violence). You can carry a bottle full of painkillers pretty easily. I ..... don't see much survival use for things like meth, coke, and arguably weed (willow-bark is an effective painkiller, and you don't have to inhale burning smoke that way), although I am undoubtedly biased against them.

I guess we will have to agree to disagree on ashwood being required. I find it quite annoying, even if there is an ash tree every couple hundred yards. It is the same thing with The Long Dark requiring maple for bowstaves and birch for arrows. Just .... why? I, too, agree that firemaking has become trivial with the introduction of the hand-drill. Even with the chance for failure. One thing I must comment on: the hand-drill method is literally the most difficult "primitive" firestarting method there is. It takes quite a long time, even if you are skilled. This should be reflected in-game. "Modern" methods should be fast and easy, but in limited (and dependent on) supply. Matches, lighter fluid, all run out "Primitive" methods should be slow and difficult, but you could go out into the woods at any time to gather the necessary materials. One thing I would like to see is the ability to carry fire with you, in the form of embers. You take some punky wood, set it to smouldering on the fire, pack it in leaves/more punky wood, and set it in a container (empty can, etc). When you get to the next campsite, you build your fire, dump the embers into the tinder, and blow it to flame. Many "primitive" peoples would do this instead of starting new fires, namely because using primitive methods is a giant throbbing pain in the ass.

I actually like the fact that the "long stick" used for crafting doesn't have to be ashwood, anymore. It is actually realistic. I have many different bows from many different woods before, and believe me or not, but when you get down to the nitty-gritty of actually making the bow, most whitewoods will actually behave basically the same. It is eminently possible to make a bowstave from almost any wood, so long as you vary the width and length of the limbs. I have made bows from oak, ash, birch, and even pine, and all performed "well enough" to legally hunt with in Massachusetts. My current bow is birch. While I wouldn't be averse to having to search for ash trees again, I would find it annoying. Not because they are particularly rare, but because it amounts to little more than artificial difficulty. Speaking of primitive crafting, birch bark in and of itself can be a wonderful material. I find it absolutely magical to make things from. If you don't have a metal pot to cook with, why not make one from birch bark? This container can also be used as a container for holding things. I personally have made a belt-pouch from birchbark, and it can be scaled up to a backpack with little difficulty. You would use pine resin (already in the game) to waterproof the seams Once you finish the pot, you heat up some rocks in the embers and dump them into the pot

It is a personal berserk-button of mine when people insist that, since Chernarus has AK-weapons and uses the Cyrillic alphabet, it is Russia. Sorry, not sorry. It.... well, it isn't. The whole plot of ARMA II was a civil war between communist rebels wanting Chernarus to be more like (Soviet) Russia, and Chernarussian forces wanting to remain independent (read: keep Western-style government and values, which it had been adopting steadily since 1991) Not to mention that many "Russian" things people take for granted are usually misinformed at best. Like, for example, firearms ownership, both legal and illegal. People think that Russians just wander around with guns a'blazin, that everybody has an AK under the seat in the Lada. In reality, private ownership of firearms in Russia is largely illegal. There is, on average, about 9 firearms (both legal and illegal) per 100 people in Russia. Firearm ownership for self-defense, and therefore, many handguns, is illegal. Most rifles are owned for sporting purposes, and restricted to 10 rounds or less. Weapons that fire in bursts, or can hold more than 10 rounds, are illegal. https://www.loc.gov/law/help/firearms-control/russia.php#Types http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/russia

WE.AREN'T.IN.FUCKING.RUSSIA.! Did you seriously not look at the map I posted? Yes, Chernarus has a significant Russian population. and shares a border with Russia. BUT, Chernarus is based largely on the Czech Republic, both physically (almost literally) and culturally. The Czech Republic has very high levels of firearm ownership. Russia, in all seriousness, does not. It is actually illegal for most Russian citizens to own firearms. Not to mention that firearms and ammunition supplies will be decreased as the Alpha gets closer to completion.

No, actually. Berries contain a lot of water, and eating a lot in a short period of time will give you diarrhea in real life. You can't survive off berries, even without the diarrhea, because they contain little more than fructose. They don't provide enough calories. It is also important to note that both "types" of berries we can pick in Day Z are both edible in real life. The "blue berries" in Day Z are elderberries, and are perfectly edible after getting cooked. The "red berries" are rose hips (and aren't even fucking berries), and are very edible (they taste kinda like apples, which makes sense, as apples are a member of the Rose family), and are high in Vitamin C. See, here is the thing: coming from someone actually trained in Wilderness Survival, almost 98-99% of the "survival" aspects of the game either 1) don't make sense, or 2) is completely incorrect. The devs just didn't do the research. They should add roots to the game, and the fact that they haven't yet is starting to piss me off. Go to any body of water in Day Z (even the ocean, which is weird), and you will see some reeds with a sausage-looking thing on the tip. That is called cattail, and literally every part of that plant is edible, or otherwise useful for survival. The root is especially good, containing more starch than an equal amount of potatoes. In real life, people eat mushrooms in the woods all the time ..... and then they die from liver failure. It is really easy to mix up edible and poisonous mushrooms, even when you are an expert at identifying them. Not even counting the fact that mushrooms provide next-to-ZERO calories, and take metabolic energy to digest. You are actively hampering your survival chances by eating mushrooms. Don't do it. In places where you can find mushrooms, you can just as easily, if not more easily, find insects like grubs that are actually healthy and high in fat and protein.

Because eating mushrooms in a survival situation is, to be quite frank, stupid and Darwin-Award-worthy.

Day Z doesn't actually take place in an entire country, actually. That is a very persistant myth. Day Z takes place in the South Zagoria region, a province of Chernarus that is notably poor, underdeveloped, rural and has .... problems between different ethnicities. Hence the Civil War in ARMA II. That is the whole country of Chernarus. We play in the upper right-most section. And, there were more than 10 cars, 3 bikes and XXX working choppers.. before the apocalypse. You can see them in-game, the rusted/bombed-out hulks. They were destroyed in the Civil War, or during the riots and breakdowns of society that happened as a result of the Z-apocalypse. IMO, We don't need that many vehicles. Having a small amount of vehicles gives the playerbase something to strive for, fight over. If every po'dunk clan could have multiple vehicles, or even just one, that severely lessens the "value" of owning one.

By "sleep", I am not referring to the mechanic in other games, where your avatar stays in the game world after you log out. That sucks ballsack (big, sweaty, hairy sack), and only promotes griefing. No, what I mean by "sleep" is the following: depending on where you log out, and the "equipment" in the location when you log out, you get a bonus to energy/stamina/hunger/hydration when you log back in. And you have to remain logged out for a certain amount of time. Stolen from myself in another thread: So, I have been playing quite a bit of Rimworld, which is a colony simulator, and by far one of my favorite things to do in that game is build a wooden (read: log) cabin and live off the land. With that in mind, I still wholeheartedly believe that 1) we should be able to build our own small shelters in Day Z, and that 2) Log cabins should be the maximum of what we are capable of building. Log cabins are easy to build, "fast" to build, and don't technically require any tools other than an axe. One person can carry a 16foot conifer log with a little effort, and an 8in thick log, when properly chinked, can keep out the worst cold northern Canada/Alaska can throw at you. A 12ft x 16ft cabin can fit 4 people in double bunks (or even more, in a loft), and have enough room for some shelves, some pegs (for clothing), a table and some benches, and a fireplace. Gunslits, cut into the walls, would allow someone to fire on targets outside (that tinnitus, tho) from relative safety. If log cabins didn't work, they wouldn't have been used for thousands of years across Europe. No need for cement, cinder blocks, nails. Just an axe, some straight conifers (which are everywhere) in Chernarus, and a ready back. A clan with a couple of members could throw up a reasonably-sized cabin with about a weeks worth of work, and have a weathertight, watertight, warm and comfortable shelter that beats the hell out of living out of a tent or some old busted-out building. Birch-bark sheets (birch trees are also very common in Chernarus) could be used for roofing, or even just a tarp. This guy below built himself a cabin in a month. Coupled with the idea of cabins, and really, "basebuilding" as a whole, I really like the idea of implementing "sleeping quarters". Now, hear me out. I would much rather not see our characters stay in-game when we log out. I have seen how it works in games that do have it, and they tend to be shit. No, instead, the "sleeping quarters" system would be a means of fostering community on a server, and give your character and base a sense of permanence and purpose, other than storing gear. Depending on the "facilities" you have in the location you log out in, next time you log back in after a decent amount of time, ( I like 6+ hours, so you log out at midnight and log back in at 8am in real time) you get a bonus to health and to stamina regen. For example, you "sleep" (read: log out) in the woods, on the ground, and you log in with your hunger/hydration/energy bar empty (not negative, but empty), and your stamina starts out low. "Sleep" in gradually better conditions ( spreading boughs/leaves beneath you in a shelter, use a sleeping bag, or sleep on a mattress), and when you spawn in, you spawn back in with gradually-increased hunger/hydration/energy bars, to represent you getting more of a restful sleep. Being under cover (inside a tent/shelter, or inside a building) and increasing the temperature (building a fire) would also lead to greater levels of comfort. This wouldn't exactly punish players that don't want to build a base (asides from starting out neutral, energy/food/water-wise, but those are easy enough to fix), but it would give someone a reason to want to build a base, or even just a lean-to in the woods. Now, of course, "going to sleep" when starving or dying of dehydration won't fix anything, the character would have to be, at most, stat-neutral for all this to work. -ground: starts out stat-neutral -"improvised bed" - piles of boughs/leaves: dark green food and water -sleeping bag : light green food and water -Mattress: light green food and water, dark green energized. Just as a little nod to realism.

Fermented (aka beer, cider, wine) alcohols are often a source of easy-to-digest calories. Beer is often called "liquid bread" for a reason. Not to mention being easy to make and tasty. With the amount of apples you can find in South Zagoria, I am surprised that there wasn't a cider-making tradition in the area. Hard cider is stupidly easy to make. Mash up some apples, strain out the chunky bits (and press these chunky bits for more juice), collect the juice in a sterilized glass (I use plastic, but it is harder to clean), cover the opening with a piece of cloth, and let it sit for a month or so. When it stops fizzing and bubbling, you can either drink it straight or distill it ( a crude distillation system is also pretty simple to make) to make the hard alcohol applejack. Alcohol, both "soft" and "hard", have many purposes in a post-apocalyptic survival situation. You can drink it, use it as a medical disinfectant, run certain types of engine with it, purify water with it, use it as a solvent, barter with it (I hold the belief that alcohol would be the basis of most post-apocalyptic currencies/trading systems), etc. In the US Colonial period, often times the first thing the colonists would do when building a settlement would be 1) set up defenses, 2) build a "common house", 3) find/build a facility to produce alcohol And, contrary to popular opinion, comfort and relaxation are actually very important in a survival situation, post-apocalypse especially. If you are stressed out all the time, your immune system will take a hit, as well as your ability to get restful sleep and your bodies' ability to heal. Which is why I would love for the game to include things like actual furniture for bases, "sleeping", and things to relax with. At the end of a long day farming crops, searching for loot, hiking rugged terrain and possibly fighting bandits and the infected, what sounds pretty good? Sitting in a comfortable chair, in a waterproof and warm shelter, with a warm fire and a tall glass of brew. If/when smokeables are included, then they should definitely include downsides. Decreased stamina, for one. Alcohol could increase weapon sway.

And then you develop Hepatitis. Or some supernasty intestinal parasite. You do realize the infected are filthy, right? They likely don't just have the "zombie disease", but are running around with infected wounds, old blood, fecal material, etc. So yeah, you could eat the infected, then you are guaranteed to get sick. Sure, whatever.

The cattail shoot is like, I dunno, that little sprig of lettuce/celery/parsley you get with a fancy dinner. Fancy, and it might taste good, but the "real" part of the meal is the rhizome. Cattail rhizomes have more starch than potatoes. Crush the rhizomes in water, let the starch settle out, mix it with the pollen into a kind of dough, and bake it on a stick/hot rock. Nothing better. Or, throw the rhizome right onto some hot embers, then eat the starch right out of the center. And I have always wanted animals to provide more meat. Not just lean meat, but organs (kinda implemented, but not in any sort of real fashion), fat (implemented), and bone marrow. A decent sized deer should provide SO MUCH FOOD, one person couldn't possibly eat it all before it goes bad. On the same hand, I have also always wanted there to be some form of food preservation. I prefer smoking, as it is relatively simple, "hands-off", and can preserve almost anything, meat, fish , berries, fruit, etc. Other methods include salting and air/sun drying. I also only mentioned the above plants because they are actually visible in the game. There are, of course, many many others, that are also visible. The thing about the plants I mentioned, especially cattail and acorns, isn't that they are nutritionally/calorically deficient, it is that they are also pretty common, and therefore, "easy" to gather in bulk. Last October, I gathered around 20lbs of acorns over a couple of days, and that was from just one tree. In areas where oak trees are common, you can gather A LOT very quickly. Especially since they are so easy to gather (go up to tree, whack with heavy stick). The processing takes more time than the gathering. Same thing with cattail. Last fall, when I demonstrated the usefulness of cattail to my Scout Troop, in the 30 minutes I was in the water for, I yanked out enough rhizomes to feed everyone until they were full. And Day Z takes place during the time of year when both examples would be ready for the picking.

That is another thing that should be difficult: building a fire in this game is too damn easy, especially using the current "stick and bark" method. That method is, by far, the most arduous primitive fire starting method. I have ALWAYS supported the idea that ALL foragable plants should have an "inventory", that is, instead of the current asinine "RNG fruit picking" mechanic, you instead 1) go up to the plant, 2) pick "forage" from the context menu, 3) a screen pops up, like the "vehicle inventory" screen, where you see the foragables of the plant. Each plant would have a limited amount of foragables. As players remove foragables, this inventory shrinks, until all that is left is the undesirable bits, like mushy, rotten apples and worm-infested acorns. For example, cattail plants would have 1 rhizome, 1 seed head, and 1 stalk. Picking any or all of these would remove the plant from the game world. Apples would have a decent amount of fruit, but a large percentage of it would be degraded. Same with berries. Acorns could be gathered in much of the same way that "small stones" currently are: go into the woods, look at the ground, and select "look for acorns" from the context menu. One thing to remember about wild plants and foraging is that it is VERRRYYYYYYY labor-intensive. It isn't just "there", like picking up cans of food in a house. You actually have to go get it With cattails, you 1) have to get wet, which can be, and often is, lethal in a survival situation. Plus, you actually have to dig around in the muck for the rhizomes. With acorns, you have to gather A LOT. And it takes a while depending on the concentration of oak trees. Plus, you generally have to boil the acorns many times, changing the water each time, in order to make them palatable. I am of the firm belief that it should be entirely possible to survive entirely in the woods, without once going into a town for loot. On the other hand, said wilderness survival should take a long time and be effort-intensive. Basically: -Looting towns: fast, easy and dangerous -Foraging/hunting: slow, hard and safe.

screw packaged food, I still want to see acorns and cattails implemented. Seriously, I am so goddamn sick of being able to watch the literal acres of cattail fronds merrily waving in the breeze, and the fact that we can interact with oak trees, yet can't take advantage of the literal mountains of food that would be available. Everyone complains about "there not being enough food", but they just haven't implemented it yet. And it is even balanced! You need to roast cattail rhizomes in order to eat them, bake the pollen (read: flour substitute) into bread, and boil acorns in order to make them edible. Cattail rhizomes actually contain more starch than a similar amount of potato. Or, nettles. Nettles are already in the game, and if you cook them, the leaves become edible (and rather tasty), and the fiber in the stems can be made into cordage.

That would be a (pardon me) fucking awful idea. Ruin any sense of permanence the game has. Why build a base, if you are just going to respawn on the coast? Why go through the time and effort to fix a vehicle, if you are just going to respawn on the coast? Why do anything except for turning the coastline into a giant free-for-all, since you are just going to spawn there when you log out, gear-be-damned? No thanks.

So, I have been playing quite a bit of Rimworld, which is a colony simulator, and by far one of my favorite things to do in that game is build a wooden (read: log) cabin and live off the land. With that in mind, I still wholeheartedly believe that 1) we should be able to build our own small shelters in Day Z, and that 2) Log cabins should be the maximum of what we are capable of building. Log cabins are easy to build, "fast" to build, and don't technically require any tools other than an axe. One person can carry a 16foot conifer log with a little effort, and an 8in thick log, when properly chinked, can keep out the worst cold northern Canada/Alaska can throw at you. A 12ft x 16ft cabin can fit 4 people in double bunks (or even more, in a loft), and have enough room for some shelves, some pegs (for clothing), a table and some benches, and a fireplace. Gunslits, cut into the walls, would allow someone to fire on targets outside (that tinnitus, tho) from relative safety. If log cabins didn't work, they wouldn't have been used for thousands of years across Europe. No need for cement, cinder blocks, nails. Just an axe, some straight conifers (which are everywhere) in Chernarus, and a ready back. A clan with a couple of members could throw up a reasonably-sized cabin with about a weeks worth of work, and have a weathertight, watertight, warm and comfortable shelter that beats the hell out of living out of a tent or some old busted-out building. Birch-bark sheets (birch trees are also very common in Chernarus) could be used for roofing, or even just a tarp. This guy below built himself a cabin in a month. Coupled with the idea of cabins, and really, "basebuilding" as a whole, I really like the idea of implementing "sleeping quarters". Now, hear me out. I would much rather not see our characters stay in-game when we log out. I have seen how it works in games that do have it, and they tend to be shit. No, instead, the "sleeping quarters" system would be a means of fostering community on a server, and give your character and base a sense of permanence and purpose, other than storing gear. Depending on the "facilities" you have in the location you log out in, next time you log back in after a decent amount of time, ( I like 6+ hours, so you log out at midnight and log back in at 8am in real time) you get a bonus to health and to stamina regen. For example, you "sleep" (read: log out) in the woods, on the ground, and you log in with your hunger/hydration/energy bar empty (not negative, but empty), and your stamina starts out low. "Sleep" in gradually better conditions ( spreading boughs/leaves beneath you in a shelter, use a sleeping bag, or sleep on a mattress), and when you spawn in, you spawn back in with gradually-increased hunger/hydration/energy bars, to represent you getting more of a restful sleep. Being under cover (inside a tent/shelter, or inside a building) and increasing the temperature (building a fire) would also lead to greater levels of comfort. This wouldn't exactly punish players that don't want to build a base (asides from starting out neutral, energy/food/water-wise, but those are easy enough to fix), but it would give someone a reason to want to build a base, or even just a lean-to in the woods. Now, of course, "going to sleep" when starving or dying of dehydration won't fix anything, the character would have to be, at most, stat-neutral for all this to work. -ground: starts out stat-neutral -"improvised bed" - piles of boughs/leaves: dark green food and water -sleeping bag : light green food and water -Mattress: light green food and water, dark green energized. Just as a little nod to realism.

Nope. You do realize that "scopes" require specialized equipment to mount to rifles in real life for a reason, right? Bullets don't just magically go where the scope is pointing. The mounting equipment for the scope is there so the trajectory for the bullet matches up with the markings on the scope. Not to mention that the gradation lines/dots are often marked for specific calibers. Taking a scope intended for use with 7.62x54mm and trying to use it on a rifle chambered in 5.56x45mm will tend to fuck all kinds of duck. Sure, you can technically zero in the scope with the new bullets ....after firing off A LOT of bullets. In the post-apocalypse where bullets won't be produced any more, that is really wasteful. Not to mention that you are going to have to re-zero the scope after almost every shot. Duct-taping scopes onto rifles has been mentioned before, many times, and it has been shot down, many times. It is, to be quite frank, a stupid idea.

There are literal stacks of bricks, lumber, roughcut logs and cement slabs all laying around different areas of the map. In no way would any construction material be "rare". Moving it, on the other hand, would, and should, be a gigantic, throbbing, pain in the ass

I am of the firm opinion that, without basebuilding and persistence, Day Z will never be anything more than yet another "survival" game where you run around and murder nearly-naked people. I also think that players should be able to build their own structures. Now, would these be like the Rust monstrocities, amalgamations of wood and steel that can get erected in minutes? No, of fucking course not. If I had my way, the "best" things the players could build would be a log cabin. Log cabins are traditionally very simple and fast to build, requiring nothing more than an axe. With the plethora of tall, straight pine trees you can find in Chernarus, a log cabin would be relatively simple to build. Of course, you would have to 1) cut the trees down, 2) move them to the cabin site, 3) notch them, 4) stack them, and 4) put a roof on the thing. In Colonial America, a settler family could be expected to build a 12 X 10 cabin in a couple of days. Some sturdy clansmen could do the same. And that would be the top of the line The most common "shelter" buildable by players? Something similar to the sheds you can already see in-game. Simple structures, made from boards and plywood (both of which are already visible in the game, by the way) Of course, I would also want to be able to build certain articles of "furniture" in a base. Build a water cistern, so when it rains, it collects drinking water, so you don't have to drink from that scummy stream. Build an oven from bricks, so you can cook your food like a human being. Build some bunks from boards, so you can actually "sleep" in your base, not just use it as a loot-storage (now, I wouldn't want our characters to actually stay in-game when we log out. But..... if you build some sort of bed, or carry around a sleeping bag, when you log back in, you get a health/energy boost, to represent you not sleeping on the ground. Different sleeping sets would give greater bonuses.) If "basebuilding" ends up being little more than glorified storage, I will be severely disappointed.

-ahem- Also.......ghillie suits are an "endgame" item? Asides from the fact that Ghillie suits don't fucking work, they are far from an "end-game" item. While I certainly think netting, in some shape or form, should be more common, your complaining about it is hilarious.

Technically, I can't say that I find Day Z a disappointment, as I bought it for $30, and with ~800 hours invested in it, I can safely say I "got my money's worth". However, I can say that I find both the current development pace, and the seeming-current "focus" of the game, quite disappointing. A quote from one of the developers (I forget who, exactly) regarding how they view the game is, for me, quite upsetting. "Day Z is boring if you don't have a gun". That isn't what I bought this game for. Contrary to the above quote, I believe that Day Z can be at its best when you are unarmed, or even when you are at a severe disadvantage. Similarly, the lack of survival mechanics for the longest time is a detriment to my enjoyment of the game.

No-one gives a shit. Besides, this belongs in the Gallery.

Nope.

Can we just talk about how awful our character's "bow-form" is? I mean....Jesus. Wrapping your fingers around the bowstring like that is very similar to jerking the trigger on a firearm: it will make the arrow veer off in the opposite direction, due to the string "rolling". You use the pads of your fingers to pull on the string. Likewise, you lock your bow-arm out straight when bending the bow back. If you don't, you will end up using the wrong muscles (you want to draw a bow with the muscles in your back, not in your arms), and probably hurt yourself.