About my longest life

[Nesstrodamus 10]

Hello all. Not sure if this'll be of any interest to anyone, but I felt like I should share.

I've had almost a dozen lives in DayZ so far. Before my current life, I think more than half of my deaths were at the hands of other players. At this point I suppose that's to be expected though.

Anyway, my first few lives I quickly learned how to get myself oriented, and despite the advice from so many, I decided to not turn my gun on another player unless it's in self-defense.

My current life started me near Cherno, and despite me getting killed in cities many time before, I needed supplies. Upone arriving, I found a mess of medical supplies in an alley near the church, so I stocked up. When I got to the church, I turned a corner and another player and I literally had out guns(I found a Makarov earlier) aimed at each other. He very promptly told me he would open fire if I didn't say something or call friendly. I frantically called friendly, and he started chatting back, informing me of a few things before bolting.

I then went into the church, when I heard a woman's voice over the VOIP. She said she only had an axe and nothing of value before running into the church with me. I had grabbed a revolver in the church and dropped my makarov with 2 rounds, so I pointed them out to her so that she could have a decent weapon. She thanked me and then we started to hear gunfire. I rushed to close the church door, managing to get myself shot a few times before doing so, though another bunch of gunshots started up as well, so I guess the guy shooting at me was being distracted. Me and the lady kinda panicked, and so she promptly set up some wire fencing in front of the door, so that no one could get in. Unfortunately she put down two at once, so we also couldn't get out. Everything quieted down outside, so we ransacked the church and I gave her a blood transfusion before we both logged to find another server where the entrance of the church wasn't blocked.

This bring me to one thing I learned: it can be lucrative to loot an area on one server, then hop to another when the item spawns haven't been claimed yet. I made a killing doing this twice within that church alone.

Still, this was a good start; two friendlies already, whereas I hadn't met any in previous lives.

However, after that I decided to head inland, since it seems there are way fewer bandits there. Turns out that's true, but there also aren't many other people around period. I followed the main roads and killed any wildlife along the way since cooked meat tends to be really great for blood, and I can't use blood bags on myself.

6+ hours later and I think I'm in Gorka? I'm not sure of the name. But I did stop in little settlements here and there along the road from Cherno to Gorka. Travelling the roads honestly seemed to be pretty safe. No players and very, very few zombies. At least on my run; maybe I just got lucky.

I am liking this game so far; I enjoy exploring the map and scavenging. And luckily since there's no fatigue and no running for zombies indoors, they are much easier to avoid and kill in larger numbers. That's not to say I didn't have a few close calls, but still. Plus for the past few hours playing I didn't run into a single player, and I was on some pretty heavy servers throughout the course of it all. Really does seem like few people go inland, which I guess is good for me since other players aren't as much of a concern. I mean, I would like to team up with others since it sounds like it would be really cool, but paranoia is rampant. Still, the last few hours have shown me that surviving on your own is quite doable.

But they've also shown me a few other things. In one of the settlements I was in, I got careless and was knocked unconscious by a zombie. I managed to wake up with ~2k blood and race to a house. I was forced to kill four zombie with a shaky view, then try to patch myself up before I bled out. Just barely managed to do that. I had drinks, but no food, and I couldn't use the blood packs on myself.

So I farmed zombies. And it worked...Almost too well. I'd make a run around the town, then retreat to the safety of my trusty house, kill them all, and loot their bodies. I'd repeat this until I actually managed to get a decent blood level back. Between that and loot respawning if I needed to/wanted to switch servers, I found I could sustain myself quite well.

I do think you should have a chance to find things on zombies, but...I dunno. If I see an abusable system in a game, I can't help myself sometimes.

I do still find the game fun, and I want to keep exploring the map, but the zombie almost seem like more and more of a non-issue as times goes on. Once you learn to deal with them, the true challenge lies with dealing with other players. I suppose that could be one of the reasons why there are so many bandits. I don't think it's all for gear, honestly, because each time I was killed by other players, it was with sniper rifles or automatic weapons while they were wearing ALICE backpacks, and I still had a Lee Enfield and a Coyote pack. I doubt they wanted my stuff. But I'm not complaining; I know that's the nature of the game.

Avoid other players and heading inland seems to have worked out really well for me so far. With as many medical supplies as I still have, I wish being a wandering medic was more feasible, but what can you do? And while I have been successful in not shooting other players, I've also barely even seen any other players in my travels, so there's that.

Anyway, just wanted to share a story and a few thoughts on the game. I know it's still in Alpha and that they're expanding on it all the time. I really hope they keep at it. The main thing right now I wish they'd do is make zombies a bit more of a threat, but I guess we'll see.

[Ssgt_Perez 35]

This bring me to one thing I learned: it can be lucrative to loot an area on one server, then hop to another when the item spawns haven't been claimed yet. I made a killing doing this twice within that church alone.

This is generally frowned upon in the forums. It is referred to as server hopping.

[Nesstrodamus 10]

Honestly, I had a feeling that might be the case. Looking back at my post, I figured some of the stuff I said I did might be considered not proper. I haven't been on the forums long, though, so I wasn't aware. Plus, in many cases I just chose whatever server I could find that had a decent ping. Still, this is one of the reasons I posted this: might be able to find out if something I'm doing isn't proper.

Like I said before, I do enjoy finding and using abusable systems in games sometimes, but if that's not the way to go, then I'll do my best to keep things legit.

Edited July 29, 2012 by Nesstrodamus