Hypothermia for me makes Livonia so much better although I guess it needs tuning. True hypothermia is a killer, worse than the infected and KoS survivors, but it reminds me of the Frostfall mod in Skyrim and is such an unexpected bonus. Clearly many survivor types, the gunfighters etc will have their lives made much tougher as it will be harder to just gear up and go to the action. However for us farmer builder types its heaven(or hell). I've finally managed to get my seventh character stable both hydration and food wise. Simply got lucky find a few cans of Kvas and then food in a village. Also survived a couple of those wonderful rain thunder and lightening storms. If you are starting out, don't sprint and so try to conserve hydration. Many of the infected do have drinks or food on them. In the rain storms try to quickly shelter under a tree or in a building. The large trees gave me some shelter but the storm seems to move and change wind direction so its hit or miss rain protection. In Livonia there is new experience to find all the time :)

The river drinking bug was most probably a glitch as I've just managed to drink at a river. I did find a well, so water was not problem, but suicided as had infection from river drinking. Onto my 7th character, nearly gone from dehydration. I've seen two dead survivors, no idea how they died, but neither had much on them. I've jogged for miles, hardly any fruit, just 4 mushrooms for seven characters. As others have said, just needs some luck to get started, a bit of hydration and food. I never attack friendlies, so gearing up takes me awhile.

I've played about a 90 minutes with four characters. Three died due to lack of hydration and the fourth to a KoS survivor although the fourth had hydration problems to. There seems to be a bug with drinking from a river as that option never appeared for me. Mushroom spawning in forests seems very low, much lower than DayZ 1.05 although this is very subjective. I have found two tins food which seemed about right for where I was searching. The game play is amazing, especially for Open Beta, with nothing to stop me playing now as no need to wait for patches etc. One thing, I'll not be looking at online maps for a long time as its great to explore a new map, new terrain, building, rivers etc :)

Just logged into my normally peaceful ruined farmhouse base, where nothing ever seems to happen, and there were FLIES. Such a sense of dread with large flies and their loud buzzing at my spawn point, so likely some dead player close by. After several minutes searching for possible killers there was no corpse or signs of a fight. Now wish I'd planted those pumpkins before I logged off, as perhaps the player died from starvation or thirst. Flies, such a simple idea, yet a huge affect upon game play for players like me.