craft (DayZ)

Hear hear. Diablo was fun, but compared to DayZ, it's popcorn. The feeling I got the first time I found a decent gun in DayZ far surpassed the feeling when I found yet another rare magical doohickey in Diablo.

Fitting. :) That's a long-ass time. Do you mostly stay out in the woods? I'd be hard-pressed to stay alive that long without doing something stupid.

My brother has been playing Diablo III for the last few weeks. He was telling me on the phone last night that he recently hit level 60 and has been finding all kinds of cool loot. His toon looks like Conan the Barbarian, he has about six million gold pieces in a little purse, and he carries some glowing, firey "Axe of Enormous Goddamn Wounding +42351" or something and a shield the size of a house and boots that make him fly. I was like, "I found some beans and an empty tin can."

The starter gun was removed several patches ago.

You're only stuck with the male model for your current life. When you die, you can choose again.

I can't remember offhand (not at home to check), but something in the neighborhood of 1680x1050. I have every option set to low, shadows turned off, no antialiasing, etc., and while there is a little bit of mouse lag and occasional stuttering, I can play just fine. It works in my favor that you don't have to aim a gun very often in DayZ. :)

It's the main circuit board in your computer -- the one everything else plugs into. But if you don't know what a motherboard is, you probably shouldn't upgrade your video card by yourself, much less your CPU. And since you're looking at upgrading all three anyway, just go to Microcenter (or whatever) and tell a salesperson there what you intend to do -- they'll sell you a pre-built machine for not much more than what you'd pay for the components alone. And you'll save yourself the hassle of installation, to say nothing of making sure all the components are compatible, etc. FWIW, I run DayZ on a six-year-old Core2Duo with 2GB of RAM and an nVidia 8800GT. It looks like crap, but I get perfectly playable framerates. Your current computer is perfectly well-equipped to run the game.

I've been playing the game for about a week now, and have been having endless fun with it. I've killed maybe a couple dozen zeds and have died at least as many times. My only interactions with other players have involved dying at the wrong end of a gun, in spite of the fact that I haven't advanced enough in the game, gear-wise, to have been carrying anything much more valuable than an Alice pack or a canteen. Anyway I've grown wary of humans and have avoided them like the plague -- far more carefully than I've avoided the zeds. Last night I spawned a new character near Elektro and was crawling around the town looking to do the initial gear-up, and made my way to the church. When I came around the corner and through the door, I found a player inside crouching over the corpse of another player. He looked up and saw me; weaponless, I ran around the corner and dove behind some bushes. I thought maybe I'd been quick enough that he hadn't seen where I'd gone, but he had -- he stopped near the bushes with his gun trained on me. I figured I'd rather die standing up, so I got up and exited the bush. I stood there for about five seconds, waiting for the shot, but it never came. Instead he lowered his weapon, crouched, and ran back into the church. After taking a few deep breaths I followed him and scavenged a few minor items from inside, including whatever my new buddy had left on the guy he'd just killed. There's no real point to this post -- it was just a novel experience and I felt like doing some cheerleading. This game is certainly rough around the edges, and it has its flaws, but any environment that can give rise to that kind of organic tension between two players is one worth sticking with. The fact that the tensest moment I've felt in a zombie game had little to do with zombies says something about where DayZ's real strength lies. I've been playing video games for nearly 30 years, and I don't think I've ever had an experience where my fate in-game was left in the hands of a complete stranger. I can't wait to log back in tonight and try to stay alive for another hour.

Just feeling the need to relate the polar-opposite experience I had last night. Found a military rifle in the fire station in Elektro, went downstairs and came across a guy wielding a hatchet. Trying to pay my previous, positive experience forward, I lowered my weapon and he backed off into a different room. I left the building, went prone, and started to crawl away. Just then my legs broke; sonofabitch had attacked me from behind. I would love to say I'll be a kind soul in the future and let my fellow players go about their business in-game, but I don't think that's going to happen. Once I get any even remotely desirable gear, I think it's more likely I'll just kill on sight. It's kind of too bad that the game dynamic fosters essentially unprovoked violence -- if this were the real apocalypse, it makes far more sense for the survivors not to kill each other -- but I still dig the tension. My only regret (besides losing the gun, which was the best I'd found so far) is that I didn't note the guy's name so I can hunt him down and shoot him in the face.

Hi, all: Been playing the game for a couple of days, and have been enjoying it immensely. I have two newbie questions I'm hoping I can get answered: 1. While camped out on a roof of an industrial building somewhere, I watched two players navigating around the surrounding area. Both remained prone and both seemed to move without regard to the zombies around them, even going so far as to approach within inches of the zombies and pass them by. Do you remain basically invisible to zombies so long as you're prone? I finally found a knife and some food and don't really feel like experimenting and risking my first loot to find out first-hand. Anyway, the game is going to be made a lot easier if all I have to do is remain prone whenever there are zombies around. 2. A few minutes ago I hurdled a fence, and immediately afterward I found I could no longer run -- not while crouched, not while standing. I waited a few minutes, thinking maybe I was just tired, but no luck. A while later I switched into and out of first-person view, and afterward found I could run again. Is this a bug? Or was I just tired or hungry or something? Any clue? These are just the first of what I'm sure will be many questions. I appreciate any help. -Stephen

Thank you for the replies, all. I could have sworn the players I was watching were moving around pretty much directly underfoot the zombies, but maybe it was just a byproduct of my perspective or something. Thank you also for the tips about double-taps. I knew about double-shift (and had tried that as a remedy), but not about the others. If it happens again I'll know what to experiment with.