Kzalor

Yes, and they usually bring expensive poles, tackle boxes with appropriate equipment for what they are catching, thermoses, coolers, perhaps something to sit on, footwear, clothing, etc. This isn't the life-or-death survival fishing in DayZ. In DayZ, we don't have specialized poles and tackle boxes and other such equipment. Think about it, we fish with an improvised rod made with a stick, rope, and a hook (thinner rope or string and a pebble for a weight would be nice but what we have is good enough) wearing rags and worn clothing, and we don't necessarily have thermoses and coolers and nice little stools. In this setting it makes even less sense to expect we would have a nice hardware store pickaxe to break boulders and a big shovel to dig worms (instead of, as the other poster said, using a bayonet, your foot, knife, stick, etc.). A hatchet/axe is not an unreasonable thing to bring on a backpacking trip and really, you could use the handle of that to help dig for worms in a pinch. There are really two questions here: What makes sense for the survival/realism theme; and, what makes for good game play and good game design decisions. At the moment I think the current system misses the mark a bit on both counts.

Stones are easier to find near rivers and I think it would actually be neat if stones were an uncommon loot spawn near bodies of water in the DayZ wilderness. I would be in favour of limiting the spawn areas by proximity to bodies of water. As for gameplay, one of the joys of DayZ is that playstyle is open-ended. Creating artificial incentives to group together kind of restricts some of the breadth of potential gameplay. Basebuilding would likely be aided by teamwork since and this is a realistic place to encourage cooperative gameplay. Catching a fish and cooking it does not require a team of people IRL and it seems rather limiting and against the idea of DayZ itself to push people into groups in order to catch their evening trout.

I just got back into DayZ and I love the added hunting, fishing, and firemaking mechanics. Slowly we are getting to the point where you can try to survive in the wilderness. There is one problem at the moment. The equipment required for you to be able to successfully live in the wild crowds out all of the interesting backpack choices. To be able to catch fish and cook them over a fire you need an axe, pick, and shovel plus your fishing rod. Only with a mountaineering pack do you have a chance of being able to carry all of these tools and there is a strong incentive to wear a vest just to have a few inventory slots left over for some other items (plus room for stones, kindling, wood, matches, and, you know, that food you wanted to cook). Eventually tents will be added to the game and you can store some of your tools there, but really, the tool requirements and/or pack space required for them at the moment seem excessive. One small change that would help to alleviate the problem is if stones were classified as uncommon or common and could be found in the wild rather than as rare civilian loot. This would eliminate the rather silly need to carry a pick in order to break boulders to get stones. I don't know about anyone else, but when I backpack or canoe I don't carry a pickaxe with me so that I can get the stones I need to build my campfire at night. I do bring a hatchet to aid with gathering wood, but really, who brings a pickaxe? The shovel requirement to find worms kind of makes sense but that also seems a bit like overkill. Perhaps a smaller, improvised tool could also be used for this purpose. If the slot burdern for wilderness survival was reduced then it would be possible for people to use some of the other interesting backpack items like the different courier bags (my favourite) or improvised backpacks (another favourite). It would also help alleviate the pressure to use a combat vest. I personally hate using the vests because it ruins several of the outfits I like to use and hurts some of the roleplaying I like to do.