Excanto

This is really following along with my current thinking. I went thru a town and left all the garbage, I came by later and even the garbage was gone, everything was gone. Someone picked up and dropped every item to tag it for despawn. I'm just not sure if they are doing it to try to ruin the game for others or they are horders that have brought their disorder to the game? Who would take 14 hard hats? Who would take 13 beanies and 12 pipes and 7 wrenches and 10 hammers? Why am I finding food, guns, ammo, clothes, vests, magazines over against the walls of military bases in the bushes? If you don't pick up the can of food it will stay there till someone takes it or if someone picks it up and drops it, it will despawn after an unknown to me amount of time.

Well I finally got to not see an Invisible Zombie in the military camp south of NW Airfield. I think it's a zombie that has fallen underground. I kicked myself for not trying to run upstairs and see if I could pull it out of the ground where I could dispatch it. Has anyone tried the up the stairs with that irritating wretch?

Hehehe great story! Unless your no where near the coast when you start, go search the ground at the waters edge where it is gravel looking, it says search for stones, once ya find one, put it in your hand and click on the same type of ground where it says craft a stone knife. That can be used for lots of things, one of which is opening cans. If you are not near the coast when you start, I recommend that you head to the coast at some point and make a knife. It takes up 1 spot instead of the 2 spots. Better luck next spawn! My worst spawning was when I was dropping my stuff in a house I recognized before I died of zombie attack, then I got to that house again after a long run and dumped the stuff I had into that same backpack before I froze to death. Third spawn I was in pretty good shape when I made it to that backpack and scooped up that loot. I found that the pipe works great at opening cans in a pinch.

LOL, makes me think about some poor officer in a heated gun battle in LA that got hit in the hand and he couldn't reload his pistol because some of his hand was jammed in the slide of his pistol. I can mostly tell when I see screwed up boots, but lately I have seen some gear that looked damaged and says pristine. Also when I repair something it still says damaged even though it is now pristine. I drop it and pick it up and it says pristine.

Last night I was running from an invisible zombie at the military base south of NW Airfield and I ran over a 75 round drum magazine. After a big loop, I got back and found that there was a lot of stuff in the bushes. I server hopped a couple times and found that was the case on 8 servers. I had posted before about despawning gear and that players are moving it or picking it up and dropping it to make it so no one else can get it because it will be hidden and despawn or it will soon despawn after dropping it and that seems to be the case. It's also possible that they are hiding them in the bushes on multiple servers so they can run to there tent and dropoff a bunch of gear and then run back and bounce the servers for a big load of mags etc. On another note I checked the helicopter near that base and about 300 feet from the helicopter, I found a bunch of helicopter spawn loot. Way away from the helicopter, not sure if it was moved or if that is the screwed up spawn distance thing that is happening right now, I have never seen it that far away.

I always wear military boots for the slim chance I will find a combat knife which fits into a holder in the boots. Boyaah!

When the patch first came out .55 tents were everywhere. They are probably back in the old .54 location now, rare and in the apartments. Axes seem to be in the fire station still, but ya all I find is damaged ones.

It looks like the standard green rectangle tent package like they have at K-Mart. It sits on the ground and looks about 3 feet long and 12 inches high and wide rectangle. The player tent stands end up in a very abnormal balancing act, the army tent sits on the ground normal and I have only seen it in the half dome building with the rows of cots in the military tent clusters like the one way out west and the one at nw airfield. The tent is big like a family tent that you can walk into, it has windows and a door you can open and close. It has a crap load of room, but I'm told it has more then it currently shows because the slider doesn't work to go down further. It is tree green so it really hides well, even though it is huge. :-D Luck! Oh also it says it protects you from the elements while inside. :-D Oh lol, the most important thing is that it takes the place of your backpack, so you really have to want it! Since you have to go hide your backpack somewhere, put on the tent and run way off somewhere in the middle of nowhere, where you can find easily again, setup the tent and run back and get your backpack. :-)

I would love to do some testing in that tent some time, close the windows and door and let people shoot at me. :-D See if I can shoot out the windows at people.

It was quite awhile ago that the testing was done. I'm not sure the devs have changed it. I'm not sure if anyone has tested it lately. The pristine anything did well, damaged etc did not do well in the protecting the player. There were tests with hand gun shots to the head with ballistic helmets etc. Check out the old videos and the guy explains all the types of tests and the results. Damaged bad ..pristine anything good. Now it is more important than ever, since it seems there is going to be a lot more getting hit and those kits are going to be extremely helpful to keep you in tip top shape. Example: Got clobbered, healed up, repaired gear. Move on, got clobbered, healed up, repaired gear. Everything was beautiful. No more repair kits or food or drink, got clobbered several times and some of my gear was damaged and got jumped again on my way to camp and my pants went from damaged to ruined after a couple lucky hits and ruined them and everything inside them. Why is pristine important, because it means protection.

I get a headache looking for stuff, because you usually can't see anything and searches discover ammo. The stuff that falls thru the ground or floor and is not visible, but still pops up on a ground search is tedious to say the least. Mosin ammo always brings a smile to my face and it can be just about anywhere it seems. The trick seems to be meticulous meticulous meticulous searches.

So I run through this town and there are no zombies, which is odd. I'm relaxed and alone on the server and hit every house. I grab all the stuff I can use and leave the rest untouched and leave town. About an hour later, there is 20 people on the server and a couple hours later it settles down to about 3 people and I am on my way back to my water pump and then to my camp and I decided to check the zombie population at the same town and still there are no zombies. I decide to hit every house again and see if some awesome item has spawned or maybe something was dropped. The town is spotless as if someone vacuumed the town. I believe that players are picking up every item and then dropping them to trigger despawn. For what reason I am not sure. If you leave the item untouched it will stay there forever, pick it up and drop it and it will vanish in some unknown to me amount of time. All the hard hats, welding hats, stun rods, sweaters, down jackets etc were gone. Everything was gone. There wasn't even a wrench left. Did the Grinch steal Christmas?

Hmm looks like you only read one line in my post. Tons of stuff, a couple hours later, absolutely nothing in the same place.

I have noticed that when I had my settings on all low it seemed jerky. The real end result of my fiddling with the settings is being able to shoot zombies from a distance and looking into buildings far off to see if I see any players roaming around. Another issue I had was that bushes would not display and only showed a black shadow, which was hard to determine if it was a bush or a player in black. At this point I have objects and terrain on highest setting. It used to be that you could not see at night unless you had HDR on low, I'm not sure on that one anymore, but it's still on low. Texture detail is on normal and everything else is disabled. Now at that point you can adjust the resolution to make it playable if it is not at those settings. I have 1680 x 1050 monitor and have it set a bit lower then that resolution to smooth it out. FYI the real test of the smoothness is downtown in a big city and try to run around the block a few times and make some u turns. :-O

I might let my tent stay put as long as I see no dev's saying otherwise.

Well when the .55 patch first came out, I was duking it out with the 1st couple zombies with my axe and I was having a great time with the new difficulty and I noticed my gear wasn't ruined at all. I think one piece went from pristine to worn. I realized that the fighting was going to be more exciting then side step swing, home run and I also realized that I am going to need more leather and cloth repair kits. Now when zombies are standing in the same location I am standing and I swing my axe, I am swinging at air. That is not how it should be, obviously.

The update takes place on Tuesday night at 11:pm pacific time, if I recall. So Tuesday evening I would just eat all the food and drinks in my tent and make the hard choices of what to dump on the ground and then fold up the tent and hold it in my hands and log off. When I log back on the next day after work, I am no longer stuffed (odd) and my tent is in my hands or has fallen on the ground while logging in, something I think they fixed recently. Setup tent and get back to filling it with extra helpful items, food, drink, ammo, repair kits etc.

The zombies never got close enough at the gas station to get on board. I parked next to a base and while in the base a zombie popped near my truck and walked over and climbed on. At the time I had a .22 so it made for nice target practice, since he never came down to get me while I fired. At some point I believe I did fit a jerry can in my hunting backpack, but it took the entire pack. I dumped everything to see if it would fit. That was a couple months ago. Just recently for the first time ever, I found a truck out of gas and a little later found a jerry can with 80% and dumped my 2cnd rifle and hand carried the can all the way back to the truck and used it on the gas tank and it actually worked. I drove back and parked the truck in the trees near nw airfield and got my rifle back. :-D

Hmm, when a server resets it rolls you back a certain amount of time. For instance, my friend was shot and died and I was on the run and server has not responded for 22 23 24 25..When we logged back in, it was just us on the server and he was alive again and we were where we were just before the ambush. Maybe you found stuff and got rolled back to before you found stuff. As for the stuff vanishing? I have never had anything vanish. I keep the most important things in my backpack because it seems zombies hit the other equipment and ruin things in them, for instance pants ruined and everything in them ruined. I keep my backpack completely full due to that issue. I only have space in my backpack when I am a bambi, Nothing in my backpack moves when it is full. If I leave some space, stuff reorganizes and I hate that.

My opinion on this is that the .55 patch had some problems and they did a meld of .54 and .55 to calm the masses, while they work on fixes. The zombies have problems because of this meld and I doubt it was intentionally how they wanted things. My advice at this time is to avoid a zombie infested area for the time being and make selective insertions into a dangerous area, only when it can not be avoided. I am living on the outskirts and slipping in and out of small towns. The other option is like what has been stated several times before, using the run through empty handed and gather up all the zombies and run them out of town and circle around method. I haven't actually tried this, but it might do in a pinch. I am farming near a water pump. I'm on finding seeds and a replacement shovel duty at the moment. I might try dumping my gear in a tent and going for a suicide mission with 5 rolls of bandages :-D

There were about 4 zombies in the last gas station I found when I was driving and low on gas, I thought maybe I could just pull up to the pump and the zombies were the old full service crewmen. They refused to fill up my truck. I went down the block and came back at full speed and caught one on the road and hit him and it flipped my truck? Somehow I was unharmed and the truck righted itself so I ran the rest over. Thanks for the info on the getting gas from the pump with a bottle. I suppose you can take those propane canisters and refill them on those big white propane tanks behind some houses?? Not to get too far off topic but, is sharpening axes etc broken? tnx.

I just made it out to North West Airfield, the hangers actually had stuff? There were at least 25 big backpacks, of course boots galore, but about 6 sks rifles, a couple pistols with magazines and lots of bottles and canteens. Been awhile since I saw more then boots and backpacks in there.

Ya, that long slow walk out of the water when I get back to the coast makes me very nervous. I usually do not head out there unless I have matches and an axe so I can avoid freezing to death, but lately it seems warmer and I can just shake off the water like a dog.

I have a mosin and an ak101 with 2 magazines and about 120 cartridges extra. Fairly decent gear just found a pot, have 8 rocks, just found an axe and I've had matches forever. I am creeping along and see a ruins and a military building. I scan around and I don't see any zombies and I start heading down slowly and looking around and then suddenly 2 zombies are on me from behind and start pounding me. There inside me so I can't shoot them, I backup and they step forward inside me again, I run and spin and they are inside me again, I circle and after a few lucky shots timed before they step inside me, they are down and I run. I'm bleeding and my leg is sore and I stop a ways away and spin around to see 3 more on me same thing. When they are finally down after a reload and much bleeding and a broken leg and face down in the dirt and a morphine injecter and a second bandage, I check my gear. OMG! Ruined Ruined Ruined Ruined. What a nasty field of ruined nothing and one military building that didn't have anything in it. I'm going to call this place graveyard. Before I got out of there I had shot 11 zombies in a 1 block radius. Ran 2 miles and started a farm to recover, no pictures please, I'm half naked.

Hmm, I was testing stuff out yesterday, since I was killed during a server reset. Punching the zombie in he face over n over n over. 2-3 punches? I was a wreck by the time I got him down and the next one was on me before I could bandage with my tee-shirt I ripped up as soon as I spawned. Screen going grey, life dripping away, another zombie while I am bandaging, broken leg, crawling along getting hit looking for a sewer drain to crawl into. Next time I die, I am going to just punch my way through town over and over and get some punching practice. I must be getting fat and slow using an akm. )