New Player - No Loot

[dharvey44 0]

I just bought the game and played for almost 3 hours and died twice of thirst and quit before dying of thirst a 3rd time. I just bought the game and had high expectations, but this is ridiculous. I looted the whole time and the best I could come up with was a couple of rifles with no ammo and a can of food which I didn't even have a can opener for.  I never found water or a legit food source. I did take a swim in the lake assuming that I could drink that water, but couldn't. 
I tried a couple of servers but nothing mattered. No Loot!

I'll be requesting a refund and sticking to Arma Exile or something similar.

[Alphajim 16]

You don't need a can opener to open them. Any sharp tool can make it, with more or less food wasted.

Regarding the loot seems like you were on a highly looted area. I never had any problem finding food, it's even too easy... Even if water is a bit more harder to find. I recommend you to use the online maps like iZurvive to locate the water pumps and your location.

[Derleth 1357]

2 hours ago, dharvey44 said:

I just bought the game and played for almost 3 hours and died twice of thirst and quit before dying of thirst a 3rd time. I just bought the game and had high expectations, but this is ridiculous. I looted the whole time and the best I could come up with was a couple of rifles with no ammo and a can of food which I didn't even have a can opener for.  I never found water or a legit food source. I did take a swim in the lake assuming that I could drink that water, but couldn't. 
I tried a couple of servers but nothing mattered. No Loot!

I'll be requesting a refund and sticking to Arma Exile or something similar.

Instead of ragequitting do a forum search here, on the steam forums, reddit or even google. There are tons of newb tips out there to help the struggling freshie. Here's some basic info:

• First of all DayZ is not a loot n' shoot pewpew shooter like pubg. Gearing up is supposed to take you hours and require you to move around a lot. Don't expect to find everything you need by looting a few buildings in one town.
• You can drink lake water, no problem. Just kneel down and look down at the water, you'll get an option to hold "F" to drink. Mind you, you'll probably get cholera and die... Most towns have a well, you can drink directly from the well or use it to fill containers with clean water. You can find bottles and canteens with water but there is a risk they are contaminated, if possible use chlorine tablets to sterilise the water before you drink it or empty the bottle (look straight down on the ground with the bottle in hand) and refill at a well.
• Food cans can be opened with any sharp tool - axes, knives, screw driver, machete... If you don't find anything sharp you can make an improvised knife with two small stones (found on the ground on train tracks, hiking trails and some beaches).
• Canned food is not everything edible though - you can hunt chickens and other animals and, god forbid, you can eat other players if you are really desperate. Just remember to clean your hands after gutting an animal or you'll get sick. Look for fruit below trees and mushrooms in the woods or by hay bales. Don't eat raw meat or rotten fruit though, you'll get sick.
• Remember to loot zombies you kill, they often have food or useful items in their pockets. Some of them even have a backpack for you...
• When it gets dark use the default flare you get to light your way. You can find chemlights that last a long time and you can make torches by cutting down a bush and combining a stick with rags.

Stay patient, and keep in mind that DayZ is intended to be a struggle for survival, not quick pvp. There are modded servers that provide that though, but I recommend you learn the game on vanilla before trying modded servers.

Edited October 31, 2019 by Derleth

[CottonHill2 5]

 The game builders intended for you to die, and die often.   Everyone dies when they are new,   but with each death you learn what not to do again.        The standard Dayz server will give you a glow stick, a few rags and some sort of fruit to start off.   Eat the fruit first thing.  It will give you a little food and hydrate you a little.            Find a road or get to the nearest town,  locate a road sign to tell you what town your in, then go to the map on Izurvive to figure out your location and look for the well in that town.    There will not be much loot on the coast since that is where every one spawns, so most of it is already looted.   But loot respawns after a little time so you will find some things to use.    You can open a can with just about any sharp item, even a screwdriver or machete.    Most houses have fruit trees in the yards, so if you need to you can scout out the trees and look for plums, apples, and pears.    Those will keep you going while you look for other things to eat and drink.                             The game has a huge learning curve, so you will have to perish several times until you wrap your head around what you actually need to do to survive.        

 

        DO NOT drink from ponds or streams,   you will end up with Cholera and it will likely kill you.    DO NOT drink from water bottles that you just find,  unless you have some chlorine tablets to make it safe to drink.      DO NOT use the cooking pot to drink from untill you can sanitize it, either by using the sanitizing spray or you can put it on a fire and heat it.     Dont eat raw meat, or drink using your hands after gutting an animal.   

           On a side note,  dying early after spawn is so much better than dying after you have spent several days gathering supplies and gear.     

[McWendy 675]

You should have been here when the mod was a thing. Infected were no joke and out running wasnt an option.

Easy mode these days. 😎

[Deranged Pineapple 8]

18 hours ago, McWendy said:

You should have been here when the mod was a thing. Infected were no joke and out running wasnt an option.

Easy mode these days. 😎

Do you mean infected from the original vanilla dayz mod? They were in my opinion the biggest joke and offered no challenge what so ever. When I played the mod infected could not even run indoors 😄

[McWendy 675]

21 minutes ago, Deranged Pineapple said:

Do you mean infected from the original vanilla dayz mod? They were in my opinion the biggest joke and offered no challenge what so ever. When I played the mod infected could not even run indoors 😄

I did mean those. 🙂

Well maybe it was too difficult for me at the time perhaps? 

I could not get a mile inland at first. Didnt understand the mechanics, lost feeling. It was great! 

But the infected hit like a truck then. 

[Deranged Pineapple 8]

6 minutes ago, McWendy said:

I did mean those. 🙂

Well maybe it was too difficult for me at the time perhaps? 

I could not get a mile inland at first. Didnt understand the mechanics, lost feeling. It was great! 

But the infected hit like a truck then. 

Fair enough, when I didn't know the mechanics well enough I use to crawl around just to be sure not to draw agro and then I saw some hero skinned dude just run past me while I was crawling on the side of the road and he pulled every infected into a grocery store and just continued to move on as infected started slow-ass walking inside:)

After that encounter which happened fairly earlier stage of my DayZ Mod experience I never died to a infected again :) ...and you could say they were rendered stupidly easy to handle after that.

Edited November 5, 2019 by Deranged Pineapple

[William Sternritter 449]

When on the coast, I recommend taking a stroll on the beach. Little boats are a great source of soda cans. Not many, but you find one or two which will help you in those early moments. Then you still need to go through houses and orchards. Taking on infected is not as hard, if you take them one by one. They do get kind of staggered by your fists. Aim for the head 😉 Still, if you're not critically low on resources rather avoid locations that have many of them. Anyway, you will die a lot. This is not an easy game. Even finding decent loot early on is not victory. Study the map and learn to move around. 

[Stagman70 210]

I died probably a dozen times before I even made it out of whatever city or hamlet I spawned in/near.  Don't give up.

[DayZNightStalker 1]

This is why I liked the old DayZ Mods.  Food, ammo, weapons were much more plentiful.

I like the PVP aspects of DayZ.  I really dislike spending HOURS and HOURS and HOURS trying to gear up so I can PVP for a short period before I die....lol

[Alphajim 16]

That's why DayZ isn't all about PvP.