DoshDosh

Yep, supermarkets are your best bet- to my experience they have at least one can. Otherwise they spawn just about anywhere else, but I suppose the chance is a lot lower. You should try your best to find matches/hatchet/knife so you can kill animals and live off of them instead of beans :).

You can totally find good things in deer stands (found PDW and DMR my current life, and essentially had these weapons long before I had basic survival gear or water/food), but the chance is low enough that I don't think loot cycling a lone deer stand is really worth it.

I don't think server hopping deer stands does anything for it, since I'm pretty sure you need to enter the area and cross a certain radius before items spawn (meaning if you hop around on top of the item nothing will spawn specifically for you- you get the goods other players left, which generally isn't that good). On the other hand loot cycling is good, but I don't think it's worth loot cycling a lone deer stand then waiting 10 minutes for a microscopic chance of gaining anything good. I've seen people loot cycle Stary Sobor and barracks which is pretty risky, but that's about it.

I honestly believe that a vast majority of players here would avoid killing other humans in a real life anarchic scenario unless it was the absolute final option (and if they did, would become emotional wrecks); none of the "I see you from behind my tree and shoot you while you're eating food"... mainly because people who do act like the shoot-on-sight bandits in game would essentially be sociopaths, and in that case wouldn't function well in society as it is now anyway. People who think acting like bandits do in DayZ is the first way to go should feel free to join up with their national military. Several of my best friends served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and each one who's had the misfortune of having to take a life have had some form of PTSD afterwards; these were mentally fit and intelligent young men that became emotional wrecks and husks of their former selves because they had to kill enemy combatants, and I can't imagine what soldiers who accidentally kill unarmed civilians would go through. Sure, you see the occasional sociopath killing civilians (see: http://www.usatoday....base/53493404/1), but as it's shown, there are severe repercussions for not only him, but everybody around him. tl;dr - It's a game and a vast majority of DayZ players wouldn't act the same way, even if they want to sound tough. edit: spelling :(

In the game's current build the best way to survive is stay isolated once you have basic survival gear/weapons, be aware of your surroundings so that you can avoid ambushes + get the jump on other players, and then shoot anyone you see on sight (in that order, in my opinion). I agree that right now it's a little too easy to "deathmatch" it out, but I feel that PVP isn't strictly necessary to survive unless you're frequently visiting high-traffic areas. That being said, I'd completely support a system that switches it up a little to lighten the "always deathmatch" mindset, but I can see how it might not be a priority now.

If you have no idea where to loot, then it's pretty tough starting out with only bandages and painkillers. On the other hand, if you do, then it's not so bad. Just find the best loot locations that are somewhat isolated (barns/deer stands, then heli crash sites), and be sure to study up the towns to see which have convenient loot spots in the outskirts. You can minimize risk this way. In my most recent life I spawned in one of the western coastal cities and just ignored the coast entirely- just sprinted up towards the deer stands, ended up with decent weapons and finally went to a town near the middle of the map to loot the high-yield buildings for basic survival gear. I haven't encountered a single player and have already gotten almost fully geared up just by knowing which places to hit and which places to ignore.

Personally I don't consider Day Z a simulator, but it certainly has aspects of one in comparison to games like Left 4 Dead and Killing Floor. I would put in features like crapping, sleeping, mental breakdowns/disorders and etc. if I wanted to make it like a simulator... and I'm thinking that probably wouldn't be any fun at all, haha.

Cities in general are higher risk, and coastal cities are outright dangerous... which is unfortunate, since occasionally you need to scrounge the odd medical supply that has a miniscule chance of spawning anywhere except the hospitals in Cherno and Elektro. In general the north woods are the safest areas, but some of the northern parts are pretty far from anywhere that has decent supplies- I would want to be well-equipped with food/water/meds/ammo if I want to go in for a long trip. A good compromise are the woods that are slightly north and not too far from cities with supermarkets, so you can find some basic supplies in an emergency.

I think it's possible that your luck was bad; I've been in a barn where every loot pile had one hatchet and nothing else, and I guess the occasional building with nothing but tin cans is a bit more common. I believe loot is generated for your character when you enter a certain radius of the building, so I think the chance of other players simply exchanging things they don't want for the good items isn't usually the case unless they're still very close by.

Yeah one thing to keep in mind is that some bandits purposely head to low-pop servers to hunt people. I'd recommend avoiding NWAF and Stary Sobor on low-pop servers in particular, since a lot of players like going to those servers if they want to raid either of those places solo. Even coastal areas usually have a sniper somewhere in NW Cherno or Elektro near the firehouse. If you go to a low-pop server for the purpose of gearing up, just don't let your guard down and assume you won't run into anybody, since mostly the people who join low-pop servers either have the same mindset as you (so the chance of encounters is higher) or will be hunting people like you (so the chance of encounters is higher... again). EDIT: On the other hand, I think low-pop servers are excellent for hunting animals and restocking food/water in general; there are lots of smaller towns that people rarely visit that have some good basic materials, and you can usually hunt these areas and animals without worry as long as you're far from the danger zones. I'd go as far as to say that you can loot deer stands and helicopter crashes fairly safely, but I think I would remain guarded around any crash site.

Yeah, the notices about survivors in trouble and advertisements about things like the freeside trading co. are pretty awesome.

This is great, I like it a lot. Jazz songs are awesome, and I also like that you put in a lot of variety but have a general survivor/dayz-style theme to it. Hope it's successful.

Double barrel actually isn't terrible- two slugs kill a player. That said, the Lee-Enfield kills in 1 shot as long as you're in range, although it's much louder than the shotgun. Pellets for the shotgun are extremely useful vs. zombies, but usually you'll prefer your sidearm for zombies. I would actually prefer keeping the Lee-Enfield over some of the mid-tier/low level military gear out there; the one shot kill is amazing vs. disconnecters and server hoppers in particular, and I love to mess up their day.

If you want to be the "hero" and actively seek bandits over survivors, your best bet is to figure out where the popular bandit sniper locations are (outskirts of stary sabor near the tents, elektro's outskirts, balota airfield, cherno outskirts, etc.) and camp near them. When you see a bandit sniper come in and start aiming at random survivors, you know you've made bank; most of them won't bother checking around once they've gotten into the groove of picking off city dwellers, and sometimes they carry high-end gear. If you get a good shot and take them down in one hit, they won't have the chance to ALT-F4.

Plenty of threads on weapon maintenance already; I think it would be cool for sure, but I'm happy waiting for Rocket to finish up whatever he's up to before he decides to add in new features.

A relatively safe way to target bandits imo is to hide in popular bandit areas (woods and hills near Stary Sobor and Elektro, NW Cherno, etc.), quietly observe to see if they're noob-hunting, then put a well-placed shot right into them while they're aiming at something else. If you can get the headshot, you can prevent them from trying to disconnect while under fire, which they do more often than other players to my experience. If you're not quite that patient, you can simply target anybody with a sniper rifle in their hand or on their back. Of course there are plenty of players that use sniper rifles as anti-bandit weapons, but considering it's the most popular type of weapon for bandits that pick off noobs, I've always considered using sniper rifles as a better indicator than none at all.

Personally I prefer to observe over any sort of engagement- especially since I operate solo. During my first few lives I always opted to ask "friendly", but that most of the time that just got me shot (occasionally we both ran in the opposite direction), and after that I tried shooting on sight but decided I didn't want to just KOS every single person I came across... so I observe to see if the player is carrying anything visibly that I would want (backpack/weapons), or if he is a bandit (e.g. stary sobor sniping/elektro sniping). I do my best to hunt bandits and occasionally go for kills that will net me items I can use, but other than that I prefer to quietly observe a player and let him walk by while hiding behind a bush or tree.

http://www.edge-online.com/news/dayz-dev-terrified-making-changes Dean "Rocket" Hall, the developer behind DayZ, admits that making updates to his zombie-infested ArmA II mod is "terrifying" because he can't be sure how the game's rabid community will react if things go wrong. It's ridiculous that the community's gotten to the point. If we're going to be like the Diablo III community, we might as well give up. Wouldn't be a bad thing to just shut the fuck up sometimes and stop being so entitled, since none of us are actually developing this damn game. Despite all the bugs the game's always been awesome, is awesome and will be awesome if we don't act so spoiled. I'd be completely comfortable with Rocket just giving naysayers the finger and doing what he wants, because he shouldn't have to be afraid of his own damn community.

Considering a lot of the changes, Rocket's been listening to feedback since day 1, and nobody said he should feel special. Sure you could leave all of it to him and just sit around and complain when things don't end up the way you want it to, like it has in some other great gaming communities, but if the player community can improve itself to help with the process instead of just sit around and QQ, there's no possible way that would hurt development. Yeah, rabid communities can be a good sign for a mod's popularity, but they say that about COD and D3. I'm pretty sure we don't want to be roped in with them, especially considering the fact that this whole thing is based on a mod, not some high budget retail product.

Actually, if you've noticed some of Rocket's messages on Reddit, he's pretty uncertain about the entire thing himself. I say that's a good thing, and everybody loves constructive criticism, but you only have to go into the suggestions and general chat subforums and scroll around a bit to see what they mean in the article. Hell the Diablo III community pretty much trashed itself, and continues to do so now- it would just be nice if something like that didn't ruin this, because it's awesome.

I've always seen more AKM magazines in the southern area and more STANAG mags in the northern area, but that might just be how my luck decided to play out.

LOL. Yeah, getting a Lee-Enfield and ambushing a sniper on Elektro can be a hilariously quick way to gain a whole bunch of top gear at the very beginning. It's especially great since a good shot eliminates any chance for them to disconnect. Try not to shoot that gun from within the city though, or else you'll have a whole bunch of other problems at hand. If you don't want to go fishing for bandit snipers, a good way to do it is through experience; everybody has their preference on looting, but after you die a few times and find your favorite places, you'll get good at running loot at your own pace.

AKM for both zombies (1 bodyshot kill) + enemy players. The M16A2 is slightly better for longer ranges due to the iron sights, but their effective range both caps at about 400m, and honestly, for something around 400m I'd be looking for a rifle with an ACOG scope or something along that vein (although I really, really believe that the Lee-Enfield is the best PVP weapon aside from sniper rifles when used properly).

The comparisons made for this game being parallel to real life are hilarious. We have bandits in DayZ because death means the other character respawns, is momentarily frustrated and we all have a laugh about it (and get cool gear). When society breaks down IRL, sure you have the crazies who lose their minds and kill for fun or beans... but that's why they're labeled sociopaths and get singled out for removal or avoidance. I doubt anybody here would be able to stay sane for long if they killed somebody else for shits, giggles and beans; hell if anybody wants to prove themselves, they should just join the military. Vets from Iraq/Afghanistan get severe PTSD from shooting enemy combatants, let alone the ones that kill civilians or fellow soldiers through friendly fire. tl;dr People yelling "friendly" get shot because it's a game and because there are trolls far removed from any consequence whatsoever

It's rare, but the type of item that people who server hop the barracks will never see due to the loot spawning system. For the most part I think it's just about luck.