The Friendly Survivor and the Disappearing UAZ

[MrJimmySlayer 30]

To set the scene, I began playing yesterday and spawned a-fresh below the Balota deer stands, after dying late the previous night and deciding to wait until the morrow to continue. My brother and I play together often and on this occasion we decided to meet up at the Northern apartments in Cherno, so that I could give him some med assistance (he was on roughly 2000 blood) and then grab some supplies and head up to our camp.

I made a quick trip to the deer stands in the hopes of finding some sort of weapon in case of an emergency on the way to, or at, the apartments. Nearing the south-west deer stand (bottom right facing North), I hear gunshots. AKM. The rounds pierced the air around me, but as I come closer to the deer stand I see a man shooting at the zombies on the ground in front of me, clearing a path. I call out to him on voice chat, asking him if he is in need of bandaging, and he responds with something along the lines of "yeah, can you help me look for some ammo?". We search the other deer stands for ammo for his gun, when he yells "Got an AK-74 for ya over here!" We fix each other's wounds up and I grab the AK and a few rounds for it, and say our goodbye's. He veers off toward the coast as I head toward a mountain for use as cover for the rest of the journey. As I move further into the distance, I hear the snap of his AKM, and look back to see tens of zombies fall and bite the dust.

This was the first friendly survivor I had encountered in the game, other than a hatchet man in a barn I had to save from zombies weeks ago. I've been playing for multiple weeks now, and had many many encounters with other survivors and bandits alike. The amount times where an unnecessary murder took place and put me back on the coast is amazing. I totally understand the threat factor, and believe me, I know how much it sucks to have to lose hard earned gear, so I get why many people try to DC to attempt to avoid death, but in many of these encounters I would have been more than happy to offer medical support or food and drink, or even give a newbie a gun. Unfortunately when a hatchet man tries to hack you to bits for your gear it's hard not to put them in their place instead of attempting negotiations, because as many have said before, you really can't trust anyone.

After this encounter though, much of my faith in humanity and the Aussie population has been restored, and I hope to encounter this survivor again sometime.

So... to the other part of the story...

I arrive in Cherno and start to crouch run toward the apartments from the mountain on the west when I spot an oddity in a bush. A parked UAZ sits on the hill next to the apartments, out of fuel and with a totally red engine. I didn't want to stick around to have a bullet put in my face, so I swiftly left, and made my way to heal my brother. We get organised, grab all the meds we can, heal up, and hit the road. I want to take another look at the UAZ, so we pass it and crouch behind it incase of snipers. opening up the boot, I find to my great surprise an M107, 3 mags, plenty of fuel, food, water, some odds and ends, and fuel tank parts. I begin repairs on the car, and refuel with a jerry can (enough to make a quick escape). We chuck our meds in the back, and rev up the engine.

She moves. We rocket up the hill I came from at a riveting 3kph, and reach a gravity defying 20kph on the dirt track at the top. Stopping further down the road to refuel in a safer place, my brother takes the M107, we save the vehicle, and continue on toward camp. Passing through Nadezhdino, the road is clear and I speed up. Suddenly out of nowhere, that glitch I read about on the forum happens. "Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiet". A burnt out truck appears directly in front of me, and I clip it with the UAZ. Boom. Car explodes, we get out just in time to be unconscious and die on the ground beside the car. My brother flips his shit in losing the M107, and decides he won't be playing anymore tonight.

I read somewhere on the dev-heaven Issue Tracker about vehicles reappearing at the last saved location on server restart, and I knew one was due that night. I made the trek back to the destroyed UAZ, and happy as Larry, I find my dead brother's body standing up on the road, M107 in hand. I take his loot (my body had disappeared) and head back to camp on foot. Putting the weapon in our of out tents, I see it. Perfect timing. "Global: Server restarting in 5 minutes"

I log off and wait for the yellow briefing status to turn to playing, then I hop back in. It's dark out, but moonlit, so the road and houses are visible as I approach Nadezhdino. I take out the binocs, and to my surprise, instead of respawning at the last saved location, my UAZ was repaired and sitting on the road ready to be taken. I get to the UAZ and to my great surprise, all the gear is still inside, and it is in a drive-able state. It takes me a while to hoof it up a hill which blocks my way to my campsite, but eventually I park it nicely in a spot close to my tents, extremely well hidden from the outside world. Now, keep in mind at the time of play it was night, and there were not too many players on the server. In addition to this, most I would assume would be NVG users looting towns in the North, so the chances of someone having followed me is very, very slim.

The UAZ had a couple of empty jerry cans so I went to fill them up at the nearest petrol station, roughly 200m from my campsite. I rush up there, fill them all, and rush back. When I arrive back at the site I have a bit of trouble locating the vehicle, so I turn up the gamma a bit to see if that helps to distinguish the car. No dice. I panic and run around in between trees and such trying to find the vehicle. Nope. Gone. Server had another restart within the next couple of minutes (the server often has 2 within half an hour in case shit gets messed up), and to my great unluck, my UAZ was still gone. Now I claim this on hackers, because I had a similar situation happen to me not two weeks ago where I lost a motorbike, then in the following days my quadbike. Pretty pissed off about it, I mean really, it's cool you stole all our vehicles, but do you seriously need that many cars? Come on mate, when will you ever use all that shit you stole? Anyway, it's an alpha and all that so I know you don't have to tell me, and yeah the tents lost nothing so chill haters :P

Well that's the story, hope it was a good little (or big) read for you. See you round :D

TL;DR: Friendly gave me boom, boom. Found UAZ, stolen by hacker. Sadface.

[alelx 1]

Wonder why I read all this

cool story though