Search the Community

I posted this once before, but it was lost. Here it is again (if I can remember everything). Let me begin by saying that I love DayZ, and am very thankful for this mod. My goal with this post is to propose a couple of ideas that I think would dramatically change DayZ for the better (much more authentic) without trying force (punish/reward) anyone/anything artificially. The ideas simply change the environment to a more authentic one given the zombie/survival apocalypse that is the setting for DayZ. Loot--current system: 1. Spawns only in structures (authentic only if zero re-spawns occur) 2. Spawns in the same exact locations (authentic only if zero re-spawns occur) 3. Spawns an unlimited number of times (completely ruins the authentic scarcity of resources that would be present in this situation--combined with #1 & #2, players can actually thrive instead of struggling to survive) The real culprit of the inauthenticity with loot in the current system is the unlimited re-spawning. But, just removing #3 would not work in the current system since there are not permanent players for each server (server loot must sustain much more than the 25, 30, 50, etc. number of players that the server allows simultaneously). Even if each server did have a permanent set of players, removing #3 completely would make for a setting where, eventually, all players would be reduced to crossbows, canteens, map, compass, matches, etc. (all of the unlimited items) since the initial loot piles would not be re-spawned. While this may be an authentic scenario, I do not think that this is Rocket is trying to accomplish. Reducing loot spawns, while creating a more playable scenario than removing them altogether, still leaves that inauthentic feel of magically reappearing loot in places that have already been completely scavenged--no authentic explanation of these re-spawns can be made. So, if #3 is necessary, how can the loot system be made more authentic while keeping #3? The answer is removing all structure spawning, and replacing it with air drops (maybe have structures continue to infrequently spawn a non-weapon item (can of beans, etc.). The authentic basis for this idea comes from a man who describes his experiences during the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990's when the Balkan city where he lived was surrounded and cut-off for a year (google "Selco" & "Balkan"). He credits US air drops with saving his life. Add zombies to Selco's experience, and you have something very close to DayZ. The aircraft making the drops in DayZ could originate from the regions to the north and west (south and east is ocean) of Chernarus, and either be random (time and location), somehow authentically influenced by players, or a combination of both. The aircraft would then fly across the map to its drop zone, make the drop, and fly back across, and off of the map. These air drops would create all kinds of interesting (and authentic) scenarios. Players desperate for supplies may rush recklessly to the drop zone to grab what they can before zombies and/or bandits arrive. A large, well-supplied group might secure the drop zone to try to take everything for themselves, and engage anything that comes near. A group with a functioning Huey could become extremely powerful, since they could use radar to locate incoming aircraft, and quickly travel to drop zones all over the map (not to mention its weapons). Who is making these air drops? It could be the same group that failed in its military missions (crashed choppers). The variety of weapons/ammo/supplies that are dropped is explained by the fact that this group is just scavenging, stealing, etc. whatever it can find to include in the air drops. Zombies--current system: 4. Spawn and remain (unless giving chase) only around structures (unauthentic--zero zombie threat in the wilderness (opposite of what one would expect)) 5. Re-spawn an unlimited amount of times (combined with #4 makes for a completely unauthentic experience--even if all 50 players banded together, they cannot keep a small town clear since the zombies just keep re-spawning forever right in front of their eyes) Just like loot, it is the re-spawning that makes the current zombie system unauthentic. And, just like loot, partially or completely removing zombie re-spawns still leaves a feeling of inauthenticity (either zombies still magically re-spawn by structures even if it has been cleared, or no zombies ever threaten a cleared area again). Again, we need an authentic solution that allows re-spawning (zombies this time). The answer is moving all zombie spawns/re-spawns to the north and west edges of the map, and have the zombies migrate in packs to the south and east across the map. The packs would change their migration path if it sees/hears players, aircraft, and/or vehicles (sprint toward any of these). If the ArmA engine could view these packs as a single unit (unless they are being viewed by a player--similar to the current system), then the packs could be large (25 packs with 40 zombies each = 1000 total zombies). The combination of both the loot and zombie ideas would also give an authentic risk/reward system regarding player location. The further north/west a player is located, the earlier the player can spot an aircraft on its way to making an air drop, which is a big advantage (reward). But, the threat of zombies is also increased the further north/west a player is located (risk). Conversely, the further south and east a player is located, the less chance they have of seeing/hearing an aircraft, but the less chance they have of facing zombies (zombies killed off as they migrate south and east).

FYI - barbed wire to block off a building is used as a cheat. No, it's not an exploit if you use a tool kit to open it when you want access, but the VAST majority of people abusing this are simply server hopping and blocking off individual servers' buildings so the loot will be preserved until their next go around. I completely disagree that a server owner / operator should not have the ability to reset their map when they see fit. You own your character, and what you carry should be preserved cross server, but vehicles, tents, fences, etc. are part of the SERVER not your character. If a server is decided to have different rules than other servers what is wrong with that? Disallowing wire fences, vehicles and tent stacking are no different than turning 3rd person on or off, allowing chat, or that setting that makes zombies visible through walls with a white orb thing. They drastically alter the way the game can be played on that server - no different. I'm all for PVP off servers too. Obviously if they exist they should be labelled as such, and maybe have separate character loot (so people dont just use them to gear up). But I see no reason they should not be allowed to exist...

I've been playing this mod for about a week. There's some definite ups and downs. Onto my list of suggestions! Item count for tents and vehicles. Much like we have an item count for our backpacks. I have lost a few clips over loading my tent. Kind of obnoxious. Sometimes they fall on the ground, sometimes they disappear. Make it to where if a bag is full, items don't just fall on the ground. Instead you just can't move it. Also I've lost items moving them around before. I was responsible for collecting tires for our team. I had one tire in my back pack with 5 open spaces. I thought tires only took 5 spaces so I picked up another one and shoved it into the back pack, both disappeared. This seems more like a bug, but not allowing items that don't fit to move would be a great fix. A way to combine half empty clips to increase round counts. I have a fellow survivor who is an idiot. He'll shoot mags down to about 10 rounds and stick them in the tent. So here I'm thinking we have about 10 mags. Instead it's 10 mags of 10 rounds instead of 30 rounds. I just want to combine clips, not split them. I'm aware of the .45 ammunition glitch currently. I don't want that. Some sort of blood regen. A very slow blood regen. 1 point every 10 seconds. At that rate it would take 2.8 hours to regen 1000 pts of blood. These zombies are intense! They're fast, strong, and don't give a shit about your mother. If I'm going into a town to get loot and accidentally get one, my only options are to lose them inside the town (Which means drawing more zombies) or to start killing them all (Also more zombies). I feel like after a while the zombies would lose interest or I could simply out run them. The real problem I see with my own suggestion, I like how scary they are. I just don't feel like these are zombies. Ideas, comments, counter suggestions are welcome.

I've been playing DayZ for like a week now pretty vigorously, and I'd like to leave my feedback. First off, the game is extremely difficult to play with friends. The best method to meet up with friends is to constantly respawn until you spawn near one another, and even then it takes an annoyingly long amount of time to respawn your character. If you try to meet up with a group of 3 or 4 people you can easily burn through a couple hours just trying to meet up and not die in the process. This could be solved pretty easily by allowing up to choose from a list of coastal cities to spawn at, while spawning at a random spot near the city, so spawns cannot effectively be camped. The second fairly large problem is that there is no objective other than to live. At first that's difficult enough, put with a dash of luck and careful sneaking you'll pretty shortly be decked out in automatic weapons, have a range of tools, enough medical supplies to keep a hospital running for a week, and have no need to even enter a city (where the zombie danger is) when you can collect water from lakes and food from animals. Once you reach the point that survival isn't a challenge anymore, the game loses any incentive to keep playing. You can explore the map, but the map basically just serves as spawn points for items. There aren't any cities or objects within the world that are inherently interesting. The only thing that I can think of that can be relatively easily changed and still add some spice to the game once survival is no longer a challenge, is make killing zombies fun. Currently they respawn infinitely, and way too fast, so killing them is a fruitless effort. They need to respawn much more slowly so an area can actually be cleared out for a period of time. Being able to clear areas means that you need to be able to move onto the next area to clear, so vehicles need to be more plentiful, allowing you to cruise through towns. Having like five cars per city street would be stupid, but after a week-ish I've only seen two vehicles. One was a boat, that is nearly useless (and it had no gas so I couldn't use it anyway), and the other was a tractor that was somehow stuck on a picket fence and rendered useless. Making cars more plentiful also aids friends meeting up with one another. A final small point, is that navigating the world after a fresh spawn is pretty obnoxious. Without a picture of the map open on your computer separately from the game, it's nearly impossible to learn your way around inland. Throw the survivors a bone and let them spawn with at least a compass to aid in navigation.

Some vehicles vanish instead of exploding. If it vanished, that means that was how much damage it could take before exploding as well.

And add more incentive to server hopping? No! Then your going to end up with servers over loaded with vehicles, and others that have few to none. As it is now, vehicles are already hard to find/repair due to the hording by the larger bandit groups and clans. It will only get worse if they are capable of taking vehicles from other servers back to their "home" server.

Okay, fine. So what? You're not going to die if you can't loot the insant you login to the game, right? 1500m is a 5 minute run. Not so much to ask in order to resolve a relatively serious issue in the game, right? You're completely free to find a suitable server, but once you get on it's not imperative that you immediately start picking up loot in the vicinity. If you were actually playing to survive you wouldn't be logging that close to loot anyway - it's incredibly dangerous and only really makes sense if you are either forced offline by mitigating circumstances (rare) or specifically trying to farm loot. A lot of people take advantage of remote deer stands - up ladder, loot, down ladder, relog, up ladder, loot, down ladder... ugh. This is complete and absolute hogwash! I'm effected in a variety of ways personally, some very severe from a game play standpoint: First, it exponentially increases the rates of player logins near high value loot. So while I'm playing - legitimately moving from town-to-town to find loot - I am constantly under threat from people popping into existence behind me because they find it more efficient to server-hop to loot the same location over and over. This has a huge impact on tactical game play mechanics. If I approach a high-value loot location, carefully scouting every possible approach and then "clearing" the building, I should have some assurances that I'm not going to be ambushed by someone logging in behind me. Yes, this will still happen randomly from "fresh" spawns, but the rates will go down by orders of magnitude if we make it less profitable to server hop for loot. See this thread for an in-depth discussion on the many issues caused by frequent logins. Second, server-hopping detracts from the persistence in the world. Instead of a 225km^2 map where people are traveling from place-to-place to vye for limited resources, you have ~6 "hot spots" in the game where people spend all day constantly server hopping in an attempt to gather loot or murder those who are. Once towns or camps are "looted out" and players know they can't simply swap servers to loot the whole place again, they will be forced to travel to another location. This creates a more interesting world, and a more fluid game experience. Players tend to stay on the same server longer, and you can track enemies, be tracked, and engage in more long-term interactions than you can in a world where ~50% of any given server population are just "popping in for a quick visit don't mind me I'll just grab my loot and be off." Likewise, players who camp hotspots waiting for loot farmers to login only to snipe them before their client finishes loading would find far fewer targets - and they might actually have to get up and move around a bit and use their brains to find targets instead of just sitting AFK with their sniper scope trained on the Stary Sobor military tents while they watch Netflix and eat cocoa puffs. Incidentally this also adds more value to vehicles. Once you actually need to travel to effectively gather loot, vehicles will be even higher value assets. Third, in this game's extremely competitive environment it is important to understand the flow of high-value loot and the impact it has on the prevalance of certain items, weapon types, etc. I am personally effected if design decisions are being made about spawn rates and item rarity based on the game when it allows for such a watered-down, cheap and largely challenge-free method for collecting large amounts of loot in a repetitive manner. Don't over-simplify a rather complex issue in order to dismiss a solution that isn't that much of a "penalty" for anyone who is not specifically and directly abusing the system on a regular basis. Again, a 1500m jog is not too much to ask. Just enough to make it annoying for exploiters without really inconveniencing legitimate players much in the process.

I don't see what destroying land vehicles has anything to do with boats. My group has had 3 or 4 boats and has used them a lot. Wanting something removed from the game because you yourself doesn't use it is selfish at best.

Google DayZ Wiki. Click Weapons on first page. Proceed to see that both are listed. As this information is public knowledge I think you only came on here to gloat about finding someones camp. Bravo though! Now please destroy all of those vehicles so the rest of us have some to find!!!

Hmm, guess I have to destroy land vehicles to a get a boat thanks for the info :)

I've been playing the game for about 8 weeks I think. At first I was playing solo and having a ton of fun just trying to survive in the DayZ world. Everything was new and fresh. Going North/inland was a major rush not knowing what was there and learning to survive as a lone wolf. Avoid others when possible, be cautious and aware at all times, and if confronted by another player try and have the upper hand. About 2 weeks into playing I teamed up with some great guys. Our collective experience and varied playstyles allowed us to thrive easily. Equipment became easy to get and other players were something to be hunted for what they had instead of avoided. Now though getting gear isn't even a problem anymore. Even without tents/vehicles, inside of 3-4 hours, we can have what most people consider high-end gear just because of our experience in knowing where to find the gear or how to hunt people that have it. None of this involves exploits, cheats, or hacks. It all comes down to teamwork and experience. At this point what is there for us to do really? We usually run 3-8 deep in a group. Not many players/groups can take us when we play tryhard mode unless it is a large, organized clan or hacker. Lately, we have taken to hunting snipers around the coast that are killing newbies, though admittedly there is collateral damage sometimes as we have a couple trigger happy folks. Some of our group have taken to just playing recklessly and not caring about surviving as they find starting without gear to be more of a challenge than actually trying to survive. Once geared, they go back to the coast looking for the newbie killers not caring if they die in the process. My point is that the only real challenge in Dayz for us is other players. The infected never even factor into anything we do anymore unless it is as an indication there are other players about. Sure we could set-up a reinforced area and defend it, but server hopping totally negates any defenses we could create so why bother. Hunting other players is the only challenge left in the game.

I'm new too and I'm all about vehicles/creating mobile fortresses. I'm all about making trustworthy Steam pals to go troop around with. I have a basic grasp on tactics and game mechanics so I'm far from being a liability. Let's repair some crap 8)

Had a nice conversation with someone asking for tips about DayZ. Since I went ant typed this all out, figured I'd drop it here :) Any suggestions for a fresh newb who's just crawled his ass around and only found one loot pile? :P Let's see... Don't get attached to anything You will die Once you've accepted that you're going to die, that backpack doesn't mean much when you lose it Instead of "how long can I live?", ask yourself "how long can I stave off death". Stay away from Cherno and Elektro Stay away from people you don't know If you want good military grade loot, look for the deer stands (look along tree lines), fire stations (two stories, has a tower in the middle), and military looking green tents Stary Sobor (another town) has great military loot, but it's a rough place Airfields are also dangerous but give good military gear The Lee Enfield is extremely loud, so be careful with it If you're spotted by a zombie, get inside If you can, get out of town without alerting any more of them and dispatch the few that follow, as opposed to shooting in town where you attact all of them Know which buildings you can go into At first, the zombies will be a pain and will probably kill you Then, once you've figured the zombies out the players will be the real threat Once players aren't a threat to you, bugs and glitches will be If the bugs and glitches don't get you, you'll probably be offed by a hacker You're gonna die ;) Find an axe, matches, and a knife Then you can hunt animals, gut them, and cook the meat Meat > canned food Water bottles are better in the long run than soda There aren't any "better" weapons It's mostly preference You can fill water bottles back up Some towns without any loot have water pumps You can also fill up at ponds/lakes I'd rather have 5 empty bottles than a coke If you see someone heading south with really nice gear, they're probably up to no good If you find a person in a vehicle, watch out. They either have the skill, resources, or team to repair the thing, or they killed the previous owner Player tents that you find are usually empty (already looted by someone else), but sometimes you find some alright gear there Get used to the map; know landmarks like castles and mountains Though if you have a map and you can find landmarks, you can do the same thing [as using a compass] All of the stuff that goes in your utility slots (compass, map, tool box) is useful and should be collected NVG is overrated Rangefinders are golden Way better than either NVG or binocs Some people watch towns for 5 minutes minimum before entering. I just look for zombies If there are zombies in a town you're far away from, another player caused them to spawn Blue chemlights are the only ones worth using Green ones are really bright and red ones arent bright at all Blue ones give enough illumination and can only be seen from 30m away Green is something like 60m Red is I don't even know, but it doesn't light much up Flares are useless Well, useful but risky They're so bright and can be seen from forever away Play with friends If you crouch with a primary weapon out, lower it, look at your feet, and free-look (alt) straight up, you look like a turtle Most important one of all of them :D Crossbows are useless, ignore them bolts take up one slot each, no ironsights, slow You can sometimes retrieve them [bolts], but only if you hit and the zombie doesn't cover it up If you alt tab, hit esc first, because if you don't and don't alt tab back in, you'll shoot once Hitting esc brings up the menu, so when you come back nothing happens If something looks too good to be true, it probably is Avoid hacked items like the plague, and report hackers whenever possible Rocket bricks their copy of Arma and many lols are had Learn the sounds each weapon makes Basically, know what's supposed to be there and avoid what isn't Get a mic Map direct chat voip to something easy to reach (mine's space bar) VOIP goes out 80m before falling off, and text goes for 40m VOIP does taper off as distance increases, so you may need to shout Walk on grass, it makes you quieter Crouch walk near zombies or crawl Car parts take up a lot of space and aren't all that useful unless you're in the repair business When you sign in, your default movement speed is sprint Double tap shift to make the default walk Make your run button (double time) something other than double tap W Cause that triggers all the time And makes a ton of noise Mines ctrl + W, for example Be active on the forums Always patch yourself to the highest possible Especially the BIS beta patches for Arma 2 http://www.arma2.com/beta-patch.php/ or just google "arma 2 beta patch" Those update all the time, so you'd be good doing it once a day before you start playing Only attempt to trust people you can talk to Use TS3 or ventrilo or mumble or whatever floats your boat I've got all 3 just in case And skype, some people use skype On the topic of groups Do whatever is best for the group They'll watch your back For example, if you aggro a ton of zombies and don't have much important gear, don't bring the horde to your group It makes them waste ammo saving you Blood bags are great but they can only be used on another person (IE a friend) Don't swim Don't fucking swim Zombies can swim And they can climb ladders And they can open doors Sometimes they just walk through the walls (that's a bug though) Barbed wire is a dick tool Thing with barbed wire is that it only stops players If you see some by a building, someone's probably camping that building and hopping servers for loot Sandbags are more reasonable Sandbags I think actually stop zombies Tank traps are I don't even know. They just ruin vehicles

They have been disabled (The ones you can fly because they desync with the server and cause erratic behaviour). Other vehicles are unaffected

Not sure if this has been mentioned before (I did a quick search and couldn't find anything) but I think that batteries should be an essential part of the game. There would be nothing more terrifying than running around at night in the pitch black with just the light from your torch when suddenly it dies because you have run out of batteries! Also all electrical equipment should use batteries like the GPS, NVG etc. Could even have car batteries as an extra component to repair vehicles! Just a basic idea so far. Anyone got any suggestions?

We logged in this morning and found our tents completely empty - They were full of weapons raided from various camps (3x SVD camo, 4x NV FAL, 2x M107s, tons of other weapons and ammo) One of the vehicles next to the tents was also completely empty, though two of the others still had their items.

@Cush Only saw this today, had a lot of trouble the last couple of days. Yes, automatic restarts have not worked properly and so the time got desynchronized. I've elaborated on the issues here. Hm, I have been thinking about this. My thinking was leaning more towards UTC-10/UTC+2, actually, because that would mean it is an exact inverse of CET. When it gets dark in Europe, it's sunrise on the UTC-10 server -- when it gets dark there, it's sunrise on the UTC+2 server. This is slightly off for CET people (and more correct for UTC people in UK) right now. On the other hand, my idea was that you could enjoy some "dusk" and "dawn" play on either server at CET peak time, those times being bright enough to see without augmentation but dark enough to make it a part of overall tactics. I somewhat agree, although it is more immersive this way, I've often wished for global/side or at least a substantially expanded direct chat (maybe 1km). It is official policy not to have these channels and I cannot change this, though. That is *very* odd. I'll have to check asap. I did receive a couple of emails to that address, though, so could you tell me the exact error? :-) @yeff Yes, the server was being dDoSed by a hacker since Thursday. My ISP has managed to get things under control -- only for the BE bypass to emerge and most servers getting nuked. In the interest of the players, I locked the servers and would like to keep them locked until there is a viable solution to the current situation (i. e. a BE update, most likely). I hope this is in the interest of everyone who has vehicles, tents, etc. on the server, but it's a damn shame. :-/ Jens

Just player textures and some vehicles like the military offroad.

The damage on vehicles really needs to be turned down. A collision shouldnt make a car explode like a Michael Bay movie. Hitting something at ~30 kmh and blowing up is ridiculous. Its especially bad when about every 10 feet of road in the game has shit littering it.

Hello Butcher, I switched the servers off yesterday because it was being dDoSed by Russians and then subsequently left it in a password protected state when that blew off to prevent it from getting nuked like several servers due to BE being bypassed. I switched the server off (as in shutdown) sometime around yesterday evening, UTC. I used the time I then had to do a clean reinstall of both ARMA and Arrowhead after I restarted the server this morning. The OS hasn't been booted for 10-12 hours and ARMA hasn't been installed for seven or so. So 10-12 hours is simply untrue. We were then on DE65, intermittently, from ~ 0858 UTC to ~ 1126 UTC this morning (start time of the ARMA2OA server according to the log file and time of final disconnect). I had talked to R4Z0R49 of the server admin team because we wanted to analyze script logs and wireshark logs of the connections in order to see if we could use wireshark to better detect anomalies in BE Client-Server communication or client-side script execution and provide more information to BattlEye and BIS. For the most part, while on the server, we simply ran around. We did not steal vehicles and deliberately kept changes to a minimum. As for the Clones, I used my other copy of ARMA (which donates the CD key to the servers) to have multiple clients connected. I am sorry this caused confusion.

The wiki is your friend :D http://dayzwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Vehicles#Bicycle Though most vehicles arent there sadly :C people either have them stashed somewhere in the far corners of the map. Good luck finding them

Thanks. I'd been planning to keep track of this character anyway' date=' but I went to the trouble of writing it out longhand thinking that others might like to read a game journal. [b']Thursday 6/28: As the work week wears on, I become progressively more tired. So I wanted to keep things relaxed and uneventful this morning. I planned to start by replacing the cooked meat Four had lost to my backpack slipup the day before. I think he'd taken all of ten steps when I spotted a boar in the trees some way off. While I understand the performance reasons driving the decision not to render grass far away from the player, it leads to the irony of distant objects being easier to spot. I'll need to remember that the next time I'm prone in high grass, feeling safe and hidden - the guy 600m away who has me sighted in his sniper rifle scope is probably laughing at what an easy target I am. Honestly, if you aren't moving, you aren't safe - although being in the trees does help. Four made short work of converting the boar into four cooked steaks. I knew that there was a body of water somewhere between Pustoshka and Vybor, as well as some deer stands to the west. So, west of Pustoshka in the trees, I thought that I would move Four north and see which I could find first. Four had barely begun moving when I started getting warnings about not having received any packets from the server in 20, 25, 30, etc seconds. So, I disconnected, reset my router, and then connected to a different server (remember this for later). Upon logging back in, my inventory seemed intact, although I thought I'd had eight steaks and now I had seven. Whatever. Having moved north through the trees for a while, a military zed became visible in the field east of the treeline. Deer stand it is, then. Upon moving Four in closer, it was apparent that there was a pretty good spread of hostiles. But it seems like they have a tendency to drift your way as you approach - so if you do so slowly, you can often draw them away from the target. That's how things went this time, with most of the zeds ending up on the approach side of the deer stand. Hoping to keep them there, Four threw a few flares into their midst a ways off... except for one whose angle I misjudged and planted right next to the deer stand. Sigh. After a while waiting for that one to go out, Four threw a couple more away from the stand. Once the close one was gone, the remaining flares did a nice job of keeping the zeds away. I'm hoping with practice I become better at using flares for a diversion - this approach took about twenty minutes, and I'd rather spend five or less. Anyway, the way was clear, so Four climbed up. He found a hunting knife and a few military weapon mags (an M9 mag, a STANAG, and something else). Four didn't keep any of it, as I didn't want to use pack space on ammo for weapons he might never get (and for which he has no real use - I'm not planning on assaulting anything). Having located this deer stand, I had also pinpointed Four's location on the map, and knew there was another stand to the northwest. So, I moved Four in that direction. Once I'd found it (the zeds telegraph these things quite nicely), I spent a few minutes scouting the best approach. Moving in from the west offered almost total cover, but the trees were so thick that I worried about Four crawling into a zed. Approaching from the south along the edge of the tree line seemed a better compromise between cover and clarity of vision. At this point I looked at the clock and saw that I only had about ten minutes left to play. Remembering how slowly the last deer stand had gone, I decided to postpone the attempt until my next session. It occurred to me that I hadn't given a lot of thought to what I'd do if I found a really nice firearm that I just had to have. I know I wouldn't get rid of the Winchester - a powerful, semi-quiet rifle with plentiful 15 round mags is perfect for Four's style. So I decided to use my final minutes to inventory my pack and think about what Four would dump if he needed to clear space in a hurry. I was deep in the midst of considering this when a sound began to intrude upon my awareness. At first it was so faint that I paid it no mind, distractedly thinking it was coming from somewhere outside the house in my neighborhood. But it began to get louder, and the unfamiliar nature of it suddenly brought it to the foregound of my mind - it was coming from in-game! Some sort of vehicle! Four immediately hit the deck, and in that same instant I spotted a motorcycle crossing the field to the east, on a northwest heading toward the deer stand. I repositioned Four so that there was a tree between him and this new arrival. My first thought was that the player was planning to hit the deer stand, and since he was making no attempt to be stealthy, I waited for the sound of the engine to stop and shooting to start. But the sound of the engine never did stop, and it began to sound as if it was now north of me, inside the tree line. And although I had lost sight of the cyclist, I did see a military zed sprinting in the trees to my north, heading west. There must be a player base around here! I can't say that I'm very surprised at the thought. When I surveyed the game map looking for good places to lone wolf it, it had occurred to me that those same places would be desirable for hiding tents, vehicles, and what have you. But I still wasn't expecting to actually stumble onto such a camp. Remember when lag pushed me to switch servers earlier? I wouldn't have had this encounter if that hadn't happened. So - what to do? If this were all real, I'd probably clear out of the area, having been influenced by movies in which these ad hoc civilizations that spring up in apocalypse situations are filled with survivalist nutjobs who wind up seeming creepier than the damn zeds. But it is a game, and something about players banding together to hoard weapons and vehicles in remote corners of the map just seems a little goofy to me - like they're taking it all just a touch too seriously. Which, of course, begets the temptation to f*ck with them. So I'll probably go looking for this camp. One of the questions you have to answer in Day Z is just what you plan to do with your time once you've become self sufficient, and Four is already there. This little adventure promises to be fun. But what would my goal be? Pillage tents? Maybe, but Four already has everything he really needs (NVGs and a GPS would be nice, but still... a tent to tent search takes time, and being greedy is a good way to get killed). Quickly in and quickly out should be the guiding principle here. A joy ride in one of their vehicles sounds like just the thing. Health: 12000 Zeds/Survivors/Bandits killed: 0/0/0 Future goals, in order of priority: Mess with the survivalist nutjobs. Use the Arma tutorials first to make damn sure I know how to interact with vehicles. Then, if I find one without getting myself ganked, have a plan for what I'll do if chased, and if not, where I'll head. Aside from that, look for Winchester ammo, morphine, and a toolbox.

Here is one of the essential contradictions in Dayz's design. You have the ability to server hop, but at the same time the game tries to lock you to one server by giving tents and vehicles that only exist where you find or place them. Server hopping can be very convenient, being able to leave one server and quickly join a server with your mates is really great.The server my group play on is about to be shut down, without server hopping we are screwed! BUT It will almost certainly have to go. It creates too many problems in the long run I think. The HIVE system is already geared towards persistence on one server. I'd imagine one day in the far future Dayz will have bigger servers with bigger maps and have many shards. I think we have to be left with one player only though, if you allow players to have a player on each different server you lose that investment in your character that makes Dayz so great. It also allows people to have "alt" characters they can use to grief on other servers.

As far as I know/remember, tents are on one server only (just like vehicles). There is no counter like on your backpack for the tent but a quick look at the Dayz Wiki says 53 item slots as of 1.7.1.5 (excluding firearms). Tents can disappear due to owner being dead (after 5 or so days) or a server restart causes everyone to lose everything :C link -> http://dayzwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Tent For a good camp, get a Hatchet to harvest wood, Matches to start a fireplace, and a Knife to gut/skin animals in the forest for raw meat. Raw meat can be cooked at a lighted fireplace and eating it regens 800 blood!!

First things first, all of our gear and vehicles are completely legit, we have never taken part in any form of scripting or duplicating of any item, we see it as against the point of the game and will go out of our way to ensure people that actually do it are worse off because of it. We have accumulated our gear over a long long period, the 12 of us pretty much just hoarding everything we find which is good and camping NWAF and scouting for other camps. The vehicles you saw near the tents were ours, the helicopter however was definitely not ours, as for the vehicle near it I have no clue. But I can assure you we didn't hack anything. What I can tell you however is where the vehicles came from, last night (around 12-4am) a major hacking spree went on by I'm not sure (I have some suspicions though) they are the ones that spawned the multiple choppers and jets and destroyed Cherno. Currently we do not have proof regarding the people we suspect but we're working on it. Of Course it's pretty much our word against yours but I hope you can understand we did not hack any of our gear and the chopper and vehicle near it we had no idea was there, and as for us shooting you well you were in our base near our stuff, we weren't just going to let you take it. Back to who we suspect, I'm hoping multiple people from NZ9 see this so they understand what's going on. We have seen (We weren't able to get a proper screenshot because of how buggy dayz is with screen shots) the player Enigma spawn ammo crates and vehicles alongside the players VOODOOBLADE, Aaron, Ethan and MANKID94. We initially kept this quiet because we didn't have proof, but they most likely won't see this so meh. They are the guys WE THINK are responsible for all the hacking crap, everything you saw in the immediate camp was ours, none of it hacked... We just don't get out much.... - [iRON] Normandy