krazypenguin

If you want to try hardcore navigation you can use a pristine compass, the sun (which seems to always be in the South, at least for me) the clouds (they drift East to West) or even the stars. Or you could just ALT+Tab to a browser showing a map of Chernarus, get your bearings, then roll out, which is what most people do. Use prominent land marks to establish your position and direction, as well as roads, tracks, power lines etc...look at what you can see on the screen, then work out how that fits in with what you can see on your map. Roads are dangerous to follow but it's fine to follow them from a distance, e.g. from within a nearby tree line - just be careful not to lose them or miss turnings. Also, all but the smallest town have street signs on their way in and out which will help to pin point your position. When running cross country, aim for your destination and do not deviate - if you need to look around you (which is advisable) use an object on your horizon to "fix' your direction. Once you stop looking around yourself make sure that your "fix" is still dead ahead of you. If you need to move laterally to avoid an obstacle, don't turn, just side strafe left or right around it. This preserves your overall point of direction.

I understand what you mean but what's the point in a game where as soon as you spawn you can just collect a bunch of natural items and craft whatever you need, having looked it all up on some DayZ wiki? Where's the randomness, the chance, the danger, the challenge there? What's the point of that? Why not just equip every new spawn with a raincoat, matches, axe, food, water, etc... It's not that you spawn and cannot do anything to survive - it's that you make the wrong decision to maximize your chance of surviving - that's what I meant about deciding whether to sprint or jog, or if you should follow a longer road, which will take more time and energy and run the risks of meeting a bandit, or go cross country, in which case you might get lost. Or maybe if you take the road you will meet someone who will help you? Or maybe you should just sit under a tree for 20 minutes until it stops raining? You make your choice and select your fate - you just don't know what that fate is yet. Life is about making choices, based on risks, and hoping they work out for you, but with the added danger that whatever choice you make sometimes you just cannot win. Look at the news to see the many ways in which people die in pointless ways through no fault of their own just because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. If the game didn't have this random element to it, this challenge then it would get very boring very quickly. Spawn - do this, do that, survive. Yawn. That's how I see it but that's just my opinion.

Whilst I do agree with a lot of what you say (e.g. only being able to light a fire with matches is overly restrictive and we generally need a lot more options to do things) I don't agree with the overall point that the game should give you all of the necessary resources to survive to start with. Why not? Because sometimes real life does exactly that to real people. People can and do die for the want of things that are outside of their reach. That actually IS the most realistic thing in the game. One of my characters died 2 nights ago because there was NO food in 3 towns and I only found one apple in a whole orchard and no berries. It sucked, but that's the nature of the game and the danger of being a new spawn. Real life is most dangerous for those who are new to the world. Don't get me wrong, a game where this happened a lot would be rubbish, but it doesn't happen that much in my experience, just enough to keep me on my toes, to make me think "Should I really sprint here or jog to save energy? Should I take the road, which is longer and more dangerous, or should I try and go straight, across the countryside and risk getting hopelessly lost?" Assuming you survive that first hour or so, then it's up to you to make sure that you acquire all of the tools you need to continue to survive and make the right decisions at the right time whilst managing your character's wellbeing and, frankly, rely on a big old dollop of luck - which is also exactly like real life.

As Pink Floyd said "Stay out of the road, if you want to grow old." A lot of the edge of maps deaths could also be because, in a way, the edges of maps are roads - you hit the map edge and turn left or right and walk until you find a landmark or road to follow back to civilization. If you are doing that, the probability is that someone else is too and when 2 players meet there's always a chance 1 of them will die. Or it could be people weighing down the W key and then dieing from an environmental effect ( eg, starvation\thirst\hyperthermia\hypothermia, etc...) as they slide along the map edge. Interesting map!

Last night I saved a life. Myself and DC were derping around, getting geared up having spawned on a new private server with a high pop. Due to our seperate spawn points Berezino was the obvious meeting point, despite the obvious dangers. We hit the town from different directions, only bothering with the higher loot locations and raiding at speed. DC heard shots in the lower part of the town towards the coast so we bugged out of the upper part of the town, heading South. We hit the next town down where I found my first ever gas mask, albeit a damaged one. I'm always nervous about covering my face - there's something about a covered face that screams "threat" to me and I wonder if others feel the same. I will never wear a balaclava, for example. Still, I am wearing the gas mask for now since it's a novelty for me, but I know I won't keep it. We also manage to finally find a box of 7.62mm ammo which we split between us since we're both packing Mosins with PU scopes (not that a scope would ever help me to hit something) so now we can actually defend ourselves with something a little more effective than axes and bad language. We move inland, raiding small towns in fast hit and run strikes. We don't see another soul but the infected are out in force and we dispatch dozens of them with our axes. We're now carrying enough food to feed an army of survivors. Meanwhile, another member of the group, Tom, has been heading down towards us from the North. He's had an interesting evening so far. He met an armed survivor wearing a motorcycle helmet and immediately surrended to him. This seemes to please the masked man as he indicated that Tom should follow him which he did. They proceeded to run up the coast, encountering 2 more survivors on the way both of which the masked gunman dispatched without fuss. Finally, he walked down to the beach, with Tom still in tow, stuck his gun under his chin and killed himself. Very strange behaviour. Tom simply grabbed all his stuff (including his motorcycle helmet which was still pristine, weirdly) and walked off. Me and DC decide to try a place called "Altar" that's marked on my map. We go cross country to try and locate it but get lost. We run for a while before realising that we've completely missed it and passed well to the North of it. This navigational failure is frustrating since I'm usually good with a map but it does explain why so many people stick to the roads and paths, despite the dangers involved. Tom's high speed run down from the North on a surprisingly hot and sunny Autumn day has taken it's toll on him. He's not packed sufficient water and has become dehydrated. In a panic he actually manages to miss a well and then gets chased by a bunch of aggroed infected. Failing to identify the primary danger, his red thirst bar, he burns the last of his energy sprinting and collapses to the ground. The infected shamble towards his prone body... A quick but this time more thorough map check shows that our mistake could be Tom's salvation - we're only minutes from our agreed meeting place. We race across some fields and sweep the town until we see 2 people standing in the road. One looks to be an infected but the other is a survivor...what the hell? Tom is unconcious but still standing up with a zombie right next to him! We dispatch the zombie and I set about pouring water down Tom's throat, followed by tins of peaches. DC goes off to scavenge the town and runs into a house only to discover another survivor searching for supplies. Under pressure to make a snap decision and with a member of the group unconcious and another tending to him DC, who has a slighly different attitude to these things than I do*, feels he has no choice but to gun down the unfortunate man. As one life is taken another is restored as Tom springs back into life. Perhaps I should become a medic? We strip the town completely and pause by the well to get ourselves back into shape, and give Tom a little time to recover. Then we set out to the North, passing sweeping fields, mighty forests and an imposing castle before descending onto our next target - the North East airfield. We've only come here due to a mix up in communications between myself and DC but we're here now so we may as well take a look. As we're are moving through the town DC sees a door open. We all crouch down, guns at the ready, but no one comes out. I move in slowly whilst the others cover me but there's no one here. The building has 2 other exits so it's possible that someone could have ducked out there, if there even was anyone... We hit the airfield which is, pretty much as expected, basically barren and then make camp to the North East and call it a night. *DC had already met and helped 3 other survivors this evening before we met up. He had also met a guy yelling "friendly" even as he was killing DC with an axe. He's more of a survivor than me but also more realistic and risk averse. With 2 of the 3 party effectively out of action this guy was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Both of these conditions are fine, the issue with them comes from applying real world logic to the way in which they are implemented in the game, especially considering the way that their effects are time compressed in the setting of the game. Take a person running the London marathon on a hot sunny day, whilst wearing a heavy and enclosed fancy dress costume (think those people who wear the rhino suits for example) - that's actually quite dangerous. The heat can, and does, cause them all sorts of problems and people do die from heat exhaustion. In game, by the time you are seeing "hot" messages and worse you need to think of it more in terms of actually being quite ill from overheating - not just being a bit warm and going for a dip in a pond. Go read the Wikipedia entry on it - it's a serious medical condition. Same for hypothermia. In this respect, however, I do think that the UI could be improved - the feedback to the player is not clear enough to indicate the severity of the effects, and I hope the devs will improve this in future. Last night I lost a character to starvation 3 seconds after sprinting up some stairs - how many genuinely starving people could do that?

Hi, you're welcome.The situations you describe are very familiar to me - when it comes to keeping your items the ground is your most dangerous foe. I've lost count of the number of times I said "I'll just put this down for a second and..oh, where's it gone?" Last night I decided to try leaving my AK101 (the first one I ever found*) in a forest whilst I looted a town, just in case I got killed. Put it down and..it's gone. Went prone and searched the surrounding area very carefully, using the inventory screen to detect nearby items. Nada, it's varnished like an old oak table. Start rearranging my backpack and suddenly, ta da! the AK101 is back in the vicinity and I can even see it lying on the ground now. Ok, I'll just leave it there and, oh no, it's gone again. Whatever, bored of this now, turn around to walk into town and my AK is now lying 3 metres behind me. Le sigh. The other thing I get a lot is this. I put a large item om the floor, e.g. a raincoat. I can see it in the inventory and the game. I then drop a can of soda and suddenly the raincoat disappears from both the inventory and game views. Pick uo the can and hey presto, the coat is back. I now have rules for putting things down, which are: 1 - whenever possible use an existing container to store or transfer the item. E.g. playing with a friend and we need to balance gear, we'll use a backpack already on the floor to transfer items. 2 - If it HAS to go on the floor then the preference is for a road or paved area, followed by the GROUND floor of a building. Forest/grass or any upstairs/raised area is pretty much a 50/50 chance of never seeing that item again, IME (ok, a little exaggeration but you get the point). If you do lose something on the floor look under anything you can (e.g. under a bed by going prone and using 1PP view), pick up other items in the area, no matter how small, to see if your item suddenly appears, look in a wide area around you and finally, if you are in a building, go look outside - sometimes items can somehow get dropped outside of walls. Oh, and as mentioned before, opening your inventory and walking backwards, forwards and side to side can help you to find things more easily. * so, the AK101. I raided the town, made it back safe and sound and recovered it. My friend was now online and we agreed to meet, with me using a truck I had found on my raid in the town to make the meet up quicker. Therefore, I ditched my shotgun (hmm, wonder if it's still there...?) slung my new most prized possession on my back and leapt into the truck. Brmmm brmmm!!! 2 minutes later, whilst taking a turn but otherwise driving perfectly normally, the truck suddenly stops and then sinks into the ground. I jump out and, with depressing predictability, "You are dead." pops up on the screen. Just minutes later my friend arrives but there's nothing there. Like they say, never get attached to your gear...

1 - Yes 2 - Yes 3 - Yes 4 - No, you don't need a tent 5 - You shouldn't, no. 6 - No comment Every Wednesday there is a server maintenance on all DayZ servers. At this time EVERYTHING except characters and their immediate items (weapons, clothes & backpacks plus contents) gets wiped. So yes, a tent left out on Wednesday morning will get wiped as will all other items left outside of a character's inventory. Different people deal with storing tents and their contents during the Wednesday maintenance in different ways. I have heard that some people use alternate, "blank" characters as mules to just lug stuff around (i.e. they buy the game on another Steam account but only play that character to store things in inventory), others may use alternative methods which may not be in the spirit of the game. Personally, I don't get the idea of tents if you cannot keep them longer than a week without having to pack everything up somehow (which should technically be impossible) - that just makes no sense to me. IMO tents should survive the Wednesday maintenance and patch - but then the game is still alpha, tents and persistence are still relatively new, so I am sure all of this will come in future. A word about persistence. Like everything, don't trust it. It's not perfect yet and is still being worked on, as is the entire loot spawn system. Be mindful that a server may say it is persistence on, but not actually be - test it first. Be aware that the server owner could turn persistence off without warning (or the server could simply vanish one day with all your tents and loot). Do not get attached to your gear, or character. EDIT - All the above is based on reading these forums, dev notes, youtube vids etc...if I have made any mistakes, sorry, please correct me! The one thing I did hear was that only "container" items (i.e. anything that you can put something else inside) would persist (so a magazine\clip would persist, an orange would not)) but that goes against everything else that I read so I am not sure. TL:DR - only way to be sure is to test it yourself on a server. Find one where what you want works and off you go. But remember, it can stop at any time.

This way my DayZ yesterday.... Having recently discovered a tanker's helmet: which was a big thing for me because I love tanks and had no idea this item of clothing was even in the game (first one I've seen in over 140 hours of playing). I was acutely aware that death must be just around the corner, since it's not in DayZ's nature to give us stuff we like and let us keep it, so I took a few screen shots and, lo and behold, took a bullet to the face in the very next building I walked into. Such is life, or rather death. Now this was a pity, not just because I lost my most amazing discovery ever, but because this was my public character that I use when playing with friends, only now they were up North and I was down South. Fortunately, they were offline so I managed to rebuild a reasonable character, even finding my first ever AK101. By the time my friend logged in I was in Myshkino and fully kitted out, whilst he was in Toploniki. We decided to head towards one another and I set off only to immediately discover a truck. Lucky me! I jumped in, started up the engine and crawled uphill until the terrian flattened out and I picked up speed. I drove straight through Pustoshka, missing the left turn, and found myself driving towards Vybor, which was not ideal, but hey, no problem, my truck can handle a bit of grass, I pulled off the road just before Vybor and skirted the South West edge of the town, rejoining the road as it left the West edge of town. Which is when disaster struck. Suddenly, the truck stopped, and then sank into the ground, until only the roof of the cab was visible. Already knowing what this meant I went through the motions and killed the engine, opened the door and pressed "get out". I appeared, full of lfe and joy, next to the truck. Wow, maybe I wasn't go to di..."You are dead"...e. Oh, ok. Sigh. Respawn in Kamyshovo to find myself in the middle of a thunder storm and I'm am instantly soaked. We're on a persistence enabled server with 4 hour restarts which has been up for 3 hours. There's nothing in the town, nothing at all. I decide to head for Msta, hoping to find something there, whilst my friend heads towards the site of my previous demise to see if he can find my gear. He can't. All my gear, including my first ever AK101, have vanished. I jog up to Msta, cold and hungry all the way. When I get there, it's the same story - nothing to be seen. From an entire orchard of apple trees, I manage to scrounge a single, solitary apple. I jog West to Staroye as my friend, carrying a few tins of precious food, converges on the town from the North West. By the time I reach the Eastern edge of the town, where there are 4 buildings and a barn and the hope of some food, I am starving. And still there is no food to be seen. I walk to the police station, which usually has a lot of loot (and therefore a reasonable chance of at least 1 item of food), but the ground floor is empty. I climb the stairs and the first floor is also empty and then I pass out. I start the stopwatch on my phone. 5 minutes and 20 seconds later my friend reaches town and finds my unconcious body lying in the front room on the first floor of the police station. He force feeds me all the food he has, then leaves to scavenge the town for food. He returns and force feeds me more food, another 3 cans or so, along with 2 full bottles of water. 27 minutes later, 27 minutes of looking at a black "I am unconcious" screen, we decide to pull the plug. My friend finishes me off with a single bullet to the head. I wake up in a forest and quickly establish that I'm just outside the Northern town of Svetlojarsk. My friend isn't very happy to learn this. He tells me to kill myself whilst he takes a quick break. I run into town and start climbing a ladder onto the roof of what looks like a large office block. My friend returns and complains that I'll probably only break my legs but I assure him that this building is definitely tall enough that I will not survive. Typically, on the roof I find a Mosin which would be nice to keep but is of no use to me at this time. I take a long run up and leap off the edge of the building into the sky. For a few glorious seconds I am flying. Then, I am standing on top of a tree which, unknown to me, was below this end of the office block. I slowly slide off the tree and drop the last few feet to the ground. For a few seconds I think that maybe, just maybe, this character cannot be killed before "You are dead" pops up. I respawn in Nizhnoye, which is much better, and we agree to hook up in Berezino. It's STILL raining (seriously, since my friend started playing about 2 weeks ago it's rained about 80% of the time we've played!) and I'm soaking and cold. I reach Berezino quickly and start looting the place whilst waiting for my friend. Finally, I start to find food, lots of it, but little in the way of clothing or weapons. By the time my friend arrives I am freezing so we light a fire in the town's supermarket (it's too wet and windy to get it going outside) and balance our gear out. It's nearly time for the server to restart so once I dry out we leave town and log out for the night. Sad to lose the tanker helmet. Disappointed to the lose the AK101. Annoyed to starve to death. Happy to meet my friend. Anticipating a new adventure.

Can confirm that skinning animals and making a pack from the skin works in .52 - have done it twice recently. In both occasions it took mere seconds. However, I've had a lot of actions failing to complete in .52 which causes me to need to "cancel current action" and try again, often after switching to a different action in between attempts. One time I simply could not craft a splint without a full restart of the game. C'est la vie. I am yet to try the full "living off the land" experience (with maybe just a pickaxe to get my initial stone and hence stone knife) but it's a role playing experience I am REALLY looking forward to trying very soon :-)

F12 for screenshot - when you quit the game you'll see a Steam screenshot window that shows you your DayZ screenies :-)

lol..."What's your favourite Steven Seagal movie?" ...er.... *runs away* I love these videos :thumbsup: :beans:

Only to a certain extent. The problem is that DayZ is currently (and presumably always will be) a one-off payment to buy and play, whilst employing people to update the game with new content, fix bugs and, in the long term, keep updating the engine and the like, is an ongoing cost and actually very expensive. Whilst DayZ has sold 2 million odd copies so far (I think), which is impressive, how long before sales and therefore profits drop off? Even if that takes a few years sooner or later it will get overtaken by something else, or the cost of updating the game engine will simply not be economically viable and then that's that. If you aren't going for a micro transaction or monthly subscription model to fund a game sooner or later the money runs out. That's where DayZ 2 or whatever, comes in. And as joe_mcentire above says, not having a long term plan is the business and financial equivalent of pressing F11...

No, no, do not log off! Just say to them: "Well, I needed a break anyway, so you guys have fun, bye" and then just walk away from your computer leaving the game running. (Or you can sit and watch if you want but do not touch anything) That's it. You character is dead anyway, just deprive them of the fun that they get from tormenting you as the person on the other end of the keyboard.

I think they are working. In the last week me and a friend have both used heat packs with positive impact on our temperature status, changing from freezing to cold after we activated the packs, without us doing anything else that we are aware would impact our temperature. But the effect does not seem to be very powerful, with my friend starting to freeze again very soon after the pack stopped working.I didn't time it but felt like my pack lasted about 5 minutes. General advice on keeping warm: So definitely not a solution to the problem of freezing, more a temporary respite to buy you the time you need to get a fire going. Whilst you try and get a fire going, make sure you have decent warm clothing on (and I presume it needs to not be ruined - my friend kept freezing whilst I was ok - after a while we realised his jacket was ruined, found him a new one and then he stopped freezing), walk or jog (don't sprint) and stick to low ground. If it's raining, stay inside but keep walking around. Not sure if it works or not, but also try wringing out your clothes. Finally, there are some clothing items that seem to make you immune to getting wet, which is a major cause of freezing. Obviously this includes the bright yellow, orange or green rain jackets (which is why they are one of my favourite clothing items) but it also seems to include many of the combat jackets you can find in military bases. You can stand in the rain all day long whilst wearing these and never get wet, and hence cold. :-)

Found my first triple figure box! 100 matches, damaged:

I've tried to find an official explanation of the spawn system but cannot find one so what follows is just from my experience. Players will spawn in a randomly selected spawn point, which are mainly located on the South or East coast lines. My recent experience is that it's significantly more likely to spawn in the South East corner, between Cherno and Solnichniy. I've only twice recently spawned North of Solnichniy and haven't spawned West of Cherno in about 80 hours of play. It's common practice when playing with friends and spawning a long way away, to simply suicide and hope for a better location next time.

Yes, I agree 100%.

Also, for the sadistic element of the DayZ player base (not me) - Bamboo torture. Drag your DayZ hostages off to your bamboo farm and have the bamboo shoots grow through their bodies. Yuck.

Sadly, I have to say that I think that bandits are a good thing. Rightly or wrongly, if the Devs removed the ability of players to harm other players, they would be removing the largest challenge the game has. I am not scared of the zombies and I'm not scared of the environmental\physical affects in the game. I can hide in a house and hack the zombies with my axe, or just run away. I can wear a rain coat or light a fire. There's enough food and water to survive most illnesses and never be hungry or thirsty. What scares me is meeting another player who might decide to attack me without warning. I know that zombies are due a major overhaul (which I am very much looking forward to) and I hope that we see a rebalance of the availability and quality of food and water, along with increased risk of disease and illness. I'd like the zombies and the real world to be significantly more challenging. However, I think the devs need to be careful to find a balance which meets the needs of enough players to keep the game alive. Go too hardcore and the casual gamers (who even in the DayZ world must surely be the vast majority?) will be driven off by a game that's too hard, keep it too softcore and the guys who want the whole anti-game survival sim will lose interest and this will just become a CoD clone. Either way, human interactions will always be the most dangerous but also most rewarding aspect of the game.

I want a Bamboo blowpipe firing poisoned darts!

Yeah, it's the sewing kit. This is taken from here: ***************Removed************** Edit - some excellent YouTube videos from WOBO: Surviving Sickness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rD_tmFNw47k Guide to Wound Infection https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maMlvphn01o

Found a 96 in pristine condition, my best so far. Still looking for that elusive triple figure box... Meh, was down to 93 when I took the picture:

lol, that's unlucky.....but also quite funny. Hope your buddy wasn't too mad! ;-) re the zeds...yeah, I know exactly what you mean - sometimes I can see one as a speck in the distance, hundreds and hundreds of metres away but he'll still look up in my direction, even though I am crouched and not moving, then he'll go aggro and charge me. Legit... And yes, I often see the infected running after animals - very amusing and adds to the danger of being away from town where you wouldn't normally expect to see them. The flip side is you can run towards animals youself and get infected who were chasing you to follow them instead. Regarding breaking contact with them - yes, it's always a very good idea to be very cautious after you think they have lost contact. You might start accessing your inventory or something only to find it's still coming after you. The trick (well it works for me at least) to lose contact is to remember how they hunt - if they can see you they will follow you, if they cannot they will stop and listen. So breaking line of sight is just the first step in the process. You then either need to go silent, or keep moving away but repeatedly break line of sight so the infected keep stopping to listen and gradually fall further and further back until they cannot hear you. I think the mistake a lot of people make when running and breaking line of sight is that they zig zag too violently\extremely and keep re-establishing line of sight themselves. Enjoying your stories ENO75 - keep em coming :thumbsup:

Good challenge - I am in! Will start hunting... On a related topic, why can't you combine boxes of matches...?