Surael (DayZ)

Don't turn your back on people you don't know.

During the nighttime you become harder to see (your visibility goes down), so it DOES affect zed in that manner. It's still not as significant a change for them as day to night is for us, though.

I can confirm that items stay on the ground where they were for quite some time, but if they aren't in a car or tent, a server restart will clear them. If there is a despawn timer for dropped goods, it is probably quite lengthy (10+ minutes or so?).