DayH: Surviving the Hacker Apocalypse

[crockett (DayZ) 41]

I no longer think of this game as a zombie survival game but rather a game where you try to play and survive against the hackers in a unforgiving environment. I figured I'd tell the story of a single day on the public Hive and a survival attempt vs hackers & script kiddies.

First off I will say that I tend to jump around on private Hives a lot and always have several characters I can use with various kits across these different servers. I find this keeps my interest up in the game and it keeps me from being too disappointed if I lose a character that I've spent a lot of time on.

After one of my friend's & myself both lost two of our better characters in a pretty decent fire-fight neither us us really wanted to go through the effort of gearing up that day. Instead we decided to jump on the public hive where neither of us had played in well over 2 weeks and we both had solid kits.

Upon logging in, I noticed I had a satchel charge in my kit I had forgot about, likely the only one on the public Hive that has ever been legitimately found. :lol: We came up with the great idea to bomb the Cherno Church and made our way from up north down to the south on a highly populated server.

By the time we made it to the outskirts of Cherno we decided it was likely way too hot to pull off our plan, rustled with maybe blowing up the NW Hospital but instead decided to blow up the tower at the Balota airfield due to the server population.

We cleared the airfield of an unlucky victim and set up inside the tower in order to prep the explosives. My friend was under the stairs & I was just above placing the satchel, when a defective Chinese circuit caused it to malfunction blowing up premature, killing my 17 day old character but somehow allowing my friend to live.

I set forth on the mad dash to get my gear back while my friend kept watch best he could.. (he was about 4k blood) He somehow manages to kill 3 players whom tried to loot my body one of which ran into the exact same tree while he was in trying to lose a zombie. :lol:

I get back to my gear only to notice someone has managed to steal my FN FaL but my DMR was still in my backpack. However thanks to public hives being script kiddies paradise, we both end up with Coyote Backpacks, Range finders & NV from two of the guys he killed. The only decent 2nd weapon they had was an AS50 so now I'm sporting a AS50 & a DMR. (lol hoping no CQC finds us)

At this time the server is dwindling with only a handful of players, so we retreat to the wood and log out in hopes to find more population elsewhere. This is where the hacking begins..

We log onto a server with almost 40 players while being in the middle of the woods.. My friend loads first as my client bugged out forcing me to restart. He dies by a hacker about 1 min after logging in.. The guy appears on top of him laughs over direct while my friend shoots him then my friend was dead with his 20 day old character and loot was all lost.

We had a back up plan and headed to a tent we had close by on another server which had soso gear in it rearmed and made our way to the woods near Cherno then logged over to a higher populated server where we planned to get some pay back on unsuspecting victims.

We logged into a highly populated server and trying to plan how we would enter Cherno, we are welcomed to the "you are dead" screen along with about 10 others on the server of about 40. No gun fire, no falling to our death, no cows parachuting from the sky or nuclear explosions.. Just instant death with all gear lost by some prepubescent kid playing with a script he downloaded from the internet.

We hop over to yet another highly populated server and decide we are raiding what ever city we are both near with what ever we can get our hands on.. Cherno yet again it was. I came in a bit ahead of my friend and managed to die with just an axe in my hands..

Re-spawn near Baltoa as my friend is just getting close to Cherno when he says he's found 3 tents.. I had managed to only find a double barrel shotgun & several rounds and he has found a tent with a L85, DMR & other obviously duped in items such as range finders & NV, Coyote backpack ect..ect.. (guns were limited for what ever reason)

Just as he is saying he got this loot we are both teleported to the north west runway inside a hanger along with the other 30 or so players on the server. My friend and I both managed to abort before we died and we logged into a server with zero players for the first time that day.

We both came in bleeding & had to bandage right away. We both survive the 3rd hacker of the day but still haven't been able to do what we intended and that was attack a major populated city and now we are all the way back up north where we started.

We decided to make the best of it and try to kit out a bit better. We both find 2nd guns that are so'so but myself still only having an assault backpack, sort of limits the usefulness of gear I could get. We head to Stary in an attempt to at least find me a decent backpack then plan to head back south.

No such luck of finding a backpack in Stary & the tents are all pretty much giving us crappy loot & neither of us are really interested in putting any effort into farming at this point. We decided to get out of Stary to the wood then most likely log over to a private Hive, when yet again my friend is teleported yet I'm left in the same spot.

We are still the only two players on this server. No one else has joined and no one is showing on the player list, but my friend is teleported to debug plains so he instantly logs out when some dude starts talking to him on direct chat..

He logs off & we join yet another server to try and hook up & gear up. He spawns in Solnichniy & I'm still just outside Stary but we both still have our gear.. Yet again on this server with no one logged in but ourselves, we find yet more hacking as on the map there is an X just to the west of Elektro with the words "Hacker loot here, take what you want".

Having nothing to lose we meet up there and sure enough there is a medical box with 5 to 10 of every gun in ARMA II along with crap loads of everything else under the sun. We spent a bit of time playing with the 50 satchel charges and learning how to use them properly. :rolleyes:

Geared up with only stuff that can be found in DayZ then logged out.. One side of me says we shouldn't of taken anything but the other side says "F" it as we have had stuff taken away far more times by hackers and we deserved a break.

Regardless, if it was right or wrong, I think it's safe to say this game is really no longer about surviving the zombies but rather surviving the Hacker Apocalypse.

Edited September 14, 2012 by crockett

[Kipale 78]

I play in 5-15 people servers and i meet hacker once in 2 weeks. One day i played in 60 people russian server, after 30mins everyone were teleported in same place and i had to go back to low ppl servers but it's fine.

[crockett (DayZ) 41]

I play in 5-15 people servers and i meet hacker once in 2 weeks. One day i played in 60 people russian server, after 30mins everyone were teleported in same place and i had to go back to low ppl servers but it's fine.

Yes, this works in most cases as does playing on private hives but it doesn't mean you wont still get hit by them. This is just more of a story on how we don't let the hackers ruin our game play but instead just roll with the punches and keep going.

[omgwtfbbq (DayZ) 1069]

I still haven't been hacked to death. It seems that you are just very unlucky. Please don't make another thread titled "I quit" complaining about the hackers. Good for you for sticking through it all.

Edited September 14, 2012 by omgwtfbbq

[sostronk 334]

I still haven't been hacked to death. It seems that you are just very unlucky.

Nope you have pretty much grinded out days. Last time I seen you you had like 80 zombie kills from 60 days. You take no risks at all and disconnect if you see a teleporter (your lucky none of them have disabled disconnect like they have with me). If you join a high pop public server your going to die within 10 hours straight gameplay in 1 day. Hacking seems to have decreased though.

[omgwtfbbq (DayZ) 1069]

Nope you have pretty much grinded out days. Last time I seen you you had like 80 zombie kills from 60 days. You take no risks at all and disconnect if you see a teleporter (your lucky none of them have disabled disconnect like they have with me). If you join a high pop public server your going to die within 10 hours straight gameplay in 1 day. Hacking seems to have decreased though.

2 points:

1) I always used to think that zombies were a waste of ammo--and I was right--until I found a UAZ today, in which I had 15 M4A1 CCO SD magazines. I now freely shoot any zombie that gets too close for my liking. I am now at ~130 zombie kills.

2) I always play on servers with 20 players or less, as there is almost never hackers on there. Far less chance of Cherno snipers, too. I used to always play on 50 people servers, until I heard about the hacking problem. I then switched to lower population servers, and sure enough, see my signature to show the benefits of 20 player servers.

[_headripper_ 8]

I still haven't been hacked to death. It seems that you are just very unlucky. Please don't make another thread titled "I quit" complaining about the hackers. Good for you for sticking through it all.

You do realize who is the very lucky bastard?

I have been killed ~4-5 times legit, atleast i think it was legit. (ppl that fired faster than me/sniped/or cause of me being stupid.

Ive been killed ~20+ times by invisible/immortal ppl shooting me in the back in the middle of nowhere. ( prone in a bush/alone in a house in the middle of the night with ~5ppl on the server, aiming at the only entrance, etc)

Teleported into the air/sea, best part is if u dont die from starvation when swimming, its likely the hacker teleports u into the air, so you fall to youre death.

Or youre char just die, running/standing/looting/shooting (in this case, my experience say that often all chars on the server share the same faith) last time it was 3ppl on the server... time before that ~38+

Couple of nights ago me and 2 friends was the only ppl left on a server and we where arguing/deciding if we should try to raid nw airfield, standing in the middle of nowhere, when 2 ppl join the server.

10s later 2 medic zeds, equiped with nvg:s come running at us(no deer stand, no tents, no village, no city anywhere near us)

They take ~100rounds from a mk48 right in the face, running around faster than a car can travel, then they start to hit us with something and we all take significant dmg before we left the game.

The part i dont get.. is what fun it is to kill someone/everyone with a script? or teleport to someone, being invisible and immortal and shoot them in the back whitout them even knowing someone was there?

[crockett (DayZ) 41]

2 points:

1) I always used to think that zombies were a waste of ammo--and I was right--until I found a UAZ today, in which I had 15 M4A1 CCO SD magazines. I now freely shoot any zombie that gets too close for my liking. I am now at ~130 zombie kills.

2) I always play on servers with 20 players or less, as there is almost never hackers on there. Far less chance of Cherno snipers, too. I used to always play on 50 people servers, until I heard about the hacking problem. I then switched to lower population servers, and sure enough, see my signature to show the benefits of 20 player servers.

No offense but I simply do not believe that you play on populated servers.. 20 is more than enough to have a hacker show up.. As I mentioned above we had one last night on a sever that it was just myself & one friend. Playing on small servers is just not fun as I'm not interested in farming items all day, I play for the player vs player interaction.

Just now I joined a server with 30-35 people.. I was set up on a hill overlooking a popular loot spot and next thing I know I'm falling from the sky and see others falling with me.. I hit abort as fast as I could and as I did I see my legs get broken and get the shock icon hearing my char scream but I had not died yet.

I logged into another server and I ended up in the same place I was before I was magically dropped from the sky. I can only assume I was able to abort before the hive registered I was falling & hitting the ground because it was less than 10 seconds from time I was in air til hitting ground/aborting.

I seriously do not believe anyone can possibly play on active "public" hive servers, with out having experienced a run in with a hacker. There is no being careful about it because there is nothing you can do to avoid them outside of not playing. The only thing you can really do is to adjust your play style to give yourself the ability to comeback quickly after getting hit by one.

Edited September 14, 2012 by crockett