It all sounds pretty good. What DayZ needs and what the sandbox survival genre (is it a genre, yet?) is, as stated in other threads, more things to do than find food and shoot everybody else. I dont think the PvP element should be removed, however. I'm no bandit, but those moment when you run into folk of unclear intent are what make the game, really. Also, the zombies could be a bit more of a a threat, so that entering a place like Cherno requires a skilled team.

They already have a farming in a zombie apocalypse game... it's called "Plants vs Zombies", and it's actually quite okay...

I've seen it about in a few threads... I think we're just ignoring it... dig the blood idea, though. Perhaps it could pool in places the bleeder stopped and lure zombies...

cannae you send your friend to town for a supply run while you guard his kit? Im sure if you find a good spot you could avoid trouble...

Perhaps the zombie virus evolved from an STD, and the patient zero frequented the women of the night...

You can download a zombie pack including zombie men and women, Civ and Soldier as well as a couple of modules to make them work from armaholic.com... They're not quite the same as the ones you see in DayZ and so far I've only gotten them to work in the original Arma 2 (ie, not OA or CO). Maybe they'll suffice?

Nice work, bro. There's lots of empty tents out there and any that I find I'm always sure to deposit my excess food/drink, survival gear and medical supplies into for other survivors to use. (No weapons or ammo, there's a story on these forums where someone aided a random by giving them a gun who then went on a killing spree.)

I dunno, I do my job a lot and I still suck at it... Having to grind in this game would really make dying hurt, seeing as you'd have to start again. Maybe if you gained skills or perks after every five days you manage to survive? Would make survival more meaningful...

Query, are there any medics or such types operating on AUS, NZ or SG servers? I'm a friendly lone wolf type player so there's not really much I can do for myself should I get had at by a rock or a door but I respect you guys plenty and would definately be willing to assist any local medics. Particularly as BG or mule... I also make a pretty decent distraction...

Because most folk aren't. Are you most folk, jjake121? You like to do what Romans do? Well Rome collapsed, man! When in Rome, be a Greek! But seriously though, play however you want. Just... Try not to drive off too many folk, I like to meet new people who want to play a game of zombies. Believe it or not, strangers are often quite interesting. Disclaimer: STRANGERS ARE DANGEROUS! IF THEY OFFER YOU LOLLIES AND A LIFT HOME THEN THEY ARE BADDIES! But if they offer you a gun, ammo, food, a drink and medical supplies, then they are BAD-ASS AWESOME HERO BROES!

Only time I ever saw a helicopter was when it was spotting for us during a bandit hunt in Stary. They came in too low and crashed in the middle of the road. Such is life.

Who does the song in this video and what is it called?

Quite enjoying these stories, reminds me of drinking at the RSL with the old fella's and war veterans on ANZAC day... This happened about a week ago. It was pre-dawn and I was making my way east from Bor when I encountered a small group of vigilantes who were scrubbing the hills looking for bandits who had fled north after some major skirmish at Balota Airfield. They opened fire on me but luckily one of them happened to be a guy I'd met a few days earlier whom I'd assisted in gathering ammo to store in a tent, and he vouched for me when I declared "I'm Friendly, FFS". I fell in with them and joined the bandit hunt but we didn't find any. The server had emptied from 30+ players to about 10 so we made for Cherno to snag some medical supplies while resistance would be managable. After a decent stride, the sun had begun to rise and we were positioning ourselves to defend the team that was about to raid the hospital on the western side of Cherno. I took a position a ways down the road acting as a sort of advanced scout. As the raiding team finished up and headed to the truck they'd brought in to cart the loot to their hideout one of the other guys on overwatch came near to me and asked if I'd help them clear the path to the next hospital on the east side of Cherno. It sounded like something to do so I joined him and we stealthily made our way through the streets. Needing some beans, I decided to check out a two story building on an intersection. As I was sorting through the loot piles I heard someone yell "F**K, BANDITS!" and several weapons started firing. The guy I was with came racing in and up the stairs to where I was and took a position by the window. I peeked outside and saw a couple of survivors not from our group taking positions in a similar building down the way. A few moments later more people from our group arrived as well as a great deal of zombies. A stand-off ensued for about fifteen minutes as we tried to discern how many of them there were and where they were hiding. One of us managed to get close enough to them to begin trying to negotiate a cease-fire but we had a lot of ammo to make use of, and I guess so did they. At one point some of our group snuk up to a building a few of them were hiding in and got the drop on them, taking one alive, wounding another and killing the third. This tipped the scales in our favour as now we had hostages. Our negotiator informed them of this and gave them the option to agree to leave Cherno until we were done or we'd kill the hostages and then we'd "frag their building down". After a bit of haggling they accepted the terms as long as we left them the means to heal their wounded and didn't loot their dead friend. After we hit the second hospital and made our way out of town, I bid the group farewell. We exchanged some info so we could catch up later on and I proceeded north and they east. It was by far the most tense experience I've had in all my years gaming.

Perhaps also tweak what loot you'd find in certain places. At the local Emergency Operations Centre we dont have any M4A1s, AKMs or even any Makarov pistols... In fact we dont stock firearms at all, so the chances of finding these items at a fire station would be pretty slim. What you would find, though, are things like maps, compasses, canteens, matches, hatchets, crowbars, and first aid supplies. Fire stations should be the place to go when starting out to get some of the more basic tools for surviving.

Indeed, I'm sure there's many reasons folk die less these days. But keep up the outstanding work, nonetheless! A single drop of water in the ocean etc etc.

Yeah, does that sometimes... I like to think its the "Life's getting too easy for you" fairies, who magically whisk you away and plonk you down hundreds of miles from your car just to see how long it takes for you to find it again... Maybe they place bets... But you're free to make of it what you will.

Surviving in the wilderness is currently the way I've been playing. ATM my survivor is almost a month old! Occasionally I team up with some folk when they're raiding the NWAF or a hospital but for the most part I lone wolf it. Had my fair share of close calls with bandits, zombies, killer trees, a stray hand grenade, at one point i was run over by a cow (He was tasty), and got caught up in quite a major skirmish which resulted in a stand-off and hostage exchange (Wasn't me but still it was the most tense moment I've ever experienced in a videogame)... Also shared beans with noobs and veterens, traded items, conducted a Search and Rescue operation in the rain and stole a helicopter from some hoodlums. Hopefully I'll last another month and have some more similar experiences.

I agree with the point that losing because the game is buggy sucks hard, but in this early stage things like that are to be expected. Hopefully things like this are fixed soon, we just have to be patient and helpful by using forums such as this to identify areas needing improvement. I dont agree that zombies should be easily felled. In the olden days the only way to kill them was to completely destroy their brain and incinerate them. They're undead, remember.

Nice ideas, most of these would be great but I imagine they'd be hard to pull off. We can dream, though. I guess DayZ would have seemed impossible in the Pac-man days... Things I'd add: Ability to choose a perk or two when choosing your gender. For instance, I can quite easily start a fire without a hatchet and matches, so a perk that enables you to take wood from fallen trees in the forest and start a fire using only that would add a bit of realism for me. Other perks could include getting a bit of extra meat from dead animals, perhap even dead survivors (Lolwut? Dead Survivors? Not quite how 'surviving' works), or a perk that enables you to pilot helicopters. (Seriously, do they teach the Chernerussian kids how to fly choppers in school?) Aesthetic changes to make the world seem like society actually tried to fight the Zombie Apocalypse. Yeah theres a mass grave here and there, military vehicles block the streets and there's dead soldiers in the airfields as well as a red cross camp, but where are the ruined garrisons, the camps where suspected infected were held, the checkpoints on the highways leading out of the major towns and cities where the military was forced to gun down scores of civillians trying to break through when things started to get way out of control. As for weapons, Military grade weaponry would be quite common in the world after Z day, due to the local military presence required to enforce order in areas as yet unnaffected by the crisis as well as efforts to combat and contain the enemy advance. Make no mistake, the Government would consider an uprising of the undead an attack by a hostile force and quickly deploy it's forces against it. (I believe wikipaedia defines a zombie apocalypse 'A general assault on civilization by forces of the undead') Apologies, I've read too much into this topic. Let me end by adding on final idea... Some other way to deploy chemlights and flares than using the 'fire mode' function. Nothing hurts quite so much as losing some nice gear because you threw a chemlight into some bandit's face instead of some 7.62 HIGH VELOCITY!!!

Was beanstalking either Stary Sobor or Novy Sobor when I heard several zombies aggro and start running around. Thinking they'd detected me I settled in for a fight but shots began to ring out nearby. I peered out the window of the house I was in and saw a hoarde of zombies staggering into one of those really long barns from all ends. I figured it was a bandit, so I was about to leave the area when I changed my mind and decided to discern whether or not he was indeed a bandit and to ensure the locals got a decent feed if he was. I circled the barn and entered through a door only one zombie was using and threw a flare at the survivor, who spun around and must have mistaken a zombie for me because he ran straight up to it and saluted before it attacked him. I was convinced he was friendly though so I killed it and about ten others before leading him out of town. We were joined by another survivor who heard the gunfire and was even better kitted up than me, who generously gave the first survivor an M16A2 and a couple of magazines and lead us to an old camping tent which had so much assorted ammo and decent weapons in it for us all to fully stock up. I had to leave about then so I don't know how they got on after that, but I do know that one more morally correct survivor was made formidable today and is hopefully holding his own in a world full of bad. Good luck to ya' buddy.

I'll never be a bandit. The internet gives us the opportunity to meet folk on the other side of the world and helps us to bond through the medium of a sandbox chat-room filled with zombies and the need to eat and drink. So much more can be gained by meeting other survivors and having fun working together to stay alive. The only other place where meeting strangers under similar circumstances is the local pub... But anyway... I was with some of my colleges from G-G State Emergency Service (A volunteer Search & Rescue organization) when I get a text message from another friend telling me he's broken his legs near Gorka and has less than 4k blood. I convinced him not to bug out of the server because we had enough morphine and blood packs to keep a squad going for a good while and that we were about 10 minutes sprinting distance away. He plots on the map his rough location and we hastily head off to meet him. Before too long it begins to rain heavily and visibility was fading as the night set in. We get to the forest, set ourselves up and begin a line search, clearing the whole area in a few minutes with no luck finding my friend, so we check the map and head to the next foresty area. We couldn't see too well, so we had to follow the compass bearing to get us there. Once again we perform a grid search, this time we see a torchlight flashing at us in the distance. I text my friend to ask if its him, to which he responds with "Yeah, hurry". We race over to him and one of my collegues gives him blood and morphine while I build a fire and the other keeps an eye out. Once it was all done he shared his cool drinks with us and we sat around the campfire having a chat and eventually we all logged out. It's nice when you can end your sessions on a high.

Awesome job, guys. DayZ really seems to bring out the worst in folk, so its good to be able to read stories like this.

Sounds good, I've been looking for local crew to tag along with. Add me on steam, ( pattersonic ).

G'day, I'm Olisonera, though in game I go by Von Stykie. I generally play on Australian or New Zealand Servers, mostly SG3. Have been playing DayZ for a few weeks now, so I know to be weary of most folk. In the real world I'm an Emergency Services Team Leader, and seeing as art immitates life I try to help folk if they're friendly... and lightly armed... and stay where I can see them. This has gotten me killed a few times. Currently I haunt the forests between N/W Airfield and Devil's Castle so if you do find youself in a server with me feel free to swing by and stock up on cooked meat, I always have plenty. Note: I respond positively to folk who attach green chemlights to themselves and holster their weapon.

This happened while I was fresh. I was searching for a drink in Cherno when i decided to avoid a roaming walker by crawling through a small garage type building. I noted a pile of scrap metal on the floor but I thought nothing of it and proceeded to crawl over it. This resulted in my instant death. Fortunately I re-spawned near nough for me to run back to where I died and collect my gear. It weren't much but I had nothing anyway so i sprinted off into Cherno gathering quite an impressive hoarde of the undead I figured I'd find some hilarious use for. I turned the corner to find some random with a makarov killing some other random over the inventory of my deceased former self. After doing a couple of laps around him laughing as he spun around shooting things i darted off and around a couple of fences and hid and listened to the sound of poor marksmanship fade into the distance followed by most of the hoarde... As i returned to my corpse to gather my belonings i was set upon by another random dressed as a bush who said in an amusing hillbilly accent "Dem boys done brought me some beans!" as he killed me with a crowbar or a hatchet... I didn't really see...