pillock

It was working to an extent in 0.48, I think. But I don't think it is anymore. From what I've seen of 0.49 so far, loot is only being replenished by restarts, and the loot that's on the server afterwards doesn't seem to bear any relation to what was there before.

Last I heard, the devs were saying that they expect the Alpha to be "feature complete" by the end of the year. So that means at least one vehicle - probably buggy as all hell and not necessarily very useable (look at persistent storage), but it should be in the stable build nonetheless by that time. I don't see any reason not to trust them on that claim.

First spawn after the new patch/wipe: It was night, and I was inside a cowshed swapping newspawn junk items into my newly-found cargo pants, when... *Swish-Thunk* > Unconscious. I awoke to find myself bleeding from at least two places, wearing nothing but a badly damaged pair of jeans that had an unopened tin of beans in the pocket. The bastard even took my shoes. There was nothing left in the cowshed, or the surrounding buildings. Unable to bandage or open my beans, I succumbed fairly quickly.

The scattered backpacks might be from people testing out the persistent storage (which doesn't work)?

When walkie talkies are functioning, I will keep the battery. Until then, the both of them get chucked in the sea.

I don't think running should have any effect on your heat - not while we still have infinite running. When stamina is a thing, fine; but not until then.

You know you can sharpen them from "Badly damaged" to "Damaged" by using them on a rock? That gives your axe infinite tree-cutting uses. Granted, carrying a rock around takes up 4 inventory slots, but you can buy that space back by putting a couple of pairs of cargo pants in your backpack (they need to fix the clothing-slot exploit, by the way: it's bollocks).

Redcurrants, I'll give you. The berries in DayZ are clearly not strawberries or raspberries or grapes or tomatoes (which are in the game separately, in case you hadn't noticed.) Those are blackberries. The darker ones are BLUE, and they are very edible; the red ones are unripe, and not good for you. What on earth are you talking about?

There are both poisonous blue berries and edible red berries that resemble the ones in DayZ. But in general, there are more poisonous red types than blue ones. What I find strange about the berries in DayZ is that the former inhabitants seemed to enjoy deliberately filling their gardens with neat rows of the poisonous berries, while the edible red ones are more usually found growing wild. Anyway. The thermia conditions are a welcome addition, as far as I'm concerned - but I'd like to see side effects introduced (narrowing/blurring of vision, shivering affecting weapon aim, etc) and a lengthening of the time it takes you pass out/die from cold, so that you have to put up with said side effects over a period of time.

I think you'll find the correct expression is down the shitter. Otherwise it means something quite different.

Curiosity is a cowardly thieving double-crossing bastard. But you have to trust him sometimes or else you end up bored and alone forever.

From what I've seen of 0.49 so far, neither persistence nor loot respawn appears to be working - it's just server resets that repopulate the loot. This is just an observation on my part, but that's what my impression has been based on my experience.

I believe that they have said that paid-for DLCs are a no-no, because they don't want to 'fracture' the community into different sections that can't play together because of owning different content. Mods are another thing entirely, though.

You'll never know. It could have been a hacker, or it could have been a genuine player who you didn't see. It's not that unbelievable that you were both at Balota - after all, you chose to be there. No point in agonising over it, in my opinion. A death's a death's death. What I would be genuinely interested in knowing, however, is why you play on empty servers when you obviously enjoy the tactical/stealthy side of the gameplay. Doesn't this just remove any challenge and tension that you might otherwise have in full servers?

For me, this is the first patch where I've actually given up playing until the next one is released. Mostly this is because of the server crashes/restarts that occur within 10 minutes of joining. But I've also been getting massive FPS slowdown/freezes at random intervals, plus the odd character reset and naked Vibor spawn. If the stability issues are fixed this week, as I've heard talk of, then I might give it a bit more of a go; but to be honest, until persistence actually works there's not really much in the game to keep me interested in putting time into it at the moment, unfortunately. (Pink balaclavas, excepted, of course.)

This poll is about group sizes for the early stages of the game, yes? That's the phase where you are still hungry, cold and lacking decent gear? The thing with DayZ in its current form is that group size has very little bearing on this; what matters is where you spawn. If you're at Novod, Elektro or Cherno, it's a piece of piss to find food, clothing and equipment; if you're out in the sticks at Poxycoastalnowheregorsk, it's a bit more challenging. This says to me that come 1.0, all spawn points should be a significant distance from a major town - and with the inclusion of more stamina/fatigue/sickness mechanics, plus more zombies and dangerous animals, it should be made impossible (or very difficult) to survive a run there straight from your spawn. Being in a group makes it even easier in larger towns, because you can watch each-other's backs, pool bandages and loot faster. Being somewhere smaller, on the other hand, can make it harder, since the little food and clothing you find has to be shared between several needy survivors.

I'd go with "it disappeared". (that's what you meant, yeah?) Persistence doesn't seem to be working. I don't know about tents, because I haven't found one yet, but everything else I've dropped (including backpacks) has been vanishified upon a server restart/crash.

Yep. I'm currently carrying about 5 pairs of cargo pants, just for the extra storage you get. They're like Protector Cases, except that you find them everywhere. If it's a deliberate change to allow you to carry clothing with items in the pockets, then it's a very, very bad idea.

Yeah, it's pretty much unplayable. One of the crashes/restarts reset my character as well. Didn't Hicks say that 0.50 will be a hotfix? Hopefully it'll be soon, that being the case. I'm probably not going to bother playing again until there's some news on this. It's just not worth anyone's time.

In the Twitch stream that the Hicks chap did last week, he seemed to suggest that player-built structures would be very limited. From what I gathered, even log cabins are way beyond what's planned. There may not even be any 'building' at all - just barricading existing structures and putting up fences around your campsite. I totally agree with what you say about cutting down trees. Chopping down a tree with an axe is one of the most exhausting things you can do in DayZ's context - it should take some time, and once stamina is in the game, it should tire you out a lot.

It's not meant to be an "improvement" in terms of gameplay. It's just meant to add new features and mechanics. Creation of new bugs and problems is inevitable; fixing of existing bugs and problems is not a priority. Because it's a public access alpha, they will keep it playable; but actual "improvements" to the way it feels to play (as a game) are not really on the cards until next year.

It will allow them to release limited edition books. That's all I care about.

That's quite enough about your tip, thank you.

I wouldn't know about that. I thought we were talking about machetes?

Never had any complaints!