bami

If you are cold, drinking alcohol is one of the worst things you can do if you want to keep your core temperature up. Alcohol widens your veins so it will warm up the extremities, but your core temperature would drop.

I run my own non-hive server. It's for colleagues and friends who I can trust to not disconnect or hack stuff. I usually go play on that when I get killed again for no appearent reason from a sniper half the map away. I also made some tweaks to the zombies so that they don't glitch around all the place and actually post a challenge instead of just being obnoxious, and some other stuff like morphine being part of farm loot instead of just spawning at the coast, vehicles require less things to repair (although they need a refuel so gas cans are in high demand), and some other things that rocket just refuses to do (like giving everyone a weapon, hatchet in this case at spawn). I know this doesn't help development directly but I think I'm personally responsible for around 20-25 sold copies of ArmA2:AO, as people from work joined the server, told other people who bought it etc. That is 20 copies extra sold for Bohemia, money they can use to invest in ArmA3 and DayZ. It's just a far friendlier place (although PvP still happens, just not as random as on public servers), and I ofcourse play on the regular servers and encourage the other players on the server to do the same. Essentially, my main motivation is to get rid of all the dicks, and a private hiveless server does just that.

Why do people still keep referring to the graphics quality settings when the view distance is the one that matters most. I can crank up the settings all the way up to 11 and still get reasonable FPS at ~4000 view distance, but a ~6000 viewdistance will easily give me 25% fps. Also, it's not like you will spot things further with higher viewdistance: stuff will disappear at the same distance due to LODing. As long as you got a videocard with a load of ram and something faster then a GF8800/Rx1600, the game will run fine. Also, I do have to make a comment that some servers just are horrible in their cleanup (don't get restarted often), and the amount of garbage on the server will affect your FPS.

If you want an accurate piss simulator, download Postal 2. But I don't think a system like this would add anything positive to dayz, only makes it more annoying.

Neither. Berezino has about the same loot, yet isn't as big as a deathmatch pit. Also, if I were to chose between the two: Cherno is crappy alone due to FPS issues.

That would kinda defeat the purpose.

I tried posting this to the "are you sick of PvP" thread, but a moderator locked it before I could post it, but I also think it applies here. I think I've found my sweetspot in enjoying DayZ: Remove all the unknown players. A couple of people (one of them hilariously named "anti-rocket"), remade the hive component of dayz to run locally on a MySQL database. I have my old PC running this + arma 2 server hosting dayz with some modifications I made on my own (slower "beefier" zombies, insane zombie spawn rates, night that isn't pitch black), and I just log onto that with 3-4 friends. You need to sneak around because even a group of 4 people armed with makarovs will get totally annihilated by these zombies. Setting up barbed wire in a field actually makes sense, since the slower zombie movement speed makes them glitch way less and are actually obstructed. Holding off a giant zombie horde of 200+ zombies is a very large challenge when it takes two enfield shots to the head for a zombie to fall, which should be the PvE endgame of dayz imho: defend and hold a safe location until supplies run out, then a scavenge run to nearby towns to resupply and set up another safe location. Even then, I gave the password to this server to some people from work, so there is still a bit of "holy crap there is a dude in the distance, will he shoot?", but no people disconnecting or warping around. I think there is always atleast 4 people on there just running around trying to survive, and the max I've had on this thing is 20 people in 3 groups, with the occasional mexican standoff between two groups. As long as Rocket wants to be the game hard as crap, while players with very high-tier stuff keep sniping people/generally griefing anyones fun and hackers roaming free around spawning stuff and nuking entire servers, I'd rather stay on my private bit on the internet. And since the server is disconnected from the Hive server and doesn't affect anybody else playing on legit servers, it's no problem for me as admin to just spawn a buttload of makarovs somewhere so everybody is atleast armed. I think it's just the same with any game that has public and private servers: Public servers are quick fun but there will always be dickheads or hackers ruining the fun, but if you want some serious action, you make sure you frequent a clan server where you know the majority of the playerbase wants the same as you: enjoy the game. I know I'm probably breaking some rules/EULA stuff, but to be honest I don't really care. The game is a great deal of fun and I got at least 15 people to buy ArmA2:CO, so I think I done my part to help Bohemia make Arma3 as good as possible, and support bohemia and rocket in fixing stuff in Arma 2.

The hiveserver cleans up bodies in intervals of 15 minutes, so the despawn time is somewhere between 15 and 0 minutes. If it takes longer then 10 minutes to get to your body, it will probably be gone already.

I love the Russian servers. Sure, they PK a lot, but they do it with dignity. I haven't had one Russian player disconnect because I shot him: They usually just shoot back or run away. However, if you meet them while you are unarmed or have shit gear, they will leave you alone most of the time. Then again, I've seen fully loaded Russian hitsquads just killing everything in Cherno, but in my opinion, it's just a far better environment. I know it's just my personal opinion and encounters of people on Russian servers, but to me, it looks like the average age/maturity on Russian servers is a bit higher. There are some exceptions, but when I'm playing on American servers (I live in europe, so for cheating nighttime), it's just a giant hack/disconnect fest.

Arma2 is heavily CPU bound so you want to reduce your viewing distance (one of the sliders of the "main" graphics panel). My i5 can barely run 4km distance, with a core2duo I would suggest around 1.5/2km, maybe lower it even further when you are nearing big cities like cherno/electro.

Start Arma2 or Operation Arrowhead without DayZ and follow the bootcamp. It will learn you how to shoot guns, how the movement system works and how to use the scroll wheel menu. Lots of Arma2 actions carry over to DayZ, and it will help you immensely starting out how to do stuff instead of standing still on a beach getting sniped.

Try downloading "Arma 2 Free", and make sure you don't set the drawing distance too high. However, you're going to have a bad time if you're in cherno/elektro or when it rains.

I know it's bullshit, but you have to understand: this game isn't made for your (the player) fun, it's made to please Rockets masochistic mind. The bugs just make it more ridiculous. But if you treat it more like a roguelike, and less like a RPG, it's a giant ball of fun. When you die, too bad, just respawn and try again. Believe me, if this game was any easier, everybody would be running around in leet gear and there wouldn't be any fun in looting. Also, all the people telling new players to "uninstall the game" and "QQ less", please shove a shotgun in your mouth: the game is buggy and whining is perfectly legit. Nightplay without gamma hacks or NVG is still impossible if you want to stay stealthy, zombies glitch all over the place and see/hear/hit you through walls and there are some serious game-breaking bugs. But it's alpha, and telling players who complain about these bugs to go away won't help Rocket one tiny bit.

It's only arma 2 mission, but it depends heavily on Rocket's main server. You can't play it without contacting his server (for loot and zombies spawns etc), so you can't really use it standalone. Also, the standalone version was used to try out hax, so rocket told the author to seize and desist.