DeKamme

Hi there, I'm one of those guys who played Doom and Quake when they were released, so I've seen a lot of games over the years. I've been subscribed to game magazines, was in and ran clans, and went to large lanparties. Over the years, my interest for games faded and re-emerged. It is because of stumbling upon games like this that my interest emerges from time to time. What a find! The start: I dropped into a game, and saw no hud, no super gear - just the stuff I would be walking around with on a regular day, minus the flashlight. I walked out of a nice beach (was I shipwrecked?), into some deserted houses, and found a rain coat. Nice, it has more inventory. Now find stuff to put in.... When looking for that stuff, I notice another player and walk up to him. Only when he turns around I notice there is something strange about the way he moves, and then a moan and a roar... And I'm running my *ss off over this nice beach. Quite a lot of deaths later, mostly by people claiming to be "friendly" with a Russian accent, some by getting invisible people (well hidden in the bushes, not standing in the middle of the road like me, I soon deducted) shoot me, sometimes by bleeding to death before figuring out I could tear up my t-shirt into bandages... I realized this is a thinking man's game. Finally, after all these years. Like half-life was a welcome change from the "hop hop shoot shoot respawn" Quake playstyle, this game is a very welcome change to the mass of COD clones out there. It has atmosphere, it has style, and it challenges you. Not just in game skills, but also in people skills - do I trust this guy, even after he bandaged me and gave me his sidearm? Is that guy in the distance chasing the other one, or are they both luring me into a trap? After 5 days I realized this game needs more then thought, it needs the tactical ranger's mindset. So I joined a "clan", or group, whatever - nothing strict or official, just people helping eachother out, with some that can hit some pixels 800m downrange. It comes natural in this game, as a need to survive and get loot. Without hud markers yelling at me to join this or click that. I need it, so I figure out how to do it. Now we're chasing others. And get killed by more succesful groups of players - but we don't get mad at them, we silently thank them for giving us the opportunity to learn, and find out how to improve ourselves. Thinking out elaborate flanking and cover schemes, running with pounding hearts over airstrips to save a bleeding blacked out buddy, hoping the designated sniper will make that impossible shot... Thank you, for making this rough diamond, and polishing it on a regular basis. Please don't yield to calls to make this more accessible, it's meant to be challenging and unforgiving (and rewarding for reaching a level of mastery). And unique by being all the above.

Huntin' bandits The first bandit gang we encountered, had an initial smart approach. They advanced on our position through thick underbrush, only after one of us fell bleeding to the ground, our marksman noticed their location. Bad call, we thought: although their position gave them quite some visibility cover, it consisted only of 6 trees in the middle of a grass field. They had fired too soon, not realizing we had already half surrounded them. The only one of us that was close to our downed guy opened up towards the trees, effectively pinning them down, as we moved to close the net around them. Once we reached our entrenched positions, it sounded like world war 3 started. All different calibers were echoing through the clear sky, and the comms were a mix of cheers and confusion. When the sound of both guns and our pounding hearts died down, someone said "we need to check them out". I decided to take a chance, we can't just let the situation rest there. There's too few of us, if they patch themselves up and take out one of us, they have an opening towards better cover. I dropped some gear, leaving my trusty carbine and a spare magazine on me, and rushed towards the lonely trees that were ground zero of the earlier barrage. Reaching a point where I could see clearly through them, I noticed a crouching guy patching another up. Acting too fast, I emptied half my magazine in their direction while still running. Although I clearly saw blood coming from the medics shoulder, it wasn't enough - my vision soon went black, lying half unconscious on the ground, I could only hear the sound of one of their guns, and rummaging through a backpack or medkit. Man down, I was just able to whisper through our comms. To my surprise, I stumbled back up, to see (through a blurry haze) the crouched medic shuffling backwards. Moving away from my 3 teammates advancing from the opposite direction. Emptying the remainder of my mag into him did the job, he fell down, and didn't look like he was going to do much in that stage. Woozy nights filled with vodka had prepared me a bit for the next bit: still in the haze, I grabbed his backpack and some other stuff, and ran back to the spot I assumed our sniper was hiding. More guided by his calm but alert voice then my blurry vision, I reached his fox hole, dropped my gear and body, and only started regaining my bearings after he pumped me full of saline, vitamins and some other stuff that left a strange metallic taste under my tongue. Is this survival? Half an hour later we were still rummaging through the combined loot, spread out over our camp floor. So much ruined equipment. You can't ponder the meaning of it all too much: we equip, they equip, we encounter eachother, lose buddies, lose equipment, use up meds - and repeat it. I start to wonder, we call ourselves uninfected - is that really so, or have we just caught a more slowly acting variant of whatever the zombies have? Maybe they have an easier life: they don't gear up, just attack everything that moves with bare hands. Maybe that's what's at the end of all this deja-vu waking up on beaches stuff. It's not reincarnating until we reach nirvana, it's a cycle that ends in the zombified state. I ended up in hell, and don't quite realize what I did to deserve this. Drinking the alcohol tincture gets more tempting every night we survive this living hell...

Deja Vu All Over Again After yet another blackout, I awoke in another coastal city. My fogged mind was trying to decide whether this was a deja-vu, if I'm in a continuous nightmare, or - no more time to think, 2 zombies have picked up on my half naked self sprinting through the streets. I punch one to the ground, then flee to a shed, where I find a hoe. The tool, you know. When both of their skulls were turned into whant I usually see inside a can of spaghetti, I pick up my usual routine of finding some goofy but spacious clothing and other essentials. With some food, water, a mosin without ammo and the hoe, I decide to head for a police station to find ammo. There I encountered some guy, rummaging through trunks of beat up cars. I casually said "hi dude, just passing by, how you doin". To my surprise he swapped his shotgun (with ammo) for my mosin. I figured, better to run around with a loaded gun looking for better stuff, then with an empty precision rifle. I pointed him into the direction of the airfield, said I'd rather stick to moving through woods - and lost him in there. My calls to him were only answered by a curious sparrow. At the airfield I encountered a corpse holding a mosin. That cleared that up. Moving towards his corpse, but sidestepping at the last moment proved effective: I heard the distinct crack of another mosin in the distance, and a bullet landing nearby. This made me run into the nearby building, grab some loot I saw readily available, and sprint back out into nearby underbrush. At that time my comms started crackling, and cleared up with the familiar voice of a brother in arms. He said he saw some guy with a mosin run out of the woods, followed by a guy with a hoe... And he took out the mosin guy. Doh. A few minutes later my buddies gave me their emergency loot stocks, turning me from a survivor into a hunter. Time to find some bandit gangs!

I think I saw this naked man walking through Cherno. From the size of his junk, he'd been walking some days in the freezing cold. As he was looking quite bewildered, I threw a can of tactical bacon wrapped in a yellow coat. Don't know if he grabbed it, or if I knocked him out by it.

One of the longest sentences I ever started to try to read. Gave up after some 1/3rd of it. Constructive feedback: - You are talking to people. Think about what you want to achieve from this interaction. - If you want to achieve multiple things, divide your questions/statements into paragraphs. - Keep people interested by insterting blank spaces between longer texts, not repeating the same word too often (and ... and .... and ... ), and not ranting but telling.

From the glitch room, afaik, you can't shoot anyone. Tried it, couldn't shoot a zombie that was standing 20m away. 'Hacking' away the buildings alltogether makes them pass-through, you can see, walk and shoot through them. Haven't tried that 2nd option, but as it's still active in the bug tracker, and I've seen people just run through the jail buildings, I am pretty sure it is what you experienced. Those are the ones that usually kill you from odd angles. Killing those in the room should be pretty easy: camp them out. They can't leave the room easily, it requires some wiggling, during which they can't move or aim properly. Or try and lead a zombie up the stairs, it'll go through the walls to the one in that room.

You got my beans meat pie, good story :) And good first time experience Michael! We also took in some newbies, giving them guns and gear... Most aren't foolish enough to try them on a group of better equipped people. They'll soon realize that just good gear won't let you survive long in this game, you need stealth skills and knowledge of how people react, or a solid band of brothers. *edit* Michael, you'd better post your timezone if you want friends. People from all over the world play, but not all when you are on.

In standalone (SA), you just have to mind your inventory - when it reads "energized" and "hydrated", you're good for a while. Just pack some good stuff along, like re-fillable containers (liter bottle & canteen), and rice, cereals, or random cans of food. Too bad the texts will be removed, I indeed find it more immersive with the current very minimal hud (only text + when drawing / zeroing weapon) loot: If you play a few hours every day, it'll take you a week or 2 to encounter most of current loot drops. The only things that remain hard to find without camping large airfields, are full camo clothes, weapon attachments like mosin compensator, Magpull attachments for m4, 60 round magazines. What you need to survive, you'll find in every medium sized city. You can spend quite some time trying to interact with friendlies (good luck with that), finding the accuracy of the different weapons, trying to approach people undetected, ... Which to choose: If you like experimental gameplay, that can change with every release, and which you can influence/contribute to by posting suggestions & feedback, go for standalone. If you want a fleshed out game full of gear and vehicles, go for the mod.

Tip: press enter sometimes, makes for an easier read than this wall of text :) I encountered a guy once, talked to him over both voice and text chat, but he kept voice and text chatting to me "do you have a mic? can you talk?". Sometimes direct chat just doesn't seem to work. The next guy I encountered, on the same server & same spawn, could hear me just fine.

Get used of using the map to know where you are, and find random Z's. Use the map to get a range estimate. Zero scope to that range. Shoot - rinse, repeat. Try to remember what range equals to what distance. Play around with the FOV setting, and see what zoom setting works for you. The only issue is indeed working with leading. A few days ago I saw 3 guys running at 500m. I shot a few meters in front of the first guy. The middle guy fell down unconscious. Experienced people will zigzag in an unpredictable way, good luck tring to hit that from 700m...

Airfield is KOS zone. People only come there to get weapons. And what do you do with weapons? ...

Since most people that shoot you after talking, start with "friendly". I don't, I say "hi buddy", give them some time to adjust. I hold my weapon in my hands, but not readied. When they are accustomed to my presense, I start chatting a bit more. Ask if they need some stuff (or can miss something), ask if they know where they are or need directions. This has resulted in an average of 4/10 friendly encounters, which I find a very good ratio. Mind, that's not counting the full military gear people with 2 long rifles, a fireaxe and tactical vest. Some things that will get you shot: - Walk into any airfield carrying a good rifle (m4, sks, mosin), especially when looking geared - Same applies for the big cities (Elektro, Cherno) - Sneaking up on people, when I notice a guy with a gun readied walking around me, I assume he's up to no good Some things that help not getting shot: - Wearing colourful clothing (yellow raincoat) - Bright colourful backpack - not the xxl one (xxl screams "I've got tons of gear") - One visible gun and one melee (if you like a 2nd, get sawed off shotty or pistol) - Random chatter, in a clear, calm voice, stating your intention (looking for food/trade/team up/...) - Stick to smaller towns in center of map I don't understand people complaining from getting KOS on an airfield. It's a military site, you only show up there to get guns. Once you get your pimped out guns and good camo gear, what are you going to do there? Start a campfire, roast beans and sing kumbaya? Once the game is a bit more fleshed out and they actually have things to do for friendlies, like farming, or building a camp, it may get more interesting. Right now, I see no other end goal of all this gearing up then shooting. Mind, I try to stick to one rule of thumb: shooting happens on even grounds, against someone with a good weapon and enough gear. Thats why I head for NE airfield. If I encounter someone on the way that needs help, I'll gladly explain how to find stuff, and warn him he should be geared up before seeking out NE.

About Proto's map suggestion: In-game you can call up Steam with shift-tab (default). There you can open up a browser. In that browser I have my dayZ map open, with city names, loot drops, water wells etc. It's better then alt-tabbing to a regular browser, because in the ingame steam window, you can see the background feintly, and hear your surroundings. And don't have to move your hands to a smartphone or other device. or just print it and hang it on the wall, for the oldschool paper touch :)

I can help: - open google - type "rent dayz server" - press enter Should get you where you want to be. It's what I'd do. Seeing as I'd have to type then what you can read yourself, it seems more efficient for you to search it directly. Could have taken you the time to go to these forums and make a post... Tip: watch the "caps lock" light.

Probably he had so much alcohol in him, to not notice he was poisoned. Welcome Rhys! I'm fairly new too, and share your sentiment. This is a truly unique game. Not for quitters or stupid people, so I hope natural selection will leave a lot of nice and odd people in the game. I'll try and remember your name, if you see some guy dancing/boxing with zombies, just try to talk - might be me. I usually wear a gas mask and a beret.

Will do! My ingame nick is "deka". I play with ] FiB [ on our server, always welcome there. I think it would be nice to have a "generic" teamspeak, not tied to a clan. Our group (talking Dutch) logs off around 10-11pm. Then I sometimes hop to another TS and meet new people, and I often encounter guys (like I assume are replying to this topic) just looking for a good chat, some laughs and some tense moments after a hard day's work. I do skip the ones with squeaky voices that are talking military style. Would be nice to meet up with 10-20 of those good people and just join a large server, and not camp NE airfield for a change. Find a noob, and escort him with a small army. Go sightseeing into castle ruins, take a hike to the other side of the map. Surprise spawning bandits with 15 nude hoe wielding nutjobs. Yesterday I saw 2 guys running around Berezino, close to eachother, but not noticing eachother or me. I started chatting, then describing their actions, hiding in a bush - seeing how they would react. They never replied, and soon hopped servers. I think some people don't understand the meaning of multiplayer. I encourage the dev's vision of sharing shards of the loot DB between specific servers, so we can start communities. I'd like a Roleplay community, PvP community, PvE community, language zones - so we can choose how to interact. I'd log quite some hours on the Roleplay server, just meeting people, helping them fend off the occasional bandit, trade gear, hold a farm...

And another can of beans for you. The move towards consoles is, imo, also fueled by piracy on the PC platform. Devs can only make the big $$$ from gamers that don't know/bother how to pirate, and this applies mostly to the console crowd. The console crowd also favours slightly more arcade games, as the elaborate keybindings (like you find in dayZ) is hard to port to a console. In turn, this makes most games go console, and makes most games go more arcade-like. This, in turn, leaves the PC crowd with far fewer games overall, and even less quality games. Making them pirate the few shitty games there are left. Making the devs go more towards consoles and arcade. It's a circle/spiral, and I think we can't just point a finger at devs. The gaming community is to blame for accepting and paying for crappy games, devs think it is what everyone wants (aka know it sells).

Nice initiative! I've started doing something similar over here: http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/topic/189612-first-days-impression-from-a-game-oldtimer/ You're free to do your narrative on our server, I'd be glad to guide you to it, PM me to swap steam ID. It's usually well populated (between 7 & 30) and always available. Could be nice to get overlapping storylines, if we cover separate portions of the map, we can encounter respawns from each others encounters... This may even lead to a roleplay-server, or whatever it turns into.

So today I started fully geared up in a barn, and was aiming to move towards my group at NE airfield. But I fell the short distance from the hay attic 1st level to the ground, and was instantly killed. The splint in my backpack could have fixed a broken leg, but no, this tough killer tripped over a loose nail, and after surviving brave gunfights, died in a pile of manure. How glorious. Sheer shame left me unable to defend myself after reincarnating on a forgotten railroad, so a zombie feasted on my brains. Then I awoke in a northern coastal city, and after finding some new pants and eating some beans, I heard mumbling. To my surprise, some white t-shirt guy had followed me into my bean camp spot, and was just standing there... Talking. Giving him a high valued Can Opener created a bond. I wished I didn't eat all the beans right away, this guy looked hungry. After chatting a while, he joined us on TS comms, and ended up playing 2hrs with us. And he was quite funny, sometimes by running over the middle of airfield tarmac chased by a zombie, then stopping to gloat over his zombie kill (still mid tarmac, enduring our yells "dude this is a full server"). He was quite scared though, once one of us shot a random Mosin round into the air, and waited 5 mins to say it was him. White T guy ran even more erratically towards cover then he was when getting chased by the zombie. Good times. Him following our camouflaged group through woods and hills with a goofy XXL orange backpack was a bit unsettling, but we were tolerant. We made a random friend in game. How unique. Also nice to be with a mature group, no one even suggested handcuffing him or feeding him some rotten Zucchini (I know that's what Gas Mask Guy is keeping in his pants for special occasions, I've picked up the odor). White T didn't have the "I'm glaring at your backpack" look some others that survived unmentionable things have, it's nice to see some left over humanity in this apocaliptic mess with unpronouncable road signs. We have a pet / trainee now. I'm no longer the newest newbie, and can find my way through random woods easily towards the others. Usually bringing spare stuff that always comes in handy. I feel useful. And feel my good old Scouts droppings in the woods with only a compass, map and a backpack pay off in adult life as well. How rewarding :)

Next time you do that, just say "oops sorry, was trying to whack those beans from your hands - they were rotten, I tried to save you from food poisoning". It's the civilized version of the Russian-accented "friendly?" you hear before getting shot. I encountered a random guy today, he ended up running 2h with us on teamspeak. And quite a funny one too. Compensation for the beans/head golf games with axes.

MOA is minute of angle, a method to describe how accurate a weapon, optic etc is. There are dummy targets you can shoot at to see how your weapon grouping is at a certain distance (in MOA), so you can compare, adjust etc. The MOA value allows you to compare with a standardized measurement. To join the discussion: I'm much of a lay man when it comes to practical weapon handling. But from reading, I've noticed people saying the M4 platform needs proper care - field stripping, cleaning, .... Maybe, in this Russian themed world, people are not used to proper maintenance of M4's, and what they consider pristine has actually collected a lot of debris, wear and tear. The AK platform seems much more forgiving in handling and care, afaik. The mosins and SKS's could be much better maintained, but never used, explaining their better "out of the find" handling. Which would also apply to the AKM. I'm looking forward to seeing the SVD in here as well. To my taste, it's one of the best looking designated marksman rifles out there. The original optic for it should allow for quick range estimation and compensation as well.

@pabloottawa (ultimate?) : 3k dollars for a gaming PC? Did you go Alienware? I built my pc for about 700€, it's still running a good old first gen i5 and 8GB ram. I go for the midrange GPU, that's a 660GTX. Still runs most stuff quite well, maybe not on super high detail - but still looks better than most consoles. That is considering an investment in a good case, screen and keyboard/mouse, after that it's swapping internals. I usually end up running about 4y with it. All depending on taste of course, if you want a console, by all means go for it. /ontopic: I'd love to see some console gamers on our servers. Let them try to snipe at 800m with their thumbsticks. And quick-snap to inventory to manually load 20 sks bullets in mid-fight. As many others have suggested, many console games introduce some arcade/dumbing down factors. I don't think this game is suitable. Could be wrong.

Yep, don't mind the dot, look for where blood appears on the Z. It's usually almost a head's space above his head you have to aim for. That, and strafing - they're so easy to strafe from, I sometimes go for a dance with them for the heck of it. I even down them with fists sometimes. Try and land a few headshots when they're downed, to keep them down. I like this now, zombies shouldn't be too easy to kill. The map is way too big, there has to be something to keep us on our toes ^^

Good to see this positive vibe and supporting community! One of my favourite games, if not the most favourite, is Fallout 1/2 (can't decide which one). dayZ is to me some kind of spiritual successor, more then what FO3 turned into. They'd have my eternal gratitude if they would add a mainly hidden entrance to an underground vault, but I guess that would be copyright infringement... Or a homage to the earlier masters? And yes Zarniwoop, I like friendly encounters very much. Or dubious encounters, where you don't know what the other person is trying to do. I only shoot the guys in full camo gear, that are scanning the area holding an m4 or SKS. Yellow raincoats with a shovel and crossbow can pass, they are usually roleplaying, and I gladly go along with that. There's no challenge in running after fresh spawn at the beach, I never even considered doing that. Let them find a gun, and make it an evenly matched encounter. The other day we shot a guy that ran into the NE airfield barracks, and he asked us to bandage him. We did take his rifle, but bandaged him and let him run on. He returned later - with 2 buddies, which our teammates spotted - asking if he could come in. I asked "are you alone", he said "yes and unarmed". While his buddies were taking up a spot behind the corner, aiming for the door. He thought there was 1 or 2 of us... This time we didn't bandage him, and his buddies were last seen running through a field, towards the setting sun. It's not that we won't give them a chance, they just rarely are genuine in their intentions... Let them try to outsmart and outflank us, it keeps us sharp!