pillock

Keep plugging away, mate. Only real way to combat invisible zombies is to run for the hills.

Bear in mind that the game isn't finished yet. Building a base and collecting loot over time isn't really possible yet; but it will be. There are mechanics for storing items in containers like tents and backpacks and hiding them somewhere, but those mechanics don't work properly right now - we're due an update next week that should fix this to a degree (the update also promises to go some way towards sorting out the problems with using melee weapons, which will be very welcome and should make killing zombies less annoying). Base building will come in some form or other further down the line. You will be able to set up camp, gather supplies and operate from your base - even returning to it after you die. But you can't do it yet. If you give the game a chance, you will get better at avoiding getting killed so frequently - many people manage to keep their characters going for weeks and months at a time, even playing on high-population servers.

That's excellent! In that case, you should absolutely be able to either squeeze it into your mouth directly and drink, or perhaps collect it in a bottle or cooking pot. Presumably we will be able to boil water in the future, as this is one of the more obvious ways of making it safer to drink.

They could achieve this to an extent by fleshing out the character health mechanics a but more. So fresh spawns are weak and feeble; but a player who's survived successfully for a while, and has established reliable and consistent nutrition and shelter from the elements, and has remained free of injury and sickness, will have built up greater physical fitness. You can run farther and faster, can carry more kit, don't tire as quickly, less weapon sway, hit harder in melee, absorb damage slightly more effectively, recover from wounds and illness faster. They could be subtle differences in themselves, but added together would make a real difference to how your character performs - so you really notice how useless and crap your new spawn character is by comparison when you do suffer a death. This would be far more preferable, in my opinion, to arbitrary 'skill levels' for things like firebuilding or weapon cleaning or bandage application. "You have successfully caught 10 fish: Fishing skill + 1" - Fuck that.

In my opinion, when you die you should be kicked off the server and locked out for 24 hours. That way, you'd have to start again in a new environment in which you don't know the whereabouts of specific loot or players. If you're playing with friends, they could switch to your new server and find you again. There would be ways around it, such as your mates looting your body and storing all the kit in a hidden persistent container so you could collect it the next day. But it would be an improvement on what we have now, where you can sprint back to your own corpse, regear with the exact same loot, and carry on the same gunfight which you just died in - that doesn't seem very fair on the guy that killed you, to me.

Maybe. But in an interview published in June, Dean Hall said he expects the game to be "feature complete" by the end of 2014. Either they are significantly speeding up development, or else there won't be all that many new features added.

I think you should be able to wring out your clothes in order to dry them, especially when wearing wet clothes causes detrimental health effects. It's not too much of a leap from that to be able to collect and drink the water, even if the water might be dirty.

The point is, I think, that the game should allow you to make mistakes. Pouring canned drinks into a canteen or bottle to save space, then reusing the same container later for water might sound like a good idea, if you didn't know about the risk of bacterial contamination. Yes, you might get sick - and that would teach you not to do it again. Just because something might be bad for you, it doesn't mean the game should prevent you from doing it.

If you get killed by being rained on, I'm going to uninstall the game. It's supposed to be "authentic".

You read out-of-game guides and walkthroughs as a short-cut, or if you can't be bothered learning by playing. No in-game task should ever be too complicated that you can't figure it out by experimentation and practice by simply playing. Or it's a flaw in the game.

I don't think "outside study" is ever good, really. DayZ can easily get around this by using in-game features such as books to teach players about the more complicated aspects of crafting. All the rest should be intuitive and easily figurable-out by common sense. That's where the "authenticity" comes in: the more true-to-life the game mechanics are, the more easily people can put their real-world experience and knowledge into playing without having to study some website or youtube guide. I am slightly concerned at the moment that things like making fishing equipment and arrows is not very obvious - why can't I sharpen sticks with an axe, for example? And why do I need a particular type of stick to make a fishing rod? How would I ever figure out by myself that only one type of tree (Ash) gives this unique wonder-stick, except by pure accident? Basic crafting needs to be a bit more intuitive than it currently is, I think.

Players start steaming out of existence and leaving their clothes behind, one by one. All this phat loot for me to *searing pain*. If they did a selective wipe of duped gear and shit, this is how i'd expect it to happen. Quite literally the holy go to heaven and the heathens are left behind to play with their hacked and duped items. That's just about where reality diverges from scripture, because all those who were 'saved' are just teleported to a different place so that they can kill eachother over and over. I guess Vikings invaded russia, so a Valhalla heaven isn't too out of place ;) I am afraid I'm a heathen I am dead. If heaven involves Barry fucking Manilow singing "It's Christmas", they can keep it.

To be honest, it's better to leave the map in smaller pieces, if you have the inventory space. The full map doesn't zoom in as far so you can't see as much detail as on the half/quarter pieces.

Maybe the house you were in used to belong to that zombie before he became infected? He's just gone for a walk and suddenly remembered he left his fags in the upstairs room. No wonder he was angry.

So this is something I have only recently discovered. Maybe it's common knowledge, I don't know. As a new spawn, I have been able to reach "Healthy" status without having first got "Energised" or "Hydrated". This has happened twice now: I find enough food to get rid of the "Hungry" and "Thirsty" statuses, and after a little while the "Healthy" status just appears - both times I have been walking nearly all the time, instead of running; neither of those times did I ever get to the "Energised" or "Hydrated" status beforehand. This got me wondering what "Healthy" actually means in gameplay terms. I know there are hidden levels such as Health, Blood and Energy, which the game doesn't inform the player of explicitly. And everyone pretty quickly figures out that eating makes you "Energised" and that drinking makes you "Hydrated". But what is "Health"? For the game to tell you that you are "Healthy" is actually pretty meaningless and unhelpful in and of itself. Does anyone know what these levels actually translate to in real terms? What's the actual benefit of being "Healthy"? Is it more important than being "Energised" and/or "Hydrated"? The mechanics for your character's health seem to be pretty abstract and obliquely presented. Some more concrete feedback on the hidden mechanics would be preferable for players, I think - more intuitive and closer to how we, in reality, monitor our own physical well-being. I know we're getting weather effects - wetness, certainly, and possibly coldness as well? - and people have been talking about stamina and inventory weight and stuff for a while. But because you can run forever without getting tired, I assumed there was no benefit to walking instead - it now seems to me that there might be.

Were you walking or running beforehand?

Except that there aren't any zombies in Novo. Dale Winton looks a fucking reanimated corpse anyway.

I've been watching the Merino videos on food/water and blood/health. They actually contradict what I have experienced. Therefore, I think that either the mechanics have changed slightly since the videos were made, or else there is some sort of glitch with the status indicators. Merino says you need to have the dark green Energised indicator in order to regenerate blood and health; I got to full health without seeing that Energised indicator. You do not, according to the video, need any hydrated status to regenerate blood or health - only to avoid being Thirsty. What happened to me was that I ate and drank enough to avoid the Hungry and Thirsty statuses, but not enough to get the Energised and Hydrated statuses - and I ended up Healthy. I accept I may have missed the Healing indicator, but only if it was very short in duration (less than a minute, maybe). I think perhaps that blood and health do regenerate slowly when you have no status indicators (neutral water and energy). As for walking, I don't believe it has any actual positive effects in itself; however, you DO consume water much more quickly when jogging, which would take your level into the Thirsty status (and therefore arrest your regeneration) before you regenerated enough to reach Healthy Status. If you walk, it appears (to me) that you can regenerate enough blood and health while in neutral energy and water status to get Healthy before your water level drops from neutral (no indicator) to Thirsty level. As I said, either something like that, or the indicators are glitched and I was indeed Energised, Hydrated and Healing beforehand but the indicators just didn't show up.

Maybe in future we will be able to use them to craft poison arrows? But, yeah, it does seem odd that the former inhabitants of Chernarus were evidently so keen to plant row upon row of poisonous fruit bushes... perhaps they were decorative?

I will search them out again, thanks. I am convinced that walking vs running has an effect, though. Perhaps running reduces your food and water levels more quickly, so that you get hungry and/or thirsty again before you regenerate enough blood to gain Healthy status; whereas, walking allows you to regen enough blood/health without losing the food and water. I got from new spawn to "Healthy" on 2 cans of Pipsi and a packet of cereal.

Yeah, that was deliberate... But walking does seem to be a fast-track to getting the Healthy status, instead to running around looking for as much food as poss as quickly as poss. If "Healthy" is an indication that you are at full blood, you evidently do not need to be energised and hydrated in order to regain blood. I never went through "Healing" status in either of the two instances I mentioned (or, at least, I didn't notice doing so). Also, it appears to me, from what you both have said, that running significantly slows the process of regaining blood/health.

Blue berries make you sick sometimes. I think it's a diceroll or something. Red berries are ok, as far as I know. You have to be pretty persistent to find them, and they don't appear to have much food value, so I guess hardly anybody ever bothers.

Playing online games on one of them would cost an absolute fortune! They're ok for web browsing and the like, but otherwise you probably use up the data allowance in a matter of hours.

I'm not sure what the absolute damage values are - I wouldn't know where to look, even. But I know from experience that fists knock over a zombie in one hit to the head, whereas other weapons, barring the axe, don't.

Only if it's a simulated football riot. That means: melee weapons only and civilian clothes, preferably tracksuits/jeans with baseball/flat caps. 20-a-side, town centre location. That'd be excellent.