One Noob Plan - Might be Useful to Some

[Vicco 123]

It’s working for me and my partner. A new player watches some YT vids, see's these guys basically avoiding all zeds, having no or few problems with players shooting them, and no problem surviving at all usually. Looks pretty easy. So the noob jumps into a public server, and lasts 5 minutes before getting shot - still totally unarmed - by a kiddie. That's what happened to me the first time on a public server. The second time I was more careful, got most basic gear including an AK, and lasted maybe 7 hours hours and a couple real time days - by joining only when the player count was very low on the server.

How did I die? Basically slow blood loss because I found no matches (that was weird, because I looked at the likely spots twice in Cherno) and not enough canned food to replace the blood that zeds took from me. And I was really panicking the last few hours. There's that. Panic. Didn't expect that. :) So, simple survival isn't exactly a piece of cake for a noob, even with few players on the server.

Add 30 KOS kiddies, and it's bad news. I really think starting on the wrong server keeps the player population down. Many noobs just walk away, especially those who didn't at least do some map looking to find loot spawn points. I mean who enjoys getting repeatedly killed every 10-15 minutes? Wears them down. When I decided to play Dayz after watching some YT vids (Frankie of course) I did quite a bit of research - because that's what I always do before making a move. The first thing I saw about the game was it required "a plan" to work for me. There's no "end game" and I don't want to play to just socialize and make friends and shoot people, nor to die every 15 minutes, so I want a plan. Some people don't need a 5-10 step plan and enjoy the game without. Just jump into a server. That's all good. But even they set some goals for their play session at some point, even if the goal is simply stay alive for an hour. I’m more of a long-term “plan guy.”

On that note, I heard a YT interview with Rocket that was done when Dayz was first taking off. The guy doing the interview posted about 22 Dayz YT vids. Started out good with thoughtful comments about this new type of game, but deteriorated into a lot of complaining about this and that. During that hour long interview with Rocket, Rocket gave three recommendations for new players. Number one was "Have a plan. You gotta have a plan. Ya know, you can’t just turn up and sorta walk around. If you do that you’re gonna have a bad time." His second and third recommendations were “Open mind” and “Sense of adventure.” Apparently this guy never heard the plan part, because I never detected a plan in any of his vids. That's why he quit doing Dayz I think. He just never got it. You’ll notice the best Dayz YT vids have a plan. The plan might fall apart, but the initial plan is there.

All right, to the post topic itself.

During my reading I came across Dayz Server Controlcenter. Just google it. In short, it’s a free Dayz server. Not hard to set up and run on your PC. Perfectly legal. It’s vanilla Dayz, and also supports about 9 different maps – Lingor, Tavania, etc. Gear spawns aren’t exactly the same as the latest Dayz patch, but that doesn’t matter. You probably need a decent PC to run it. Mine is 3 years old, an I7 920, 2.6 GH, and runs it fine. I had 6 gb memory and was getting swapped out of the game with a low mem message but I didn’t have a swap file set up because I didn’t need it before. That may have fixed the low mem, but I just added another 6 gb and no issues since. Since setting up the swap file and adding the memory occurred at the same time, I can’t say for certain the swap file handled the low mem issue, but I believe it did. I’m running all the Dayz stuff off vanilla 7200 rpm HD’s and except for the “Connecting to Host” part, which can take a minute to complete, it runs sweet with 2 players, with no lag or desync at all. Sometimes the yellow connection chain appears, but that’s just internet speed. Anyway, it might run fine on a lower spec computer. You’d have to try to see.

You should have a least moderate PC skills for this, but a PC noob could set it up with no issues if he just follows instructions closely. If anybody’s interested, I can post a few links to help, and answer basic questions. I don’t get into the SQL/scripting that’s it’s capable of and just use it vanilla. The “help” forum assumes you’re familiar with MySql and basically caters to admin types, so doesn’t look like the place to go for noob help. But Dayz Server Controlcenter has a a simple install executable and a decently intuitive GUI, so if you follow basic instructions you’re good to go. I set up a Cherarus server pretty quick, 2 player, PW protected. It doesn’t show up in Dayz Commander, probably because it’s not up long enough to get polled, but that doesn’t matter, and it’s probably a good thing that such a private server doesn’t clutter things up. It’s always there in the game multiplay internet menu and me and my partner easily join the game.

This is working well. Me and my partner are learning the ropes of zombie avoidance and gearing up with no kiddies killing us as we spawn. So we've been playing a couple hours every night for a week now on my personal little Dayz Control Center server, exploring and gearing up without getting killed by zeds for a few sessions now. No KOS’er’s to deal with.

Found a working and gassed off-roader, but didn't use it as we want to stay on foot to get familiar with gear spawn locations.

We know Cherno pretty well, and logged out in Electro last night.

After we get Electro down we'll foot it to Balota and get familiar with that area. Balota airfield is where I found the AK on the public server.

That way when we join a public server we can gear up pretty fast, and won't be pure sheep.

To me and my partner you gotta have "a plan" to make this game good. Though I admit I had fun lone-wolfing on the public server without much of a plan - but it was more like "lone-sheeping."

Anyway, this private server setup is a plan for noobs, which I am. Can’t say I’m even comfortable avoiding zeds in close quarters yet. Last night after my partner had to go, we logged in the Electro grocery. I decided to log back in later to see if I could score the tent that is part of our plan. Full blood. Grocery was empty, so I ran to the fire house to see if there was an AK there while letting the grocery respawn. No AK, and I got caught on the stairs going down by the zeds I’d aggroed. They were already at the corner ladder glitch, so I had to start shooting with my revolver to clear them. I jammed myself by bad movement and they started drawing blood. I realized I’d been firing without reloading. And aggroed all of Electro. Started panicking thinking I’d lose all my gear. Calm down Vic! Reload! Run! Got past them, gushing blood, and into the grocery behind the front counter. Bandaged myself, ate 2 cooked meat, went prone and started aborting with less than half blood. Got to about 25 seconds on the countdown clock when I started getting hit, bleeding again, and the clock stopped due to being in combat. WTF? More panicky thoughts. Kneeled again and saw no zeds near, so I bandaged again. Figured I got hit through the wall, so I moved closer to counter and logged – with about a quarter blood. Lots to learn.

We’re really having fun just doing the survival bit for now, and have plans to prepare ourselves before we join public servers.

If you don’t want to or can’t try out Dayz Server Controlcenter, another option is to just go into public servers when there’s few players on them. A bit more dangerous, but that should work. Just have a plan, and expect that it will probably go wrong. But at least have a fighting chance and some fun seeing it all happen.

PS. To verify what I said about about the server not showing up in Dayz Commander but always showing up in the game multiplayer menu, I started my server and checked both.

Just joined the server – don’t know why I did that, but it went into multiplayer setup in the game. Never hit “Ok” to continue, but apparently there’s a timer that hits that for you.

Swapped back to finish writing this, and just now swapped back to the game. “You Are Dead.” Probably spawned back in the grocery standing up and got clobbered by zeds.

So much for my “plan” and the gear I collected the past few sessions. What a great game!

[John69 64]

This....wall...of...text..

Breake it up please.