emuthreat

@IMT I don't think I'm supposed to be shilling for the server that I play on outside of recruitment sections, but you know where to find me. Just for reference the Q is about 10 to 20 people during peak European play times most days. And if you are looking for action, it is not all that hard to find.

The level of interaction is pretty-much determined by the culture of each individual server. The one I've been playing on since September has been one of the most interesting experiments I've ever seen. Without exaggerating a bit, I can say I've met equal numbers of friendly players at Tisy to the people trying to shoot me. This server has managed to amass a community of players interested in cooperative basebuilding, and there are 3-5 major cooperative factions working together to secure the server. This is an impossible task, but we have all been surprised by the level of success we have found to this end. There are occasionally large groups of organized players who can manage to do some damage in the short term, but we always put things back together. Random lone wolf bandits and small groups of KOS squads still roam the map, but the chances that they get stomped by organized groups is pretty high. Over the past two weeks, a maniac with a chainsaw has made himself known around the server. It's a really cool thing, to have a dozen people standing around talking and cooking and carrying on, when all of a sudden the buzz of a chainsaw moves it's way through the camp. It is hilarious how fast things go from idle conversation to absolute panic. Maybe you and @Thurman Merman should stop by some time to get the inside track on pre .63 basebuilding strategies. Everything we do with tents can only be done better with steel walls and HESCO barriers.

That's why I kept referring you to what happens on that server. I can only think of a few potential good base locations that we haven't experimented with yet. Once basebuilding assets are included with beta, I'd like to take a crack at securing the Vybor distillery. Our main challenge this patch has been dealing with sightlines beyond the render distance of tents. Topography plays a huge role in selecting locations. I know of a few hilltops that would be perfect to surround with walls. I can easily say that it is better to deal with infiltrators than snipers.

The entire Village project until Beta is just a logistics and teambuilding exercise. The real fun begins when we get to start playing with walls and towers and gates. Hopefully they will have well-balanced durability of structures. I would love to build metal walls lined with barbed wire outside and HESCO barriers inside, requiring the raid party to bring duplicates of an assortment of tools. Someone should not be able to walk up with a damaged sledgehammer and expect to breech a well-built base; and someone with an alice backpack full of pristine pickaxes and sledges should expect to spend at least 10 minutes making a hell of a lot of noise and taking a few breaks to regen their stamina.

Yeah. I can understand that. The Village was forced to disallow using tents to completely block access, due to the unmanageable volume of support tickets reporting glitch abuse. Now the dominant meta is to sneak in friendly, and log out until off-peak. Fortunately, we have a very sharp group of people kicking ass and taking names, so most of the bad apples are gone, or have learned not to try anything too dishonorable. In fact, after an attack on the Village last night, I returned to find all the tents intact; bags of loot we stripped from our fallen, an SVD and AK74 still sitting in tents in the very location that the last guard died. I could link to screenshots or streams of the village, but I'd rather direct you to go say hello and see for yourself. Currently village is at Stary Yar lumber mill, Queens Guard have secured Vybor town, and the Settlement has actually devised a way to secure a portion of Devil's Castle. I think BarelyInfected started his stream today from inside The Village after the most recent remodel.

I'd be happy to give you a tour of The Village sometime. As it stands today, there are 3 sizeable bases of around 2 dozen tents. The prison Island had 5 factions under one roof sharing a secured compound for some time, but boredom and faction friction eventually led us to spread back out around the map again. I had heard that Fort Eden was only able to survive in such a manner because of saved persistent states that would be rolled-back after any successful attack. Not sure how accurate this is, but if true, I think your claim to fame is in need of an asterisk. ; )

Is there someone with a secret identity that I'm not aware of? From all my time on this server, I've only known it to be hosted by Spaggie and populated by regular (albeit enthusiastic) players. Anyways. I was just sayin'... If we are counting civilian tents, your claim of the largest base in all of DayZ might be open to challenge. And never saved persistence states to nullify attrition by bandits/despawners. You'll definitely have some healthy competition when basebuilding comes into play.

I'm pretty sure The Village has seen some bases that were similarly sized over the past few months. Settlement camp at Rify and the Prison Alliance bases were both pretty large and sustained over weeks on end. But since it is an organic server, saving peak persistence files was out of the question, and bases tend to get destroyed or moved over time. Server is still running strong, BTW.

Are you sure about that?

If you think you might buy DayZ when beta comes out, you can save a little money by buying before the price increase. If you are new to the game, it might be a bit of a waste learning everything on the obsolete systems currently used.

When the experimental servers had the positional data in the debug box, the axes were a bit odd. In the order they were displayed, I would label them (X,Y,Z) For purposes of finding one's location, the middle number was irrelevant. Moderate X value and low Z value would indicate a Cherno spawn, high X value and low Z value would indicate Skalisty/Tulga spawn, high X and high Z would indicate Svetlojarsk spawn. IIRC, the X axis started at the west edge of the map, determined East/West position, and increased to the right. The Y axis started at sea level and corresponded to elevation, increasing vertically. The Z axis began at the south edge of the map, and determined North/South position, and increased to the north. This might be irrelevant to why they cannot expand the map, but if it were relevant, this would likely limit any map expansions to the north and east without having to redefine everything.

You should really play on the Village dude... I keep seeing you repeat the same old thing about a lack of interesting gameplay. Meanwhile we have managed to organize dozens of players to secure a public base where all friendly players are welcome. Just recently, we have united the friendly factions under a common purpose to attempt to civilize the server. Some will always want to destroy us, but even more players come and see what we have built, and want to help defend it. Friendly players love having a place to come and relax, cook food, farm and trade, maybe sit down and play a guitar for a while; and bandits still want to come and wreck it all. Sometimes they are successful, most often from using less than honorable tactics, but we always regroup and rebuild. Interesting emergent gameplay is the responsibility of the players, as has always been the case. Instead of cynically shitposting, many of us have been making something worth being proud of, even in this state of the game. It's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it.

I feel like all the criticism of the process falls flat anymore. All the information is out there Bottom line: The mod created a zeitgeist and inspired a vision of an immersive, open-world, zombie apocalypse simulator; the likes of which the world has never seen. The existing tech was unable to support that vision. The first adapted tech was still unable to support that vision. A decision was made to Concurrently/Reverse engineer a set of tools to support that vision in a forward-looking configuration. All the while, they have kept the vision alive at a painstakingly labor-intensive level of dedication throughout all iterations, heretofore sacrificing resources simply to KEEP US HAPPY. Many people can't seem to accept alpha playstyles any longer. And for the most part, we have failed. We have failed to understand just how big of an undertaking this is, and had become; long before we even realized that the 2015 roadmap was insanely optimistic pipe dreams; riding on the waves of our collective hype. But Bohemia knows. Even after 1.0; this engine will have room to grow. I think they've said as much, in plenty of different ways. TL/DR out of all the pain and frustration, comes a game engine specifically designed to work with modding; built from a gnarled tree, hacked back to the roots; rebuilt to better support all existing branches and foster future growth. \Inbetawetrust

Fingers still crossed for bearskin kayak.

@OP: beans for the name. Welcome

After finding a few dozen large boxes, I'm gonna guess that's a hard no. SMERSH Backpacks could fit into the largest gift box, but I've never seen one, and left behind plenty of vests along the way. Plate carrier pouch is too big to fit anyhow. Every carrier seems to have a holster attached though.

Praise be RNG!! Another brave soul has stepped forward to exalt the wonderment of our blessed loot. Thank you, Brother, for coming forward in these most desperate of times. I know it's not easy. There are those who walk among us here, who have nothing but hate in their hearts for our beloved loot. They will shoot us for fun, simply because we do not yet have good enough loot. They will strike us down in spite, so that we may never reach the Promised Land of Tisy and bask in the glory of 1337 1007. They will follow us to our doors, so that when we sleep they may despawn our holy shrines without resistance or recognition. They claim to not care about the loot, but they will show their true colors if one dares to ask of some loot off their backpacks. They will strike you down if you come too close to their tents and barrels. Blame not, those who have no reverence for the loot, for they were born with but death and despawnnation in their tortured souls. Pray for those who have yet to be blessed by the light of their love for the almighty loot. Pray for them, and rebuild our temples so that even they, may have a place to refill their magazines. Praise be RNG.

Loot is love. Loot is life. Loot is the light at the end of the tunnel. And the tunnel itself is made of loot.

Don't worry mate; if you turn you food into charcoal, you can fix it by eating charcoal tablets.... And on the note of extreme rarity of certain "unicorn" weapons: I would really love to see the pitchfork have a practical use. Perhaps it could be made to be the only tool effective at moving the many haystacks laying around Chernarus. And under a very small percentage of those haystacks, there could be a random chance of a crate holding a very rare weapon, ammunition, and a couple of related magazines.

Finally, a little freakin' love for the VSS. I'm glad somebody enjoys this gun. Truly hoping that they include the20 round magazines at some point, and make it the ultimate building clearing gun.

That server went offline a few weeks ago...

I'd still rather see a PTRD-41 before any fancy modern specialty rifles...

Most of the stuff you covered will be included with beta/1.0 content additions. Right now, it sucks, but is still very decently playable if you know what you are looking for and put in some effort to find the right server. There is a whole other level of difficulty in trying to get established on a consistently full server. Go find some vehicles and try to keep them running long enough to get a few tents and barrels stocked with sets of your favorite items. See how many times you have to move before your camp is untouched for a week. Learn a little bit about the finer details of the game that most people still haven't noticed yet: Adding coolant to vehicles will greatly extend the life of the engine, especially if you redline low gears constantly. Crafted stone knives will consistently give you higher percentage cuts of meat from skinned animals. Treating crops with disinfectant will prevent blight and increase your yields. Crafted leather clothing will make you something of a juggernaut--I have taken a repeater shot to the chest point-blank and didn't even bleed, and almost exclusively kill wolves with melee weapons. I can't stress this enough. Leather clothing is the shizzzzniiiit!!! There is a lot that you seem to be frustrated with, and most of that is due to the content backlog that is waiting for the final versions of the underlying tech to be implemented. There are plenty of things that will change in the coming months, apple-spamming being one of them. Maybe you could try to get ahead of the curve, and swear-off the abuse of apple trees? This will give you an appreciation for farming and hunting, as well as an edge against returning players who won't know how to feed themselves without exploiting the infinite apples. Try to set-up and maintain a base stocked with two of everything. Make yourself a set of leather clothing and go try to kill a wolf with one of every melee weapon. Without defining what you consider to be the benchmark of fun or success in DayZ, it is hard to know what can be suggested to help you get the most out of the experience right now.

Best moments: An early best moment was back in the days when trucks were working okay, but no other vehicles had been added yet. i was in Krasnostav driving towards the coast waiting to hear from my friend when he knew where he was. I passed a guy on the road and asked him to hop in for a ride, and decided to stop for the well at the east edge of town. He shared some food with me, and we both ate. Then I went to drink from the well, and saw him level a Longhorn against my head. It's a good thing I had just gotten a haircut, because it was too short to pull out by the fistfulls that day. More recently, I heard some shots at Tisy, and ran to investigate. I found two guys by the garages, and asked if I could collect the wolves they had just killed. They said sure, and went on to loot the barracks. I got some free food and pelts, and confused some strangers in the process Worst moments: After having finally survived long enough to get decently geared and make it off the coast, I had finally managed to make it to Sverograd. This was near the end of my first week of playing, and I didn't know the map or any skills beyond looting and consuming loot. I used up most of my bandages from Berezino and my vision was pretty washed-out from blood loss, so I decided to check the hospital for medical supplies. I found a lot of medical supplies, so much that all my inventory was full. At this point, I was on the second floor hall and noticed i was getting very thirsty. I thought that something on the wall looked like a drinking fountain, and saw the icon to drink. I soon learned that the bottle of disinfectant spray that I found, was not in my backpack, but rather in my hands. And thus ended my first successful journey off the coast. Just yesterday, I was being stupid and running too much, not finding much food, and being too proud to pick apples this far into a life. I went to Tisy to hunt wolves with a friend, and found no wolves before he had to log off. I decided to loot alone, and assumed a couple cans of tacbac would certainly fall into my lap. I killed a chicken to hedge my bets, but had lost almost half my blood by the time I could get a safe distance out of the fence and make fire. The server reset. Fresh loot! Surely there would be more tactical bacon here now. I ran to the usual bacon spots, picking up an extra gun, snatching and stuffing and shuffling magazines. I killed two more chickens just in case, and went through the barracks on my way to go fish for survival. By the time i heard the footsteps, it was too late to pull out my axe. One-slapped by a zombie while half-starved at Tisy mil base. I died neither to the zombie nor the starvation; but rather my hubris, greed, and haste.

I am amazed at how these conversations (if you can call them that) are still 'a thing.' We have people here who follow development, and participate regularly in discussions, and those same people can still communicate ideas that contradict anything resembling an understanding of the process; even after posting things that have demonstrated an understanding of what is happening and why. Order your steak well-done, and ask why it is taking so long. Set your alarm clocks to midnight, and ask why is it so dark outside. Cover your ears and ask me to repeat myself.