CardinalSins

It's been fun watching DayZ grow but in my opinion this latest direction isn't for me. Before the game was fun and provided a nice escape. Now: might as well stay in the real world at least I can win here. I'm basically starving to death or being killed by zombies inside the first 10 minutes of play. Might as well go play COD or something else. I'll check back in a month or two and see if things improve.

Never did I imagine this would be a 3 page topic. So after reading the very helpful posts from the community I figured out what is going on and yup: the game is in fact better than before. It is more challenging, but with a little bit of basic knowledge it is very playable. What was I missing: the rock knife! Here is how the game goes for me now (yeah - I still die but usually in more fun and interesting ways) 1. spawn, find a rock, make an improvised knife. 2. turn the rag in to an arm band to make room 3. break the glow stick and throw it to make more room 4. find an apple tree and find apples. Eat apples until full 5. start searching for gear at the top of the list for my search is rope. I want an improvised bow as soon as possible. In fact I've taken to skipping firearms b/c the bow kills zombies nicely and doesnt attract more zombies in the process. With practice I'm even able to stand off a little from the zombie and kill from a short distance. But the bow sucks if you miss, way slow to reload. next up is the machete. I used to want the fire axe but the machete gets the job done b/c it pulls out faster than the axes and you get to make more strikes with the machete than the axe. I find and axe still because they're great for making firewood. The usual way I get killed now is blundering in to a group of zombies. Got to Tisy and started to explore, found the military tents and as I went in 4 zombies ambushed me. After nearly 2 hours of play - oh well. Now I don't mind. Is there a way to reload the improvised bow faster? I'll have to look in the sharpened stick. I missed that from my earlier browsing. Again: thanks for all the feed back.

wow. I appreciate all the feedback. I haven't read it all yet and the basic point that I need to do some relearning is well taken. IT seems they've gone in a new direction. Before the game was sort of a blend between a running simulator and a scavenger hunt. Now they're reorienting towards crafting stuff. For instance: I had no clue about the stone knife. That would have made a difference. I already figured out hunting for apple trees. That kept one of my lives going for an hour or two. I think I was killed because of an infection. I discovered that I could stop bleeding using a sewing kit, but soon after sewing myself up it said I was sick and then that progressed to being unconsciousness before I could find antibiotics. I'll keep playing, but I'll spend some time reading up on what others have discovered first. Again: thanks for the feedback.

not really looking for PVP. Early on it was fun just exploring the island, finding stuff, generally avoiding zombies and avoiding other players. That's pretty much out the window. You can't explore because you die almost as soon as you spawn. After doing the initial post I went ahead and played again. I set a 20 minute timer. First spawn (a strong independent black woman) managed to find water but was then ambushed by zombies. The first zombie was killed but she was bleeding. Fixed that and then the next zombie arrived and was killed but she was bleeding again. no knife or anything to make rags with so off to find something to make rags or to stich up with and here comes the next zombie and dead. Respawn, 12 minutes remaining on the timer. New we have a cross dressing dude. Apple trees everywhere! find 3 apples - we're in good shape! sneak in to a house, ambushed by zombie. kill zombie, bandage up. leave house attacked by zombie. kill zombie but now I'm bleeding again. off to find something. Find leather sewing kit and stich self up but now I'm sick. eat more apples. wounds are infected. searching for antibiotics or something to cure myself with...unconscious. actually lasted a whole 20 minutes with that one. If it wasn't freezing outside I wouldn't have wasted the time. I do like that they have improved the combat so that you can kill the zombies without having to have fire axe or gun. that's undeniably better. But the absence of any findable loot moves the game beyond what I'm willing to invest in. As I said: I'll find something else and check back in a few weeks (I really do like this game and its gone through phases like this in the past) to see if they've improved things.

This is probably really lame but: how to I make the truck back up? I've finally got the V3S put back together but it's parked against a wall. In order to go anywhere I first have to make it backup. I've tried every keyboard combination, I've searched the entire internet and found nothing and nobody every says anything about it. so it's probably really obvious...but I still can't figure it out. So: how do I make the v3s backup? TIA

I didn't know that about protector cases. Guess we'll have to conduct some experiments.... Funny bit is persistence isn't all it's cracked up to be. I'm going to guess if you don't visit your stash within some amount of time it will disappear during a server restart. I'm at a point with my current game I'm about to try and find a fresh spawned player to dump most of the gear on (everything but the axe). I've had the bus for a bit, driven the truck around, my character has everything necessary. I'm carrying about 10 glock mags an AKM with 4 magazines.......what the blazes now? Too bad I can't open a bar or something.

So....how does a person unflip a car or truck????

This game cracks me up. Finally made it back to the location of the truck I was talking about when I started this thread: it's still here! all of my gear is here too! Or at least the junk I left in the truck. Let's drive over and see if the bus is where I parked it last.... The odd bit is that the truck tent I had found was gone from the police station I had set it up behind. I hope somebody found it. I put about 6 pelican cases in it with stuff in them. Now I have to figure out where I hid the various barrels.

Thanks on both tips. So the fun continued - I had some down time so I respawned and almost immediately found a bus ready to go! Just sitting in a field waiting for me. So I learned how the shifter works that way. As described Q and E do the business. Anyway, started playing around got to the town on the north east end of the map and when I got out of the bus I just suddenly died. No idea what happened. No big deal. Had fun and now I know how to use that part of the game. And then the fun continue with a surprise: looking forward to starting over I jumped back in to the game and I respawned on the south end of the map but all of the gear I had before is still with me! WTF? No bus, but I'm no worried about that. I'm hydrated and energized, have a glock and an mp5 with ammo. Very strange. Anyway - thanks for all of the tips.

Perhaps I still need to put parts on the truck. I didn't put the hood on it but I can start the engine and if I press W the tach raises. Q & E make noises when I press them. As it is: no longer an issue. I decided to see how to throw the grenade....didn't work so well. I get to start all over. Which is actually my favorite part of the game. If you are on "DayZ TX 2-18 (Public/Veteran) 131642 - Hosted by GameServers.com" Go to the north end of the map above the air field. in one of the shop yards you'll find a V3S that is fully assembled. If you look in police stations in the area you'll find barrels filled with loot.

I'm sure this is a bug but if they fix it I'm screwed. A few days ago I noticed that running zombies up and down hills would eventually cause the zombies to die. Great new if you just spawned in and your choice is to run away or try punching them. Today I finally figured out the mechanics of it and am able to get good results ~80% of the time. What you need is a steep section of hill. The way to determine if it is steep enough is to try and sprint up. If you start walking it's good. Now lead your konga line of Zombies up to the top and then lead them down it. Wait until they are close before you start running. You want them to be running and jumping at you for it to work. Done properly the zombies end up sliding past you dead. Today I had 5 and managed to kill 4 before I just took my fire axe to them. Only problem for me is that if I use the axe I'll almost always need a bandage b/c I never get the timing right and end up bleeding. The other glitch I like to use is a house with stairs up to the first floor. Get in it ahead of the zombies and they'll end up in the floor. then you play whack-a-mole!

happened to me standing on top of a control tower at an air field. Sucked. I had an M4 w/ a RDS, fire axe, 2 handguns, and all the other cool stuff. Attempted to do a rescue using my other account but it got killed on the way in (Sure are a lot of Zombies all of a sudden). So I just rolled my player out on the strip and started shooting zombies until I was overwhelmed. Just remember the glitches cut both ways: take some zombies for a hill run and see how many you can kill by just running up and down a hill. So far my best conga line had 8 zombies. The military ones are the hardest to kill that way, but they eventually die. Who needs a fire axe when you have a hill?

How can I determine which server I'm on? I have two accounts and I have both in the same general area. I need to drop something off for the other to pick up (2 accounts/1 computer). However this will only work if both are on the same server. So how do I figure it out, besides the obvious? ie - is there something somewhere that says "you are on server X"?

Standing on top of a control tower at an air strip and all of a sudden "ouch! I think I broke my leg". WFT? The server was already acting kinda whacky so no big deal. I crawled my guy in to the wood b/c I'm close to an area where other players will normally be. For now I'm logged out. I'll just login w/ my other account and run over to the area and drop off a morphine injector.

First post here was whining about the game being pointless after the patch. A mod closed the thread commenting to wait until later before playing the game...bah! I say. I did take a few days off, but I had some free time (I love my job) so what the hell. First thing: new strategy -DayZ is a running simulator. There is another thread about what to do about zombies that I posted on. Find it for info on what I'm doing now. It seems to work. However, zombies are only 1 issue when you spawn in. The other issue is food and water. I watched a video on youtube that discussed the health system in DayZ. Prior to watching it I thought that if you started bleeding in DayZ you were screwed and would have to get a blood bag. Wrong - eat everything you come across! eat it immediately! You can open cans with axes, knives, screw drivers, hacksaws and even can opens (if you can find one!). Eat until your status think says you are energized and healthy. Drink until it says you are hydrated and then continue eating until it says you feel full. Once you're full stop eating until that goes away. Do not allow the energized and healthy status things go away. If you get hurt, once you have bandaged yourself you will start healing. Just keep eating. Don't even bother storing stuff in you backpack or pockets, just eat it as soon as you can. medical stuff: the only thing I keep with me is bandages. Once I find a first aid kit I'll replace everything in it with bandages or rags. I know there are other conditions where other things are needed, but my experience so far is grab bandages ahead of everything else. axes rule for whacking out zombies or new spawns who are dumb enough to try and run up and punch you. The baseball bat is also pretty good but swap it for an axe ASAP. The rest of the stuff is a waste of time. Until you have an axe or bat just run away and use the glitches to escape the zombies. I'm not sure how the clothes and hats work for protection but I've noticed that wearing a motorcycle helmet gives you a lot of protection from zombies. Keep swapping clothes until you are wearing pristine cloths...sort of. When you spawn in you should immediately tear your t-shirt in to rags so you have some bandages. So whatever shirt you come across next you're going to put on. after than you have to make a choice: if this shirt stores more stuff (A hoodie) or is it in better shape. If I'm wearing a pristine work shirt and come across a damaged hoodie: I'm swapping for the hoodie. No idea what the point of the shoes are. I don't know if the boots provide some protection or if sneakers are stealthier. I've already mentioned that I grab the motorcycle helmet as soon as I find it. I don't know if the military helmets are better or if a cowboy hat would be just as good. As for guns: I grab all ammo until I have a gun and then I start only grabbing ammo for the gun I have and dump the useless stuff. A few times I've gotten lucky where I had both pistols and an M4. Only problem with guns is that they are loud. If you shoot 1 zombie with your ghetto blaster you're going to have 10 more drop by for tea and brains. Run away, use your axe, avoid shooting at all cost. I know there are silencers to be found, but when I had one it didn't seem to make a big difference. YMMV Other players: I've only encountered 1 coop players in the game so far. Everybody else has been some type of KOS player (kill on sight). This use to bother me, but now it's just part of the game. I avoid other players as much as possible. Earlier on I'd exit if I saw another player. Now I prefer seeing if I can hang out and avoid being detected. They're just like the zombies only a little smarter. So in brief the game has gone from pissing me off to no end to actually being a ton of fun. I think if it was easier I'd lose interest pretty quickly. I like COD & BF but once I've done the campaign and played a few death matches online I'm good and the disk ends up in the box with all the others. If they can maintain or improve what they have now I can see screwing around with this for a long time.

How long does stuff stay around after you dropped it? For example: say I load up a backpack full of gear and drop it in middle of a town and then leave. If I come back in an hour or two will it still be there (assuming nobody else picks it up)?

another sorta final note before I'm done: cargo pants rock! Need more space in your mountain backpack? put a pair of cargo pants in it and then drop stuff on the cargo pants. The pants take up 4 slots but hold 6. I do cheat a little by using an online map so I have an idea about where I'm going. As you play you eventually notice where good stuff spawns and you start ignoring places that never have it. You should occasionally check those places too. In one case I found a hoody and 3 food items in a house that usually (and since then) has nothing in it. Once you have your stuff sorted out explore the map. North of the NE air strip is a field that has the outline of a man drawn on it. East of the NW airfield is a ruined castle. In one spot I found a really cool house that I've never seen before anywhere else (it's like the tavern but different). The map I use just shows a gray square with nothing there but I still found something (it had some food in it). I kick off a project this week so I won't get to play again until Friday. Once you get over the killer Zombies and figure things out this game is really addictive. Have fun.

persistent objects would be very cool. sure, they can be abused, but anything can be abused if you give it some thought. My primary intention is to start dumping my loot and then letting people know where it is. outcomes: 1 - I really am just dumping my gear and starting over w/o killing myself. In which case jackpot! This is likely what I'm doing 2 - I'm a jackass KOS player setting others up - dump my gear in the middle of the road near a spawn area, wait for somebody to try and collect and shoot them. Fun maybe twice, after that it would get kinda lame 3 - dump the gear, let everybody know where to find it and watch the hunger games carnage as people kill each other trying to collect. Fun all day long.

Last week I was whining about his latest patch. After stepping back and rethinking things I love it. Both have to do with the 'new' zombies. What do you do about Z until you have an axe? You have options: If the zombie has not noticed you and it is far away just stay out of its line of sight. If its right next to you walk away and stay out of its line of sight. If it has noticed you and is running at you there are different options all of which involve running first is run. You need to zig zag your running because the zombies are actually faster than you but are not able to turn. If you zig zag enough you'll open a gap on them and eventually lose them for a while. I've noticed that even after I've lost the zombie it will show back up after a while (5 or 10 minutes). So always stay on alert. The next two observations are probably cheating: Find a house that is slightly raised and run in to it. The big house with 2 large rooms each having 2 doors in to the main hallway is the best for this. Once side wait on the zombie, there is a good chance it will glitch and be halfway in the floor. Just run around in the house for a bit and it will eventually just stop. I'm pretty sure this will get fixed eventually, but for now it works. This is also related to my biggest gripe about the game: zombies shouldn't be able to just pass through walls. So the glitches kind of even the score. The next glitch is to run up a hill and then just lead the zombie up and down and around trees. I've have 4 zombies chasing me at once and I managed to kill 3 of them just running in circles on the side of the hill. No idea why they die, but they eventually do. I've done this several times because it's funny, even with an axe I'd chose the above options rather than standing to fight them. I'm not a particularly good player so even with an axe I get hit too often. Using the glitches saves me bandages. Almost Final note: Once you do have an axe, walk up behind the zombies and kill them before they notice you. However, take your time to look around, in several cases there were other zombies who could see me while I killed one. Sort of final note (until I think of something else): Once you do have a gun of some sort think twice before you use it on a zombie. First you don't have an unlimited supply of ammo. Second it attracts more zombies so you use more ammo. Other players in the area will hear you "Dude, he has a gun, I'ma gonna take it!". Save your ammo for other players (defensives purposes only of course ;). One more thing: If you see another players walking up behind a zombie with his axe raised, wait until after he has killed the zombie to shoot him. That saves your ammo. Some idiot KOS player decided to kill me just as I was about to kill a zombie.

I got DayZ after watching the Node videos on youtube. The game looks pretty fun. For a while, prior to this latest release, it was fun. You could survive if you were careful and once you had a fire axe the strategy for the game changed - avoid the other players b/c everybody I encountered was a KOS type player. Which actually was kind of fun searching a town doing my best to make sure I avoided other human players. If I entered a new town with open doors I knew to be extra careful as I moved around. With this latest build - I can't play the game and I'm not really interested in investing my free time in to a game where even though I all the cool stuff (M4, 356 revolver, fire axe) the zombies just kill you anyway. A KOS player would have been a blessing. Starting over - good luck, you're going to die inside of 10 minutes if you try anything except run away from everything. Water from a well - there is a zombie on ever well. Fist fight a zombie - you die. Run from a zombie - you end up with a conga line of zombies who will eventually close the gap and kill you Fight with the zombies? Sure, even when the zombies are at the other end of the block facing the wrong way they still hit you with every strike. You're going to die. I'll go play minesweeper and try again when they release a playable version again. Too bad b/c this game is really cool when it is playable.