So yeah, I got pissed (first day of playing)

[pastelpunk86 13]

Okay, so last night was my first day of gaming DayZ.

After helping my friend for approx. 3 hours to update his Battleye - we finally got into the game, and there was your usual 5-10 minutes of radio-silence between us in the very start, both of us way to nervous and jumpy to even speak to eachother over TS. We really had no idea where we could start moving so we could meet up somewhere. So naturally our first spawn ended they way that have to end - with death by zombo.

2 spawns later, on a bambi-server that gave you some starting gear, we eventually found out we could find eachother within 5-10 minutes, and so we did. Having had a stark meeting with Cherno his last spawn, my friend wanted to trek into the forest, since we had they very basics of supplies. So yeah, going into the woods and being with a friendly really made the game beginning to rub off a first impression on us. We found basic shotguns, and I thought it was kind of great to find my first Lee-Enfield. Even got down to some motorcycle-action up there in the mountain-trails. Well, since the clock starting to creep towards 3am, plus my freind had to log off soon, it would eventually lead to us doing a poorly planned raid into "Gorka" I think the name was of the city. Nevertheless, it got messy and having no morphine, we were smashed.

My friend then logged.

And I logged into another server, this is where my story of modest anger starts. Upon logging in to my new server, the first thing that I notice is that this must be what they call night in-game. No chance of seeing even my own shoes. But I did have the flashlight, and I had a compass. That made me find my way to Cherno.

The server had about 8-10 people playing on it, and something was going on - someone was in power, because there was a heli patrolling the cities and making fuel runs. Well, it was still night, so I thought this would be a good time to go on my first ever looting-run in Cherno. Well, when I was heading out from Cherno again, I had what I felt I needed.

Meanwhile some tension was building up on the side-chat between the group with the heli and the rest of the random mortals - mostly in elektro and cherno. There were betrayals, and randoms were promised airlifts, and shooting. The usual, I guess. But not for me, I am still in my first day of playing.

So, I quickly found out that having the ocean and the shoreline in my background, sort of made the night a littlebit brighter. I mean I could actually see stuff going on.

I set my mind on going north, north, north. But first I just had to steal and loot a perfect UAZ-car full of ammo and meds that belonged to the organized group on the server.

But you know what, I`m going to cut the rest of this story short.

Since very, very little happened for the next 2 1/2 hours I spent walking north. On my way up there, I decided my goal would be the airstrip up there.

2 1/2 hours in the black night. It got so dark, so when I felt I had traveled far enough north and started to move inwards into the mainland, I just had to turn that stupid flashlight on.

I loved everything about my gear.

In some backwoods shacktown I lost a checz-backpack full of medical, food, ammo. I lost my first proper assault-rifle, and I had like 4-5 clips for it. Matches, everything I wanted. I lost all that because someone named Farthur or something like that just had to shoot me in the head up there on that stupid road.

And still I can`t wait to play again tonight, and that is kind of magic.

Edited January 21, 2013 by pastelpunk86

[disorder 344]

Have you played the military portion of arma 2? Because it gives you some good training. If not this may help. http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/26996-disorders-military-guide/

Oh and keep to servers with day time, until you have NV or don't care about light giving away your position. DayZ Commander shows current time in list.

[philbottle 430]

Hate losing matches too. Funny how some things in this game would frustrate me in others... but in this game I love the frustrations. Some weird masochistic thing going on I suppose lol.

[samzerks88 31]

Gamma/Brightness to max when at night. Not perfect but at least you can see more than just pitch black.

[King Tubbs 224]

its a hard lesson to learn- you cant get attached to you're stuff, hard i know but you WILL lose it

sounds like you done quite well on my 1st day my longest life was under 3 hours

[Mr Nasty 1023]

Great story. Sorry it had to end in you dying. Glad to see you are not giving up and I can honestly tell you as you become more acclimated with the map things will only get better and better.

[bogroll 35]

That's DayZ in a nutshell right there. Loved your story PP...... take the knocks and come back out fighting.

[herrjon 478]

That sucks that you died in such a way, but that's day z for you. You had a lot better and longer first life than the first dozen lives of other new players. It's good that you're pushing through and will start again, because if there's anything you should learn about DayZ, it's that you will die. You can avoid it and be as careful at you like, but at some point you're going to croak. And also Flashlights aren't a good idea, they give away your position from at least 1km away.

I wouldn't recommend playing during the night unless you have NVG's or you can handle moving around without light, but I understand this case because it was a private hive. You can turn gamma/brightness up, but that's really up to opinion.

Best of luck!

[cydran 1]

Sorry to hear about your death, man, just take a break for a bit if you don't wanna run back to obtain your gear, then start playing again. :)

I agree with what Disorder said, go play a bit of original ArmA II: Operation Arrowhead and get used to the controls, inventory system and firing the firearms.

[thelonewarrior 886]

The game annoys the hell out of me sometimes, but I still love it

[Kill8ox 28]

Nice story..now join our server and you will be helped gearing up! Hell i can even offer you a ride with my little bird!

[gloopsgf 35]

If you want a buddy to teach you some of the game, add me on Skype, or message me here.

I can give you some of the best ways to get loot, find vehicles, and even give you a few flyin lessons

[unkillable94 149]

Welcome to DayZ. It sucks at times, but it still pulls you back in. If you want to I would recommend finding a clan. You can find massive cross-game clans or smaller ones (I lead an 8 person clan, I've seen 15 person clans, and even a few 4 people clans but by that point you're approaching groups) My life span increased greatly when I got some people behind me.

On a different note, it is a thrill at first but if you play continuously for a while it can get old, my clan is on a 2-3 break from DayZ after logging easily 72 hours per person the last 2 weeks. I would recommend checking out Arma or another mod like Wasteland, it's a nice break and when you get back into DayZ the excitement is back. Happy hunting :D

[epsilonion 0]

Well it beats my 1st time of playing (about 2 months ago), I started with the map (online one) on my 2nd monitor and searched loads of medium value houses only finding empty cans.

I spent 2 hours doing this.. then I went to electro. where it seemed that every zomby could see me from 2 miles away as they all came running for me.. so I ran away and tried the houses in the closest village, again crawling along as every zomby would see me from a range of around 600 away from the village, eventually after alot of running away and coming back i made it into the village, I only found empty can in every house i went into apart from one and there I found some glow sticks and a road flare..

Then I thought I would try a dear stand as I have tried houses with nothing useful to pick up... so I went to a dear stand nothing again.. but there was a small hut at the side of the road not far from me surrounded by zombies.. hmm to distract them while I have look to try to pick something up...

So I threw a glow stick, hmm the zombies did not batter a eye lid at it, so I threw a road flare.... That had no effect on the zombies either... so I pressed escape and disabled the mod and went to play amar 2 OA...

Now I am thinking give it another go (2nd time of playing the game)...

Dont know if it was just a bug with the no pickups or it was the server (public server) i dont know wich one it was ( it was a couple of months ago....) Is it normal for zombies to be able to see you for such large distances? even at day time walking (not running)?

[The42Jet 16]

I feel your pain....getting killed sucks...really really sucks...have to brush yourself off take a break and do it again I guess

[Tigerbeetweenie 51]

Okay, so last night was my first day of gaming DayZ.

After helping my friend for approx. 3 hours to update his Battleye - we finally got into the game, and there was your usual 5-10 minutes of radio-silence between us in the very start, both of us way to nervous and jumpy to even speak to eachother over TS. We really had no idea where we could start moving so we could meet up somewhere. So naturally our first spawn ended they way that have to end - with death by zombo.

2 spawns later, on a bambi-server that gave you some starting gear, we eventually found out we could find eachother within 5-10 minutes, and so we did. Having had a stark meeting with Cherno his last spawn, my friend wanted to trek into the forest, since we had they very basics of supplies. So yeah, going into the woods and being with a friendly really made the game beginning to rub off a first impression on us. We found basic shotguns, and I thought it was kind of great to find my first Lee-Enfield. Even got down to some motorcycle-action up there in the mountain-trails. Well, since the clock starting to creep towards 3am, plus my freind had to log off soon, it would eventually lead to us doing a poorly planned raid into "Gorka" I think the name was of the city. Nevertheless, it got messy and having no morphine, we were smashed.

My friend then logged.

And I logged into another server, this is where my story of modest anger starts. Upon logging in to my new server, the first thing that I notice is that this must be what they call night in-game. No chance of seeing even my own shoes. But I did have the flashlight, and I had a compass. That made me find my way to Cherno.

The server had about 8-10 people playing on it, and something was going on - someone was in power, because there was a heli patrolling the cities and making fuel runs. Well, it was still night, so I thought this would be a good time to go on my first ever looting-run in Cherno. Well, when I was heading out from Cherno again, I had what I felt I needed.

Meanwhile some tension was building up on the side-chat between the group with the heli and the rest of the random mortals - mostly in elektro and cherno. There were betrayals, and randoms were promised airlifts, and shooting. The usual, I guess. But not for me, I am still in my first day of playing.

So, I quickly found out that having the ocean and the shoreline in my background, sort of made the night a littlebit brighter. I mean I could actually see stuff going on.

I set my mind on going north, north, north. But first I just had to steal and loot a perfect UAZ-car full of ammo and meds that belonged to the organized group on the server.

But you know what, I`m going to cut the rest of this story short.

Since very, very little happened for the next 2 1/2 hours I spent walking north. On my way up there, I decided my goal would be the airstrip up there.

2 1/2 hours in the black night. It got so dark, so when I felt I had traveled far enough north and started to move inwards into the mainland, I just had to turn that stupid flashlight on.

I loved everything about my gear.

In some backwoods shacktown I lost a checz-backpack full of medical, food, ammo. I lost my first proper assault-rifle, and I had like 4-5 clips for it. Matches, everything I wanted. I lost all that because someone named Farthur or something like that just had to shoot me in the head up there on that stupid road.

And still I can`t wait to play again tonight, and that is kind of magic.

If you wan't to learn how to play DayZ, you should actually start with ARMA 2. Most of the individual tactics guides still apply and all the bullet physics are the same. Here's a starter (pull out the useful stuff, ignore the squad specific combat information): http://ttp2.dslyecxi.com/ (or google for dslyecxi's ShackTac guide if, for some obtuse reason, the link is removed).

Once you get some of the higher tier scoped weapons, the following mil-dot tutorial should also be of help: (DayZ mil-dot tutorial by DayZAzimov)

As for weapon values and most other general information, the DayZ wiki (http://www.dayzwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page) should be your primary reference point.

Also, since you are first starting out, I would recommend using a loot map. Once you learn the layout of Chernarus and which buildings hold what you should, in my opinion, refrain from using it as I believe it detracts from the immersion value. The one I used to use is the map that Dayzdb provides (http://dayzdb.com/map). You may see this differently than I however and if that's the case, feel free to continue using it. I won't judge you for it.

There are generic survival tutorials all over the place (if you still don't know all the mechanics) so just google for them. Or you could go through the process of trial and error.

Edited January 24, 2013 by Tigerbeetweenie