My First 4 Hours of play

[vetrox 16]

First off if you're lazy (like most of the internet) and dont want to read the whole post then the summary is: I love it. If you want a more in depth summary scroll to the end. Read on if you want some opinion and structured comments from the worlds worst keyboard warrior

Ok so a friend of mine told me about DayZ mod and as an avid zombie lover/killer I immediatley decided to download it. I already love ARMA II and I think it makes the perfect platform for a zombie survival mod/game.

So my first 4 Hours Post download and install

Hour 1:

So getting started with the mod. Im well aware that this in alpha stage (I have tested far worse alpha games) but the first problem I ecountered was just getting the game loaded. It was stuck on the "finding character creation" (or whatever it says) for a while and I thought i broke it. I soon realised this mod takes ages to load on my machine (ARMA II is the only game that runs like crap on my laptop but the long loading did make me worry)

Once that was out of the way the I was in and ready to explore and engross myself in the post apocolyptic zombie world. 2am, Lights off headphones on full LETS GET GOING!!!!! First order of business...remember how to play ARMA. Its been a good year and had since forgotten the controls so about 20 minutes spent familiarising myself with the controls and inventory system

Next 20 minutes. I got no weapons....SWEEET. One of the best games i played was amnesia:the dark descent, in which you play the whole game helpless with no weapons so this immediatley appealed to me. I saw an island a little way from me so I started swimming for it thinking there might be piece of something for me on there.

Long story short I found some zombies, started bleeding, swam away, died. The End

Hour 2:

Ok im familiar ish with the mechanics. Had a quick read up on the wiki to familiarize myself with the survival basics. Pick a new server and start all again. This time I used my amazing map/tracking/mountaineering skills to work out where i was (Ok i have never read a map in my life but even the most basic of braincells should be able to work out how to look at the map, see which side of the road the train track is on, small islands off coast and have a rough idea of where the nearest town might be)

So i started huffing it to a town (didnt catch the name) and cautiosly made my way closer and closer, crawling past groaning zombies and what not. Now im only an hour or so into this game/mod and my heart is already racing. I was actually in the game. Sneaking around, trying not to get eaten.

I found a hut...I FOUND SOME STUFF. Chem lights, some food and drink. Did some more sneaking around and found a 20slot bag and a hatchet. No i can be less fearfull of these dead walker things.

So i carried on like this for a bit, scavenging, avoiding. Slowly growing more confident in my ability to sneak up on zeds. I even went as far as to take a few out.

HOUR 3: First contact with player.

By this time its pretty obvious that the zombie AI needs a spot of tweaking but it still doesnt detract from the whole fearing for your life that you might get eaten. I had taken a couple of hits and could use a blood pack really.

So there I was casually skulking around for supplies when suddenly, I hear gunfire in the distance. FUCK ME DID ALL HELL BREAK LOOSE! zombies that I didnt even know where there suddenly started running madly around like mad rapists at an orphanage! Moar gunfire and more zeds. Omg my heart was pounding.

I can honestly say I have never felt like this playing a video game ever!!!! It was sureal (dont know how to spell that one) Lots of gunshots carried on. I can only assume there was a couple of guys cutting through swarms of zombies. The gunfire did stop eventually but i never saw the player or bodies. I didnt want to so I promptly got up from under the bush i was cowering in and made a run for the treeline.

HOUR 4:

So some exploring and scavenging some more. I found a small little village that looked like it could have some stuff in it. Im casually walking around with my trusty hatchet popping the odd stray zombie when suddenly i hear footsteps behind me.

Another player....AND HE GOT A GUN!!! I thought i was doine for then and there. He just looked at me. My salute key doesnt want to work...I dont know what button to voice chat. I was just waiting for the last couple hours hard work to wither away.

But he didnt shoot me...I turned around to watch about 10 zeds hurl themselves towards me. I managed to somehow cut them all down without taking a hit (ok they aint to hard to wipe out. Again the AI needs a spot of tweaking) turn around and the player had disapeared.

I then found a barn...with an actual fuck ton of stuff in it. My lucky day...theres a gun on the floor...a rifle as well. As im sifting through all the gear and loot...a bloodthirsty axe murderer comes up behind me and plants it straight into my skull....DEAD....Rookie error. I wasnt paying enough attention.

SUMMARY.

So my first 4 hours. Fortunatley ARMA in my books is a great game anyway so I dont need to comment on that, but the MOD itself.

It really did draw me in. I felt like i was the last guy on earth it was a great feeling. You quickly learn that the zombies are pretty fucking dumb. You can practically walk up to some of them and they wont even notice (it still doesnt stop me from sneaking around like im splinter cell) but the concept is just brilliant.

COD players are probably not going to like it cos you dont just run around and blast shit (good games may be that simple but amazing games aren't) but if you actually take time to learn what the mod is about before you begin then you will have a great time. I dont know how long it will keep me involved. I'd say 100 hours? im sure i will get pretty used to these dumb as fuck zombies pretty quickly.

The only major difficulty that people might find (when i say people i mean those who dont know how to make game work) is the odd loading screens and death screens and how to respawn but I'm going to put that down to alpha-ness syndrome.

I just wish I had a machine that could make the game look good and play with a decent fps. (its the damn trees that do it, I know it is. Its almost as if the AA is killing my GPU by making it work overtime applying aa to trees!!!!)

If you read all that...Thanks. Im bored at work so If you didnt read it I'm not hurt. Anything anyone (devs in perticular) wants to ask about a generally open minded gamer/software tester (or QA depending on what country your in) on his initial impressions feel free to ask.

In b4 generic interweb tools with noting usefull to say.

Edited July 31, 2012 by Vetrox

[concepts (DayZ) 7]

Glad your enjoying the mod, and aren't complaining like 1/4 of the community.

:D

[ThatGuyCalledReptile 314]

Good on you for being good about your first few hours of the game.

But you should learn that there's a difference between murderers and bandits.

Murderers are COD kiddies who are cunts.

Bandits have class and morals.

Anyways cheers mate.

[Sula 1205]

I confess, I did skim but all my threads are long. So I paid attention. :) Welcome fellow noob. Been studying youtube for a month and playing for a week. Dead, dead and dead again, no weapons, bleeding, dying of thirst, find some matches, want to cry with joy and get eaten, dead again. I LOVE IT and I'm glad you do too. :D

[ninjaholic 116]

ingrose

Engross.

I found some zombies, started bleeding, swam away, died.

ROFL.

zombies that I didnt even know where there suddenly started running madly around like mad rapists at an orphanage!

WHAT.

That said, glad you enjoyed your first couple hours. Mine were epic, ninja-like zombie dodging for 4 straight days foraging for food, ammo & water before I finally succumbed to hunger, surrounded by zombies and without any more ammo, something like 60 zombies dead. I'm their fucking apocalypse.

[Joelho 1]

Nice : ), I'm new too, i also enjoyed this mod a lot!

[Sula 1205]

Hi Joeho. Are you totally new? I found this sort of advice helpful, I hope you do too - check out the threads where people are looking to meet up and teamspeak/steamchat/skype about meeting on a server. If you're already passed that part, my apologies. :)

[vetrox 16]

Engross.

I knew i spelt it wrong! I just knew it!!! Google was right there but I was all like "no no no i got dis!!!! But I think you nailed it in your comment. You really do struggle to survive and when you find that can of beans when your dying of hunger your all like "OMG FOOOOOOOD nom nom nom, OK ZOMBIES!!!! LETS DO THIS!!!! WWWWAAAAARRRRGGGHHHH" etc

Anyone else want to comment on their first 4 hours? Are you the zombies apocolypse?

Edited July 31, 2012 by Vetrox

[ninjaholic 116]

Here's an article I wrote on my first couple hours:

I look at Dayz the same way I look at Australia. Everything, given the opportunity, will kill you.

With paranoia keeping me awake in my sleep-deprived state I started about midnight on a UK server (since I'm an EU gamer) with a high player count, 25-30/50 players, and despite the time of the day in GMT the server was in early afternoon time judging by the sky. I started on the shore (as everyone does, far as I know) and made my way west (though didn't know it at the time) until I hit the end of the map.

FML. Great start, as anyone who knows Dayz will know this means I'm in the middle of nowhere and have to run for ages to find someplace worth finding. By that time I'd be gasping for water and desperate for beans. I knew that already, so with time against me ran in as straight a line in what I now know was north through the forest to what I'd thought would be a nearby village and not waste any more time.

About 15 minutes later I still didn't see any signs that I wasn't the only person on the server, ever, so I took a southeast turn back to the coast hoping to recover some distance lost and get a guiding line of coast or trees or road or, Jesus, anything that would take me to where the drink, food, guns and zombies were (in that order I'd hoped).

Coming out of the forest, which had me shitting myself every foot that there were zombies behind every tree, shrub and mound, I came upon the coast. The same place I'd started.

You're fucking kidding me. Man, these maps are absolutely massive. People weren't joking when they said 225 square miles of terrain, and every mile can feel like a real one.

Going the opposite way was the only sensible thing to do, as you gotta follow the basic survival rules in Dayz: Please Remember What's First (which stands for Protection, Rescue, Water & Food) and the food's not going to come to me. I am the food. There's no rescue either.

Following the shoreline I came across what I now know to be Kamenka. I swear someone with a gun hasn't been here in years because there's zombies EVERYWHERE. I'm not kidding. There must be 30 in and around the treeline, village and buildings. I had to spend the entire time in prone so I didn't get insta-eaten. The train tracks run right through and up the coast so I followed these best I could, dodging between houses to avoid most of the horde and being spotted.

I nearly got caught by a zombie who'd glitched into the train tracks at one point, nearly touching his feet before I realized 80% of his body was inside the track mound that raised the train tracks off the floor to around shin-height. I had to work my way around through the foliage on the coast, past the pier and came across a guard house. Awesome. Stuff spawns in here.

Taking a look inside made me laugh. Couple empty cans and some flares. I bet the zombies will shit themselves now.

Instead of getting lost in the wilderness on a place I hadn't even bothered to find a map for yet, I decided if I was going to find other new players I'd better follow the tracks up the coast, so prone until I was a good 50 meters from the nearest infected I crouched and made my way up the coast to a standalone lighthouse with nothing interesting at all inside or about it, but beyond I could see some buildings, one of them large. There's got to be something in here.

Sick of crawling I ran up the coast fast as I could, thankful no zombies were around to see me and rounded a wall, ducked into a crouch, and popped in to the first building with two sets of open, blue doors. This is Komarovo.

A map would later tell me that there's one building here with a chance of a spawn. That spawn turned out to me more empty cans. Awesome. If it was real life I could make piss-poisoned aluminium ninja stars and kill the zombies over a couple of weeks but since this isn't real life I'm shit out of luck. I crawled out one of the blue pairs of doors, opposite to the entry doors and crawled right in to the face of a 'hopper'. OH SHI-

As luck would have it, he wasn't facing me, and hopped right past. I got the fuck out of there, I'd like to say fast but I was crawling prone on the ground so it took what felt like six hours to get out of the building and follow the tracks across the compound in behind some cargo containers.

Still without a weapon, gasping for water I couldn't find and didn't have, I pressed F by accident and smashed an empty whiskey glass off a nearby container. I think I shit a housing estate at that point because every zombie for a mile would've heard it.

Or so I thought.

Poised to run like a bitch... nothing happened. Zombies on the opposite side of the wall didn't care. The zombie around the corner couldn't care less. Phew. At that point, with no hope for finding a liquid worth drinking without resorting to drinking my own piss, I decided to log out and check back in another night. On another server that didn't have zombies every 8 sq. ft.

I checked a map online, and I'm going to make my way to the deer stands to the north of Kamenka, towards Pavlovo next time I log in.

[iamblazelflack 33]

Read it and I loved it, I didn't get so in depth into the game like you until my third death I think when I found a hatchet.

[TGxGriff 5]

Great story dude