Now that the devs have fixed the boats so they no longer get tossed around by rocks reaching the dam by boat is very doable and takes less time than running up there on foot. There’s only one narrow spot you absolutely have to portage around but, if you are good at driving boats and manage your speed well, you could theoretically make it without having to get out and push anywhere else. However, there are a two or three other spots that are tricky where you’re likely to get hung up and have to do a little pushing. All said, reaching the dam by boat is now viable. I didn’t feel like portaging up and over the dam to see if it’s as easy to reach the swamps from the high side of the dam as it now is to get to the low side, but it probably is based on my recollection from doing it before. I think it would be cool if the devs spawned a single boat in the lake on the north side of the dam.

I think you misunderstood my intention. I don’t care one way or the other how people use the boats. It’s just a game to me. I don’t get too worked up over how people play. I was just stating what I believe the reasoning was behind the way they implemented boats.

I guarantee they did this on purpose to prevent people from driving them out to sea and using them as floating bases. Most of them would up out in the middle of the ocean if they let you do what you suggest.

Well, NWAF by boat just isn’t worth doing. I figured out that I missed my turn because the branch heading toward NWAF doesn’t actually connect to the branch I was on except by a culvert. After doing a little scouting on foot, it looks like the other branch is little more than a rocky ditch and I’d end up spending a lot more time pushing the boat than driving it. I’d say I already spent as much time portaging around obstacles as I did driving just to reach Krona castle. Someone stole the spark plug out of my boat last night while it was parked in the swamp, but I had spares. So, whoever you were, you didn’t slow me down in my quest. However, I jogged up to Krona castle to look around and some bandit shot me dead without saying a word. Whoever you were, thank you for putting that crazy life to an end! Now I can move on to other more sane things to do than trying to boat all the way to NWAF. I’ll settle for having reaching Vavilovo swamp and call it a victory.

Oops. I missed my turn and ended up in the swamp west of Vavilovo. Now I have to turn around go back a ways.

Here’s a link to screenshots: https://1drv.ms/f/s!Ap2aKHFgUU59gsBQGbEQBf50vAScGQ

I have now portaged the boat up over the dam and am trying to boat all the way to NWAF. The canyon under the RR bridge at Rostoki is impassable due to those boat repelling rocks, so I had to portage a good ways down the tracks before I could put the boat back in the river. Unfortunately, when I did so I touched an anti-boat rock and it flipped the boat. It took me about a half hour to get it flipped back over and then I had to catch and cook some fish because I was starving. By the time I finished all that, it was dark and I had to log for some lunch IRL. now all of the NY official servers seem to be down. I plan to continue my journey once they are back up (If the boat is still there and no one kills me — I’m surprised I haven’t been shot by someone yet. I’ve spent a couple hours just pushing that boat around obstacles). Krona castle is just around the next river bend.

It took quite a bit of effort, but I made it. Had to do some serious portaging, pushing the boat around a few narrow spots between the rocks. Speaking of rocks…it would be nice if the devs tweaked the way boats interact with rocks. If you even touch some of them the boat starts jumping all around uncontrollably, sometimes flipping it over. IIRC, this was a feature added awhile back to help prevent high centering vehicles and getting them stuck. It’s probably safe to remove that behavior from boats to make them behave in a more stable manner. Speaking of flipping boats over…it would be nice if there was an easy way to flip an upside down boat back upright. My boat got flipped over by the rocks a few times on my trip to the dam. I had to push it around onto the rocks letting it get randomly tossed around until it finally got flipped back over. The boats are a great addition to the game. It would be really awesome if you made the rivers truly navigable by boat. It wouldn’t take much, at least for the river on the western edge of the Chernarus map. If you fixed the rocks tossing the boat around issue, then there would only be a couple of places too narrow for the boat to get through. If you go fast enough, you can make it over the downed trees and several of the rocky crossings. There are also a couple spots where it’s too shallow, but that’s okay, you just have to get out and push a little. However, if you could make the river about a foot deeper it would make things a lot easier. Having a navigable river leading inland would open up all kinds of amazing new game play possibilities.

I don’t do social media. 🤷‍♂️

I think it might be time to start considering a rollback to the previous version. Also, it would only take a minute to put out some sort of communication at least acknowledging the problem exists.

I have been playing DayZ on official servers since it first became available as a WIP purchase many years ago. I have come and gone from the game numerous times, but keep coming back to it time and time again. It’s probably fair to say that I have as much DayZ experience as most people and there are few that have more experience than I do. That’s not to say that I’m the best survivor you’ll ever come across (far from it — my PvP skills in a gunfight are pretty poor, actually), but I am very familiar with the gameplay. While I agree with much of RunningManZ’s commentary, I am quite surprised at some of the points raised by such an experienced and well known player. While I’m in total agreement about the current spawning system, and sort of agree with the criticisms of the zombies and have a few constructive criticisms about them that weren’t mentioned, I haven’t been hindered hardly at all by many of the other problems that seem to be causing RunningManZ considerable frustration. Regarding the zombies, I also find their ability to strike you while facing the opposite direction annoying and immersion breaking. The other thing I really dislike is how they currently spawn right on top of you. It seems like the game tries to spawn them out of LOS, but fails miserably more often than not, especially when crossing open fields. There are so many times when a zombie steps out from behind a tree or around a corner from an area you can’t see right now, but could see was clear from where you were a half a second ago, that it is also very annoying and immersion breaking. Zombie spawns need some work. I haven’t, however, noticed a huge problem with Zombies ruining my clothing too quickly or forcing me to carry tons of rags and bandages — I’m pretty good at not letting myself get ganged up on and at hitting them hard enough to stun them without getting hit myself, and I normally run with a light load and therefore have the stamina to throw enough heavy melee hits to kill a zombie without getting hit at all. Sure, I mess up and take shots ever now and then, but have never felt like I was constantly having to repair zombie damage to my gear. That said, I wouldn’t complain if item durability was increased across the board. I 100% agree about how frustrating the increased time it takes to wring out clothing is. It’s totally annoying and excessive right now. I don’t mind having to wring stuff out to stay dry, but it takes way too long to do it as it currently stands. I also don’t find myself having any problems with rain on the official servers. I almost never get sick in the game. The trick to staying healthy is real simple. Keep your loads light, your stamina up, and your food and water meters full. To help keep my loads light and gauges full, I eat all the food I find as soon as I find it and don’t carry any food around with me at all. I also limit myself to one long gun, one handgun, and one melee weapon at a time with at most two or three full mags for each weapon. More often than not, I’ll keep a stab vest equipped over the plate carrier just to keep my stamina up. Once you stuff yourself, get your hydration up, and stop sprinting around everywhere you go while carrying heavy loads, you can cover a lot of distance, albeit it more slowly, without having to loot for food and water and you can jog around in the rain all day without fear of getting sick. I also find no difficulty in finding multivitamins and tetracycline. Take the vitamins proactively until they’re gone as soon as you find them. It boosts your immunity to sickness. You’ll even have a chance to not get blood poisoning from stitching wounds or using undisenfected rags, but I still wouldn’t recommend it except in a pinch. I can’t tell you how often I end up looting the bodies of survivors who were running around with heavy packs full of food and ammo who had no meds. I also agree with the comments about shotgun and repeater spawns. Move the shotties further inland and/or make them less common on the coast and make the repeater carbine and sporter more common and easier to find on the coast. The repeater would be a desirable early game gun but, as it stands now, I never find one until I’m already inland and geared up with better weapons. Meaning the only use I ever have for the repeater is to take the ammo for a deagle, leaving the repeater behind. I don’t know if realism is a concern or not, but I have a lever action rifle chambered in .357 magnum and it holds 10 rounds in the tube magazine, is the most accurate rifle I own out to 50 yards (it beats out the AR15 with a red dot, the Garand, and the M1 carbine at those ranges, and it’s not even close), and I can rapid fire it almost as fast as I can shoot a semi auto pistol. You could easily beef up the repeater and make it an uncommon early game gun available on the coast. Right now, with its rarity and geographical availability, it’s a useless weapon assigned to the wrong tier. I too would like to see game changes that make survival more challenging and not just more tedious.

Nice video Espa. Thanks. I completely agree with Vertigo's assessment in the video.

Well, I'm convinced of this: This next release is a pivotal make or break moment in the development of the game. Either the new engine will open the floodgates and the bug fixes and features will start flowing at a steady pace over the next few months or they won't and the devs will wind up treading over the same ground again yielding the same disappointing results in a new engine. I've seen both outcomes from projects that started over with new architecture in the past. However, as I said before, I've seen more failures than success stories after that reset button was pushed. It has been about 2 years since Dayz hit the reset, so now seems about right for the moment of truth to occur. Here's to hoping Dayz beats the odds, overcomes the difficult setbacks of starting over, and goes on to become a spectacular success. I guess that BI does have one thing going in their favor that most projects that I have seen fail after starting over didn't have: Deep pockets. BI did make a crap ton of early access sales back in the day and the project shouldn't be in danger from lack of funding unless they have terribly mismanaged their finances or diverted the money to other projects. That could very well make the difference in the project's success.

How much later? I waited three years before checking back in last time and the state of the game is largely unchanged in that time. I think a little healthy skepticism is reasonable.

Kiwis that show up in slain Dean Zombie inventories often appear as a grey square. You can drag the grey square from the slain Dean zombie to your own inventory and it changes back into a kiwi. It has been that way since at least 2014. With regards to zombies, the biggest change I'm hoping for is for them to aggro on the location where you fire a weapon and not telepathically lock onto your character. I have frequently had zombies clip through walls, tents and concrete barriers to attack me. You actually can't interact with trash piles. However, it had been so long since I last played that I forgot that. As soon as the game crashed when I tried I instantly remembered that the game used to crash back in 2014 when you did that and was frustrated that it was still a problem. Looking back through older status reports I see that many of the same problems were going to be addressed in upcoming patches as far back as 2015. Your optimism is earnest but perhaps misplaced.