-CARNIFEX-

I died in exactly the same manner on my first life, in the dark, on a nearly empty server. Thought it ironic, since I had watched the last 10 min of this video just prior to my own experience...

The laptop I'm on atm is a Sager w/ i7 2860QM, 8gb DDR3 1600, Radeon 6990 2GB, Intel SSD, and DayZ is definitely playable on high settings. So the MSI laptop would no doubt accomplish that. However, as has been said, you're better off (and this is from personal experience) just getting a badass desktop and a decent laptop for school/business/whatever. Unless you live a VERY mobile lifestyle that would prevent having any established desktop gaming machine whatsoever, you will save a lot of cash by just going that route. I have a desktop with i7 950 (@4.1ghz), 6GB DDR3 (@1800), and a GTX 580 1.5gb, and it still puts the laptop to shame in terms of FPS. You could build a rig superior to that for $1200, then buy an adequate laptop for $700, and you would have 2 computers for the price of that single MSI laptop. Just something to consider before you spend about $2000...

Just some thoughts... If you spawn on the eastern part of the coast, you can run north to Berezino in 15 minutes or less. The SW section of the city (it's a little removed from the rest of Berezino proper) has a hospital and TWO supermarkets, all within visual site of eachother (as well as some decent residential spawns). I almost always seem to find a backpack in one of the supermarkets (which will let you fill up on blood, morphine and epi pens at the hospital), and generally also find the majority of necessary survival gear (a knife, matches, compass, binocs, etc.). You will also usually find at least a Makarov and/or a relatively crappy primary, but it should be enough to take care of zombies as needed, until you can score a proper military-grade firearm... Then, given the general flatness of the terrain, you can run west to Stary or the airfield within 20-30 minutes, easily. You can go about getting a "real" gun, ammo, any other supplies you don't have, killed by a sniper @ the NWAF, etc. etc. etc... I did this very route just about a day ago, and it was surprisingly quick. I would guess that I was back up north and geared sufficiently for PVP within 90 minutes. The same can likely be said of Cherno/Elektro routes, but they seem to be riskier in my experience. If I start to the west, I just hit up some tree stands on my way up north to Zelenogorsk - the supermarket there is really easy to get in and out of. Then you can just head to Stary/NWAF to round out the rest of your gear. Again, between 1 and 2 hours and you are likely geared fairly well. Playing with friends, and/or on low-pop. servers, can make this exponentially easier. You may spawn on the coast alone, but allies can stake out the traditionally dangerous areas up North so that when you get there you can go about gearing up much more quickly. Then get on something with more people when you want some action...

The first vehicle I ever encountered was a GAZ. I looked over the roof of it and saw someone approaching where my friend had been standing watch over me, and at that same moment I saw the "GAZ" nameplate pop up and thought that a survivor was sneaking up on my friend to murder him. I asked him if he had moved, for some reason he said no, and I shot. Well, it turns out he HAD moved, and was moving back into position, and "GAZ" really wasn't a bandit after all...woops! He was left with less than 4000 life, we had no medical supplies, and we were near the coast. He asked me to put him out of his misery, and my .45 obliged. He still jokingly gives me crap about it.

I had a guy spawn behind me inside a buidling and try to kill me with a silenced Bizon. He shot me at least 3 times, if not twice that, and I managed to run a short distance to cover, turn, and kill him with a burst from an AK74 Kobra. Only then, after bandaging, did I see my health: 9800. I literally lol'd. He had a DMR + 10 mags to boot. Glad that he is a bad shot and the Bizon is really weak. Point being, besides having a lot of bullets per magazine and being quiet - both of which make it good at killing zeds - it's not a very useful gun IMO. Any PVP with it is probably going to leave you cursing.

Granted, in real life you don't have some magical quantitative measure of your health that you are always aware of. But on the flip side, if you take a hit you probably have some idea of just how badly it hurt you. As an indicator of blood level, it would be cool IMO if your exact blood level was briefly displayed after taking damage, but would quickly go away (think of how long you have to see where you are when you first spawn in, or less). It would be up to you to be attentive to have a decent idea of where you are at, blood-wise, without the need to have it displayed prominently at all times. This allows you to see how much damage each hit did to you, but then after that it would be up to you to remember and/or rely on the in-game signs of blood-loss to figure out your health. I suppose when bleeding out it would be flashing pretty often, so it would need to be displayed in a minimalist fashion to not look too obtrusive, or perhaps even forego completely any indication of bleeding/starving damage (other than the obviously visible in-game signs...).Just a thought. Overall, I like the idea of getting rid of the monitor.

My friend spawned in on the coast, and had to make the lonely journey to NWAF while I drank beer and reflected on how good it is to not be in his shoes - it was pitch black and he literally was just running full-tilt up north using his compass, essentially oblivious to everything around. So once he finally got close to the NWAF, we decided to hop over to a low-pop. server with better visibility. The one we join has 4 people including us, and is right in the midst of the day. Should be good. We approached the high value barracks, and once we got in sight (but with no zeds spawned), he went for a smoke while I guarded his body. Feeling lucky, I decide to run over and check the barracks real quick - I can probably be back by the time he returns, and I've been waiting to do something, anything. So I run over, avoid zeds, get inside, and find tons of ammo and supplies, but no great weapons. Oh well. As I sneak back out, I manage to aggro a zed, and as I flee through the woods to lose him, I eventually wind up just outside the fence that encircles most of the airfield. At this point my friend has returned, and I am circling around to meet back up with him. Right when I get to where I can see him, he says "Is that you?" I replied with an affirmative, but realize upon looking closer at him that he is looking the wrong direction, back towards the woods/barracks. I tell him as much, and say that I must have managed to draw the attention of just about the only other person on the server. We group up and watch from a few bushes/trees, and this other survivor is definitely looking for someone. Me. Little does he know that the hunter has now become the hunted. We both take aim, and I tell my friend I will fire on his mark. He shoots a burst (and admits likely missing), which spooks the bandit right as I start pegging him with single shots. He turns, takes a couple of steps, pauses, and then blinks out of existence. My first real experience with getting robbed of a kill by alt-f4. Hopefully he wound up back on a coast somewhere, bleeding.

All of these complaints about graphical issues are pretty hard to address without more concrete information. You're lucky if someone includes what video card they are using, let alone driver version. I won't claim that it's a fix for everyone, but ALL of my graphical issues were fixed by upgrading 4-6 month old NVIDIA drivers. There are certainly things outside of the scope of DayZ itself that might be causing issues for people, but without more information it's hard to suggest fixes for anyone. So what I'm trying to say is, if you are having these problems, include more information about your setup. Even if you included it once in this thread 5 days ago, and post again, it doesn't hurt to reiterate what you are working with for people looking at your latest post(s). Don't just say "I went from 1.7.2.4 to 1.7.2.5 and I still have problems! Rocket sux!" - it's not helpful in the least, and leaves little room to try and help your issues.

I paid $25 to be able to play the alpha mod, so I would think that a well-developed standalone would have to be worth $40-50. I hate paying $60 for games, as so few these days seem to really be worth it, and can't really fathom the people dropping $100+ on collector's editions, but to each his own I guess. I'm not a poor scrub just scraping by, but I could think of much better uses for the money - beans and ammo for the apocalypse, etc etc etc. That said, if a lot of additional features are present, and the current features are fine-tuned into a well-oiled zombie death machine, then $60 wouldn't be a big deal....

I noticed that a lot of people have failed to mention what drivers they're running. Anyone who doesn't have the absolute latest graphics drivers for their respective cards, and is having the graphical glitches still, might try updating drivers as well. After the patch, I was still having occasional glitch-nightmare flare-ups, while my friend has so far had none; I have an EVGA GTX 580, he a 570. The only other difference was that I was running 296.10, and he had the latest NVIDIA drivers (301.something?). After I updated as well, I played for 2+ hours without a single glitch, and I definitely was in areas where it would have been happening previously. Perhaps it will come back with a vengeance, but it appears to be fixed thus far. Just something to consider and try if you haven't already...

Out of the 3 people (myself included) I know playing DayZ, 2 of us have had this happen so far in the past ~ 4 hours combined playtime (over a 24hr period). So instead of being able to play the game with your friends, starting at a point where you all had been the last time you were playing, it then becomes a matter of running for 30+ minutes to get anywhere close to meeting up with them, hoping you don't get killed along the way. Only then can you resume where you had (thought you) left off. It feels rather sisyphean. Hope this gets resolved, because these are not the undocumented changes lulz I was hoping for...

What a night. I've been trying to teach my friend, who can only play about 2 nights a week (and only for a few hours each night), the ropes of this game, when I myself am a relative noob. We started off trying to meet up at the Balota airstrip, and eventually succeeded. I killed a guy named "Hades" in the interim, and he seemed to think I was a prick for doing so, but I was hungry and thirsty and out of tasty beverages and snacks. What's a survivor to do? Anyway, we dicked around trying to meet up for a while, and managed to on several occasions, and stayed near to Balota. After a brief foray away and subsequent return, at the far kwanza hut was a pristine GAZ. At this point I think something fishy is going on, and we decide to cautiously enter. My friend sets up on overwatch while I run out to the car - note that this is my first time ever operating any, ANY, vehicle in DayZ/ARMA; also note that this happens to be a server with nametags on, which I am not used to! I go over to the driver's side, looking over the roof, and see a figure running out from the building...some "GAZ" fellow (hurr durr hurr...). I say, "Hey, I think I see someone named GAZ! Are you running around right now?" Now, for some reason, my friend answers that question with, "No, light that fucker up!" So I do, only to immediately realize - to both of our horror - that it is indeed he that I have just injected hot lead into. I ran over and bandaged him, but he had less than 2000 life at this point. We shuffle back into the kwanza hut, with me offering profuse apologies while asking why he said he wasn't running around, and he pretty much gives up on playing for the night. But I convince him to soldier on, and while he waits there I go back for the car. We're going to make a Cherno-or-bust run, knowing we're probably as good as dead. While I'm away from him for a brief moment, he encounters someone, and manages to kill them with a revolver - all while he has blurred vision, barely any blood, and is literally passing out under any sort of stress. It turns out this person has: a ghillie suit (was wearing it), range finder, GPS, nightvision, AS50, epi-pen, antibiotics, ALICE pack, all survival gear, etc etc etc.I take everything of use besides the weapon - I figure there's at least a decent chance this is all hacked, and don't want to take any sort of ridiculous weaponry. My friend resigns himself to death given his poor life, and I oblige him with a .45 to the head. Unfortunately, he respawned in Elektro, where he went on to have a few adventures of his own before calling it a night. But as for myself, I got in the GAZ, and started driving eastbound...and down. After a short way, I got out to check a building for food (that dead survivor had had awesome gear, but nothing edible...), and had to run from a zed. I managed to lose it in some bushes, but it had hit me, and I somehow broke my leg and passed out before I could bandage. So I had to watch as I bled out from over 11k life, unconscious and never stablizing. It sucked. I spawned again, this time on the outskirts of Komarovo. Still close to where I just died, all is good in Chernarus. Except...it seems Komarovo has been nuked. And in front of me, not 100m away, is a fully functional bus. Empty. Wtf? At this point, I know something is up. There are shenanigans afoot. But I can't resist driving that big rig, so I hop in and make my way over to Balota. As I barrel down the airstrip with nothing to lose, I can see another surivor in the woods behind the airstrip, watching and thinking he's sneaky in his Yankee blue jeans. As I approach my old GAZ (and my old corpse), I park the bus so as to shield me for a minute while I loot the corpse. I manage to regain everything, EVERYTHING, and I feel great! I run a short distance away, look back to make sure I am clear of followers, and log to go smoke. Did I mention that at this point I'm feeling great? I come back a few minutes later, log in to the same server (mistake?), and spawn in the right location, but with the same gear as a fresh survivor (i.e. - essentially nothing...). Jesus Histrionic Christ! I'm not far from where the car, and my former corpse, lay. I run over, and the corpse now has the identical gear that I myself am now sporting. KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!! Needless to say, this has all been frustrating. My friend calls it a night after killing some people before himself dying in Elektro, and I decide to hop in the cursed GAZ and drive full speed towards Cherno. Cherno or bust! On the way, at the gas station, there were two cars with survivors inside! (thanks, cheap nametag feature, for making it so obvious!) Naturally, I ram into the side of the closest car - another GAZ - while yelling "Arriba! Arriba! Andale, andale!" I back up and ram it again for good measure, while the second vehicle swings around to ram me and protect his friend. When he fails at doing so, and instead rams his friend, he decides to instead hop out and point his AS50 - wait, what!? - at me. After one shot, old Gazzer was done for. I lamely turned in circles at 5 kph while he lined me up and put Gazzer out of her misery. I hopped out, and made it 2 steps before being taken down like some sort of African bush grazer. So, after finishing another beer and reflecting on life for a bit, I decide on one more go. I join a different server this time, and again spawn right outside of Balota (my spawns were amazingly lucky tonite, tbh), and make a beeline for the airfield. In the woods outside of the control tower, I hear flies abuzz. It's pretty dark, but after I look around I find 2(!) survivors' corpses. Between them, they have everything I lost previously and then some. And all is right in the world. It just goes to show that you should never give up, even when the bullshit is neck high and you are questioning if you want to keep playing. DayZ giveth and DayZ taketh away. Accept it, keep playing, and soon enough you will be having fun again.

200+ matches in a box. If you knew how to light a fire with only a couple of matches, or even one, that would last a loooooong time. Might as well be infinite for game purposes.

This is a good route for avoiding contact. My most successful survivor so far went that route and had pretty much all the survival essentials by the time I hit Zeleno.

In the forest Northwest of Nadezhdino, to the west of the lake that lies just north of the town, there is a maneating tree. I just died by crawling too close to its roots, losing a DMR and all the essentials in the process. I made it back to the same tree about an hour later after running through the outskirts of both Elektro and Cherno (and then north...). I heard flies abuzz, and as I excitedly crouched down to search for my gear, my leg snapped causing me to pass out (I had figured that, crouched instead of prone, I might avoid injury...). I woke up with just over 9000 life, listening to flies mockingly buzz me and my now-broken leg, beneath the Tree of Doom. I simply crawled back into its roots, and the sweet embrace of death. I love DayZ, but it always sucks to die to a glitch, instead of to zeds/bullets...

First off, this had probably been discussed ad nauseum, long before I learned of DayZ or joined the forums. I get that. I just wanted to offer my opinion on the matter of spawning survivors... I don't mind not having an immediate respawn feature. And I don't mind not being able to instantly spawn on friends. But I feel that there is a better way than everyone simply washing ashore like driftwood. That particular scenario, played out again and again, for every single survivor, seems a little far-fetched even in a Zombie apocalypse scenario. I would suggest the following... If starting survivors had some way to pick the town region - not necesarily the town proper - that they spawn in (and this would be the more significant towns, up to and including Zeleno, Stary, and Berezino...), then it would make it somewhat easier to meet up with friends, while still not making the game much (any?) easier for survivors. To me, it seems more likely that there would be a few survivors from each town, rather than every survivor somehow sprouting forth on the beach. It would likely increase activity in the northern reaches of the map (all you entrenched snipers would love fresh meat, right?), while making the coastal areas a little less noob-filled. Some will still choose to go the southern coast route, because it is familiar and they know how to successfully raid Elektro/Cherno (which should, in theory, have a little less PvP going on in this scenario). Others will check out the northern reaches that they may or may not have seen before, perhaps having a better chance at finding military loot, but less access to abundant medical and general loot... In the end, though, I think the ability to spawn a little bit closer to where you want to be (or where your friends are at) would make this mod / future best-selling game simply more appealing to a lot of folks - I have several friends whose biggest problem with (buying) DayZ is that it will, at times, take potentially an hour or more to meet up in-game...they would basically buy it in an instant if they thought it would be easier to unite when playing. While the potential difficulty of doing just that has made death "mean something" in DayZ, I think that cutting that travel time down for freshly-spawned survivors who want to meet up with friends would improve the player experience without too much compromising of the challenge or "feel" of a lonely zombie apocalypse simulator.

Do a generic search for "respawn" related threads, at the moment, and you get page after page of threads regarding reinstating the respawn feature that was just removed. A google search yields a bunch of dead threads from before June. Sorry for "hiding" the main idea of the suggestion by trying to explain it more fully. If you want a game to eventually be a standalone product, no matter how niche some of the playerbase want it to stay, it has to have some mass-market appeal. Not necessarily trying to be huge, but enough interest to garner a full-on release. Having you spawn outside of the beach is not the craziest of ideas, and I don't really see how it makes the game difficulty change all that much, especially for truly new players. And it makes the game slightly more appealing to players who are debating whether or not they should buy it. Alpha would be the time to experiment with this sort of thing. Just an opinion.

Fat Elvis will eat all of your beans, fyi.

I finally got one of my friends to buy everything to get DayZ running, and after some issues with trying to meet up on the same server, we finally join in on the same server. I've explained some basics to him, and offered links to some short beginner guides, but it was late and sometimes these things are just better left to experience. Anyway, he missed his chance to see where he spawned in, so we were simply working under the principle that I would move south from the middle of the map, towards Balota and Cherno, and he would head away from the coast until he could hit some road sign or landmark to figure out where he is. All is going well, when after literally 3-5 minutes he tells me, "I see other people!". "One or a group?" "A lot! There's like 5..." "#&*#! Did they see you?" "Yeah, they're talking to me...Oh shit, they just spawned a helicopter! This guy just gave me a bunch of gear, and now they're telling me to get in this helicopter with them!" "Dude, they're hackers..." (that made my heart sink...) "They want ME to fly this thing...these guys just want me to die to amuse them, right?" "Yeah, we need to find a different server...." And so my friend dropped whatever awesome stuff they gave him, and we started to look for another server. 10 minutes later we are both spawned in and moving along nicely on another server, when he says, "Hey, I see a crashed helicopter..." So I tell him that, if he can get around the zeds, he has probably just hit the jackpot. And indeed he has - this crashsite had 2 bizons, a FAL, and some medical loot I believe. Some sort of magical beginner's luck going on here, but whatever, I'm not bitter... However, in his haste and poor familiarity with the inventory system, he drops his damn patrol pack on the ground (with a bizon in it), and can't for the life of him figure out how to pick it back up. I am trying to explain, but zeds are getting closer, he is getting nervous/impatient, and so I suggest that making out with the FAL and his life might be the best bet - a backpack can be found readily enough. So he manages to escape to a treeline, where he semi hides himself to re-evaluate his gear situation and figure out a next course of action. I explain the gear system a little more, and he figures out that he was doing the wrong thing to try and get his pack, and is going to go back to try and get it. Famous last words. He gets back to the crash site after some careful maneuvering, only to spot two players - somehow seemingly oblivious to him - moving in on the site with rifles in hand. I tell him that they might draw aggro and give him a chance to overcome their strength in numbers, or escape, but he resolutely replies that there isn't a good way out of this, and he's pretty sure he's going to have to shoot. Sure enough, a firefight breaks out almost immediately, and he manages to kill one and wound the other before going down. Pretty sure the zeds ate the other wounded survivor. "This is fucking cool" was how he summarized it. I have rarely encountered other players because I've been solo'ing and playing it safe, so for him to find a group of hackers that didn't KOS, and then get in a legit firefight at a heli crash site, seemed like quite the first experience for a beginner. Hopefully he's hooked, and we'll be able to get some of our other friends to check DayZ out...

Rog is cursed with some sinister stairs. The very first gun I ever found, in the very first tree stand I ever searched, was an M4A3 CCO. I made my way up to Rog, and there was a dead body at the base of the stairs. Being a complete noob idiot, I felt compelled to literally run up the stairs to possibly face down whatever bandit slayed the poor bastard. Instead, I fell off the stairs to my death (pretty sure a little lag was involved). Maybe the body was there from the same exact thing. Someone should put a "Caution! Wet Floor" sign up at the bottom of the stairs...

The prospect of absolutely NO PvP seems far worse than allowing senseless PvP to occur, IMO. The threat of being stalked by other players adds a level of danger to the game that it would lack otherwise, as no AI zombie will ever be as frightening as being stalked by another human...anything that adds to your emotional response when playing is likely making the experience more immersive, which is exactly the point! I concur with you that senseless PvP seems, well, senseless...it would add a lot to the experience if you didn't just assume every encounter was going to wind up with gunfire. There are enough players complaining about banditry that you can be assured there are plenty of people willing, in theory, to cooperate. In a perfect (game) world, we would have the groups of PvP-minded individuals prowling the map, with groups of cooperating survivors that would occasionally be forced to deal with them (on top of those eagle-eyed, easily-confused zeds...). Right now, it's near impossible to play as a lone wolf and expect to find other survivors to group with...you really need to have some people to play with, using TS/Ventrilo/mumble. Otherwise you are just easy prey, and you shouldn't be surprised when someone shoots you. Hopefully that may change a little, but you should never lose the fear of being backstabbed when trying to be friendly with anyone you aren't in direct, constant communication with, or that you don't personally know. Again, that adds to the fear / immersion / overall experience! I also concur with those stating that changing the current logout procedure to prevent abuse of DCing is needed as soon as possible, and could very well completely change the dynamics of player-player interaction once enacted (i.e. - forcing players to face each other to be killed outright, warily pass eachother unscathed, decide to team up, get robbed, offer assistance, etc.) I would expect a short disconnect countdown, or something similar, in the near future. All we can do is have patience - having so many new players flooding the mod is slowing some of the progress in other areas, and you have to take the good with the bad in this alpha state...

A mix of zombie types would be great, IMO. It would be cool to experiment with the ratio of slow vs. fast zeds, which would probably necessitate higher overall numbers of them. Some of the recent (most recent?) changelogs noted that the performance enhancements might make room for more zeds, so whether or not that was tongue in cheek, I hope that we see something like this: Given the current system of zed aggro, having a majority be of the Romero variety could equate to a slow, inevitable horde shifting in your direction if you enter a town sans stealth. A few standouts, "rage infected" or whatever you want to call them, that can separate from the pack and give chase would lend "Oh shit!" moments to the slow sense of impending doom that hordes of shamblers offer. The randomness/uncertainty would be a great addition, IMO - just one more thing to keep in mind as you try to survive...that next zed might take notice but be ponderous, or they could snarl and immediately run at you. Plus, it would be kind of cool to walk up on a town and, instead of zombies immediately launching at you, to see the whole mass start to take notice of you, slowly turn, and start making their way ever so slowly towards you...en masse. You might as well start a timer for how long you have to get a couple of choice pieces of loot before you (attempt to) run for your life... tl;dr A mix of both Romero/infected zombie types would spice up the game/potentiate awesomeness.