Deviants Helpful Tips on DayZ

[facelessdeviant 30]

Bought Arma CO?

Downloaded and installed the mod and all the patches?

Got your control scheme all figured out?

Sacrificed a can of beans to the gods of Chernarus?

Time to play?

You could, but chances are you will be stumped, confused and frustrated!

Helpful as I am, I've taken it upon myself to make this little guide/handbook/thing to ease you into the game easier.

1. You will die. A lot.

The island that this game takes place on is filled with dangers. Everything is out to get you. Theres zombies, bandits, stairs, starvation, dehydration, low hanging branches and a whole bunch of other things. All are out to get you. And they will. You will die and you will loose all that gear that you spent hours, maybe even days gathering. It will happen to you, and you will make it happen to others.

The sooner you accept that this will happen, the sooner you will start to have serious fun.

2. This is not a traditional game

Remember all those other fps'es that you've played? Remember the ones with zombies in them. Like Left4dead, Dead Island and that one mod for HL2 that was really awesome?

This is nothing like that.

DayZ does not have a real goal. Theres no frags (that people care about) or point system. There is no end or final boss. There is one goal, and that goal is to avoid death for as long as you can. How is totally up to you.

3. Zombies are the lesser of all the dangers.

Zombies are pretty stupid. Not surprising. They will run after you until you loose them. But in the end, they are the least of your concerns.

Zombies can be easily avoided through crouching or proning and moving slowly. Learn how far their radius of attention stretches and if they start chasing you, don't panic!

Panicking is the worst thing you can do. Just remain calm, keep running and head for the closest building that you can enter. Zeds cannot run indoors. I guess they still retain some manners after their death. Anyway, if its a building that has two entrances, you can just run through there and loose your fanclub of zombies. Or if its a single entrance building, you can kill them with your weapon.

4. Never trust other survivors.

You've probably seen or heard it. Some people say they are friendly or ask if this or that town has friendlies in them.

Dont trust them.

There is no such thing as a friendly survivor. With a rare few exceptions, everyone you will meet will probably kill you. Some will kill you for your gear, some will kill you because it'd be dangerous to have you running around them and some just want to watch the world burn.

When someone yells friendly, they may be on a teamspeak server, calling their friends to ambush you. Or they may need a few seconds to ready their weapon to finish you themselves, or they may be unarmed for the moment and need to find a gun or axe to do just that.

If you do not know them or share a teamspeak server with them, dont trust them. Avoid them or if you cannot avoid them, shoot, loot and scoot.

And never ever say where you are in side channel. Unless you want to lure would be bandits your way.

5. Looting.

http://dayzdb.com is your friend here. Its a map where all the good loot spots are marked.

For zombies, I personally like the axe a lot. It is easy to find and makes zero sound and has like 1000000 uses. The downside is that you'll have to get up close and personal with mr Smelly Zed to use it. Pistols are also fine, but if so, aim for the head. Zeds can take a lot of shots to the body before going down. Again, keep calm and aim down the iron sights and just shoot.

For Players. You will want to keep your distance to others. A good rifle like a winchester or an enfield usually does the trick and is pretty easy to find. Check the barns for these babies. The island has quite a few of them. They are white with red roofs. Watch the stairs when you leave the lofts as falling from them might break your legs. And then you are boned, unless you've got morphine from a hospital.

When you are looting, be quick!

When you are looting, you are usually looking down at the ground where the loot/body you are looting is located. This means you have no idea if a zombie is coming for you or if someone has you in their crosshairs. So always assume both of those things when you squat down to steal those yummy beans or whatever. Fast and quick as a shadow!

Also, never EVER enter a city if you are unarmed.

Cities on the southern coast are filled with good stuff. Food, weapons and all kinds of nice stuff. It is also filled with other players looking for someone that allready has collected those nice things for them. So if you enter a city, be prepared for trouble and dont be surprised if you get shot.

6. Behaviour.

I am repeating myself now. You will die and you will kill people. When this happens, try to be humble. Instead of raging in sidechannel or wherever, just smile and accept that someone got the drop on you. Heck, if you compliment their kill, they might even feel guilty about it :D

This also has the effect that when you kill someone, chances are they will be cool about it as well. After all, its a game. Being butthurt over getting killed wont make it funnier or better for you, but the rest of the server may get a giggle or two over it at your expense. Humility is a good thing here.

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I hope you found this useful. I'll see you when I see you!

Edited October 24, 2012 by Deviant82

[Bludy 324]

ehehhe i'm not exactly a noob, but this is a good topic, i like how you write. i agree with you about the enfield and winchester, they are easy to find and with a bit more caution and patience than an automatic assault rifle ,you can do easily the job.

i add a pro tip advice that i got from many hours online. it's about looting:

don't underestimate low level buildings, with particular attention to the civilians: in fact in high density of players areas, you can also find that every spot has been already looted. in this case, move to all those black houses, shacks, toilets, cabinets that are around the big towns. nobody goes there, because they are dangerous (one entrace, a lot of zombies around) and, as said, low tier,which means that they have less lootspawns, but considering that the rarest items (ghillie,camo,tent) have a difference in the loot tables of about 0.10% between a cornershop and a shack, you have almost the same possibility to find something good, and if you, with the due attention, search for every spot, a small number of buildings in the borders of cherno can be compared to the church. the same thing is for the other kinds of buildings, think to stary and a barrack in NWA: without considering those items that spawn only in the barracks, the military tents(15 with 2 spots each) in stary are more than 2 barracks(12 spots each)